Theories of moral sentiment. Adam Smith addresses ideas about self-control with regard to passions. While this assessment would tend to agree with the ideas expressed in this essay from 2010, for the privacy of relationships, and the government not be involved (due to privacy issues), I have questions. In other words, self-control and passion really involves an assessment of an individual’s ideas for promiscuity or no promiscuity. It brings forth an assessment of privacy regarding monogamous sexual relationships and three or more individuals involved in sexual relationships. The issue here is not about heterosexual or homosexual, as evangelical puritans, afraid that someone somewhere is having a good time. Such people feel as if they have a divine right to judge and use people like Trump, DeSantis, Rick Scott, and others to invoke their autocracy forcing people to live in their way.
Therefore, am I correct to say that Smith made a statement of “morality” which was in a broader context than addressing homosexual and heterosexual ideas?
After all, traditionalist puritanical autocrats put forth the ideas of Sodom and Gomorrah. S&G (Genesis 19), if one reads it carefully, is really about the broader context which is addressed by Smith. Passions described in the events of S&G are about hatred of immigrants (xenophobia?) and using rape to demonstrate the hatred of immigrants, whether male or female. Ironically, a parallel account of this activity is found at Judges 19 when a woman gets killed due to rape.
In reading Smith’s Theories of Moral Sentiment, one can come to the conclusions I address. Your 2010 article seems to want to address the idea of privacy. Is this meant as a means of “being nice” to the plutocratic autocratic puritans in America today?
In a sense, Trump, Putin, DeSantis, Rick Scott, and others are doing nothing to abide by what this article says, as they try to push to put government BACK into the privacy of homosexuals, push homosexuals back into segregated closets, and help to re-introduce strong blackmailing of gay folks.
These people use religion to push an old idea which is the basis for the letters of the “f” word: “fornication under consent of King (or queen).” In this case, we can say, “fornication under consent of aristocratic business leaders” and then we can easily say the lack of privacy is NOT in the hands of a libertarian anarchist type of government, as Citizens United pushes those with money to vote and control the government and predominate over the will of the people and democracy. They use the ways of anti-homosexual companies like Chick-Fil-A (and now I have heard of Walgreens, Disney, and others) which is putting money forth to political candidates. It is ending up being those with a love of money who are working to control society and push for “fornication under consent of aristocratic business leaders” like Chick-Fil-A and others.
In other words. Trump and Putin and others can do whatever they wish to do regarding fornication, groping of women, etc., but they wish to dispose of, through old bullying tactics, those who are gay.
In a sense, this says let us just skip past the fact that Trump does not live up to Adam Smith’s ideas on moral sentiment, whether sexual or in terms of economics. Thus, to handle this, simply be “kind and nice” in trying to speak about “no government intervention in private matters?” After more than a decade since this essay was written, what has been accomplished? What is the intent here and how do you intend to move forward for the sake of moral sentiment towards ALL human beings.
Silly me for concluding that theologian, Adam Smith, with his “moral sentiments,” did NOT endorse the love of money. Even Joe Scarborough and others have written about this, with regard to economics and commerce.
Thus, when I view a documentary about a wealthy man who pulled himself up by the bootstraps from nothing, George F. Johnson, identifies a need to have a “sense of morality,” I don’t take his words as an endorsement of morality with regard to sexual identity or racist ideas. It just happens that society at that time was immersed in Jim Crow and the idea of bullying gay folks. If I take Mr. Johnson’s remarks as being related to ideas to endorse human equality due to “morality,” am I correct with regard to Mr. Johnson? Is there someone who just wishes to embrace the puritanical ways who finds it more interesting to shoot holes in what I say because “it’s just an interpretation,” rather than doing what another Binghamton, NY, person said, “THINK.” That means to consider and “THINK.” When puritanical autocratic people, living in judgment like a god, shoot holes in what I say, they never work to consider what I say in the context of humanity, but these idiots uphold their traditionalism with examples of past hatred. It is good to seek traditions at time, especially when considering humanity, human justice, human equality, and human rights. It is despicable to seek traditionalism.
The examples of both Johnson and Watson were to attempt to endorse ideas of humanity among their employees and do so by making money on this basis, not on the basis of a predominance of love of money, which is evil and endorsed by Russian immigrant, Ayn Rand, and others who taught the generation under the age of those of the World War II generation.
What does the Adam Smith Institute think about what I say?
Replies can be made at a blog titled Tioga Herald (http://tiogaherald.com) or at my email address of bibsinger@gmail.com …
Tioga Herald 
Fig Leaf
In the TV program, Naked and Afraid, we still blur the genitals. The mindset is from ancient ideas and traditions which cannot be validated by a library of books we call the scriptures. These are man-made ideas, not those from a loving God. Ron DeSantis and the majority of Roman Catholics on the SCOTUS have no right, under the U.S. Constitution, to invoke their beliefs about covering over genitals, portraying sex on TV, or even putting porn on TV. If so, then why are my rights and beliefs being tread on when I say I don’t want to see blood, guts, violence, and guns on TV, held by vicious and barbaric people who are like the Ancient Romans and carried forward by the Holy Roman Empire and the Roman Catholic Church? My beliefs are about a loving God who would not do such things as massacres, genocide, or homicide. Those are my beliefs and need to be protected by the U.S. Constitution which had a great deal of writing by Deists and not just those who call themselves Christians. This is NOT a Christian nation. It is a secular nation of one culture and a multitude of religious beliefs.
Walking out of a modern art museum in Florida, someone in our crowd began to bloviate about the nudity in the paintings and photographs. As someone involved in the arts, I protested and said that the human body is as beautiful as the scenery and other scenes on canvas or photos. Perhaps under the new law by DeSantis and the RepubliFascists of Florida, I would be shot for protesting such an expression against art, with a dissension against public displays of blood, guts, violence, and guns on T? The dissension for which this heinous law intends is to allow those like DeSantis or the idiot from Arizona (Blake Masters) to shoot down those who disagree and express the disagreement in words of dissension against what THEY believe? RepubliFascists need to be routed out, especially when they are moles hidden among the Democrats and divide the Democrats in the process. There is no free speech for hatred and lies which merely push people to fear in order to vote for RepubliFascists. This needs to be ended. Puritanical Roman Catholics and puritanical Protestants have no right to push their religious beliefs upon the rest of us. It matters not whether it involves their beliefs about blood, guts, violence, and guns on TV, sexual identity, abortions, frontal nudity, sex, or porn.
When introducing college students to the Internet in the 1990s, we found many young people were searching out porn. They would come to the college library to use the publicly available computers connected to the Internet in order to view the porn. We had a rule about not using the computers to view porn, but it did not stop the students. My approach was to ask someone whom I caught on the porn whether it would be good to have such actions portrayed live and on the tables in the library? Or at the same time, whether such public displays of bashing another person’s head in should be allowed in the library? It would give the students an embarrassment. I would use that as a learning moment to help understand how we need to respect what others think in a public situation and one way was to not put on the screens of the computers what others might find very offensive.
Then one day, a student who heard me say this asked the question: “why are there scenes of violence on computers and you say nothing to them?” He had me on that one. I merely said, “I wish I could, but my boss is more concerned about not having the porn, nudity, and sex on the screens and there is no concern about the violence on the screens.” That was the 1990s. Most of those young people at that time are now in their 40s and perhaps 50s. Many who were in their 20s in the 1990s were of the ages of those who stormed the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021, with weapons and vicious, spoiled brat attitudes of immaturity.
As the Internet got going, I no longer had to police for porn and utilize such situations as learning experiences. Did not matter because I don’t think anyone else used such situations as learning experiences. In fact a colleague promoted violence by physically abusing the students by hitting them over the head. When I protested that being done and tried to explain how it could be a calm learning experience, I was put down and the boss never took it seriously. Only tough guy vicious ways were promoted. And today, look what we have. With such actions of violence against the students, why would they not choose violence?
Funny thing. Because we had black folks in the library, too, and never once did I ever see a black person looking at the porn. That does not mean none of them did so, but it was always white guys whom I saw doing that. It was the white guys who got hit over the head by a librarian. It was white guys who stormed the Capitol building. When the black folk lodged a protest in Washington, prior to Jan. 6, they did so in a peaceful way of protest. So don’t talk to me about how black folk are bad and do so in a demeaning and ignorant knowledge about black folks.
My rights are being denied against the public viewing of blood, guts, violence, and guns on TV. In Europe, with less guns, allow such things to be viewed and don’t have a stupid jackass bloviating about seeing nudes in an art museum, as I viewed in the early years of the 21st Century in Palm Beach County, Florida. But then again, I have not endorsed censorship of blood, guts, violence, and guns on TV. I also don’t endorse censorship of public viewing of nudity, sex, or porn, either. Remove the Goddamn fig leaves, too, not because I get a perverted sense of enjoyment because I don’t. But because these are beauty among human beings which cannot be denied. And stop eating sugar and carbs so as to increase obesity and diabetes in America today. Again. Remove the Goddamn fig leaves because my God of love objects to such use. That is MY belief and should be protected under the U.S. Constitution.
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Commentary, democracy, Education, human-rights, If it's broke let's fix it TOGETHER, Living & Learning Moment, Peace & Justice, Religion
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