This is topic south carolina has usurped kentucky as the source of all my political entertainment in forum Books, Films, Food and Culture at Hatrack River Forum.
Rand Paul says Obama's criticism of BP's handling of the oil spill is "un-American"
May I remind you BP stands for "British Petroleum"
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
In advance, screw anybody who votes for a pro-oil candidate this fall. Talk about un-American...I don't want Myrtle Beach all covered with oil. This drilling stuff is nonsense. I like to vacation at the beach. What's wrong with that? Is beach-going un-American?
Posted by Geraine (Member # 9913) on :
Rand Paul says Obama's criticism of BP's handling of the oil spill is "un-American"
May I remind you BP stands for "British Petroleum"
So the quote is accurate?
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
Obama criticizing a foreign oil company for wrecking our coastline is unamerican, not BP itself (apparently they're very american)
Posted by SenojRetep (Member # 8614) on :
Rand Paul says Obama's threat to put his boot heel to the throat of BP is un-American, because it's anti-business (that BP is headquartered in Britain is superfluous). That's a pretty solid conservative libertarian thing to say; the business of America is business and all that.
When are you going to link Paul's Civil Rights Act comments from Rachel Maddow? I've wondered for awhile how civil libertarians (who generally tend to be Democrats or Democrat-leaning independents) square their opposition to some government intrusion into private business for social purposes (drug policy liberalization, abortion restriction opposition, etc.) but not others (like the Civil Rights Act).
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
quote:political entertainment
The whole notion of "political entertainment" makes me feel tired all over.
Posted by Geraine (Member # 9913) on :
The thing is, the government shares some of the blame. Regulation became lax, and because of that this atrocity happened.
BP shares most of the blame, but a small part of the blame could go to the government.
I think something positive in this whole situation though is that the other oil companies are helping BP by offering the help of their top engineers and researchers. This spill is their worst nightmare, as they know it will likely result in more regulation. It is a wake up call to the oil industry that they need to have better control over the safety of the rigs and the crew.
Also, kudos to Kevin Costner. He has been working on a machine with his brother since the late 80's called "Ocean Therapy" that sucks water in, cleans it, and spits it back out 97% cleaner. He spend $40 million developing it, and BP has been using some of the machines to help clean the water. It won't be able to take care of the problem completely, but it will help a bit. It can clean 200 gallons of water a minute, and he has donated the use of some of them to help with the spill.
quote:Originally posted by SenojRetep: Rand Paul says Obama's threat to put his boot heel to the throat of BP is un-American, because it's anti-business (that BP is headquartered in Britain is superfluous). That's a pretty solid conservative libertarian thing to say; the business of America is business and all that.
When are you going to link Paul's Civil Rights Act comments from Rachel Maddow? I've wondered for awhile how civil libertarians (who generally tend to be Democrats or Democrat-leaning independents) square their opposition to some government intrusion into private business for social purposes (drug policy liberalization, abortion restriction opposition, etc.) but not others (like the Civil Rights Act).
You're too religious to go to the beach, aren't you? You don't think all that exposed skin is pleasing to your God, do you? You're kind of like the Muslims in that way, aren't you?
I mean seriously, either you like the beach, or you like oil. You can't...like...BOTH.
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
quote:Originally posted by SenojRetep: I've wondered for awhile how civil libertarians (who generally tend to be Democrats or Democrat-leaning independents) square their opposition to some government intrusion into private business for social purposes (drug policy liberalization, abortion restriction opposition, etc.) but not others (like the Civil Rights Act).
It's because we're sick of religious-based social beliefs intruding into out lives. The hijab and anti-marijuana laws are pretty much one to me, I think.
Posted by Geraine (Member # 9913) on :
And I'm sure the religious folks are sick of atheist-based social beliefs intruding into their lives.
Neither side is right, and neither side is wrong.
Posted by Shanna (Member # 7900) on :
Rand Paul says Obama's criticism of BP's handling of the oil spill is "un-American"
May I remind you BP stands for "British Petroleum"
What an idiot! The spill is having a huge economic impact here on the Gulf. Fishermen out of work, restuarants closing their doors, etc. And now it's creeping into our wetlands killing everything with the beginning of hurricane season upon us.
I wish these politicians would get there heads out of the sand and realize this spill isn't just about pretty beaches and warm-and-fuzzy environmentalism.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
Shanna: Seriously, it's stupid the concept of, "You made a mess, clean it up." gets so obfuscated when politicians get involved.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:When are you going to link Paul's Civil Rights Act comments from Rachel Maddow? I've wondered for awhile how civil libertarians (who generally tend to be Democrats or Democrat-leaning independents) square their opposition to some government intrusion into private business for social purposes (drug policy liberalization, abortion restriction opposition, etc.) but not others (like the Civil Rights Act).
Well, that's where ayn rand paul gets even more lol:
He's a libertarian when it comes to things like saying 'screw you' to public education and the americans with disabilities act and letting segregated lunch counters come back into play, but suddenly, MIRACULOUSLY, rand is very very into federal government intrusion once we reach the subject of IMMORAL ACTS such as abortion and gay marriage.
aderr
The sad thing is that stuff like that can prosper in america's "libertarian" "shift" because the large majority of people who self-identify as 'libertarians' these days are conservatives who were TOTALLY for federal antihomo laws and the PATRIOT act and are suddenly very anti-government and have miraculously discovered how to be afraid of overreaching federal powers now that a Democrat is president, and want a cool 'indie' label to be homophobic under. Watch as they bastardize the 'creed' over time.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
So Sam, rant aside, what do you see as the fundamental difference between the Civil Rights Act or the Americans with Disabilities Act and, say, federal laws against experiments with fetal stem cells? Why is one type of governmental, morally-justified intrusion into private business okay and another not?
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
The Civil Rights Act, for instance, actionably protects the rights of individuals who were in a socioeconomic position to warrant anti-discrimination laws. Assuming there was a federal law against experiments with fetal stem cells, it's not actionably protecting anyone's rights, it's preventing a form of research based on a nearly purely religious objection.
the difference is like a difference between a federal law banning entire towns from effectively banning blacks, and a federal law banning the burning of a flag or depicting Muhammad. It's "a law to protect people's rights" versus "a law to protect someone's fragile moral sensibilities" — I consider one to be practical in application to the extent that it warrants federal action, and I do not see the practicality in the other. So it's good that the latter case law doesn't really exist and I can harvest and drink stem-cell milkshakes if I want.
What makes it such a pressing image issue for libertarians like Rand is that they make a big show about nap and positive-versus-negative rights but they show themselves hypocritical when they turn around and desire the imposition of federal law in these moral cases.
Posted by MattP (Member # 10495) on :
quote:The thing is, the government shares some of the blame. Regulation became lax, and because of that this atrocity happened.
Rand seems to be the sort of "principles first" Libertarian that doesn't think businesses should be regulated in the first place.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
I don't think that rand is insane enough to think that there's no 'regulatory line' to be crossed. he's just not at all intelligent at where he wants to draw the line.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
If you are looking for really entertaining politics, screw Kentucky. Follow the Trinidad and Tobago elections (coming up on Monday).
[ May 21, 2010, 04:25 PM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:And I'm sure the religious folks are sick of atheist-based social beliefs intruding into their lives.
I'm sure that when 'atheist-based' social beliefs 'intrude' into religious folks' private lives, they generally don't do so with the force of law, and when they do it's stridently objected to by 'religious folks'.
But for heaven's sakes, we've just got to keep homosexuals from marrying. I mean, if we're going to talk blanket generalizations such as 'atheist-based social beliefs'.
Posted by MattP (Member # 10495) on :
I don't even know what an atheist-based social belief would be. The best I generally hope for is neutrality. I'm not aware of any atheist organization pushing for laws that are based on or support atheism above any other ideological position.
Posted by Lisa (Member # 8384) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: If you are looking for really entertaining politics, screw Kentucky.
Bad visual.
Posted by Parkour (Member # 12078) on :
Rand Paul cancels on Meet the Press - only other two cancellations ever were Louis Farrakhan and Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia.
Posted by Parkour (Member # 12078) on :
I’m sure that in his own mind Rand Paul sees himself as a principled libertarian, applying the same standard of personal responsibility to everyone. In practice, however, it’s only the poor and powerless who get held to that standard; when it’s a big coal or oil company — and we already know that both Massey and BP were severely negligent — well, “sometimes accidents happen.”
Rand Paul blew up the Internet. Did you notice? Here's how it went down: first, he suggested unmistakably that he opposed the Civil Rights Act. Then he tried unsuccessfully to weasel his way out, under near-implacable questioning. This was when people got really worked up. So Paul put out a press release, the strategy of which was more or less to deny that the previous 24 hours had happened. In the meantime, those of us who hail from the Internet have lost the ability to talk about anything else.
Mainly, of course, we've been condemning and mocking Paul. But there's a group that’s lined up to defend him as well. The basic claim is that, while Paul was of course wrong to oppose civil rights legislation, it was an honest and respectable mistake. As Dave Weigel put it on Twitter (hence the weird sentence), "Rand doesn't mean harm, is suffering as old libertarian debate moves into prime time." (Weigel wrote a longer defense of Paul yesterday as well. For an excellent response, see this post from Salon editor Joan Walsh.)
Various figures who stand a few notches in toward the mainstream from Paul have made arguments similar to Weigel's. It was a mere theoretical fancy, they say, nothing should be made of it. A staffer for Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., calls the whole thing "a non-issue." Thanks, white people, for clearing up that whole civil rights thing for everybody else. Not important!
But, lest Paul be allowed to escape, those of us who do want to make something of this need to broaden our argument. It's not just that he screwed up and said something stupid because he's so committed to a purist fancy. No, it's worse than that. Libertarianism itself is what's stupid here, not just Paul. We should stop tip-toeing around this belief system like its adherents are the noble last remnants of a dying breed, still clinging to their ancient, proud ways.
Posted by Darth_Mauve (Member # 4709) on :
Rand Paul believes in the sacred sovereignty of property. A person's property should be inviolate from any government control.
So private property should not be forced to cater to the will of the government of the people even when that government and those people are morally correct. A privately owned diner, like your own private home, should be allowed to limit its visitors to those it actually seeks--even if that means that people of color can't find a place to eat.
And since BP has more of this sacred property than any fisherman, hotel, or vacation and tourism place along the Gulf of Mexico (not to mention much more property than any of the fish, birds, or dolphins being overwhelmed by the oil) BP should not be punished or threatened with the forced loss of that property.
Besides, it will take a whole lot more oil than this to get up to Kentucky.
Posted by SenojRetep (Member # 8614) on :
quote:Originally posted by Parkour (from the Salon article): Libertarianism itself is what's stupid here, not just Paul.
And that's what I meant before when I asked how lefty libertarians reconcile this. To me, looking in from outside, it takes an unacceptable amount of mental gymnastics to perform the feat.
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: The Civil Rights Act, for instance, actionably protects the rights of individuals who were in a socioeconomic position to warrant anti-discrimination laws. Assuming there was a federal law against experiments with fetal stem cells, it's not actionably protecting anyone's rights, it's preventing a form of research based on a nearly purely religious objection.
Sam, the individual right to be served by any business that has a public nature trumps an individual right to property (for the lunch counter owner, or hotel owner, or whatever)? That seems like a patently un-libertarian sentiment to me. Perhaps it seems less un-libertarian to you than someone's right to religion (and religious expression) trumping someone's right to property, but I'm not convinced.
[ May 22, 2010, 07:49 AM: Message edited by: SenojRetep ]
Posted by SenojRetep (Member # 8614) on :
So I didn't have time earlier, but I can see some obvious deficiencies in my hypothetical stem-cell ban (since the individual rights aren't as direct, for instance). I still think there is significant tension between civil libertarians and a lot of Democratic causes (cf Ricci v. DeStefano or the paternalistic LA fast food ban).
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
quote:And that's what I meant before when I asked how lefty libertarians reconcile this. To me, looking in from outside, it takes an unacceptable amount of mental gymnastics to perform the feat.
This is actually an interesting question. I consider myself a "lefty-libertarian," insofar as that's not a contradiction, so let me give it my best shot.
The principle RP is working with is, people should be permitted to do what they want with their own property.
I tend toward leaving out that last qualifier: people should be permitted to do what they want, as long as they're not harming other people.
And according to my definition of harm, you can harm someone by withholding good things from them. Especially when you withhold them in a discriminatory way (ie, offer them to whites but not blacks -- that's very harmful to the blacks).
So on my view, the CRA is there to protect minorities from the harm white business-owners could otherwise do to them (by exercising what RP would call their "property rights"). On the other hand, in a stem-cell research case, there's debatably no harm done to anyone, so there's no grounds for a ban.
Posted by SenojRetep (Member # 8614) on :
Destineer-
I think that's a pretty clear statement. I wonder how "do not harm" others should be interpreted, though. How direct does the harm have to be? To take a topical example, justifications of campaign finance reform generally depend on an appeal to a diffuse "harm" done to the democratic process. Is that enough, or does the harm need to be more individually felt?
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
Externalities make it so that it's impossible to run a big enough business or a government without 'harming' someone, unless we very, very carefully modify all axioms involved to determine what counts as 'harm.' 1. Government can 'harm' the pocketbooks of BP by insisting on stringent safety controls and regulation. 2. BP can 'harm' the livelihood of the millions of people who depend on the coastline for their income, because they're externalities which were relegated to bottom-line methodology. 3. Companies can 'harm' themselves and others through monopsony or price control which turns into wildly fluctuating cycles, or through an inability to manage the natural environment or sustainable development and practices which are safe for all the externalities involved. It's just that your typical libertarian is going to differ on which types of harm 'count' (in these cases, in order, 1. nearly always, 2. seldom, 3. almost never).
Related to all that, it makes me super super happy that the Rand Paul apologists are making the case that Rand is hurting because he's 'moving the libertarian debate into prime time' — yes, FFS, please please please move the libertarian debate into the public eye when BP, Transocean, et. al., has gang-raped the southern coast of the United States and is tried to cap their liability for these externalities at 75 million. Please introduce this 'debate' into primetime. I want everyone to see it.
quote:So I didn't have time earlier, but I can see some obvious deficiencies in my hypothetical stem-cell ban (since the individual rights aren't as direct, for instance). I still think there is significant tension between civil libertarians and a lot of Democratic causes (cf Ricci v. DeStefano or the paternalistic LA fast food ban).
there's going to be tension, but even a lefty-lib can take these on a per-case basis on whether or not they are effective and worthwhile civil engineering. The LA fast food ban would be a terrible idea if it were actually a 'fast food ban,' but it's not. it's a moratorium on the development of fast food joints in impoverished regions. it's civil engineering designed to prevent the long-term negative repercussions of food/nutritional deserts in urban regions. Ricci isn't even a good case because the scotus ruled against the invalidation of the test scores, I think. A better case to look at would be Kelo v. New London, which I consider a blatant overextension of property seizure capacity by state and local governments for the sake of civil engineering.
Posted by Parkour (Member # 12078) on :
The attack on Rand Paul's principled libertarianism -- which appears to hold that private businesses should be allowed to discriminate on race -- writes itself, and it's hard to see how he makes it to the Senate if he can't give a better explanation than he gave Rachel Maddow last night:
"What I think would happen -- what I’m saying is, is that I don’t believe in any discrimination. I don’t believe in any private property should discriminate, either. And I wouldn’t attend, wouldn’t support, wouldn’t go to. But what you have to answer when you answer this point of view, which is an abstract, obscure conversation from 1964 that you want to bring up. But if you want to answer, you have to say then that you decide the rules for all restaurants and then you decide that you want to allow them to carry weapons into restaurants."
“He needs to come up with an answer today, or Kentucky will be Arizona: a battleground for ugly, racial politics. He has 24 hours," Joe Scarborough said this morning.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
The fact that Rand Paul stumbled his way into a Civil Rights Act argument (and then subsequently tried to contort his way out of it and/or pretend it didn't really matter) is utterly sublime to me in ways related to that point.
Seth Finkelstein wrote this in August of 1997. Like, this is over a decade old. And it's proved so, so so so so profoundly relevant now that a guy literally named Rand is out and about representing libertarianism at a hilariously perfect moment (when a corporation blatantly screwed people and environment in big way, underscoring the whole 'failure to address externalities'/tragedy of the commons style argument against libertarianism).
Bolding mine.
quote:One of the seamiest and ugliest aspects of Libertarianism is its support of turning back the civil-rights clock to pre-1964 legal situation for businesses. "I am not making this up". They're very explicit about it:
quote:Consequently, we oppose any government attempts to regulate private discrimination, including choices and preferences, in employment, housing, and privately owned businesses. The right to trade includes the right not to trade -- for any reasons whatsoever; the right of association includes the right not to associate, for exercise of the right depends upon mutual consent.
That's "rights" according to Libertarianism. Whites-only lunch counters, "No Jews or dogs" hotels, "we don't serve your kind here", "No Irish need apply", "This is man's job", etc. All this is a "right of association" in Libertarian theology. Such a weird position is not just the purview of some position-writers in a corner, but a surprisingly common trait of Libertarians. It's one of the surest way of identifying one, if they justify such a reactionary position from abstract considerations.
It must be stressed that a) Libertarians ARE NOT racists, sexists, etc. and b) The above is not meant to comment either way on the much more controversial affirmative-action debate. Libertarians can go to town whenever they're called racist, sexist, and so on for the above (gee, how could anyone ever get that idea?), proclaiming their great personal but private commitment to equality. Of course, they never have to do anything much in this regard since events have passed them by. But they want make sure you know they fully support the ideals, even if they think that all the past decades legal effort should be repealed as immoral and unprincipled. They also love to switch the debate to affirmative action, because that's far more contentious than anti-discrimination. But the position's very plain. Drinking from the wrong water fountain would presumably be "initiation of force", allowing retaliation of force to eject the malefactor.
Some of the most amazingly idiotic things will be said by Libertarians in defense of the above ideas of "rights" and the evils of anti-discrimination law. A few of my favorites, from debates on this topic:
The "Why is a raven different from a writing desk?" question
quote:What is it about the "lunch counter" that is different from a date? ... is it violence to be overtly racist in selecting a romantic interest? If so, how should we prevent it? If not, why not. Is it because the relationship is not primarily economical, in the narrow sense?
The "Business is a personal matter" approach
quote:Most non-libertarians are not in favor of the American Nazi Party marching in Skokie, nor in favor of misguided marriages, or poor business investments, but very few think that this should be illegal.
The "no distinction between anything" sneer
quote:I guess that if a fat, ugly, smelly female entered your immediate space (slobbered on top of you) and requested sexual favors, and if by some wild chance you refused, that it would be proper to take you away to a state mental health clinic and have your discriminatory ideas expunged. Is this correct?
What sort of brain-damage does it take to argue this with a straight face? Do they really, really, think someone will say "My god, a lunch counter is JUST LIKE a romantic interest. There's no way to someone could tell them apart. If a business doesn't want to serve any blacks, that's just like not having sex with someone". But apparently, this is all part of the "right of association" in Libertarianism.
Libertarianism Makes You Stupid: the house of cards
The fanatical opposition of Libertarians to anti-discrimination laws also illuminates a crucial aspects of the stupid-making effects of the philosophy. They can never admit even one instance of government intervention doing good overall for society as opposed to the effects of the market. This isn't a matter of preference, it's absolutely crucial to the function of the ideology. If they ever do that, then it's an admission that social engineering can work, the market can fail, and it's just a matter of figuring out what is the proper mixture to have the best society. This is what sets it apart from Liberalism, Conservatism, and so on. One outcome against prediction will not send those intellectual foundations crashing down, because they aren't based so heavily on absolute rules applications. Libertarianism, by contrast, if it ever concedes a market failure fixed by a government law, is in deep trouble.
So this in turn leads Libertarians into amazing flights of fancy, for example, to deny the success of civil-rights laws. They must say institutional segregation was somehow all the government's fault, or it would have gone away anyway, or something like that. Rather than racism, it's being made stupid by ideology-poisoning.
Libertarian logic is an axiomatic system that bears very little resemblance to standard deductive thought - which is in part why it's so debilitating to people. It's a little like one of those non-Euclidean geometries; internally, valid results can be derived from the postulates, but they sound extremely weird when applied to the real world.
1997. He wrote that in 1997! Dude best be the smuggest person on the planet right now. Rand Paul was dreamed up as a bumbling caricature representative of libertarianism, fully about 13 years ago.
Posted by malanthrop (Member # 11992) on :
Still waiting for anyone to criticize the Obama administration for giving that rig a safety award, despite the fact that it wasn't inspected.
There is a difference between private and public. Perhaps I should try to join the Black Panthers or a woman's club.
God forbid a man try to get a membership at Shapes.
Is Shapes a sexist private organization? Rand Paul is correct. The law isn't applied evenly. Shapes should be able to deny membership to men....which they do.....which is technically illegal, yet ignored. Some laws can be ignored...like immigration.
"Equal Justice Under the Law"..is only true when a protected class is offended. Black only and women only organizations are fine. Don't dare to create a white only or male only one.
There is no White Entertainment TV or National Association of White People.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:There is no White Entertainment TV or National Association of White People.
I could've sworn these were colloquially known as 'television' and 'mainstream society'.
Posted by malanthrop (Member # 11992) on :
With the same logic,....mainstream media is liberal media. Colloquially, NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, etc is liberal media. Yet still, Fox and talk radio is defiled and lawmakers call for another fairness doctrine. The minority in media is conservative.
Before the civil rights act there were plenty of black only businesses. Blacks want to eat out as well. The civil rights act put many black business owners out of business and a wise white business owner would've catered to both.
Shapes would go out of business if it was forced to accept men. Women, like my wife, like to work out without men looking at them.
How can Shapes operate in this country, legally? They are sexually discriminating. Many men would love to go to a gym full of women? The law is ignored and the media does not care about discrimination when the discrimination comes from a protected class.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Defiled? FNC has how many viewers? Sure, it's all 'liberal' media...say many of the people who partake of it.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Is Shapes a sexist private organization? Rand Paul is correct. The law isn't applied evenly. Shapes should be able to deny membership to men....which they do.....which is technically illegal, yet ignored.
Show us the law that makes Shapes illegal.
(hey everybody, watch this)
Posted by malanthrop (Member # 11992) on :
Would you accept a man only gym? Would you tolerate a White Entertainment TV channel? Would you accept a National Association of Aryians?
Of course not. There is no "Equal Justice Under the Law"...despite the actual law....constitution.
There is a difference between law and the application of that law. If the law was applied equally, Shapes would be shut down, the NAACP would be considered a racist organization and ICE wouldn't tell Arizona it isn't going to deport the illegal aliens it sends to them.
Law is law. We live in a land where the application of law is not equal. Women only and black only organizations are tolerated. Illegal aliens are released from jails without proof of identification. The American is profiled by having to prove his identity. Illegal aliens can make up a name and they are released without any proof. Still waiting for an illegal alien to be charged with "giving a false name to a law enforcement officer". Of course, it can't be proven their name is false.
[ May 23, 2010, 01:00 AM: Message edited by: malanthrop ]
Posted by MightyCow (Member # 9253) on :
Isn't SyFy the White Guy's Channel? Posted by malanthrop (Member # 11992) on :
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:Is Shapes a sexist private organization? Rand Paul is correct. The law isn't applied evenly. Shapes should be able to deny membership to men....which they do.....which is technically illegal, yet ignored.
Show us the law that makes Shapes illegal.
(hey everybody, watch this)
Go ahead and watch. I'll ask you one simple question....is there a man only gym?
I can't site the dotted decimal code of your law. The difference is this.... If there where a man only gym, a woman would sue to join and she would probably win. There have been many white only groups and minorities have sued to join,...and won. They didn't really want to join, they wanted to make a point. Shape's will lose, if a man decided to sue them.
Conservatives don't tend to bring legal suits to join a group they really don't want to join. Southern blacks went to black owned restaurants that served the food they really liked. They didn't want the white man's food at the the truck stop. After the civil right's act, the blacks still went to the restaurant that served the food they liked. Was it such a privilege to go to the white business owner's restaurant?
Conservatives don't ask Ms America contestants their position on AZ's immigration law or about gay marriage. Conservatives realize that the Miss America Pageant isn't about politics. To liberals, everything is about politics. Liberals will sue to eat at a restaurant they don't want to eat at. A man isn't going to sue to join a woman's only club, but if he did,...he would win.
Rand Paul accepts the NAACP and Shapes. He believes that a private organization can exist to suit it's member's needs. Liberals admire their own sexist and racist organizations. Liberals sue the Boy Scouts to make a point. Conservatives aren't like liberals....they don't sue to join a group they don't want to join. Perhaps they should. We are learning valuable lessons about community organizing....IE Tea Party.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
quote:Originally posted by malanthrop: Before the civil rights act there were plenty of black only businesses. Blacks want to eat out as well. The civil rights act put many black business owners out of business and a wise white business owner would've catered to both.
I'll skip what you said about the media, but this bit is interesting. "Black only" is sort of a misnomer in the sense that you're using it. They weren't black only because they excluded whites, they were black only because whites didn't want to eat there, and like you said, black people wanted to eat somewhere, so black businesses filled a niche. The kinds of movements that led black communities to exhort one another to patronize only black establishments even when white establishments would allow black patrons was part of a wider protest movement, not about excluding whites.
And I wouldn't say that the Civil Rights Movement was what ruined black businesses. It's an extremely complicated history that has to do with white flight, immigration, economic slumps, the decline of urban centers, cheaper options outside of the black community coupled with squeezing black incomes, and a host of other issues. The decline of black businesses in urban centers was coupled with an overall decline of urban business as a whole. That's a trend that is only somewhat related to the movement as a whole.
Posted by malanthrop (Member # 11992) on :
I doubt whites were excluded from the eating at black restaurants. Blacks were capitalists who would sell the good food to anyone. During the same period, whites liked to listen to jazz in black clubs.
If I lived back then, I would eat at a black restaurant and have a few beers at a black jazz club. What is good is good. I don't believe the civil rights act killed black business but it did introduce competition. If there is only one store in town you go to, white or black, there is no competition. The civil rights act inserted competition. Music and food is a different business category than groceries and goods. The white equivalent of Wal-Mart would be steep competition for the black only local store.
Still, I think the black restaurant would be successful. Even with the whites sneeking out the back door.
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
quote:Originally posted by malanthrop: I'll ask you one simple question....is there a man only gym?
There are, yes.
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
quote: Southern blacks went to black owned restaurants that served the food they really liked. They didn't want the white man's food at the the truck stop. After the civil right's act, the blacks still went to the restaurant that served the food they liked. Was it such a privilege to go to the white business owner's restaurant?
This is why I get sick at the Texas School Boards conservative propaganda. If you don't teach the truth about what it was like for a black person before the civil rights movement, you get lies like this masquerading as the truth.
Black Owned restaurants catered to Black customers not because they wanted to but because someone had to. The "Food they really liked" is a racist comment. African American's do not like any type of food that is different from what a European-American would enjoy. Why were they forced to limit their choices to just what the one local black owned restaurant offered when the rest of society could enjoy Italian, Chinese, or the expensive French food.
The food served at black owned restaurants was not the same quality or price as that served at other restaurants because the best food and the best prices the wholesaler offered went to the White-Only restaurants--their buddies.
Was it a privilege to go to a "White Only" restaurant? YES! Quality, service, prestige, all were better at the fancy and formal White Only restaurants, not to mention location. What if it was the only restaurant in a 100 mile radius? What if you were a minority so poor or so small that a black owned restaurant wasn't feasible in your town so you had no choices? The diner protests of the 60's were important Black Owned restaurants were kept out of whole sections of town (not by law, but by Libertarian Approved Red Lining practices of private Real Estate agents). If you worked in those parts of town you had 0 options for food. You brought your own cold sandwiches or you waited until you got home while your white bosses walked across the street to enjoy a hot meal or cooled off in the air-conditioned comfort that you could not be allowed to enjoy.
This is the difference between pure Libertarian thought and the backward, elitist, and conservative views that have claimed it.
Pure Libertarian thought says that Property is Neutral. It is neither good nor bad, black or white, legal or illegal, but should be legally respected by all. The Civil Rights Act codified that by saying you should respect all Property regardless of who it comes from. If you don't you are denying that Property Owners basic rights.
What good is it for a black man to earn money if he is not allowed to spend it as he wishes? What of his property rights to be a member, eat at a restaurant, sit in the front of the bus?
Once you allow bias, cronyism, and nepotism to raise their ugly but natural heads into a Libertarian Utopia, it will crash and burn.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:There are, yes.
Listen, malanthrop knows, OK? Any given social situation, he has direct, relevant, comprehensive experience that trumps whatever actual facts you can bring to the table. For everything else, there's the Jamaican neighbors.
Posted by Pegasus (Member # 10464) on :
Except as prohibited by the Civil Rights Act, privately owned businesses have the right to deny services to anyone, for any reason. Most don't, as it would be against their interests to turn away customers.
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
I thought soul food was still a thriving business in the south? Heck if I knew one near me I would go, after watching that Boondocks episode on it, it looks awesome!
Posted by dkw (Member # 3264) on :
quote:Originally posted by Pegasus: Except as prohibited by the Civil Rights Act, privately owned businesses have the right to deny services to anyone, for any reason. Most don't, as it would be against their interests to turn away customers.
There are other laws that limit the reasons service can be denied. For example, some states have laws that prevent businesses from asking nursing mothers to stop breastfeeding or leave.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
Honestly, while I see the "My principles are against the Civil Rights Act" as something that people are going to get angry and upset about, it's pretty much true, without necessarily being based on racism.
There's a line people need to draw on where government interference in private enterprise is acceptable. Extreme libertarians draw in at (no surprise) an extreme point. Government should be there to enforce contracts and punish fraud. That's it. Ensuring that a private business is not discriminating against protected classes is on the other side of this line. I don't agree with this and I think that extreme libertarians live in a fantasy world where the horrible things that would happen if what they want actually occurred don't exist, but it is true that their principles are in opposition to the CRA and ADA.
Posted by Sterling (Member # 8096) on :
Equally, it doesn't need to be based on racism to be unacceptable to a voter. I recognize that politics is such that "He's against the Civil Rights Act" is just going to become a shorthand, probably with attached insinuations. But at the same time, it's not unreasonable to oppose someone who's against something you think was positive, even if it isn't for what one might think the "standard" reasons.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
MALANTHROP HAS NO IDEA WHAT HE'S TALKING ABOUT, PART THE XVIIth
quote:Originally posted by malanthrop: Go ahead and watch. I'll ask you one simple question....is there a man only gym?
Yes. have you heard of "google?" It may be able to help you find such a thing!
quote:I can't site the dotted decimal code of your law.
Yeah. I know. And you can't even find one. Which means that you're admitting that even though you were going to state the existence of such a law as a given, you had no personal knowledge of such a law. In short, you're making things up, because you expect them to be true. You're wrong, you fail.
Find the law, or you fail again.
quote:Shape's will lose, if a man decided to sue them.
Yeah, you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.
quote:Some men have complained that female-only workout facilities violate laws prohibiting gender discrimination.
A few have even sued, though most have been turned away by the courts. One Wisconsin man's lawsuit against Curves prompted the state to pass a law exempting single-sex fitness centers from the state's discrimination laws.
Whoops.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
quote:From the Rabbt: The diner protests of the 60's were important Black Owned restaurants were kept out of whole sections of town (not by law, but by Libertarian Approved Red Lining practices of private Real Estate agents).
I'd only add that Redlining began, or at least, was most heavily used early on, by the government. The FHA was possibly the single greatest contributor to housing segregation because of their redlining practices, which had a far more devastating effect on black housing nation-wide than any private bank ever could.
(not to Rabbit, but in general here) In Detroit, Chicago, and many other major northern cities, and to a lesser extent some southern cities, choosing to patronize black businesses (be it a lunch counter or a clothing store) exclusively was less about wanting to eat 'black food' than it was about politically protesting the fact that many businesses wanted their business, but didn't want to employ them. "Don't buy where you can't work" was a slogan that defined a massive boycott movement that was designed not only to prop up struggling black businesses that relied nearly 100% on all-back patronage, but also to protest white hiring practices.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
quote:Originally posted by Blayne Bradley: I thought soul food was still a thriving business in the south? Heck if I knew one near me I would go, after watching that Boondocks episode on it, it looks awesome!
Have you ever heard of the Lady of Shalott?
Posted by scholarette (Member # 11540) on :
Aren't men's/women's items (like gyms) one of the things people claim would be eliminated if the ERA passed? Allowing the gyms would fit into the whole why we can have separate bathrooms discussion (privacy issues). I think you would have a lot more trouble if you started say a grocery store and allowed only woman to shop there.
Posted by Darth_Mauve (Member # 4709) on :
The more I think about it the more I am convinced that the Civil Rights laws making discrimination in a private business illegal is pro-Libertarian not anti.
Sure, it forces a private business to do something, but that something is protecting the private property of others--and Protecting Private Property Rights is the one think Libertarians agree that Government should do.
What the Civil Rights laws did was protect the value of the property of minorities.
See, if a black man and a white man in 1950's Alabama both earned $100, the white man could spend his money anywhere. The black man's $100 could only be spent in limited places, for limited things, and at limited times. His $100 lost value because of the biases of the white-only businesses.
I have felt the same thing with "Trade" money--money I earned on a commercial exchange, but could only be used at limited businesses and at limited times. As such I did not want to make that "trade" money unless I earned 25% more than normal.
A black man in 1950's Alabama was not only paid less than his white counterpart, but that money was of less value.
Hence the White Only Business model was robbing black men of the value of their property. The government had a right and a libertarian responsibility to stop it.
On another note, many white owned businesses wanted the business of their black neighbors, but they couldn't get it because of the stigma attached to catering to different races. If their white clients found out they were shopping with "colored folk" they would leave and shop at another white only store. The passage of the law allowed these businesses an excuse to go after this minority business. They profited and appreciated it.
Posted by malanthrop (Member # 11992) on :
Don't forget, white only drinking fountains and black only restaurants weren't a product of the free market. The south wasn't segregated by business owners. It was segregated by government. A business owner is a greedy capitalist.
The federal government is failing us. The federal government did the right thing with the civil rights act but they are failing to enforce federal borders. What's worse is, they claim AZ can't enforce the federal laws the feds refuse to enforce. What if the federal gov't ignored civil rights when it came to segregation? Would you be so sympathetic? The Civil Rights Act was the fed's protecting the rights of the individual. Unfortunately, they pick and choose which laws they want to enforce. If a state makes a law to enforce federal law, the feds say they are acting unconstitutionally. If the feds would do their job, there wouldn't be a rapist who has been deported nine times only to return. He was deported but our border is open.
Losing tactic #5, up 3 with a bullet. When you are losing an argument, switch to another argument that you think you can win.
This is not a thread about Arizona, but about Kentucky.
This is not a thread about immigration, but about Libertarianism and the role private property plays in social justice.
But hey, if you want to change subject, the weather's been really hot today.
Posted by malanthrop (Member # 11992) on :
We aren't a democracy, we're a constitutional republic. If we were a pure democracy, segregation would never have ended. If we were a pure democracy, national health care would be passed.
Segregation was the local government enforcing democratic majority and ignoring the constitution. Tyranny against the minority is democracy. In that case, the federal government intervened to enforce the constitution. Unfortunately, the feds also ignore the constitution in other areas. We aren't a democracy. Lady justice is blind folded with a scale. Segregation in the south was the perfect example of democracy in action when the government is willing to ignore the constitution. Rand Paul would never make it "LAW" to have white only drinking fountains but he is opposed to government telling private business owners who they must serve.
Southern Democrats and the government made it illegal for a black to drink from a white fountain. A libertarian would never make a law of this kind but he would defend the right of a private business owner to serve who he wants to.
Posted by lem (Member # 6914) on :
quote: Sure, it forces a private business to do something, but that something is protecting the private property of others--and Protecting Private Property Rights is the one think Libertarians agree that Government should do.
What the Civil Rights laws did was protect the value of the property of minorities.
quote: This is not a thread about immigration, but about Libertarianism and the role private property plays in social justice.
Agreed on both counts, but I disagree that the Civil Rights laws were good about protecting the property of minorities. The libertarian argument is more about limiting Government and letting people self govern. Apart from physical threats or broken contracts, I can't see libertarians getting behind growing government to protect value.
I consider myself libertarian (I hate all labels but this is the closest to what I believe). I am sympathetic to their argument that Government institutionalized racism, and there may be an intellectual argument that leaving out the private property (business) clause may have more efficiently achieved all the goals of the Civil Rights Act and may have helped contemporary race relations. I lost respect for Paul when he tried to answer the question without answering the question.
HOWEVER I have to side with the Civil Rights act, and I think you can do that as a libertarianism...at least with my brand. Since businesses are taxed and those taxes are used for society, we have an obligation to extend the same protections we grant citizens from government institutionalized racism to citizens who are buying and selling goods in the public sphere.
If a politician would introduce a bill that would require us to not have our deficit more then 3% (or some other low number) of our GDP including our military adventures and and obligations like social security AND that would force congress to balance the budget withing those parameters, I would vote in a heart beat for that candidate.
I am not part of the Tea Party movement, but I am not seeing any evidence that the two parties are reigning in spending. They just spend differently. Maybe Rand would have a positive effect on budget accountability.
Posted by malanthrop (Member # 11992) on :
On a side point, did Ron Paul name his son after Ayn Rand?
Rand Paul would be opposed to the segregationist laws of the south. I understand there is a current assault on capitalism but I want to remind you....segregation wasn't the business owners refusal..it was the law. The most powerful images of the time are the students (brown v board of ed) going to the white school for the first time. Schools are government organizations. The government segregated the south. The south had a better democracy that the north. The constitution aside, the southern governments cared more about democracy than constitutionality. The front lines of desegregation were government institutions....including the bus. Rosa Parks took a stand against the government and the democratic tyranny she was subjected to. Public schools and public transit are the epitomes of the time. (they weren't privately owned)
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:HOWEVER I have to side with the Civil Rights act, and I think you can do that as a libertarianism...at least with my brand.
quote:Originally posted by malanthrop: We aren't a democracy, we're a constitutional republic.
Hey lemme repost something I already said.
quote: Originally posted by Samprimary: When someone says something like "America is a republic, not a democracy!" they don't know what they're talking about. The statement is incorrect.
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:We must reassert that America is a republic, not a democracy
We must reassert that my vehicle is a sedan, not an automobile!
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:Originally posted by malanthrop: Fortunately in America we have a represenatative republic.
Cool. Want to know something neat? We're also a democracy.
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:Originally posted by Lisa: The part about the US being a constitutional republic and not a democracy has merit.
The statement "the US is a republic" is as correct as "the US is a democracy" — anytime someone says that the US is not a democracy, they're wrong. What the US is not is a direct democracy.
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:Originally posted by Raventhief: Samp, could you clarify? Because a democracy is a form of government in which the people legislate directly by vote while a republic is a form of government in which the people elect those who legislate.
You are confusing the general term "democracy" with the specific type of government known as a "direct democracy." You do not have to be a direct democracy in order to be considered a "democracy" or a "democratic nation."
The answer to the question "Is the united states a democracy?" is yes.
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: The correct answer to the question "Is America a Democracy?" is "Yes."
The correct answer to the question "Is America a Republic?" is "Yes."
The correct answer to the question "Is America a Democratic Republic?" is "Yes."
If you say that America is not a democracy because it's a republic, or that it's not a democracy because it's not a 'true' (direct) democracy, this is wrong.
You might as well say that my Chevy Silverado is not a truck, because it is an automobile. Strangely enough, it's both, and you're correct to call it either!
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary:
The answer to the question "Is the United States a democracy?" is yes. Anyone who tells you otherwise is wrong. The term is not mutually exclusive nor contradictory to our status as a republic. If someone says that 'the United States is not a democracy,' they are strictly incorrect. It's like saying that a Dodge Ram is not an automobile because it is a truck.
The United States is a Democracy. The United States is a Republic. The United States is a Constitutional Republic. The United States is a democratic, constitutional republic. The United States is a representative democracy. Any of these statements is true. One thing that the United States is not is a specific form of democracy known as 'direct democracy.' The United States is not a direct democracy, but this does not make the united states 'not a democracy.'
Thanks for reading this. Totally glad that we have this straight now, yay.
sooooooooooooo everyone's got this straight now right, no more failing at english language to make a hamfisted political delineation, yeeeessss?
Posted by malanthrop (Member # 11992) on :
Maybe an American president saying he's going to "keep his boot heel on the throat of BP" is unamerican.
Maybe it's funny the Obama admin gave a safety award to the Deep Horizon earlier in the year. Maybe it's funny the federal government had a preapproved plan to deal with a situation such as this.....since 1996. Unfortunately, they didn't have equipment necessary to contain the spill with their preapproved plan.
Good to be your source of political entertainment. The federal response to Katrina was faster. I know, I was active duty and sent to New Orleans a month after the fact. Our current administration can't do anything except blame BP. If America wants to do something, it'll do it right away. This president is waiting for BP to pump golf balls into the pipe and has cancelled the shuttle program.
We can rely on the Russians to get to space and a boot on the neck of BP is more effective than the technological might of the United States of America. Why is our federal government waiting for BP? Bush's response to Katrina was much faster.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
Do you have political Mad Libs sitting next to your computer keyboard or something?
Your post reads like an exercise in creating a non-sequitor cul-de-sac of non-sensical gibberish.
Posted by malanthrop (Member # 11992) on :
Impressive response.
Of all politicians, Obama is the top recipient of BP cash.
My gibberish is this...... It's the American coast line that is in danger. The American government is much more powerful with many more resources than BP. Why is the American government sitting back, waiting for BP to solve the problem?
God forbid we discover an asteroid plummeting to Earth...maybe the Russians will save us.
Posted by malanthrop (Member # 11992) on :
TEST
Posted by MattP (Member # 10495) on :
quote:Originally posted by malanthrop: TEST
FAIL
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:My gibberish is this...... It's the American coast line that is in danger. The American government is much more powerful with many more resources than BP. Why is the American government sitting back, waiting for BP to solve the problem?
Can you explain how BP's failures are relevant to this particular thread? Especially given that you've still failed to cite any proof whatsoever for your previous claims here? It seems like you wouldn't want to go off on a separate tangent when you've still got a whole bunch of other claims to justify first.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
Oh this thread is making me LoL.
We have a new political archetype in Mal, I think: the "Agit-spaz"
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:It seems like you wouldn't want to go off on a separate tangent when you've still got a whole bunch of other claims to justify first.
Assuming a high degree of political spinelessness, it seems like a great time to go off on a separate tangent, given that the first batch of claims can't really be justified in the first place.
Ignore, evade, or admit. We've all seen which one he's gonna pick.
Posted by Geraine (Member # 9913) on :
quote:Originally posted by MightyCow: Isn't SyFy the White Guy's Channel?
I was going to say Spike. But SyFy works too
Posted by scholarette (Member # 11540) on :
As a chick who watches SyFy, I think Spike is much more the white guy's channel.
Posted by Parkour (Member # 12078) on :
Malanthrop, your train of thought is like a herd of kittens. Why are you talking about BP? It has literally nothing to do with what you were arguing about before, or what this thread is about. Do you just pull random nonsequiturs out of a hat, do you have memory issues and forget which thread you are in, or are you actively brain damaged?
Just wondering.
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
Isn't Spike the channel that had ST:TNG on all day during the week?
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: It seems like you wouldn't want to go off on a separate tangent when you've still got a whole bunch of other claims to justify first.
yes it sure seems so after the last 67 times he's done exactly that.
It basically goes like this:
Mal: Can't take the heat? Get out of the kitchen. Everyone else: Mal, man, you're not in the kitchen. You wandered into a walk-in closet. We watched. Mal: pffffffff, liberals Posted by scholarette (Member # 11540) on :
Spike had lots of CSI on it. Also wrestling (which I guess is on SyFy now). I think Spike used to advertise themselves as the channel for men though.
Posted by Misha McBride (Member # 6578) on :
I always thought CMT was the White Guy Channel.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
Lifetime is the White Woman channel
Posted by scholarette (Member # 11540) on :
I read the Spike channel summary on wiki. Apparently, they can't claim first channel for men as Canada's mentv beat them
Posted by Lisa (Member # 8384) on :
quote:Originally posted by Parkour: Rand Paul cancels on Meet the Press - only other two cancellations ever were Louis Farrakhan and Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia.
And Hitler was a vegetarian. And John Wayne Gacy painted clowns for children. What's your point?
Posted by Lisa (Member # 8384) on :
quote:Originally posted by malanthrop: Maybe an American president saying he's going to "keep his boot heel on the throat of BP" is unamerican.
It's not just un-American. It sounds like something you'd hear from a two-bit dictator in some banana republic.
quote:Originally posted by malanthrop: Why is our federal government waiting for BP? Bush's response to Katrina was much faster.
But Bush was eeeeeeeeeeevil. Obama takes his time to even respond to the oil spill, and it's okay. Because he isn't eeeeeeeeevil.
Posted by scholarette (Member # 11540) on :
Well, with Bush and Katrina, I had and probably most other people, had some specific steps in mind for what should be done. What exactly do people want Obama to do?
Posted by Sean Monahan (Member # 9334) on :
quote:Originally posted by scholarette: Also wrestling (which I guess is on SyFy now).
I totally don't get this.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
Bush's response gets marked by the 'functioning' repartee of people like Brown, Obama's by Ken Salazar.
so, lol at trying to pare down the difference in public interpretation as "it's just because bush was eeevil"
You're rarely sillier than when it comes to the subject of Obama, lisa.
Posted by Parkour (Member # 12078) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lisa:
quote:Originally posted by Parkour: Rand Paul cancels on Meet the Press - only other two cancellations ever were Louis Farrakhan and Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia.
And Hitler was a vegetarian. And John Wayne Gacy painted clowns for children. What's your point?
Ok. If you need help deducing "my point" then I'll tell you, but first I will ask you a question:
Do you agree with Rand Paul that we should repeal the part of the act which prevents you from excluding customers from your private business based on race?
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
I'm not sure what I think of that, but I do note that today such a repeal is perhaps unlikely to lead to renewed large-scale segregation. Certainly there would be white bars and black bars, but there wouldn't be the situation where every bar had a separate counter for the second-class citizens.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: Lifetime is the White Woman channel
They're paired in an unholy alliance with the Hallmark Channel.
Posted by Parkour (Member # 12078) on :
Lisa:
quote:Originally posted by Parkour: Do you agree with Rand Paul that we should repeal the part of the act which prevents you from excluding customers from your private business based on race?
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lisa:
quote:Originally posted by malanthrop: Maybe an American president saying he's going to "keep his boot heel on the throat of BP" is unamerican.
It's not just un-American. It sounds like something you'd hear from a two-bit dictator in some banana republic.
quote:Originally posted by malanthrop: Why is our federal government waiting for BP? Bush's response to Katrina was much faster.
But Bush was eeeeeeeeeeevil. Obama takes his time to even respond to the oil spill, and it's okay. Because he isn't eeeeeeeeevil.
Just un-American. Posted by Sterling (Member # 8096) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lisa:
quote:Originally posted by malanthrop: Maybe an American president saying he's going to "keep his boot heel on the throat of BP" is unamerican.
It's not just un-American. It sounds like something you'd hear from a two-bit dictator in some banana republic.
If Obama were threatening to, say, use the disaster as an excuse to nationalize BP and seize their assets for the use of the Fatherland, I might agree.
But since what he's actually talking about is keeping the pressure on a corporation that's largely responsible for a huge environmental catastrophe with enormous, wide-ranging effects in the face of a system that seems to have multiple loopholes put into it specifically to allow companies like BP to weasel out of responsibility, I'm going to have to say comparing this statement to that of some third-world dictator is absurdity bordering on paranoid delusion.
[ May 26, 2010, 03:18 AM: Message edited by: Sterling ]
Posted by scifibum (Member # 7625) on :
quote:I'm going to have to say comparing this statement to that of some third-world dictator is absurdity bordering on paranoid delusion.
I disagree. The comparison was "sounds like." That's a very limited comparison.
Posted by Foust (Member # 3043) on :
quote:Originally posted by Parkour: Lisa:
quote:Originally posted by Parkour: Do you agree with Rand Paul that we should repeal the part of the act which prevents you from excluding customers from your private business based on race?
I expect she does, if only because she can't wait to see Jews persecuted in the US just so her beliefs about Israel's (practical, not theological) necessity will be proven correct.
Posted by Sterling (Member # 8096) on :
quote:Originally posted by scifibum:
quote:I'm going to have to say comparing this statement to that of some third-world dictator is absurdity bordering on paranoid delusion.
I disagree. The comparison was "sounds like." That's a very limited comparison.
All right, first, the quote didn't originate from Obama, but from Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. Second, the original quote was "We will keep our boot on their neck until the job gets done." Banana Republics don't usually include termination conditions for oppression. Now, one can argue that in an era where some people love to bring up scary images about jack-booted agents kicking in doors at the drop of a hat, we should abandon all mention of boots in comments by public figures altogether, but I maintain that comparing the comment to that of a dictator is both ridiculous and inane.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn:
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: Lifetime is the White Woman channel
They're paired in an unholy alliance with the Hallmark Channel.
It's so true! It's terrifying just how much of a hold they have on the two most important women in my life!
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by Foust: I expect she does, if only because she can't wait to see Jews persecuted in the US just so her beliefs about Israel's (practical, not theological) necessity will be proven correct.
She has a paranoid personality disorder in general (see: her comments about her daughter's safety here v. israel, her comments about the census, her comments about anything governmental) so she doesn't need any of her concepts to be proven correct by anything extant. Imagined is sufficient.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:Originally posted by Foust: I expect she does, if only because she can't wait to see Jews persecuted in the US just so her beliefs about Israel's (practical, not theological) necessity will be proven correct.
She has a paranoid personality disorder in general (see: her comments about her daughter's safety here v. israel, her comments about the census, her comments about anything governmental) so she doesn't need any of her concepts to be proven correct by anything extant. Imagined is sufficient.
Whistled. This seems exceedingly inappropriate to me.
Samp, I get the feeling you think you can do whatever you want because PJ seems pretty much to have checked out. I obviously can't stop you, but you should know, at least in my opinion, you are one of the major problems with this place.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Samp, I get the feeling you think you can do whatever you want because PJ seems pretty much to have checked out.
Yeah, no. I'd prefer this place be better regulated. But thanks for contributing!
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky: I obviously can't stop you, but you should know, at least in my opinion, you are one of the major problems with this place.
Every once in a while, I agree with Squick.
Posted by TheHumanTarget (Member # 7129) on :
I've been off this board for three years, and reading through the recent threads reminds me of why I left.
Actual discourse has been replaced with vicious sniping and base character attacks.
Everyone seems to have been distilled into a caricature of their core beliefs, mindlessly repeating their mantras in what they believe are new and creative ways.
If PapaMoose (sorry PapaJanitor) has checked out, who can blame him?
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
Why do people even think that he's 'checked out?' he hasn't gone anywhere, has he? he's just dealing with more important stuff than a now fully imploded, dysfunctional forum.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:Samp, I get the feeling you think you can do whatever you want because PJ seems pretty much to have checked out.
Yeah, no. I'd prefer this place be better regulated. But thanks for contributing!
You're not responding to what I said.
Yes, I get that you feel that stronger moderation is needed. A component of this is that you don't seem to think that self-regulation is effective. Therefore, until PJ becomes a more heavy handed moderator, you see no reason to act like an adult. (Initially I thought you were behaving this way to make a point, but observing your other behavior and opinions, it seems to me that this is your natural inclination.)
For myself, I've been at Hatrack where moderation was very light but we handled most problems with self-regulation. Having a culture that expects people to act like adults can be effective in most cases. There were outliers with people who had no desire to honestly interact with the community, because, let's face it, the majority of people on hatrack are not what I'd call person-savy.
I actually agree with you that the in the current state of things, we'll likely need more involved moderation to have most things here change, but a significant part of that is you and a few others not being willing to act like adults. If you (plural you, I'm certainly not putting this all on your shoulders, although several of the others seem to be taking cues from you) change this behavior and exercise better impulse control, it could result in many changes for the better.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
I am responding to what you said. I'm just not commenting as to whether or not you think I'm acting like an adult because I find it completely irrelevant.
I also don't think self-regulation is effective because it isn't effective. All forums usually pass through a phase where it is, but unless the community doesn't grow or nothing changes, that period doesn't last forever. Then people always start grousing about the glory days as though the forum could just 'grow up' and start self-regulating again without going through a mass exodus and doing what Hatrack does now, which is become so ridiculous that there's at least three other forums that Hatrack exports its drama to (along with most of its expats).
Dreaming for a return for a Remember When This Place Managed Itself And We Were All Mature is a humorous way to spend one's time but it's not going to change, even if I vanish off the face of the forum.
In the meantime I'll keep doing what I'm doing, which will include the fact that I think that someone with obviously paranoid and unsubtle personality inclination will continue to be paranoid and act that way. You can continue to call me a baby. We all win.
As for whether or not I still want "more involved moderation?" The timeframe where that would have really helped is over. I'm disinterested in commenting or caring about it anymore. This place will do what it wants, I am and will continue to be straight and uncompromising with people who I feel have devolved into political or personal caricatures as long as they continue to play their tired old song like a skipping record (hey Malanthrop, stop posting forever) and people can feel that way about me in turn.
Now if anyone else would like to say I'm a terrible poster, please go right ahead! Just leave the whistles at (1) because PJ for serious has a load of RL crap on his plate and hey I'm not worth his time. Posted by Parkour (Member # 12078) on :
Is acting like an adult some sort of code word for being nonconfrontational to a fault? Mincing your words? I would prefer less adults then.
Lisa you should answer my question.
Posted by Lisa (Member # 8384) on :
quote:Originally posted by Parkour:
quote:Originally posted by Lisa:
quote:Originally posted by Parkour: Rand Paul cancels on Meet the Press - only other two cancellations ever were Louis Farrakhan and Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia.
And Hitler was a vegetarian. And John Wayne Gacy painted clowns for children. What's your point?
Ok. If you need help deducing "my point" then I'll tell you, but first I will ask you a question:
Do you agree with Rand Paul that we should repeal the part of the act which prevents you from excluding customers from your private business based on race?
I don't know if Rand Paul actually said that, but it doesn't matter. Yes. I absolutely do. And religion. And gender. And sexual orientation. And hair color. And political ideology.
The law should absolutely prevent government run or government funded institutions from discriminating. I'm as much a citizen as a straight Christian male, despite being none of those things.
But when it comes to private property? Hell no.
Look, let me make it clear. I think that someone who refuses to hire someone or rent to someone or sell to someone or do business with someone in this country because they're Jewish or Muslim or Christian or black or white or purple is an ass. A morally bankrupt piece of trash. I wouldn't spit on such a person if they were on fire.
That said, it isn't the place of government to force people to be nice.
If I go out to buy a car, GM doesn't have any "right" to demand that I buy one of their cars. If I choose not to, no one has the right to make me explain my decision and then rule on whether I made my choice for good or odious reasons. So why do you think that if I'm buying someone's time/labor, I should be forced to do exactly that? Who the hell died and made a government the arbiter of what I do with what I've earned?
So yes. It's unpopular as hell, but I do not believe that it is proper for government to prevent private citizens from discriminating on idiotic grounds. Or any other grounds.
I'm going to go on, because I've been here before, and generally the kind of people who ask questions like the one you did will expend stunning amounts of energy drawing lame conclusions from what I said, and reading things into it that I did not say. That doesn't mean that if I enter into a contractual agreement with someone, and then I find out they're into David Duke or Louis Farakkhan or other people who make my stomach turn, that I have the right to abrogate my agreement. But it does mean that I don't have to renew the agreement. And it does mean that I don't have to enter into the agreement in the first place.
I work at a small company. I'm an "at will" employee. That means that I have no contractual relationship. If my boss wants to fire me, he can. If he were to decide to do so because I'm Jewish, I could, as the law stands, sue the hell out of him. But that would be wrong. It would be a huge temptation to take advantage of the immoral power I'm given by statists, but I would like to hope that I'd resist it.
I'm against Medicare. And Medicaid. And anti-discrimination legislation that violates the rights of individuals. Why? Does that bother you?
Posted by Darth_Mauve (Member # 4709) on :
Lisa, I understand your point about the sanctity of private property.
What about the sanctity of the private property belonging to the minority consumer?
If someone steals your private property and resells it, shouldn't the government have the authority to stop that business? Shouldn't the government insist that a private company does not destroy property belonging to person A in order to sell their own?
If you agree with that we can move on to what discrimination on a large scale does to the private property of the people being discriminated against. It steals its value.
If I have $100 I can spend it to buy a wide range of things. If a black man from 1950 had $100 he had only a very limited number of things he could buy. That $100 lost its value because of discrimination by private companies. Not only was that black man deprived of the value of his personal property by those who discriminated, but it led to a weakening of the entire libertarian idea. Why would a black man in 1950 work hard to earn money if he couldn't spend it as well as a white man?
The autonomy lost by the private business owner was insignificant against the property stolen from the minorities by those businesses.
Posted by swbarnes2 (Member # 10225) on :
Does your small business own the property they work on, or only lease it?
What if the owners of the property stipulated that the lease was cancelled if Jews were employed there?
What if 70% of the commercial real estate were owned by people who had such stipulations? If a small number of people owned a lot of property, it wouldn't be so unlikely.
Is the right of David Duke to keep Jews from working on his property more important than your right to work for whomever will hire you?
Posted by Lisa (Member # 8384) on :
quote:Originally posted by Darth_Mauve: If I have $100 I can spend it to buy a wide range of things. If a black man from 1950 had $100 he had only a very limited number of things he could buy. That $100 lost its value because of discrimination by private companies.
No. That's weird logic. That $100 is like any other $100. If he takes his $100 and swaps it with $100 belonging to a white guy, no value has changed.
Let's say I'm a store owner selling a box of cereal for $1. You don't have any money on you, so you go home and get some. When you come back, you find that I've raised the price of the cereal to $2. Are you claiming that I just stole $1 from you? Because that's crap.
The value of anything is what someone will exchange for it. You're positing some sort of objective and intrinsic value of money, and that's insane.
quote:Originally posted by Darth_Mauve: Not only was that black man deprived of the value of his personal property by those who discriminated,
He wasn't deprived of anything. To be deprived of something, you must have a right to it in the first place. A right is something you can legitimately claim from someone else. That black man in your example isn't entitled to a damned thing except to be able to attempt to engage in trade. Again, when we talk about the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, that's not the right to life, liberty and happiness. There are no guarantees in life.
Have you ever been to the Arab souk in Jerusalem? I remember going there (back in 1980, when it was actually safe) and seeing how things were bought and sold. I was at a distinct disadvantage, because I don't do haggling. So I'd buy something, and two minutes later, I'd see someone else buy the same exact thing for half of what I paid. Do you think I was stolen from?
You have a particular cultural bias. You think that everything should have a fixed price and that everything should be controlled so that no one ever has an advantage over anyone else. Or so it seems. You sound like someone out of the world of Harrison Bergeron. And the frightening thing is the degree to which others agree with you, and are willing to really steal from others in order to shore up your worldview.
quote:Originally posted by Darth_Mauve: but it led to a weakening of the entire libertarian idea. Why would a black man in 1950 work hard to earn money if he couldn't spend it as well as a white man?
So now you're pretending I'm a consequentialist? You must know by now that I'm anything but. I don't hold by some "libertarian idea" in order to encourage people to work. I hold by it because it's unjust and vile to violate the rights of others.
quote:Originally posted by Darth_Mauve: The autonomy lost by the private business owner was insignificant against the property stolen from the minorities by those businesses.
There was no property stolen from the minorities by businesses. You can call a tail a leg, but it's still just a tail. Term switching in the service of your agenda doesn't actually make reality change. Since those businesses owed nothing to any of their customers or potential customers, and since money does not have a fixed value, but only that which another will accept, discrimination is not theft.
Posted by Lisa (Member # 8384) on :
quote:Originally posted by swbarnes2: Does your small business own the property they work on, or only lease it?
They probably lease it.
quote:Originally posted by swbarnes2: What if the owners of the property stipulated that the lease was cancelled if Jews were employed there?
At the time the contract was signed? Well, since the president of the company is Jewish, he probably would have told them to go frak himself.
In mid-contract? That's not an issue of discrimination; it's a matter of violating a contract.
quote:Originally posted by swbarnes2: What if 70% of the commercial real estate were owned by people who had such stipulations? If a small number of people owned a lot of property, it wouldn't be so unlikely.
Gee, that would suck. What's your point?
quote:Originally posted by swbarnes2: Is the right of David Duke to keep Jews from working on his property more important than your right to work for whomever will hire you?
That's just it. David Duke has the right to decide who works on his property (subject to voluntary agreements he's entered into, of course).
Let's take a really complicated situation, because you clearly want to stretch this to the breaking point. Suppose my boss signs a lease for a property for the company. And suppose the lease has a clause in it forbidding Jews to work on that property. So that's the first nexus. Does my boss sign the lease or not? That's his choice, right? Let's say he doesn't pay close attention to the lease and doesn't notice the anti-semitic part. Just for the sake of argument. Or that he notices it but doesn't care, because he doesn't have anyone Jewish working for him (let's pretend he isn't Jewish for the sake of the question, okay?).
Now I go and apply for the job. And because I'm so clearly superior to other candidates, he decides that he'd like to buy my services, and he hires me. Yay, me. And let's take two possibilities: in Scenario A, I enter into an employment contract with him, and in Scenario B, I start work as an at-will employee without a contract. In neither case does my boss think about the Jew thing. Maybe he knows I'm Jewish, maybe he doesn't.
So I'm working there for 6 months, and the rat-bastard my boss is leasing the property from twigs to the fact that there's a hebe working on his property. Now things get interesting.
So my boss is in breach of his contract with Herr Schweinhund. What can he do? Well, he can either move the company elsewhere, or move me elsewhere. That seems pretty simple, no?
Suppose he chooses to fire me, because the location is really amazing, or because he just hates packing. Well, if I have a contract with him, then he's in breach of that contract. If not, then I'm hosed. Again, not rocket surgery.
See, you referred to "your right to work for whomever will hire you". I have a right to enter into an agreement to exchange my labor for money, yes. But that right doesn't confer any obligation on a third party.
Let's see if I can make it simpler and more clear. I have the right to go to the store and buy a cherimoya. Does that mean that a farmer in California (or wherever) has an obligation to supply my local grocery store with cherimoyas? Obviously not. The only obligation that my rights create is the obligation not to violate my rights.
I don't recall offhand if you're one of those people who thinks that a right is something created by governments and conferred on people like an entitlement. But if you think that, we're talking two different languages. A government can recognize rights, or not. But it doesn't alter them. As the saying goes, my right to swing my fist ends where your nose begins. But that doesn't mean that if your nose itches, you have a right to have someone else scratch it. People aren't there to serve you.
Posted by The White Whale (Member # 6594) on :
Lisa, how do you then feel about shared commodities. The Gulf of Mexico, say. Or air. What if my nose itches, and it ends up being noxious fumes from Asia?
Do I sue Asia? There was no breach of contract. Merely overuse of a shared commodity. Do I ask them nicely? Or do I try and come to an agreement with Asians recognizing that I have as much of a right to breath clean air as they do? Do I try and make my government work with other governments to create and recognize this right to clean air?
When these governments were founded, there was no issue with air quality. The populations were too low, their emissions were negligible. No one worried about the air. It wasn't killing anybody. Two hundred years later, air quality is a huge problem.
How would you go about addressing air quality problems?
Posted by Lisa (Member # 8384) on :
There are two ways to deal with that. Persuasion and coercion. This is an area where people can disagree honestly. What constitutes an initiation of force? If China (for example -- sorry Blayne) were to intentionally spew mustard gas at it, everyone would agree that this is an act of aggression. What about if they spew toxic gunk into the air? Is there a threshhold of toxicity? A threshhold of quantity?
A government has an obligation to protect the people from initiated force. Should it try to negotiate with the Chinese? Well, I'd think that's preferable to nuking them. But if persuasion doesn't work, retaliatory violence might be necessary.
It's pretty much like the tannery next door, writ large.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote: A government can recognize rights, or not. But it doesn't alter them.
A bald premise. When taken on faith as an axiom, not true on any square inch of earth.
Posted by Lisa (Member # 8384) on :
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote: A government can recognize rights, or not. But it doesn't alter them.
A bald premise. When taken on faith as an axiom, not true on any square inch of earth.
Oh isn't this fun
Posted by The White Whale (Member # 6594) on :
Two words ('Not', 'Yup') linked to 26,324 words. This is gonna be a blast.
Posted by Lisa (Member # 8384) on :
Oh, please. How many times do I have to point out the fallacies in that silly thing?
"Rand's argument seems to be as follows".
Not to anyone familiar with what she wrote.
"Value is agent-relative; things can only be valuable for particular entities. premise "
Wrong. That's not a premise; it's a definition. Find me a philosopher that doesn't define key terms for use in their philosophic system. "Value is that which one acts to gain or keep" is Rand's definition of "value" in her system. "Virtue is the means by which one gains or keeps a value" is another definition.
So Huemer proceeds to claim that the argument (which isn't Rand's argument at all, but only a flawed reformulation of Rand's argument) has eight "fatal flaws".
1. "Rand bases her ethics on the agent-relative position, but she offers no argument for it, only a bald assertion."
Wrong. Again, it isn't a premise; it's a definition. She states it in order for readers to understand what she means when she uses the term "value". See, words only have meaning if they have definitions. If you use a word that everyone interprets differently, and you don't define how you're using it, then you're only spouting vagueness and drivel. A word is only a symbol for a concept. So Rand states what the concept is that she's using that symbol to symbolize.
Huemer reformulation #2: "2. Something is valuable to an entity, only if the entity faces alternatives. premise"
"Premise 2 seems to be false. If I knew that I was inevitably going to get a million dollars tomorrow--there's no way I can avoid it--would that mean that the money will have no value? Again, Rand offers no defense of this assertion."
What does that even mean? "Inevitably"? This sounds like a semantic trick. Along the lines of "Can God make a rock so big that He can't lift it?" It's just a trick of language, and doesn't signify anything that can exist.
Huemer reformulation #3: "3. No non-living things face any alternatives. premise"
All of Huemer's "counter-examples" are about the possibility of non-living things being destroyed. How is that "facing an alternative"? Rand talks about making choices. Huemer's "counter-examples" are pure babble.
Huemer reformulation #4: "4. Therefore, values exist only for living things. from 1,2,3"
Three bad premises lead to a baseless conclusion.
Huemer reformulation #5: "5. Anything an entity acts to gain or keep is a value for that entity. premise"
"Either premise 5 is false, or the argument contains an equivocation. The word "value" has at least two different meanings."
He's just repeating himself. This is a definition; not a premise.
Huemer reformulation #6: "6. Every living thing acts to maintain its life, for its own sake. premise"
Where do I start here? The man simply can't read. A rock doesn't just roll down a hill; something external has to cause it to roll. Gravity, my hand, an explosion. Whereas a living thing can go one way or the other, even without consciousness. You believe in evolution, don't you? A plant that photosynthesizes lives. One that doesn't dies. In the most simple case. Correct action leads to life. Incorrect action leads to death.
Huemer reformulation #7: "(7. There is no other thing that they act to gain or keep for its own sake.) implicit premise"
Seriously? "Implicit premise"? He can't even get real premises correct. "I have included 7, because it is necessary in order to get to 8." So #8 is going to rely on this "implicit premise". Can't wait to see that.
But even within his argument of this objection, he uses phrases like, "It is hard to believe". Just because something is hard for Michael Huemer to believe doesn't make it false.
"Many people value happiness or pleasure for its own sake, and not simply for the sake of further prolonging their lives. Rand herself, inconsistently, later declared happiness to be an end in itself. According to her theory, she should have said it was good only because it helped maintain your life."
This just demonstrates Huemer's ignorance of Rand's "theory". It shows that he doesn't know (or has forgotten, intentionally or unintentionally) how happiness is treated in Objectivism. Rand contends that emotions are analogous to an individuals pain/pleasure reaction. Except that with pain/pleasure, the feeling is hardwired into us. Yes, there are people who are damaged so that they can't feel pain, or who are damaged psychologically so that they find pleasure in pain, but we're not talking about sick people here. With emotions, they operate in a context of an individual's values (going back to Rand's use of the term "value"). Change your values, and your emotional response will change along with them. If you value controlling others, then government policies which facilitate that will make you happy. If you find the idea of controlling others repugnant, such policies will make you unhappy. And if you have conflicting values, certain things will really frak you up, because you'll feel happy and unhappy at the same time, about the same thing.
Of course, this is a simplistic, schematic description of things, with "happy" and "unhappy" standing in as polar opposites on a spectrum. The full picture is obviously more complex than that, but the understanding of emotions stemming from a combination of a situation and your values is clear.
So if your values are rational, then happiness is an end in itself. See, context is really important, but Huemer drops it.
Huemer reformulation #8: "8. Therefore, its own life, and nothing else, is valuable for its own sake, for any living thing. from 5,6,7"
Huemer reformulation #9: "9. Therefore, life and nothing else is valuable for its own sake. from 4,8"
Again, bad premises lead to bad conclusions.
Huemer reformulation #10: "(10. Everyone should always do whatever promotes what is valuable for himself.) implicit premise"
Gah. Another "implicit premise". "This is probably the most egregious error. Premise 10 begs the question." What? This "implicit premise" is the most egregious error? On whose part?
(I have to finish this, don't I. If I don't, you'll claim that I stopped because I couldn't continue. So I'll continue, even though the arrant stupidity of Huemer's "criticism" is making me physically nauseous. Granted, that might just be because I haven't had breakfast yet and I'm hungry, but still.)
Huemer reformulation #11: "11. Therefore, everyone should always do whatever promotes his own life. from 8,10"
Wait... so Huemer's "implicit premise" in #10 is necessary because otherwise #11 doesn't follow. But #11 is only predicated on #8 and #10. And #8 is a conclusion he draws from #5, #6 and #7. And #7 was also an "implicit premise", while #5 and #6 are just wrong (as I noted above). This is kind of pathetic reasoning, if it can be called reasoning at all.
Huemer reformulation #12: "12. A person can live only if he is rational. premise"
It's kind of funny that critics of Rand accuse her of being too black and white, and not seeing the greys. Here, that's exactly what Huemer does. He seems to have the idea that Rand is saying that a moment's irrationality will immediately cause one to drop dead. Or that "If her thesis is something weaker, such as that any person who is not by and large rational will probably die..." But it's neither. A moment's rationality won't make you necessarily live, and a moment's irrationality won't necessarily make you die (which is lucky for Huemer, because otherwise, writing this drivel would have killed him deader than a doornail). Rationality leads towards life. Does that mean a 100% rational person can't get struck by lightning and killed? Obviously not. But it does mean that rationality is life-affirming and that irrationality is the very opposite.
Huemer reformulation #13: "13. Therefore, everyone should be 100% rational. from 11,12"
Bad premises. Bad conclusion. No surprises here.
Pardon me if I don't continue. This is such a small fraction of the whole page, and I've gone on so long already. I'm going to go out on a limb here and said that if you read "The Objectivist Ethics" with a clear mind and without an axe to grind, you'll easily see the fallacies in Huemer's scribbles.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
Samp, I would consider it a personal favor if you would try to act a bit less like a dick. That I know you can is the only reason I bother asking.
Posted by scholarette (Member # 11540) on :
Regarding the civil rights acts, when Lisa says she would oppose it, I believe it is an extension of her libertarian principles. She has more than convinced me that she really does believe in the extreme libertarian views. However, when Paul says it, I think, hmm, interesting where he chooses to libertarian and where he doesn't. He is in favor of govt intervention on moral grounds (abortion, drugs and I think anti-ssm though not in the let's eliminate all marriage way). Without that consistency, I think it is fair to question his statement's motivation.
Posted by SenojRetep (Member # 8614) on :
From what I've read (not that I care deeply) Paul is pro-legalization (at least for medical purposes) and anti-DOMA (or federal amendment excluding SSM). He is strongly anti-abortion, but I don't think being anti-abortion is antithetical to ideological libertarianism (although it's not a common belief for a libertarian to hold).
Posted by Lisa (Member # 8384) on :
quote:Originally posted by scholarette: Regarding the civil rights acts, when Lisa says she would oppose it, I believe it is an extension of her libertarian principles. She has more than convinced me that she really does believe in the extreme libertarian views. However, when Paul says it, I think, hmm, interesting where he chooses to libertarian and where he doesn't. He is in favor of govt intervention on moral grounds (abortion, drugs and I think anti-ssm though not in the let's eliminate all marriage way). Without that consistency, I think it is fair to question his statement's motivation.
So vote for me instead. <grin>
Posted by Lisa (Member # 8384) on :
You know, I find it interesting that anti-Constitutional libertarians or anti-states rights people never make the best criticism that they could. At least I've never seen the criticism made.
See, according to the constitution, the Bill of Rights only limits the federal government. It actually allows individual states to declare a state religion, or to conduct unreasonable searches and seizures. Or to ban guns (next time an NRA type starts talking about the Second Amendment, point out that states rights means that the Second Amendment doesn't apply to anti-gun laws on the state or municipal level and watch them blow a blood vessel).
To me, the prospect of Utah declaring LDS the state religion (formally, I mean) or Michigan declaring Islam the state religion... well, those are nightmare scenarios. And I'd oppose any such thing. But Constitutional libertarianism certainly allows for that.
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
Declare a state religion? Only if they ignored the 14th amendment, which extended the protections explicitly to the states.
Posted by SenojRetep (Member # 8614) on :
I think the Everson v. Board of Education ruling disagrees with that interpretation. So if constitutional libertarians believe official state religions are legal under the constitution, they've been wrong for at least 70 years (and possibly since the 14th amendment was enacted, depending on how you define "legal").
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
Lisa: Utah essentially declared LDS the territorial religion when they first settled there. When it became a state it was probably the closest thing to a state religion the country had seen in almost 100 years. I can't conceive of anything like it since. It wasn't exactly a nightmare scenario at the time. But it probably would be problematic now.
Posted by Lisa (Member # 8384) on :
quote:Originally posted by fugu13: Declare a state religion? Only if they ignored the 14th amendment, which extended the protections explicitly to the states.
Maybe, but they never formally repealed the 9th and 10th amendments, which puts the 14th amendment in a fuzzy legal category. Also, the wording is interesting. Because the First Amendment isn't a protection of us so much as a limitation of the federal government.
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
The 14th amendment is after, and thus supersedes, the 9th and 10th, if there were any conflict. No fuzziness at all.
As for the wording, both the intent of those who put in that wording (which was to extend those rights) and the history of legal interpretation are both clear: privileges include prohibitions on restrictions.
Posted by Armoth (Member # 4752) on :
The 14th amendment doesn't incorporate the entirety of the bill of rights. The Supreme Court has decided which amendments represent fundamental rights which are protected by the 14th amendment. Since SCOTUS has not yet ruled on gun control, that's why it's still an issue.
I believe the 1st amendment was incorporated under the 14th, or at least the guarantee against establishment of religion in Everson v. Board of Education.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: Samp, I would consider it a personal favor if you would try to act a bit less like a dick. That I know you can is the only reason I bother asking.
A personal favor, eh?
Fine, but I want a postcard.
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
Armoth: yep, that's why I focused on the state religion question. The question of gun control has always been more complicated.
Though the second amendment probably applied to the states even before the fourteenth. The first amendment places limits on Congress (and whether or not that also places limits on the states, it definitely does after the 14th). The second amendment, however, gives rights to citizens directly, and explicit Constitutional granting of rights trumps state law (as the Constitution is quite clear on).
So no, states can't place gun control laws (that the federal government couldn't), at least as the 2nd amendment is concerned: it explicitly gives the right to the people, and the Constitution's protections trump any state law.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
And if he supports that particular act, that means he supports Congress attempting to pass unconstitutional laws (no doubt he has some complicated reason he thinks that law isn't unconstitutional).
At least if you're against people born in the US being citizens, be forthright about it and call for a constitutional amendment. The language is not at all unclear.
Note: the other possibility, making the children of illegal immigrants not subject to US legal jurisdiction, would also make them un-extraditable. Somehow I doubt that's the desired outcome. Even people who break the law are subject to the law. Indeed, if they weren't, they wouldn't have been able to break it. Of course, the newborn children of illegal immigrants aren't breaking the law (they're citizens from the moment of birth; when could they have broken the law?).
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: Speaking of the 14th amendment...
Rand paul: "The Democrat party is [all about actually following the constitution]"
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lisa: Oh, please. How many times do I have to point out the fallacies in that silly thing?
"Rand's argument seems to be as follows".
Not to anyone familiar with what she wrote.
So, the fact that the author is obviously familiar with what she wrote, it seems to derail your entire argument from the get-go. If you don't want to be countersniped so easily, don't make silly comments like this.
"Value is agent-relative; things can only be valuable for particular entities. premise "
quote:Wrong. That's not a premise; it's a definition.
Very strangely worded for a definition. The assertion of it as a premise makes more sense, assuming we are both speaking the english language.
In fact, yes, it most definitely seems to be a premise. I'd wait for a more impartial analyst of philosophy to have a go at it before I believed your assertion.
Since the rest of your post is more or less hinged on that point, that pretty much wraps it up, I guess.
[ May 28, 2010, 09:49 PM: Message edited by: Samprimary ]
Posted by Parkour (Member # 12078) on :
quote:So yes. It's unpopular as hell, but I do not believe that it is proper for government to prevent private citizens from discriminating on idiotic grounds. Or any other grounds.
"Any other grounds"?
How about criminal history, citizenship status, or health concerns? Is the government not allowed to discriminate against someone's right to travel over drug resistant tuberculosis infection for instance?
I am going to guess that the answer is no.
quote:make my stomach turn
Yes like everything.
quote:I'm against Medicare. And Medicaid. And anti-discrimination legislation that violates the rights of individuals. Why? Does that bother you?
No, it does not bother me, because it is irrelevant to how we will actually be governed and it wont pick up. But here is another question: Rand Paul very clearly wants to repeal those "immoral statist rights" but he is now mincing his words because he knows it hurts his electability. If it came down to him mincing his words and hiding his true ultralibertarian intent to get elected versus hiding his ultralibertarian intent to get elected, even though he can not even seem to figure out when a bill is clearly unconstitutional, or does not care, which do you want?
Posted by malanthrop (Member # 11992) on :
Rand Paul is a Libertarian. The vast majority of Libertarians separate ideology from voting preference. I'm a Libertarian but I wont waste my vote on a Libertarian candidate. Effectively, it's a vote for the liberal.
Libertarian's believe in tolerance. Rand Paul is demonized for his beliefs,.....disregarding his voting record. The opposite end of the spectrum: progressives that run as conservatives and vote hard left.
At least Rand Paul states what he believes and let's his voting record stand for what it is. Progressives talk centrist and vote liberal.
If Obama told the truth of his ideology beyond the platitudes of Hope and Change,....he would've lost.
At least Rand Paul tells the voters what he really thinks. You should worry....the extreme right wing can tell the truth and win. The extreme left can't be honest and win. (other than San Fransisco)
Rand shares his ideology....the left hides it.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:At least Rand Paul tells the voters what he really thinks.
The truth is, yet again, close to the polar opposite. He's very unabashedly for repealing restrictions on race-based discriminations for private companies but he's very explicitly trying to conceal and abrogate that and avoid direct questioning on the issue because he (now) knows it is a profound political liability.
quote: You should worry....the extreme right wing can tell the truth and win.
I'm not worried at all. Please, extreme right wing. Please tell us the truth about what you think about things. Please continue to go nuts with racial overtones over the mosque at ground zero. Continue to talk about how you would march with Martin Luther King but you want to get rid of every protection that allowed the civil rights marchers to live and eat in southern towns. Go ahead. Make me super afraid with all of your truth.
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
November 2, 2010, is coming, Samprimary. If you're not worried about that, you ought to be.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
Why should Samp personally be worried about that?
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: November 2, 2010, is coming, Samprimary. If you're not worried about that, you ought to be.
Do go on, I would like to hear your prediction on this one. Will the republicans be taking back the house and the senate?
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
And even then, why should Samp personally be worried? Would it be a bad thing for the Republicans to take the House and Senate?
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: And even then, why should Samp personally be worried? Would it be a bad thing for the Republicans to take the House and Senate?
Come on now, I know pithy one liners are like, your thing (and with good reason! You're really quite good at them ) but I think the answer to this is obvious.
I think Samprimary would definitely think it was a bad thing if the Republicans actually did manage to take the House and the Senate. He'd be worried, not for himself, but for the country. He would worry that they would pass terrible legislation or repeal good legislation, and generally muck things up worse than they currently are.
Is that inaccurate, Samp? I'm basing these predictions on what I've seen you say, and what I've discussed with you, but I'm no mind-reader. If I'm wrong, let me know. Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
Clinton + a Republican Congress sure seemed to get that budget balanced.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
Maybe it wouldn't be such a bad thing. For starters, the GOP wouldn't have to filibuster anything in order to continue breaking our legislative system.
I actually wouldn't be that torn up about it for serious unless it exposed a giant hole in analytical poll methodology. it would just prove that bait-and-switch concrete obstructionism really actually does work. Since the expiration of conservatism is, in a generational sense, seriously f****** nigh, and because the conservatives aren't going to be taking the white house anytime soon, I wouldn't have to be worried about 'progress being undone,' (the health care overhaul, for instance, is already politically untouchable), just a yawning pause in anything really being accomplished by our legislative branch (which might just be the kick in the teeth it needs to see real reform before 2025-ish).
In the long cycle, I win. In the short term, I'm entertained either way.
The issue is estimating likelihood. The pithy one-liner's purpose is not because Tom really needs to know whether or not I'd personally be worried, he wants to know why Ron Lambert thinks I should be worried.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
That's fair. Perhaps you wouldn't be worried, then.
However, don't you (and/or Tom) think it's likely Ron was basically just implying the same reasons I gave? I mean, he said it in a vaguely menacing way, I guess. But honestly, when someone on either side of the political spectrum says to someone on the other side "You better be worried about next election cycle!" I think the unspoken second part of that sentence pretty much always "Because your side is going to lose!" isn't it?
Posted by malanthrop (Member # 11992) on :
The left side of the political spectrum is much more politically adept. Dick Morris is a political commentator on Fox today,...we was an adviser for Clinton. "Triangulation" is a term foreign to the Libertarian and liberals run as centrist conservatives.
You can criticize people like Rand Paul for stating their beliefs. I prefer politicians that are honest with the voters about their ideology. I respect Rand for stating the truth of his ideology, all the time. In Washington, a "gaff" is mistakenly being honest. IE, Joe The Plumber Moments. Obama gaffed and exposed his real position as a socialist redistibutionist. (no wonder he doesn't give unscripted press conferences). Rand is free to speak his mind. Obama and his ilk need advisers to spin their true position. Someone like Palin can give a speech based upon a few words written on her hand. She's ridiculed for the ink in the palm but a one word reminder will generate a speech. She's being honest and a one word reminder is all she needs to speak her mind. Obama can't even talk to elementary school kids without a filtered teleprompter. Joe the Plumber caught him in an honest moment and his handlers won't let that happen again. Rand Paul doesn't play these games. Rand Paul isn't a liar and deceiver.
Obama is about marketing. Paul is about truth. This is what I am, vote for me or don't. Obama can't expose what he really believes.
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
quote:Originally posted by malanthrop: The left side of the political spectrum is much more politically adept. Dick Morris is a political commentator on Fox today,...we was an adviser for Clinton. "Triangulation" is a term foreign to the Libertarian and liberals run as centrist conservatives.
You can criticize people like Rand Paul for stating their beliefs. I prefer politicians that are honest with the voters about their ideology. I respect Rand for stating the truth of his ideology, all the time. In Washington, a "gaff" is mistakenly being honest. IE, Joe The Plumber Moments. Obama gaffed and exposed his real position as a socialist redistibutionist. (no wonder he doesn't give unscripted press conferences). Rand is free to speak his mind. Obama and his ilk need advisers to spin their true position. Someone like Palin can give a speech based upon a few words written on her hand. She's ridiculed for the ink in the palm but a one word reminder will generate a speech. She's being honest and a one word reminder is all she needs to speak her mind. Obama can't even talk to elementary school kids without a filtered teleprompter. Joe the Plumber caught him in an honest moment and his handlers won't let that happen again. Rand Paul doesn't play these games. Rand Paul isn't a liar and deceiver.
Obama is about marketing. Paul is about truth. This is what I am, vote for me or don't. Obama can't expose what he really believes.
I actually know a number of career political operatives. Not one of them would even consider the idea that one side is somehow more sincere. These people are trying to get elected, not achieve sainthood, 99.9% of the time.
That's not to say there's not the occasional candidate (or even more rarely, incumbent) who just says what he/she thinks, and couldn't care less. However....Good God...if anyone really thinks that there's more than 1 or 2 elected officials in Washington at any time like that...they are sadly, hilariously naive.
The reason Palin can give a speech from just a few words is because the conservative schtick is so deceptively correct-sounding and internally consistent, in this country. In the former Soviet bloc, I imagine it was the leftists who could give speeches with only a few words of notes. Why?
Extremism is easier to express simply.
It sounds great, until you actually see it in practice.
That's true for both sides of the issues, the extreme left and right.
Extremism doesn't require as much THOUGHT. It leaves a much bigger mess, but, hey, the people with the foresight to avoid extremism are the thinkers. It's the Palins of our country (and many under-informed, poorly-read, and uneducated people, everywhere) who desire a philosophy/worldview that is solid, dependable, and easy to grasp. Such a worldview never works in practice, sadly.
Posted by Lisa (Member # 8384) on :
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:Originally posted by Lisa: Oh, please. How many times do I have to point out the fallacies in that silly thing?
"Rand's argument seems to be as follows".
Not to anyone familiar with what she wrote.
So, the fact that the author is obviously familiar with what she wrote, it seems to derail your entire argument from the get-go. If you don't want to be countersniped so easily, don't make silly comments like this.
"Value is agent-relative; things can only be valuable for particular entities. premise "
quote:Wrong. That's not a premise; it's a definition.
Very strangely worded for a definition. The assertion of it as a premise makes more sense, assuming we are both speaking the english language.
In fact, yes, it most definitely seems to be a premise. I'd wait for a more impartial analyst of philosophy to have a go at it before I believed your assertion.
Since the rest of your post is more or less hinged on that point, that pretty much wraps it up, I guess.
A couple of things. First, Huemer doesn't display familiarity with Rand's work; only with this one essay.
Second, it is a definition rather than a premise.
Third, you can't prove a negative. All anyone disagreeing with her statement needs to do is produce one single thing which has intrinsic value. Value which exists divorced from those who find value in it. Just one thing. You can't do that, however, because there is no such thing. To suggest that she needs to prove there's no such thing is silly. Produce a counter-example.
Posted by Lisa (Member # 8384) on :
quote:Originally posted by Parkour:
quote:So yes. It's unpopular as hell, but I do not believe that it is proper for government to prevent private citizens from discriminating on idiotic grounds. Or any other grounds.
"Any other grounds"?
How about criminal history, citizenship status, or health concerns? Is the government not allowed to discriminate against someone's right to travel over drug resistant tuberculosis infection for instance?
While I'm having a bit of a problem parsing that sentence -- I assume you're asking whether I think it's okay to quarantine someone, but correct me if you meant something else -- the role of the government is to protect people. With the understanding that "not helping" does not equate to "hurting", governments exist to prevent people from hurting one another. To mediate disputes so that it needn't come to that. To punish those who have hurt others. So if someone has a communicable disease and isn't doing anything to prevent contaminating others, the government can certainly step in and protect me and you and everyone else from their recklessness.
Does that answer your question?
quote:Originally posted by Parkour: I am going to guess that the answer is no.
Interesting. You'll have to tell me how your guess did. Since I'm still not 100% what your question was, I don't know for sure what my answer would be.
quote:Originally posted by Parkour:
quote:make my stomach turn
Yes like everything.
Aw... is that a pout I see on your face? No, not like everything. Like you, I have to admit.
quote:Originally posted by Parkour: [QB][QUOTE]I'm against Medicare. And Medicaid. And anti-discrimination legislation that violates the rights of individuals. Why? Does that bother you?
No, it does not bother me, because it is irrelevant to how we will actually be governed and it wont pick up. But here is another question: Rand Paul very clearly wants to repeal those "immoral statist rights" but he is now mincing his words because he knows it hurts his electability. If it came down to him mincing his words and hiding his true ultralibertarian intent to get elected versus hiding his ultralibertarian intent to get elected, even though he can not even seem to figure out when a bill is clearly unconstitutional, or does not care, which do you want?
"Ultralibertarian"? Did you make that up yourself?
Yes, it seemed to me like he was equivocating a little. Maybe he needs more practice doing interviews, or maybe he really was equivocating. I hope it's the former.
Wait... do you think I'm so gung-ho for Rand Paul that I'd be okay with that? Or pretend he wasn't doing it?
Posted by Lisa (Member # 8384) on :
quote:Originally posted by malanthrop: If Obama told the truth of his ideology beyond the platitudes of Hope and Change,....he would've lost.
Well, that's for damned sure. But Rand Paul did seem to be equivocating a little.
Posted by Lisa (Member # 8384) on :
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: Please continue to go nuts with racial overtones over the mosque at ground zero.
Where do you possibly see race involved in that? All people are asking is for a little sensitivity. Putting up a mosque there, when 9/11 happened out of Islamic fervor, is beyond insensitive.
Posted by Lisa (Member # 8384) on :
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: November 2, 2010, is coming, Samprimary. If you're not worried about that, you ought to be.
Do go on, I would like to hear your prediction on this one. Will the republicans be taking back the house and the senate?
God willing.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lisa: A couple of things. First, Huemer doesn't display familiarity with Rand's work; only with this one essay.
So you are making a very strange assertion indeed to claim spuriously that somehow a critique of her essay can't rely upon familiarity of the essay; that somehow an implied unfamiliarity with other works mean that you can't simply counter the essay based on the points it makes.
It's pretty simply a garbage invalidation.
quote:Second, it is a definition rather than a premise.
you've already made that claim. Saying 'yeah huh' does not reinforce it nor contradict my counterclaim. It just reminds us that you have your opinion and won't deviate from it (as well as indicating an unwillingness to argue it in good faith).
quote:All anyone disagreeing with her statement needs to do is produce one single thing which has intrinsic value.
That is ONE thing that someone can do. I applaud your crude rhetorical device, though: attempting to straightjacket any critique by setting the goalposts for what YOU think must be done to disagree with Rand 'effectively.'
Posted by Lisa (Member # 8384) on :
quote:Originally posted by steven: The reason Palin can give a speech from just a few words is because the conservative schtick is so deceptively correct-sounding and internally consistent, in this country. In the former Soviet bloc, I imagine it was the leftists who could give speeches with only a few words of notes. Why?
Extremism is easier to express simply.
It sounds great, until you actually see it in practice.
That's true for both sides of the issues, the extreme left and right.
Extremism doesn't require as much THOUGHT. It leaves a much bigger mess, but, hey, the people with the foresight to avoid extremism are the thinkers. It's the Palins of our country (and many under-informed, poorly-read, and uneducated people, everywhere) who desire a philosophy/worldview that is solid, dependable, and easy to grasp. Such a worldview never works in practice, sadly.
"Extremism" is a dumb word. It implies that "extremely good" and "extremely bad" are equally problematic.
Opposing the status quo is not "extreme".
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lisa:
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: Please continue to go nuts with racial overtones over the mosque at ground zero.
Where do you possibly see race involved in that? All people are asking is for a little sensitivity. Putting up a mosque there, when 9/11 happened out of Islamic fervor, is beyond insensitive.
quote:What's happening: the community board in lower Manhattan has endorsed, by a 29-to-one vote, a plan to build a mosque and Islamic cultural center about two blocks from the former site of the World Trade Center. Predictably, outrage has erupted. If you type "mosque" into Google, the first suggestion is "mosque at ground zero," which gives a sense of how quickly this has moved into the popular consciousness.
The imam in charge, Feisal Abdul Rauf, is consciously moderate, and has described combating radicalism as his personal mission. Nor is he jumping on the chance to get in the neighborhood to make some point: the mosque is already just a few blocks away, in Tribeca, but has overgrown its current space. Rauf says that he hopes that having a moderate mosque so near Ground Zero can send a message of tolerance and peace.
But this is something the right wing just can't pass up. These people, and this neighborhood, can't just be people in a neighborhood. They've been conscripted for a larger war.
Mark Williams, a Tea Party leader and Fox News commentator, wrote on his blog, "The monument would consist of a Mosque for the worship of the terrorists' monkey-god." He added, "In the meantime I have a wonderful idea along the same lines as that mosque at Ground Zero thing… a nice, shiny new U.S. Military Base on the smoldering ruins of Mecca. Works for me!"
At WorldNetDaily, the Birther web publication popular on the conservative fringe, an article, written in classic WND style begins by acting like a straight report -- albeit laced with purple prose about "that fateful day when time stood still." Then author Chelsea Schilling moves on to ominously noting that building inspectors had trouble investigating construction complaints -- almost as if somebody was hiding something. She finishes up by quoting a random selection of racist blog commenters: "Muslims are doing this only to see if they get away with it. It's the way Islam spreads in every country these days, like a cancer -- through incremental totalitarianism," writes one. Another writes, "This is not different than allowing the Nazis to establish their headquarters and propaganda office in NYC in 1938. How come people could tell right from wrong then and not now?"
Lest you think it’s just anonymous trolls producing this stuff, though, check out Pamela Geller, the head of the group "Stop Islamization of America," talking to Joy Behar on CNN. According to Geller, instead of a mosque, the site should be host to a monument to the "victims of hundreds of millions of years of jihadi wars, land enslavements, cultural annihilations and mass slaughter."
You’d think someone who runs a group with "Islam" right in its name might know that the religion is about 1,400 years old -- not "hundreds of millions." I know that all that desert stuff seems super-ancient -- "sands of time" and and all that -- but honestly. "Hundreds of millions"? That’s way, way older than homo sapiens as a species. (Maybe that explains Williams' "monkey god" reference?)
Then there's Andy McCarthy, National Review writer and recent author of a book arguing that liberals are consciously conspiring to betray America to the ravenous Muslim horde. McCarthy recently pointed out on Fox News that there are 2,300 mosques in America, but no churches or synagogues in Muslim holy cities Mecca and Medina.
First of all, I think this fairly puts to rest any notion that the more militant strain of anti-Islamist hawkishness is anything other than full-scale, civilizational hatred. After this eruption, it's going to be a stretch to take seriously claims that the interest of the right-wing base in armed conflict in the Middle East is about anything but an active desire for full-on race war. (I've taken some heat in the past for using this term, but I stand by it. The occurrence of the phrase "monkey god," I think, makes my point rather neatly.) Moreover, it's penetrated quite far into the mainstream of the right, with the flowering of a sub-literature that treats migration patterns and labor markets in Europe like they’re the secret plan for the conquest of Christendom.
In recent years, liberals have become fond of pointing out that this kind of belligerent overreaction to the terrorist threat is exactly what makes terrorism effective. It plays into the hands of Osama bin Laden to treat Islam like our foe in a global, apocalyptic struggle. That's exactly how he sees it, and joining him in this fantasy endorses al-Qaida's ideology.
This is a true and important point, pragmatically. But there's something even worse going on here. It's not just that Gellar, McCarthy, Williams and the rest in the War-with-Islam group are inadvertently playing into the hands of Islamic extremists. They are, exactly, their analogue within our own society. The same things that benefit Islamic radicals benefit anti-Islamic militants. Both groups feed off conflict, and prosper when violence erupts. Their only break from accusing Islam of guilt in wars and mass violence seems to come when they call for wars and mass violence against Muslims.
It's notable how McCarthy seems to think that, in pointing out that the United States has many mosques, but the holy cities of Saudi Arabia have no churches, he's making an appropriate comparison. It's almost as if he demands that we behave just like a theocratically-tinged authoritarian monarchy. The hatred these people have for the Muslim world conceals a noticeable yearning -- an envy for its ability to carry out the undemocratic, anti-pluralist, and puritanical measures that the United States has long since abandoned.
"Insensitive," indeed. I am not surprised that your individual visceral hatred for the muslim world (and your frankly racist diatribes that you indulge in from time to time, though you are easing) is fitting in well with this phenomenon.
Posted by malanthrop (Member # 11992) on :
quote:Originally posted by steven: [QUOTE]I actually know a number of career political operatives. Not one of them would even consider the idea that one side is somehow more sincere. These people are trying to get elected, not achieve sainthood, 99.9% of the time.
Thank you. The problem we face are the people you know...."CAREER POLITICIANS". Rand isn't a career politician. I agree with you,...when it comes to career politicians, no one is sincere. Our current president has never been anything but a politician.
I prefer politicians that are honest about their ideology. I would rather elect someone who isn't a "career politician".
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:I prefer politicians that are honest about their ideology
I'm sure Rand is hiding from Meet The Press and obfuscating his position now entirely in pursuit of that honesty.
Posted by malanthrop (Member # 11992) on :
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:I prefer politicians that are honest about their ideology
I'm sure Rand is hiding from Meet The Press and obfuscating his position now entirely in pursuit of that honesty.
Don't judge him until he passes the 300 day threshold set by the President of the United States. Just because he doesn't want to show up on your favorite show, doesn't mean he is avoiding the "press". "Meet The Press" isn't a mandatory cable show. Meet The Press is free to play his clips from other shows.
quote:Don't judge him until he passes the 300 day threshold set by the President of the United States.
Oh I forgot his apparently abstract 300 day immunity to criticism. If I had known about it, I certainly would not have made this thread. My bad.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
I have no idea which is going to be the more epic event of the year for me on hatrack: this thread, or getting fought to a fair-shake standstill like three times in a row by fugu.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
And the year's not even half over.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
When people disparage Christianity, do we say that they're racist against white people?
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lisa:
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: Please continue to go nuts with racial overtones over the mosque at ground zero.
Where do you possibly see race involved in that? All people are asking is for a little sensitivity. Putting up a mosque there, when 9/11 happened out of Islamic fervor, is beyond insensitive.
Suppose we accept the symbolic importance of erecting such a mosque. Isn't there some judo-esque value in turning the other cheek?
Especially considering it's sure to be an extremely liberal mosque. Manhattan Muslims have less to do with the 9/11 attackers than Manhattan Christians have in common with Fred Phelps.
I don't have the sort of gut fear of radical Islam that a lot of right-wingers do. But even if I did, I'd be way into embracing peaceful, non-radical Islam. If nothing else, it's good strategic thinking.
Hell, we should actually have a Muslim president!
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
quote:Originally posted by Destineer: Isn't there some judo-esque value in turning the other cheek?
Christian value. Nothing to do with Judaism. Or judo.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: When people disparage Christianity, do we say that they're racist against white people?
Occasionally.
That said, that shouldn't be the case, and it is a excellent point.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: When people disparage Christianity, do we say that they're racist against white people?
Perhaps if they were to disparage it in the terms of the 'great Satan's christian monkey-god' we would start seeing those subtle permutations arise. In most situations, no.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: When people disparage Christianity, do we say that they're racist against white people?
Well no, it's not that Islam is a mono-ethnic religion, because it isn't, just that it is majority non-white. So when you're talking about Islam, as a white person, this is sometimes seen as code for talking about "those people," be they Africans or middle-easterners, Indians, or Malaysians. I know people in this country specifically who use Islam as code for Africans, even though most Africans here are hardly religious. It's easier to disagree with an ideology than a race- that's why we have to be aware of when we are actually speaking in code, and when we are talking about an ethnic group in general.
Posted by scholarette (Member # 11540) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: When people disparage Christianity, do we say that they're racist against white people?
Generally people are a bit more specific in which Christians they don't like. It is the Catholics or the Evangelicals or Baptists or the Lutherans or the Mormons or the crazy radical Christians or sheep Christians or whatever. Most times I have heard really disparaging remarks to Christians, there is some qualifier, even if just "those Christians" or scare quote Christians. That makes it less offensive because it excludes a bunch of Christians. I think Americans generally lack this distinction when discussing Muslims (ex without looking it up, how many people know the difference between sunni and shiite and which one hezbollah is and which one al-queda is).
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
quote:Originally posted by rivka:
quote:Originally posted by Destineer: Isn't there some judo-esque value in turning the other cheek?
Christian value. Nothing to do with Judaism. Or judo.
I meant judo-esque in the sense of using your opponent's momentum against him.
How awesome would it have looked to the world if, three years after being attacked by Islamic radicals, we elected a moderate Muslim president?
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
Depends on how quickly the alternate-reality tea party manages to lynch him Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lisa:
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: Please continue to go nuts with racial overtones over the mosque at ground zero.
Where do you possibly see race involved in that? All people are asking is for a little sensitivity. Putting up a mosque there, when 9/11 happened out of Islamic fervor, is beyond insensitive.
I suppose, but in another sense a correct expression of Islam rising out of the ashes created by a false one seems to have a certain apropos.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:How awesome would it have looked to the world if, three years after being attacked by Islamic radicals, we elected a moderate Muslim president?
Honestly? I think it depends on who you mean by "the world." There is, for example, a faction among Arab extremists who would (wrongly) interpret this behavior to mean "Americans are weak and can be threatened into conversion." Frankly, I don't think the ethics of our actions should be measured by how they look to anyone.
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: Frankly, I don't think the ethics of our actions should be measured by how they look to anyone.
Agreed.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: I suppose, but in another sense a correct expression of Islam rising out of the ashes created by a false one seems to have a certain apropos.
Well, a humane expression, a liberal expression, a cosmopolitan expression, or a peaceable expression of Islam I could agree with.
From my POV, they're all incorrect expressions anyways, just some are easier to get along with than others
(But this of course is an ongoing, (17 page?) debate)
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
quote:Originally posted by Destineer: How awesome would it have looked to the world if, three years after being attacked by Islamic radicals, we elected a moderate Muslim president?
For that matter, I think we should all pretend to convert to Islam, and then build a Pizza Hut on the ka'aba, all the time saying "Dudes, we're Muslims too! What's all the fuss?"
Posted by Lisa (Member # 8384) on :
I'll take mine with sausage.
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson:
quote:How awesome would it have looked to the world if, three years after being attacked by Islamic radicals, we elected a moderate Muslim president?
Honestly? I think it depends on who you mean by "the world." There is, for example, a faction among Arab extremists who would (wrongly) interpret this behavior to mean "Americans are weak and can be threatened into conversion." Frankly, I don't think the ethics of our actions should be measured by how they look to anyone.
If making ourselves look bad leads to mass loss of human life, I think it's worth it ethically to consider our image.
I also think a leader who intimately understands the culture we're most in tension with during this historical period would be a good choice to lead, image aside. BHO was a relatively good choice in that regard, but a Westernized Muslim would be even better.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
strange crap bubbling up in reddit.
Dr. Rand Paul: Not really a doctor?
CONFIRM/DENY
Posted by SenojRetep (Member # 8614) on :
In short: Paul claims he was originally board certified. When the board took measures that meant new doctors would need to recertify every 10 years, but old doctors would be certified for life (consistent with former ABO constitution) Paul claims he left the ABO (American Board of Ophthamologists) to found the NBO (National Board of Ophthamologists) with about 200 other young doctors. The new organization has a recertification requirement for all members, regardless of age, but is not accredited by the ABMS (American Board of Medical Specialties).
<edit>I wonder if this indicates that should Paul be elected, when the US Senate votes to pass laws he doesn't like he'll simply choose to form a new Senate (call it the National Senate), made up of his like-minded collegues.</edit>
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
o_o
quote:the highlight may be Paul's initial response:
The Courier-Journal began seeking comment from Paul Tuesday. When the newspaper tried to interview him at two Louisville events Saturday, he wouldn't comment.
"I'm not going to go through all that right now," Paul said while at the Great Eastern National Gun Day Show and JAG Military Show, in Louisville.
Asked when he would talk, Paul said: "Uh, you know, never. ... What does this have to do with our election?"
(He later gave a fuller answer.)
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
Update: Rand has slumped to a dead heat and is polling unfavorably
(surprise)
Posted by SenojRetep (Member # 8614) on :
Looking at recent news posts, I guess you're talking about the new PPP poll out showing Paul and Conway tied with 43 points each. The problem is that PPP also showed Paul and Conway as tied (statistically) in May, and showed Conway with an advantage back in December. So the idea that Paul is slumping isn't really borne out looking at PPP surveys.
Rasmussen has been polling more consistently. They show Paul's rise flattening out around 50 percent since April, and Conway's vote share steadily increasing to close the gap. I guess you could call this a "slump" but it seems more like a Conway "surge" (which I think probably coincides more with his increased name recognition than Paul's gaffes). And, FWIW, as of 6/28 Rasmussen still had Paul up by 7 points*.
* Nate Silver has expressed a lot of doubt about Rasmussen's likely voter model this cycle. To a similar point, though, according to their cross tabs the PPP poll's is not necessarily a good sampling; it shows Dems relative to Reps and Inds at 52/37/11, which would be a pretty considerable Democratic turnout come November. More realistic, based on the 2008 election, would be 47/38/15. <edit>And even that would represent a rather stark contrast to the current narrative of energized Republicans and less energized Dems, which would tend to favor an improved GOP turnout over 2008.</edit>
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
Conway surge, huh. I guess he's going from unknown to favorable interpretation. But I think there's still a slumping effect in that the more people know about Rand, the less they like him. His unfavorable rating is growing.
Posted by SenojRetep (Member # 8614) on :
His favorable/unfavorable differential in the new poll (34/42 -> -8) is essentially identical to what it was in early May (28/35 -> -7), prior to the widely reported gaffes. The differential from December (26/23 -> +3) was when he was largely an unknown outside of an immediate, high-information circle.
So I don't think the favorability numbers support the idea of a slump either. In fact, they indicate that he is slightly better off today than he was in May (judged by favorability percentage among those who have formed an opinion).
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
hahaha then people are forwarding me some really bogus verbiage.
OH
it's huffpo
Posted by Geraine (Member # 9913) on :
The article you posted about Fesal Abdul Rauf is laughable. He is conservative, yet he promotes one of the most intolerant sociopolitical systems on the planet: Shari'a law.
I have nothing against followers of Islam, but what is the reasoning behind building this mosque near ground zero? If he has come out and said he plans on building it on ground zero to serve as a reminder of what hate in the Islamic faith can cause, or to teach tolerance of other religions and belief systems, then I'm all for it.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
As a sufi mystic, his vision of the interpretation of sharia law is going to be remarkably different from the 'most intolerant sociopolitical system' that conservative media is sure to implicate him as having.
quote: If he has come out and said he plans on building it on ground zero to serve as a reminder of what hate in the Islamic faith can cause, or to teach tolerance of other religions and belief systems,
pretty close to that yes.
Posted by SenojRetep (Member # 8614) on :
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: hahaha then people are forwarding me some really bogus verbiage.
OH
it's huffpo
FireDogLake, Swing State Project and a host of liberal blogs have a similar take. I think the poor analysis was spurred by a PPP blog post that attributed what the author perceived as Paul's lackluster performance to negative media coverage (citing as evidence a poll question about whether negative media coverage made people more or less likely to vote for Paul). The assertion was statistically and methodologically vacuous (and PPP should have known it), but it seems to have been picked up as the narrative by much of the liberal blogosphere. To its credit, TPM avoided the mistake (at least in the write-up I saw).
Posted by Darth_Mauve (Member # 4709) on :
quote:When people disparage Christianity, do we say that they're racist against white people?
I actually find this question a bit racists, since it implies that Christianity is a religion of White folks, when I imagine that the majority of Christians are of various non-white races. Just adding the strong Catholic populations of Central and South America, the African American Christian community, and the strong Evangelical work that has been done in the past 200 years from China to India, and I think the limited faithful in the white west are a minority.
But you do have a point. Talking about this as a race issue leads to confusing and heated misunderstandings. The Islamic terrorists don't want to kill us because we are white, and the White Fanatic doesn't want to kill them because they are not-white. Its a cultural conflict. They have a different culture from us. We assume our culture is right, and are willing--no, anxious to destroy those that are not. There are several ways to prove who's culture is correct. The simplest and most common is to kill those of the other culture.
That is what we need to face and overcome.
My view of an enlightened culture, and an enlightened religion, is one that does not fear competition to the point of murder.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
I don't know why but I keep thinking Dan Frank and Darth_Mauve are the same person. I think there's another poster with a similar name that I've fused with these two.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
Dan_Raven.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: Dan_Raven.
*snaps fingers* That's it.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
) but I think the answer to this is obvious.