But Britain was more liberal, not less, in 1930 or 1870 than it is today. In 1900 you could order a machine gun in the mail and opium at the village post office. Today you cannot buy certain types of flavourings because of vague and weakly substantiated dangers.
What has changed since 1900 is that people who make good decisions have increasingly been forced to bail out people who make bad decisions. That has made bad decisions much more common and in turn has created pressure to ban bad decisions. Increased social control has gone hand-in-hand with social 'degeneration'.
It's probably true that most people would be better off handing over most of the big decisions about how to live life to a responsible and trusted advisor, but even there, voluntary arrangements almost always work better than compulsory ones. Compare the quality of care offered by, say, the Methodist church in liberal 1870s Britain with the quality of care offered by the USSR in 1975. Social advisors to whom you can't say no are really just slave-drivers.
That liberalism led to democracy, and democracy has led to socialist degeneration and totalitarianism. Plato's vision has been accurate.
Catholicism kept away the forces of liberalism for a thousand years, and Islam has proved unassailable to it. Once liberalism gains hold, everything else eventually follows. Once you accept that people should be free to do what they want, the slippery slope ensues and soon you have people with the right to kill their children and the freedom to act like animals without consequences. That is, be subsidised by society for their disgusting behaviour.
By liberalism, I do not mean the freedom to make your own choices, but the political movement which led on from classical liberalism. Logically, in my view. This movement emphasises the freedom to make one's own choices regardless of their consequences. The consequences apply either to the person or to society in general. Keynesianism, free love, narcotics prevalence and family collapse all came from giving people a choice.
Traditional religious societies face none of these problems. Freedom seems to be opposed to human progress and human dignity. Freedom unleashes the scum tendencies in humans and the most degenerate pull everyone else along.
As for the Soviet Union, in my view that was an example of how a religious monarchy skipped the liberalism stage straight to totalitarianism. However Russia has always mystified me.
That liberalism led to democracy, and democracy has led to socialist degeneration and totalitarianism. Plato's vision has been accurate.
Catholicism kept away the forces of liberalism for a thousand years, and Islam has proved unassailable to it. Once liberalism gains hold, everything else eventually follows. Once you accept that people should be free to do what they want, the slippery slope ensues and soon you have people with the right to kill their children and the freedom to act like animals without consequences. That is, be subsidised by society for their disgusting behaviour.
By liberalism, I do not mean the freedom to make your own choices, but the political movement which led on from classical liberalism. Logically, in my view. This movement emphasises the freedom to make one's own choices regardless of their consequences. The consequences apply either to the person or to society in general. Keynesianism, free love, narcotics prevalence and family collapse all came from giving people a choice.
Traditional religious societies face none of these problems. Freedom seems to be opposed to human progress and human dignity. Freedom unleashes the scum tendencies in humans and the most degenerate pull everyone else along.
As for the Soviet Union, in my view that was an example of how a religious monarchy skipped the liberalism stage straight to totalitarianism. However Russia has always mystified me.
You contrasted current Britain unfavourably to the old classical liberal Britain. Would you contrast current Britain unfavourably to 15th century Britain? Or most of the current Islamic theocracies? Or Catholic countries in Latin America, or the Philippines?
If not, then I think you are arguing for a retreat from socialism back to classical liberalism, not a retreat from all post-enlightenment ideologies to theocracy.
I understand this what you are saying. I think in Britain you are constantly surrounded by luxuries and many poor people get down about not being able to live a 'normal' life like the people down the road. You're leading the same life day in, day out with no change and many see alcohol as an affordable luxury, a chance to have a break. Usually, this means cutting back the budget on something else - usually food because rent and electricity are more of a necessity.
Of course children are more important that happiness or ease, but depression is a selfish illness.
Edit: I am in no way defending their actions btw, just stating my experiences.
Fair enough. I believe it's extremely important to condemn people who behave poorly. The society is so permissive that poor behaviour is accepted and even praised!
The threat of social exclusion is the best disincentive to people living poorly. The problem is that the threat has not been effectively exercised for so long that the problem has become widespread enough for the new society to be dominated by failures and the excluded.
I totally disagree with this! You cannot ban parents from having children whether they are fat! First of all it is discrimination (Sizeism) and would encourage more people to fat - shame others. This acceptance of allowing people to discriminate people due to their size is wrong! It has been shown to hinder rather than help and will make people feel more depressed about their bodies.
Secondly how do you define a fat parent? This is a grey area as there are loads of different ways to measure weight/ health/ fat. If we use the standard BMI then some parents who are perfectly healthy may be labelled fat - (look at professional rugby players would are labelled "obese" by BMI - would you say that they are unfit parents?) Some measuring scales are unreliable and subjective to how there were carried out and by whom.
And not all people are fat because of laziness or diet - some are because of external factors that they cannot control - it could be a medical condition such as Hypothyroidism, or medication that causes you to put on weight.
I think that fast food companies such as McDonalds, KFC, Burger King etc... are to blame. They promote fast food to children on daytime adverts, through sponsorship - (Coca cola at the Olympics), on billboards, through product placement...
I believe the only way for people to see sense about food is through education and government teaching programmes.
You contrasted current Britain unfavourably to the old classical liberal Britain. Would you contrast current Britain unfavourably to 15th century Britain? Or most of the current Islamic theocracies? Or Catholic countries in Latin America, or the Philippines?
If not, then I think you are arguing for a retreat from socialism back to classical liberalism, not a retreat from all post-enlightenment ideologies to theocracy.
My experience with the poorest of countries is that their society is superior to ours in most ways. Not their levels of wealth, certainly, but society itself in these countries is far healthier than in the west.
Classical Britain would have been superior to these societies, but classical Britain birthed modern Britain. It could be argued that the first world war killed off all the strong men who normally keep degeneration at bay, but the USA was hardly affected and it has become the bleeding edge of the looney tunes movements. Or could we blame Soviet financed cultural marxism? I don't know. But it seems to be that in both these cases, for whatever reason, socialism came from liberalism. Islamic countries under the Soviet umbrella eventually reasserted their identity, but the West seems irretrievably socially doomed.
So I don't disagree that classical liberalism is as close to a good form of governance as possible. I simply don't think it is sustainable.
Talking about healthy weight and then talking about BMI in the same sentence is ridiculous.
For one thing, there is no such thing as a healthy weight. For another, if there was, then BMI would not be the way to measure it.
How is it ridiculous? BMI is still pretty much the gold standard for measuring body fat - this is why GPs still use this measurement for determining whether you are a healthy weight.
Also healthy weight can be defined: Its the amount of energy you consume is equal to the amount of energy you use for respiration, digestion and physical activity. You become obese or anorexic when the balance is tipped to one side.
You have to remember that the term obese is for when your weight poses a present risk to your health. You can be slightly fat yet not have any adverse affects to your overal health.
How is it ridiculous? BMI is still pretty much the gold standard for measuring body fat - this is why GPs still use this measurement for determining whether you are a healthy weight.
BMI is utter gibberish, completely meaningless. You're better off going on absolutely any other measure you could think of, even waist-height ratio is better than BMI. It STILL doesn't measure your health or fitness though.
Also healthy weight can be defined: Its the amount of energy you consume is equal to the amount of energy you use for respiration, digestion and physical activity. You become obese or anorexic when the balance is tipped to one side.
That doesn't even make sense. A weight is not an amount of energy.
You have to remember that the term obese is for when your weight poses a present risk to your health. You can be slightly fat yet not have any adverse affects to your overal health.
Well yes, being slightly overweight increases your life expectancy by a significant amount.
Weight and health are only extremely tenuously connected and not generally in the direction people assume.
How is it ridiculous? BMI is still pretty much the gold standard for measuring body fat - this is why GPs still use this measurement for determining whether you are a healthy weight.
Also healthy weight can be defined: Its the amount of energy you consume is equal to the amount of energy you use for respiration, digestion and physical activity. You become obese or anorexic when the balance is tipped to one side.
You have to remember that the term obese is for when your weight poses a present risk to your health. You can be slightly fat yet not have any adverse affects to your overal health.
And by the way, the NHS knows little about how to promote good health. My experience with doctors is they've little idea other than "eat a balanced diet" (whatever the **** that means).
Nutritionists and holistic doctors have a much better idea. The idea that the Government should have a role in anything as important as human health is really really foolish. The EU is going around banning or restricting many health supplements so France and Germany can monopolise Europe with their pharmaceutical industry.
Don't go looking for help from Daddy government because you will find either fools who know nothing or businessmen who want to rip you off.
"1.the state or fact of having a duty to deal with something or of having control over someone
2.the opportunity or ability to act independently and take decisions without authorization"
whether we agree that they are being responsible or not is a different matter
I mean in EXTREME cases some parents could be thought of as negligent through their child's diet - ie. if they were so fat they developed Type 2 diabetes at a ridiculously young age
That liberalism led to democracy, and democracy has led to socialist degeneration and totalitarianism. Plato's vision has been accurate.
Catholicism kept away the forces of liberalism for a thousand years, and Islam has proved unassailable to it. Once liberalism gains hold, everything else eventually follows. Once you accept that people should be free to do what they want, the slippery slope ensues and soon you have people with the right to kill their children and the freedom to act like animals without consequences. That is, be subsidised by society for their disgusting behaviour.
FYI you do realise for thousands of years parents use to abandon unwanted children by the roadside in jars or commited direct infanticide?
Monasteries, modern birth control and abortion is one of the only reasons the killing of unwanted live children is seen as unacceptable these days.
How is it ridiculous? BMI is still pretty much the gold standard for measuring body fat - this is why GPs still use this measurement for determining whether you are a healthy weight.
Also healthy weight can be defined: Its the amount of energy you consume is equal to the amount of energy you use for respiration, digestion and physical activity. You become obese or anorexic when the balance is tipped to one side.
You have to remember that the term obese is for when your weight poses a present risk to your health. You can be slightly fat yet not have any adverse affects to your overal health.
"These results suggest that BMI is age and sex dependent when used as an indicator of body fatness"
So its basically useless.
and what does body fatness really tell you anyway? wtf even is body fatness?
lol I'm a single parent kid. BMI of 22 and a lot of it is muscle since I am quite toned. So... Yeah being a single parent kid isn't an excuse for obesity?
Good. You're potentially an example to all the other single mothers out there. I hope you spend as much time on your child as you do on yourself, though.
BMI is utter gibberish, completely meaningless. You're better off going on absolutely any other measure you could think of, even waist-height ratio is better than BMI. It STILL doesn't measure your health or fitness though.
That doesn't even make sense. A weight is not an amount of energy.
Well yes, being slightly overweight increases your life expectancy by a significant amount.
Weight and health are only extremely tenuously connected and not generally in the direction people assume.
I agree that BMI is maybe not the best of measuring devices but that was why I mentioned it. Its not perfect and using it to determine someones ability to have children is wrong. Also if it was soo bad why haven't the medical profession adopted a better system for measuring body weight - surely it can't be that bad.
Also weight is not an amount of energy but the amount of energy consumed and burnt plays a massive part in weight. We get energy from calories and we put on weight from excess calories or lose weight from consuming less calories. Therefore weight must be directly proportional to the amount of energy involved in our day to day tasks.
I agree that BMI is maybe not the best of measuring devices but that was why I mentioned it. Its not perfect and using it to determine someones ability to have children is wrong. Also if it was soo bad why haven't the medical profession adopted a better system for measuring body weight - surely it can't be that bad.
because they're lazy and stupid.
Also weight is not an amount of energy but the amount of energy consumed and burnt plays a massive part in weight. We get energy from calories and we put on weight from excess calories or lose weight from consuming less calories. Therefore weight must be directly proportional to the amount of energy involved in our day to day tasks.
yeah ok, but at what weight is someone most healthy? 5 stone? 10 stone? 15 stone?
"These results suggest that BMI is age and sex dependent when used as an indicator of body fatness"
So its basically useless.
and what does body fatness really tell you anyway? wtf even is body fatness?
Its not saying its useless its saying that there are things wrong with BMI for age and sex but it is quite reliable for accurate results for different ethnicities, also it does not say that we should stop using it.
Its one of the easiest ways for GPs to accurately determine your body fat in the short amount of time that they have to see someone in their surgery.
The children would've been adopted, or at least had a life to live. If the kid-killers were caught, they were imprisoned or killed for their crimes.
Today, they are praised as Strong, Independent Women™.
I know which society I'd rather live in.
Nope.... exposure was widely practised until the middle ages. Exposure in antiquity and the classical ages was seen as acceptable if the child died from natural causes, by later period you had parents physically killing their children, in rome for example during the middle age it was a common site to see a mother throwing her child into the tiber. By larger it was still accepted by society.
The first example of it being outlawed was around 374AD, however the law was rarely ever enforced, even until the late middle ages it was actually completely legal in sweden, germany and iceland and vastly ignored in the rest of europe.
It was only during the high middle ages that abandonment finally replaced exposure as the main method of getting rid of unwanted children.
because they're lazy and stupid. - haha, that made me laugh! Also it could be because there isn't yet a reliable alternative way for measuring it yet.
yeah ok, but at what weight is someone most healthy? 5 stone? 10 stone? 15 stone?
I think it depends on the individual person - I can't say a broad statement such as if you are over 15 stone you are overweight - for some people it just may not be true and they may be perfectly healthy at that weight.