yupTravis B. wrote:I.e. it's not colonialism if I agree with it.
no one is speaking about empathy: you don't need empathy to figure out that your enemies are people who sincerely believe what they do, you don't need empathy to figure out you need to tread carefully when you're fighting nonviolent injustices with violence. you just need reason and principles.
that "law is violence" makes you think of libertarians only is, i must say, your failing: communists know law is violence, liberals have known that law is violence for at least three hundred years, bakunin <hardly a libertarian> knew laws were violence. the chinese political philosophers have known law is violence for aeons. the romans knew law was violence, machiavelli knew laws are violence, locke knew laws are violence, mill and ricardo and smith knew laws are violence. the dudes that wrote deuteronomy knew laws are violence. That we like <some> laws doesn't mean laws are not violence. That some laws can be just doesn't mean laws are not violence. That you and I agree that we probably can't have a minimally livable and decent society without laws doesn't make laws not violence, just like that we think we're right in punishing savages for cutting the clits off their daughters doesn't make that an imposition of our own values unto theirs, just like the fact that we think bigots should be punished doesn't erase that punishing bigots is violently opposing nonviolent injustice. things aren't black and white.
Obviously not believing in ethics-based empathy is not the same as ignoring emotions. emotions are important, but they're not *that* important.
You're going for some sort of super edgy combination of solipsism and gold mean fallacy, where nothing is right or wrong and every argument is a naval-gazing monologue.
What part of "it's right to impose violently our beliefs on people who are themselves not being violent towards others though we should be appropriately sober about the kind of thing we're doing" is anything remote like "nothing is right or wrong".
How kind of you to inquire, as a matter of fact I do! something is moral policing when you're policing morality and views, instead of actions. This is such a case. obviously not selling a cake is not a crime, the crime is not selling it for certain reasons: if I don't sell bob a cake because he's a pedophile, or a fascist, no one gives a fuck: if I don't sell bob a cake because he likes penis then this law does give a fuck. the objective here is to reduce the amount of people who believe bigotry against homosexuals is okay the way the amount of people who believe bigotry against blacks is okay has been reduced, because that's the only way for discrimination not to be a thing: it's obviously not about the cake, but, as zompist argues, it's about what kind of a world we want to build, and that there be a world where people espouse the wrong morals <"I ain't selling no cake to no niggers/faggots/whatever*" > are so few and marginalized they don't even speak those morals, let alone act on them. This is how you know when something is moral policing: alternatively, If we have a law, say, that says that if I punch your kid in the face I should be punished, that's not moral policing: the law doesn't care about my reasons or feelings, or my views regarding the kid: it just cares for action, and as such polices action and not views, which is a different thing.Do you have a rubric for which laws are necessary for a functioning society and which areevilviolent moral policing colonialism?