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Originally Posted by PepsiFree
Murder isn’t human nature, that’s behaviour. Behaviour is changeable, nature is not.
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Acting hypocritically is also a behaviour. You're missing the point, which is to support principles that would generally lead to us not acting in ways that we are innately predisposed to do, but which are deleterious to the project of building the society we want to live in.
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The same nature that put us in staunch political groups is no different than the one that makes us a fan of a sports team, or protect our friends.
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This is accurate. As a result, norms and principles that allow us to
overcome that element of our nature in contexts where it's particularly harmful are, one might argue, good norms and principles to foster.
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The same nature that causes one to kill is the one that causes you to want to win, at anything.
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This isn't, as far as I'm aware, but maybe you have some scientific basis for saying it. Either way, it's beside the point. I don't think you actually disagree with what Cliff is saying, which is essentially, to stick with the murder example,
1. Murder is a result of inherent aspects of human psychology that are innate in all of us;
2. Our mutual societal commitment to principles like "murder is wrong" are the main reason we
don't murder each other, thereby repressing those innate aspects of human psychology in answering the question "should I kill that guy who just angered me";
3. This process of suppression of innate human psychology in the context of murder is a good thing; and
4. At least some of those principles that allow society to function best (Cliff might say most of the important ones) are rooted in classical liberalism (in this "murder" example, the harm principle).