It must be. I’m reading the results of a poll of Republicans, and the answers don’t make sense. For example, look at this one result:
Do you believe Barack Obama wants the terrorists to win?
Yes 24
No 43
Not Sure 33
A quarter of Republicans think our president is rooting for the terrorists? That’s simply nuts.
Read the rest. The percentages for absurd questions like whether Obama is a socialist are unbelievable enough, but when it gets to the issues it simply gets worse. 77% want the Bible taught in the schools, for instance.
Maybe I should just stay in Ireland.
Actually teaching Bible in a purely secular point of view as literature is not completely unreasonable. However in practise I think it would cause a lot more trouble than it would help to solve.
The result below is symptomatic of one reason I’ve have sometimes, idly, wondered if I should bother renewing my USA passport or even ever return to the USA:
Take the worse possible thing you can find/do and turn up the worsedness to 11—the Thugs plans for the USA.
Brain Damage maybe not but arguably a cognitive deficit. The values often associated with conservative politics show a low score in a psychological variable called Openness to Experience and are consequently more traditional and authoritarian in their outlook. This means that they are less likely to want to acquire knowledge or to engage in intellectual pursuits. There is also, it seems, an associated drop in IQ score. Indeed some researchers use the word “intellect” instead to describe this factor.
It is probably the factor that is responsible for the perceived liberal bias in academia. The evidence suggests that it is a smarter person’s bias.
@ 1,
please read for comprehension :
Taught, as in as scientific truth.You know, like they did after St Augustine in the 5th century.The period from the 5th to the 15th century is called the Dark Ages for a reason.
It’s actually worse, not only do 24% say “Yes”, but 33% say “not sure” !!
Indeed. And as you point out, doing so may to cause more problems than it solves. However, as quoted in the Daily Kos article, the above is not what the wingnuts and Thugs want:
Turning up the worsedness to 12…
Christ, seeing the results of that poll was depressing. The Republican party is entirely a joke at this point.
I also don’t know whether to laugh or cry over the fact that 14% of New Jersey Republicans think Obama is the Anti-Christ and 15% weren’t sure.
Aha! So thats why he’s so keen on bombing the taliban in Afghanistan with Predator drones – its a form of accelerated evolution. Just like bacteria gains resistance to antibiotics over time, this will weed out the weak terrorists and make the remaining missileproof. How devious!
But then again, these same republicans probably don’t believe in evolution.
I live in Oklahoma. Any talk of evolution, or science, or reason for that matter is viewed as crazy talk by the people that surround me. Teaching creationism is always a topic of debate(not with me) and anything that people can find to let them “think” that they are on an even level with evolution or science, they take it and run with it. There are a few reasonable, logical scientific minded people with whom I can associate and many more that I believe question religion but are afraid to publically question their indoctrination in this part of the country. The last thing that schools need is to teach the bible or any god or creationism! You are in school to learn, in math class you learn math, in a foreign language class you learn a foreign language. So in science class, you should only learn science! If you want religion(I don’t know why you would), go to church!!! Don’t waste MY time in school!
Seeing bad (the Bu–sh– Junta years, when there was gleeful talk of a one-party state and the “rounding-up” of “Libs” who “obstructed” – this at ordinary newspaper comment sites) turn to the current suicidally evil, bitter insanity that is the fervently held religion of the 23%ers that make up 90% of the new “Republican” Know-NO! NUTHIN’!!! party, it’s pretty clear they would rather see anything but a successful, prosperous America at peace.
We can only trust that the “Old Guard” is too greedy to harm to their own interests in the short run, and in the deep, absolute vicious laziness and cowardice of the Tea-party-ers.
Will the Democrats and the President stop dealing with them as anything but fools and corrupt enemies of our nations interests!
The bible should be reserved for mythology class only!!!
Not only do 24% of Republicans think Obama wants the terrorists to win, a third of them aren’t sure. Madness.
I think Republicans just basically don’t like him, so respond when negative insinuations are made. You could ask “Does the Bamster kill Hamsters?” and you’d probably get a significant showing.
It wouldn’t surprise me if more conservatives had fewer college degrees, though. Whether this actually correlates more with intelligence or interest though…
“Is brain damage a prerequisite for joining the Republican party?”
…….. YES!
I’m not a USAnian, but i’m pretty darn sure that one requirement for being President of the USA is to be born in the country. Most Republicans don’t know this, according to this poll. I guess i’m not surprised.
Obama a socialist? These people really should visit Europe for a change.
I live in the Netherlands. I vote on a center party, pragmatists. There are parties to the left of what I vote.
Obama still seems like right-wing to me.
From my European perspective Obama is a rightwinger too.
Obama still seems like right-wing to me.
Well. His health care plan is to the right of what President Richard Milhous(0) Nixon proposed. And he’s adopted the G. W. Bush stances on warratless wiretapping and state secrets. Fortunately, his position on global warming is roughly similar to to Margaret Thatcher’s.
(0) Named after Bart Simpson’s best friend, I am told.
My apologies. I intended to blockquote the first paragraph of my previous post.
Trying again:
simply not edible | February 6, 2010 5:59 AM:
Well. His health care plan is to the right of what President Richard Milhous(0) Nixon proposed. And he’s adopted the G. W. Bush stances on warratless wiretapping and state secrets. Fortunately, his position on global warming is roughly similar to to Margaret Thatcher’s.
(0) Named after Bart Simpson’s best friend, I am told.
PZ, I may not be an American, but I was a member of a party that was heavily infiltrated by the conservatives here in Australia (ironically called the Liberal Party, P.S. it REALLY isn’t what it sounds like).
These conservatives will not listen to evidence, and live in a world of denial. Closed minded, dogmatics. In answer to your question, yes brain damage is a pre-requisite. Foetal alcohol syndrome at very least. Most of them were “simple” people with a univariate thought process.
Of course Obama is a Gol Durn Furriner, he was borned in some furren place, and he has a funny name that sounds like one of them bad guys from Arabia-Land. So, he must be a furriner!
And besides, didn’t you notice… He’s. . Gasp! . . . Not White! . . . he can’t be a True Christian™ if he’s Not White! And so, being a false christian, and a furriner, our duty is to Impeach him as soon as possible, if not sooner!
Go Sooners!
Err um…
Wow, thinking like Orly Taitz makes my head hurt.
I keep trying to turn up the brightness, but it doesn’t work.
What a depressing mess of a read.
Oh, I wish there was a way and a place. Go forth, set up thy dark ages kingdom, far, far away from the rest of us.
Rationalmind @#3
That’s absolutely fascinating! Can you point towards anything to read about this?
B
We should set them up a country, just let them liv off on their own, away from sane civilised societies of the Post-Enlightenment.
Aarrgghh. Now I want to whap a whole lot of people with a clue by four.
Is it sad that I’m impressed that 8% of those who think birth control abortion are willing to consider the option of it being legal? (I’m assuming the three that went to the yes side were from not sure in the previous.)
In defense of non-crazy Republicans*, I think we ought to consider how the results to a survey of Democrats would look if similar questions were asked of them:
ie, “Do you think Bush would nuke Tehran to deal with Ahmadinijad?”
Or perhaps:
“Do you support government subsidies for ‘alternative medicines’ such as homeopathy?”
Sad to say, given your odd two-party system, every non-crazy is going to find themselves in or generally supporting a party filled up with crazies, kooks, and conspiracy theorists**; it’s also sad to say that you inevitably forget this as soon as you get the chance to do so.
*Yes, they do exist. Even atheist Republicans. Picture an atheist libertarian looking at the recent Democratic budgets, for instance.
**Of course, that doesn’t keep Republican kooks from being scary as hell, but it’s worth bearing in mind that the party doesn’t march in lockstep.
I’ve given up trying to explain what socialism is to certain conservative friends and coworkers. All they know is “Rush Limbaugh sez ‘socialism BAD! and ‘Obama BAD!’ so socialism = Obama.”
Actually, you must be a natural-born citizen, which does not mean you must have been born in the USA (or its territories, military bases, &tc). I, for instance, am one, despite being indisputably born in a foreign country, and have a document from the State Department to prove it (it’s safely stored and so this is from memory, but it’s called something like Certificate of a Natural-Born Citizen Born Aboard).
Indeed. The
DemocratsDummies are, at best, central-ish by a somewhat generalised European measure, right-ish of this generalised European left. How far rightwards-leaning they are isn’t too clear, and in any case, this one-dimensional metric can rapidly become confusing and meaningless. On specific points a multi-dimensional metric is perhaps better.Speculating, for health care, one axis might range from all-public-funded to all-private-funded, and another axis might be available-to-all to available-only-for-pay. The current USA system is clearly in the private-funded/only-for-pay quadrant. Different European systems will generally be in the for-all half, but at quite different points on the who-pays scale. (Or something like that… not sure this example is working, and besides, it’s almost lunchtime and the Six Nations starts this afternoon, so I’m in a hurry to leave…)
Ha! Clue by four, I’m so stealing that for everyday use Caine. Hope you don’t mind the theft of your intellectual property.
Whether Obama is a right-winger depends on what you mean by “left-wing” and “right-wing”; but he’s certainly highly authoritarian, and has been very disappointing on civil liberties. He’s continued warrantless wiretapping and detention without trial in the course of the “War on Terror”. Sadly, there seems to be a bipartisan consensus in the US for taking away citizens’ liberties. I still find it hard to believe that the Republicans are accusing Obama of not being aggressive enough in “fighting terrorism”. It’s as if both parties seem to be competing to see who can be more authoritarian.
But don’t see the rest of the world as any better. The Labour government here in the UK has been just as bad when it comes to individual freedom. Until the House of Lords ruled against them, the UK Home Office were detaining foreign nationals who were “suspected terrorists” indefinitely without trial at Belmarsh Prison, just as the US was doing at Guantánamo Bay. (Their rationale was that, since the Human Rights Act prevents them deporting foreign nationals back to countries where they are likely to be tortured or executed, it was “necessary” to detain these people indefinitely and deprive them of all civil rights, despite not having any actual evidence that the individuals in question were involved in terrorism.) That practice was thankfully stopped; but the civil liberties situation in Britain is still awful. The government is rolling out an “ID database”, to which I have now probably been added, as I recently had to apply for a new passport. Labour still have their hearts set on forcing everyone to carry an ID card, though popular opposition is likely to prevent them introducing this illiberal measure.
Sadly, history teaches that most political parties, right or left, are perfectly happy to advocate greater protection for civil liberties while in opposition, but become much less keen on individual freedom once they’re in power. This is why the greatest force for individual liberty in the US – flawed though it is – is the federal court system; and why I strongly advocate a constitutionally entrenched Bill of Rights for the UK, modelled after its US counterpart.
Walton,
Alas, this has the ring of truth to me.
I’d go further: it seems laws are much easier to pass and implement than they are to roll back, once enacted.
Maybe I’m just cynical.
I just love the juxtaposition here. Because of course, what America needs is MOAR BABIES… and the proper role of government is to keep women pumping out babies as frequently as possible, whether they like it or not. Duh. And all the unwanted kids who will grow up in deprived households, or be left to die on the streets, because of this policy? Fuck ’em. [/sarcasm]
(Is anyone really insane and callous enough to think like this?)
“Maybe I should just stay in Ireland.”
I wonder what my great-grandparents were thinking when they left Ireland for the shores of New York ~1890?
Walton @ 32:
Yes, christian fundies. They go on and on and on about the ‘slaughter/holocaust/mega-murder’ of the unborn (or pre-born) while they rarely display any concern for actual children. Basically, women are for subjugation. Can’t have women running around having sex without consequence, ya know.
I wonder if the history and/or sociology types here can point to a particular event or series of events that lead to the US and it’s political system being broken and the thought of immigrating from Europe to the USA being utterly absurd in 2010 ?
Is it just the religious nutters and their spread and ascent through the political ranks ? it’s got to be something else too, there was after all the McCarthy madness, whic as far as I know wasn’t religiously motivated.
The republican train left the sanity station a long time ago.
Because of course, as we all know, every sperm is sacred: God loves every potential human, from unfertilised ovum to the day of birth. (Once they’re born, on the other hand, He no longer gives a damn, unless their parents happen to be wealthy Republican donors.) As long as women are forced to keep pumping out more Real American BabiesTM, so as to keep the birthrate from being overtaken by Teh Ebil Foreign Hordes, the fundies are happy. The number of children condemned to abject poverty and deprivation in the process just doesn’t matter.
(Gah. I threw up a little in my mouth while writing this. And I say this as an ex-Christian, and a member of a non-US conservative party. This is a mark of how insane the Republican right has gone in recent years.)
That practice was thankfully stopped; but the civil liberties situation in Britain is still awful.
Apropos Britain, what’s up with the sealing of records of David Kelly’s death for 70 years?
By all means; they are so much more rational, with their blasphemy law, severe catholic/protestant division and all. Every place has its crazies. We need to be the voice of reason.
So, why aren’t you in jail? They know who you are and don’t want to create an international incident? The law has no teeth, ’cause everyone knows it’s silly and unenforceable? You didn’t blaspheme? What?
/quote (Gah. I threw up a little in my mouth while writing this. And I say this as an ex-Christian, and a member of a non-US conservative party. This is a mark of how insane the Republican right has gone in recent years.)/quote
Sounds like we got similar bios Walton.
I fail at HTML.
Absolute idiocy. Do people really believe all this? Do they deliberately delude themselves? Or do they not believe it but feel obliged to parrot the lie du jour as a matter of political principle?
I’m an Australian but I’ve always had a bit of an interest in American politics. I can’t remember it ever being like this, even during the Clinton/Lewinsky/Ken Starr stuff. I can’t even imagine it being like this anywhere else in the Western world.
The average Australian voter (who isn’t necessarily the sharpest sandwich in the picnic) tends to view both sides of Australian politics with a good deal of cynicism, but never with the sort of hysterical, conspiracy-minded hatred that you see in the US. I hope it isn’t catching.
Re RationalMind’s point at #3, I can see the thing about not being open to experience. But I can also see a phenomenom of being open to personal experience, but being unwilling or unable to expand that experience to the wider world.
Two near-identical cases from my own family: My great aunt likes to rant about Asians (South-East Asians, mostly), and how they should all be sent back where they came from and how the navy should blow refugee boats out of the water, but ask her about the Vietnamese priest at the local church and she’s, like, “Oh, you couldn’t send him back! They’d kill him!”
Similarly, a second-cousin type rants about how he despises Muslims, but says his Muslim next-door neighbour is one of the best blokes you’ll ever meet. I just don’t get it.
PZ, remember: If you stay in Ireland, the terrorists win. ;^)
And this, my friends, is why I am going to take postgraduate education in Europe, not America.
Re: ambulocetacean @ 42:
Interesting point. I’ve noticed a good deal of casual, and quite harsh, racism among some of my Australian friends/associates. These people wouldn’t (I think) even consider hating an individual they know personally for their race, but will happily rant about ‘asians’ and such, without making the connection that pretty much every asian they know is an exception to the stereotype they’re portraying.
Well.
How many Republicans are there?
After all, the party has shrunk a lot since 2002, and may still be shrinking. Only the Crazification Factor people are still in, so it’s no surprise at all that “a poll of Republicans” yields completely crazy answers.
What do you mean “as if”? They’ve been competing for decades on who is Tougher On Crime™.
No, they just don’t think that far, or try to convince themselves that Christian charity will somehow manage to avoid this problem.
I want my rock hammer.
Yes PZ, staying in Ireland, where the pre-teen schools are essentially all controlled by the Catholic Church, is a sure way to escape religious crazies.
Good luck, is all I can say. And make sure you try the fish and chips!
Australia is becoming too nationalistic for my liking.
MadScientist @33
The Countess and I are saving our pennies and are planning to emigrate to either New Zealand or Italy. We’re starting to get scared enough to feel like something truly awful is going to happen in the next 15 years. We do not wish to repeat history.
Yeah, there is a fair bit of barely submerged racism in Australia. The misnamed and very right-wing Liberal Party stirs it up with a bit of dog-whistle politics any time it needs a bump in the polls.
The stuff about Indians being assaulted and robbed in Melbourne has been overblown, though. Taxi drivers get robbed fairly frequently, and it just happens that most taxi drivers seem to be from India and Pakistan. There are a lot of Indian students in Melbourne and they work late at convenience stores and restaurants and then walk or take the train home to shitty suburbs listening to iPods or playing with iPhones. Not saying that they’re asking for it; that’s just the way it is.
The Indian guy who said two white guys doused him in petrol and set him on fire turned out to have set himself on fire trying to burn his car for the insurance money.
… who is planning to vote for a highly authoritarian party that will restrict individual reproductive rights for women in the UK.
Hypocrisy: the Conservative political philosophy.
Speaking from the brain-damaged front, there must be something different about those Republicans. My political views (liberal Democrat) personally have not changed throughout brain damage, comparing from before my car accident; in fact, they have strengthened, as no “god” smited me in the past two years.
Just passed my second anniversary of leaving the US for Canada. I haven’t for a second regretted my decision.
Rorschach @ # 4: The period from the 5th to the 15th century is called the Dark Ages for a reason.
The period given that name usually extends from the Fall o’ Rome in the early 400s to the rise of Charlemagne’s “Holy” “Roman” Empire in the 800s. The name came not so much from unenlightened culture as from lack of literature from those centuries (so nobody could “see” what happened then) – particularly from the dearth of documents for what became the English-speaking lands.
Arguably the ChurchⓇ had less control during that period than in the Medieval (say, 800-1400) era.
I am currently back in the land of the casual racist (Mobile, Al) for my mother’s funeral. I had forgot how appalling conversations can be here. Trying to hold in rage, knowing I am not quite rational at this point and remembering both why I am here and that I leave tomorrow. The biggest problem, probably the only real problem Rush and Republicans and Tea Baggers have with Obama is that they persist in starting the spelling of his name with an “N” and put two “G’s” in the middle. I see little else other than that as the real problem. He could have really been a Muslim, really semi-foreign born, probably even an ex-Communist and still got elected. What is unacceptable is that he is a “”Nigra”. I weep for the land of my birth.
Must get dressed and off to the funeral. Must not knock the shit out of relatives. That last part requires more self control than dealing with the death.
Ciao y’all
Hey, Count at #48, see what NiChrome at #52 has done. Lot of pluses to living in the Great White North… right now we aren’t ass-deep in snow, unlike most of the eastern US
strange gods,
The Conservative Party does not have a policy of opposing abortion. Votes on abortion are, almost always, free votes in which MPs vote according to their consciences. I would also point out that our leader, David Cameron, is a supporter of abortion rights.
Admittedly, the party does have a reactionary religious right wing, often dubbed the “Tory Taliban”, who oppose abortion and gay rights; but I am personally active in opposing the influence of these people within the party, and I would also point out that many of the most reactionary MPs are set to retire at the next election.
I would also point out that while I dislike the “tough on crime” right-wing rhetoric that has sometimes been associated with the party (particularly in the early 1990s, under then-Home Secretary Michael Howard), the Conservatives today are far more committed to civil liberties in general than Labour is. We oppose compulsory ID cards and the ID database, arbitrary detention without trial, restrictions on political speech and demonstrations, and the other illiberal measures which have been taken in the name of the “war on terror”. While the party platform doesn’t go far enough for my liking – I’d like to see a much stronger commitment to the civil rights of asylum-seekers, for instance – I have hopes that Britain under a Conservative government will be more committed to individual freedom.
You are an American, and I don’t know why you seem to think you can make sweeping statements about British politics without any first-hand experience of British political culture. It would be like me trying to tell Australians or Canadians how to vote, based on scraps of knowledge I’d picked up on the internet.
PZ: “Maybe I should just stay in Ireland.”
I knew it! The Catlicks have converted you.
Let’s get you into detox, quick! Try to stay sedated with Guinness until we get you back in Palinland — er, the USA.
By way of supplement to my last post @#56, another example of the illiberal mentality of New Labour: Refugees and asylum-seekers coming to the UK are currently incarcerated in “detention centres”, often for long periods. These people – who have committed no crime, and are generally fleeing serious persecution and violence in their home countries – are treated like criminals, and deprived of civil rights while the government’s notoriously incompetent bureaucracy processes their paperwork. The most infamous such centre is Campsfield House, near Oxford; I have friends who have visited the place, and, by all accounts, the conditions are substantially worse than those in most British prisons.
A civilised country should not be treating innocent people like this. That’s just one of the many reasons why we need to get New Labour out of power as soon as possible. (In the long run, I’m hoping to work in immigration and asylum law myself, after I qualify as a solicitor in a couple of years. So my concern about this issue isn’t just talk.) I know this is off-topic somewhat for the thread, but I’m trying to explain to strange gods why I believe that the current Labour government in the UK is intolerable, and why I believe that campaigning for a change of government is worthwhile.
For all the good that’s done. It’s great for lawyers of all stripes, but it hasn’t done the people a whole lot of good. ITs’ just run up their costs for little gain. The burgeoning number of lawsuits being made isn’t helping matters either, though I obviously have nothing against most legal challenges to the state that’ve been made.
What a fucking bullshitter you are, Walton.
I linked to indisputable facts: 80% of Conservative MPs are voting to restrict abortion rights. It does not matter whether this is party line or individual preference. The result is the same: the Conservative party is anti-woman.
You do not get to disagree with the numbers.
That is pretty rich, considering you regularly do tell Americans how to vote, based on less quantitative arguments than those I’ve linked above.
Hypocrisy? In my Walton? It’s more likely than you think.
I’ll leave it to Knockgoats and other Britons to address the insinuation (not explicitly stated, perhaps deliberately) that Conservatives will close the detention centers. I suspect more bullshit, since you were obviously bullshitting ten minutes earlier.
Look, strange gods, I have clearly outlined above some of my reasons for actively supporting the Conservative Party in preference to the Labour Party. Which of them do you have a problem with? I doubt that you support ID cards, or arbitrary detention without trial, or “hate speech” laws, or restrictions on political demonstrations, or the maltreatment of refugees and asylum-seekers. Do you deny that these are legitimate reasons for opposing the Labour government?
I know that you, being a socialist, would probably strongly oppose the economic policies of the Conservative Party; and for you, this might well outweigh the considerations I’ve outlined above. That’s fine. I’m not asking you to support or approve of my choice of party. But don’t call me a hypocrite, when I have demonstrated that I have perfectly coherent and principled moral reasons for supporting the Conservatives and opposing Labour – reasons that I would have thought, and hoped, that you would understand.
I do not. I do sometimes explain how I would vote in a given election if I were an American; but that’s not the same thing. I don’t recall ever having called an American a hypocrite because of their choice of party.
(In response to this, please don’t drag up some off-hand comment I made in 2008 that I have completely forgotten. I have, as you know, revised many of my views considerably since then, and disavowed much of what I would have said at that time; I ask to be judged on the views I hold now, not on those I held in the past.)
I didn’t make such a statement. And, indeed, I think it’s unlikely in the short term. All major British parties have a regrettable tendency to pander to the stupidity and xenophobia espoused by the Daily Mail (and by large sections of the voting public), hence why the UK today has completely irrational and illiberal policies on immigration and asylum.
But as a Conservative activist, I have hopes that, with a Conservative government in power, I and others can campaign within the party for a more liberal and sane policy on these matters.
Note the context of such bullshit.
Walton was using this thread to show off his supposed liberal leanings on abortion rights.
When I offer the fact that he is planning to vote for a party with a demonstrably anti-woman recent record on abortion rights, he changes the subject.
“But immigration! But ID cards! But taxes [wait for it]!”
Yet such are the same sort of always-more-important-issues that Republicans and Blue Dogs offer to justify their reprehensible reproductive policies, the same Republicans and the same policies that Walton was just happily shit-talking a few posts ago.
That doesn’t follow. Firstly, a number of those MPs are retiring at the next election. Secondly, the fact that a large number of the party’s MPs hold a certain viewpoint does not mean that the party holds that viewpoint as an institution. There are numerous Conservative MPs and candidates who support abortion rights; voting for one of them will not cause more restrictions to be placed on abortion. FWIW, if my local Conservative candidate were known to be a strong opponent of abortion rights, I would be substantially less likely to vote for him or her (though I don’t know what I would do instead.)
You talk about Merikan politics all the fucking time. Not that I *mind* or anything, but you sure as shooting do talk about cultures you’re not part of, and you can’t claim Strange Gods “Told you who to vote for” any more then you do when you talk about this country.
Oh my god, I’m so southern, I may have to commit suicide ._.;
Walton, are the Tories really planning to end mandatory detention of asylum seekers?
One of the few things both of the major parties in Oz agree on is the fact that refugees should be locked up for ages in harsh conditions, preferably in the desert, as a warning to anyone else thinking of fleeing the countries we helped invade…
Actions speak louder then words.
So… you’re attacking me for “showing off” an opinion which more-or-less accords with your own expressed view? And how does it make me a “hypocrite” to support abortion, and yet support a party which contains some members who oppose abortion? I don’t know why you exclude the possibility that there might be other considerations besides abortion which also matter in choosing a party. I would point out that very few major parties in the world are exclusively composed of pro-choice candidates. But evidently, in your world, abortion rights have to take precedence over all other political issues.
“A number.”
Would you care to tally the numbers then? This will also require showing the percentage of recently incoming MPs that have voted against the abortion restrictions.
Yes, it does. The institution is the people. The party does not hold some higher and purer goals than the people who make it up.
Campaigning for Conservatives in general, as you do, will result in more restrictions. You don’t merely vote. You advocate.
David Marjanović:
It’s comforting to reassure yourself that the teabaggers constitute only a small percent of the population, that Palin is so obviously an unqualified nitwit that she’s unelectable, and that by the next presidential election the economy will have shown enough of a turnaround that it will work in Obama’s favor. I’m not so optimistic. The leadership of the republican party has shown considerable skill at manipulating its base, to the point that most right-wing venom is directed not at those same far-right manipulators whose survival depends on keeping the base poor, ignorant and cowed, but at those pointy-headed elitist college professors and the like–the very people who are critical if the situation is to improve.
So much for the base. They’re a lost cause for progressives anyway. But a worse problem is that the right wing has been cementing its control of the media–and of the political narrative–to the point that the vast middle of the electorate now gets a mashup of facts, unsupported assertions and industrial-grade bullshit, with no way to tell which is which. The few sources of accurate reporting and clear thinking still in existence are pretty much lost in the noise, and unless you seek them out, it’s easy to fall into the trap of believing that Obama’s US citizenship is open to question, or that the Bush administration ran balanced budgets. Even if the educational system was producing a large number of people capable of critical thinking, they can’t do so when they aren’t getting the accurate information necessary for rational decision-making. Inevitably, the center moves rightward when right-wing gibberish is virtually the only thing they’re exposed to. Couple that with the chronic paranoia spawned by 9/11, throw in a badly-broken supreme court, and you’ve got a situation ripe for the next round of hijacking and looting of what’s left of the republic by far-right authoritarians.
Are we there yet? I’d like to think not. I’d like to think that the public’s belated revulsion for the crony capitalism and corruption of Bushco indicates that there is a core of common sense in the electorate that will, eventually, assert itself. But the fact that the demonstrably-impervious-to-reality teabaggers command a good deal of media attention–and, in some quarters, credibility–suggests otherwise. If I didn’t have a good chunk of change invested in the federal retirement system, I’d be working to learn the words to “Oh, Canada.”
I can’t get over this result:
Yes 77%
No 15
Not Sure 8
I know this may be a stretch, but let’s bear this out over some other areas. Apply it to the Republican membership of the congress, and that means 134 members and 32 senators think this. Apply the 77% mark to the 55 million republicans in the country, and that means 42.35 million think this. Are this many people really that entrenched in Biblical dogma, or are that many people really lacking in basic scientific knowhow (that I think is really necessary if you want to consider yourself a literate person), or is it both?
PZ, if you need anything to sober you up after drinking Guinness like water for a week in Ireland, these numbers oughta do it for ya.
strange gods, how many times do I have to say it? Abortion rights matter, but they are not the only issue which matters. Other things matter too. I want to promote civil liberties and individual freedom in British society, and the only available means of achieving this is to get rid of the Labour government.
I notice you haven’t offered a single word in support or defence of any of the Labour policies which I have attacked on this thread. You just keep going on and on about abortion. As you know perfectly well, I support abortion rights; I regularly speak out in favour of abortion rights; and if and when a Conservative government gets into power, I will campaign within the party to maintain abortion rights. But there are other individual rights and liberties which also matter, and I am concerned with protecting those too. Are you saying I’m wrong to care about opposing ID cards, or opposing detention without trial, or any of the other issues I’ve raised on this thread?
Also, more than 3 in 4 Republicans believe in unicorns. These are people far separated from reality.
Source.
No, I am merely offering the counterweight to your showing off.
You get an inordinate amount of praise from people here for “changing your mind” in response to rational criticism.
As I have learned in harsh disappointment, this does not often translate to you actually making a change, and your words are worth just short of nothing.
So as is my habit, I want to
share my disappointmentalert those who praise you to the truth behind the display.How is that even an honest question? It does not simply “contain some members.” It contains a sufficient proportion of anti-woman MPs to pass that law restricting abortion the next time it comes up, as it does every two years.
The restriction on abortion will cause a great deal more suffering than ID cards will.
Contrary to your distraction, I recognize other issues, as you of course know.
It’s interesting that women’s freedoms are always worth compromising further, always ready for the chopping block. I wonder why that is?
And now you’ve offered, as more important than women’s freedom, not even the closing of detention centers but merely talking about closing the detention centers.
Well, you could accomplish that much without even getting the Conservatives into office. Indeed the time to change a party’s philosophy is when that party is out of office and struggling to find its way, not when it’s high on the rush of power.
But no, real women’s rights are less important than a drunken bullshit session with your Oxford Conservative Association buddies, the extent of your political action.
In some ways, I sympathize with Walton. I think he’s flat-assed wrong on a lot of issues, but I sympathize. I think his position is very similar to that of a lot of fiscally conservative but socially quasi-liberal individuals who identify as Conservative in spite of most of the party’s platform.
His situation is somewhat similar to the fiscal conservatives in the US in the 60s and 70s. Under Nixon, the Republican party realized that the only way it could win was by linking up with the racist Dixiecrats in the US South disillusioned by the Democrats embracing civil rights. In the late ’70s and early ’80s, Reagan won by adding in the anti-environment, anti-immigrant, gun nuts, and misogynistic elements of the electorate.
George H. W. Bush was the firt who had to confront the rising power of the anti-science and anti-reality religious right. Bush lost in ’92 to Bill Clinton because there was a limit to how much he would pander to these extremists. George II learned his lesson and jammed his nose so far up Pat Robertson’s ancient white ass that for a time he was mistaken for an intestinal polyp. And now Sarah Palin has gone even further down the anti-science, anti-reality, Just-say-no-to-everything yellow-brick road.
The thing is that the basic problem with both the Republican and Conservative platforms is that they are both founded on a mistaken notion of government. That is, that government in a complex, mobile, modern society integrated into a global economy can be small–getting by with only the same services that government did in the 19th century. It can’t. Government has to be commensurate with the complexity of the society. That costs money, and theo only people who have the resources to pay for it are the wealthy–who after all enjoy more of its advantages.
Because the wealthy will always be in a minority, the conservative, anti-tax parties find it necessary to expand the tent continually–pandering ever more fringe and looney groups. It’s fun ’til somebody loses a civilization.
Well, strange gods, what kind of “change” would you like me to make? What kind of course of action would convince you that I actually stick to, and live by, the moral principles which I espouse? I ask merely for information.
Walton (#65)
Whether or not many MPs are retiring, lawyers will continue to be greatly overrepresented among their replacements. Our UK political parties have far more lawyers than any other profession. Lawyers think any problem can be solved simply by passing another law.
The second largest group of MPs by profession is made up of accountants and economists who think any problem can be solved simply by making people waste half their working time completing paperwork, and time management forms on which you even have codes for filling in time management forms.
Local government is almost as bad, in most places, and certainly in the cities.
The only new law I would wish to pass would be one that barred all lawyers and accountants from standing for any public office, ever, at any level.
I will, as I have for the past two elections, have great trouble finding a candidate I feel able to vote for, even with a peg on my nose.
it is quite evident, that they, the respondents, have frontal lobe damage, since they couldn’t see the poll was satirical, you’d have no argument from me. Specificity is required when using the phrase “brain damage” or even severe temporal lobe damage, since they are a humourless, overly religous lot
I’m saying you’re wrong that ID cards are more important than state ownership of women’s bodies.
Besides, if a weak majority Labour government is sufficient to stop ID cards, as it apparently is, then a weak majority Labour government is acceptable for that issue.
Not to mention that you could vote Liberal Democrat or Green, parties that actually hold so many more of the viewpoints that you claim for yourself.
And are the Conservatives going to end detention without trial? Or is that another case where no more than your intraparty politicking is more important than women’s freedom?
Vote LibDem or Green.
That’s a frightening point, and I hadn’t really added it up in quite those terms before.
JefferyD #54
I love Mobile. Is “Judge Roy Bean’s” still there on the east side?
Anyway, JD has it right. The people down here can’t stand that a black person (man or woman) is the President. Most of them still don’t understand why the confederate flag is offensive. I can’t speak for the rest of the nation, but I would bet its the same. We are still a nation of racists.
Hullo,
I’m a comment-section lurker from Singapore, and this is my first (or possibly second) comment here, so please pardon any lapse of etiquette on my part. I just wanna put in a word of fairness for Walton. It’s true that the party he supports isn’t exactly all rational and logical, but what he is doing is choosing the lesser of two evils (at least, according to how he weighs the issues). It’s pretty arrogant to think that everybody should place the same amount of weightage on each issue as you do…
Sorry for my poor command of the English language >_<
The Green Party are radically anticapitalist, and advocate a substantial move away from free-market policies. They also oppose British military involvement in Afghanistan, believe in drastically reducing the size of the armed forces, and oppose nuclear power. I disagree with them on all these issues. Plus, they have no chance of gaining significant power under the current electoral system.
The Lib Dems are much more reasonable (being partially rooted in the Gladstonian liberal tradition, which I admire), and are strong on civil liberties; but they have a tendency towards ideological incoherence as a party, and they do have a strident left-wing faction which espouses views I dislike. All the same, I don’t find the Lib Dems objectionable on the whole, and there are several senior party figures I respect; I would actually be very happy with a Conservative-Lib Dem coalition, should a hung Parliament occur at the next election.
The Conservatives have consistently opposed Labour’s plans to expand the maximum period of detention without trial for suspected terrorist offences. Labour at one time attempted to extend the detention period to 90 days, which failed when a large number of Labour MPs broke the party line and voted with the Opposition. Subsequently, the government succeeded in pushing through a less extreme measure, which extended the detention period to 42 days. This illiberal measure was strongly (and rightly) opposed by the Conservatives and the Lib Dems.
Walton (#84)
What do you mean by ‘ideological incoherence’ re the LibDems?
Newsflash, so do the Conservatives, and in any case “ideological coherence” is of secondary importance to the actual suffering that may be caused or alleviated by any given term of government. What the Liberal Democrats stand for in 2010 is of far less importance than whether their 2010 stance is trivially reconcilable with their 1990 stance.
As the Conservatives have a strident right-wing faction which espouses views you claim to dislike.
I hardly give a fuck about your opinion of them; you asked about action so I told you.
Here you admit that voting Lib Dem would be tolerable to you. I am therefore on even better footing to say that if you do vote Conservative, it will be an anti-woman action.
I’ve been saying for years that these Theothuglicans openly hate the US and want to destroy it. It is no secret, they say so themselves often.
Every once in a while someone pays attention enough to claim I’m wrong and it is only a few wackos like Pat Robertson, Dobson, Hagee, the DI and so on, just the leadership. The fundies xians themselves rarely deny it though.
It would be tempting to just let the xian kook dominated states just leave. They are a drag on our society and country and many of their residents hate the USA and would destroy it if they could. They could set up a theocracy and ban science, eating bacon, wearing mixed fabrics, and believing the earth is older than 6,000 years.
Unfortunately, it wouldn’t work. The first thing that would happen would be Boston, Seattle, Washington DC, San Francisco, and NYC disappear in nuclear fireballs. Ten minutes later, the entire south central USA would do the same. 500 years later a new Columbus would rediscover North America and find it inhabited by very large, intelligent cockroaches.
They have never quite decided, as a party, where they fit on the political spectrum. They were formed from a merger between two different parties: the Liberals, who had a long heritage dating back to the eighteenth-century Whigs and nineteenth-century Gladstonian liberalism, and the Social Democrats, who were a centre-left group who broke away from Labour in the 1980s. As such, they have always been a relatively broad party without a strong “left-wing” or “right-wing” identity. In the 1980s, they were seen as a “centre party” in between Labour and the Conservatives. But in more recent years, with Labour’s movement to the right since the 1990s, the situation has been further complicated by the fact that many left-leaning voters defected from Labour to the Lib Dems (especially after the 2003 invasion of Iraq) strengthening the left wing of the party. They’re often identified today as the furthest “left” of the three major parties; but this obscures the fact that (particularly in the south-west, where the Lib Dems are strong) there are a lot of moderate right-leaning voters who will vote either Conservative or Lib Dem but would never consider voting Labour.
So, essentially, my problem with voting Lib Dem would be that I wouldn’t know exactly what to expect from them. They’ve never had a particularly coherent policy agenda, and it’s hard to know whether they should be viewed as a “centrist” party or as a left-leaning one.
I suppose you could, maybe, read the party platform, look at the recent voting record of their sitting MPs, and get involved with the campaign of the candidate for your area. Hm?
strange gods, I’m about to send you an email.
The cynic in me says that they are not necessarily opposed to the idea, just that if Labour’s backing it, so they must be contrary.
Sadly, history teaches that most political parties, right or left, are perfectly happy to advocate greater protection for civil liberties while in opposition, but become much less keen on individual freedom once they’re in power.
strange gods, I’m slightly flattered that you’re now quoting my own words without attribution.
The number of Xian fundie Dominionists in the USA isn’t well known. The answer isn’t asked on polls that I’ve seen.
Given their congruence with the wingnuts of the Theothuglican party, it is around 20-30% of the population.
They have plans for all you Fake Xians, atheists, scientists and so on. It is a movie we’ve seen before. It won’t hurt. For very long anyway. See if you can guess which movie it is.
crosspost from PT:
Oh. We can play too. Creationists often openly hate the US secular democracy and want to overthrow the government and replace it with a theocracy. The words of their leaders below.
Tom Willis wants to herd evolutionary biologists into slave labor camps and work them to death. He also advocates torturing them and exiling them to Antarctica to die.
Gary Potter and Gary North want to set up Biblical law based dictatorships of the fundie death cultists and make believing in other religions such as Presbyterianism and Episcopalianism illegal. Since one is a Catholic and the other Protestant, presumably they will fight a Reformation style war to see which sect gets to be dictator.
Roberstson is just lying. The first amendment mandates separation of church and state. And xians at 76% of the population are not exactly a minority in submission. The fundies owned the last president and made a mess of everything for 8 years.
The fundies in general and creationists in particular openly hate secular democracy, modern Hi Tech Western Civilization, and all religions including other xians except themselves. They say so often.
I’m slightly flattered
From what I understand, this poll was of 2000 Republicans. From where were this 2000 culled? I mean, does this really represent the Republican party as it stands today, or were these questions asked at the local tea party rally?
Raven,
Maybe the answer is to increase those secessionist sentiments and then boot the fuckers out of the Union so they can create the third-world shithole they’ve always craved. Or maybe the progressive states in the US could secede and tip the balance in Canada.
Or maybe we could realize that this whole pay-for-play, partisan thing ain’t working and take our government back from political parties whose agenda is soliciting donations from their ideological base rather than making the country work. Naaah! That would never work! ;-)
Margaret Atwood (Surfacing) put it simply and plainly:
“Stupidity is the same as evil if you judge by the results.”
Aleaxander # 99
Jonathon Swift (the ‘he’ is Gulliver’s Houyhnhnm master, having had human warfare described to him)
RTL@100,
Mankind is not a rational animal, but a rationalizing animal. There is a reason why our brains have all those folds and crevasses. It is so we can drop inconvenient facts into them and wall them off never to be seen again. Over time, this tends to lead to what I call smooth-brain syndrome (SBS), where so much of the gray matter is devoted to obscuring unpleasant facts that there isn’t enough left over for processes any more complex than breathing or watching Hannity.
In its later phases, SBS leads to delusions, such as ID with science or thinking Sarah Palin is hot. Unfortunately it is a fatal and uncurable condition–and even more unfortunate, the thing it is fatal to is civilization rather then the affected person.
30 Republicans did oppose the Anti-Rape ammendment…
Walton, quite frankly you’re doing the exact same thing every Libertarian (Minus one) I’ve ever met does; You play the “I LOVE LIBERTY OF ALL FORMS” card, then consistently go out of your way to justify sticking with the economically free while avoiding those who support Civil Rights.
Kathy Orlinsky #97 wrote:
That was my first question, too. It seems so extreme. But here’s from the poll results:
The thing that surprised me the most was that only 58% of Republicans do not want their state to secede from the Union. Also, only 8% think that gay men and women should be allowed to teach in public schools.
Well, “openly gay” men and women shouldn’t teach. I suppose there’s a slight chance that a sizable chunk of the people responding to the survey thought this meant that they’re focusing on only those homosexuals who would actually perform live sex acts up in the front of the classroom, so that kids may learn about gay sex.
If a question can be misinterpreted, it will be misinterpreted. Though, depressing either way.
As someone once said (a federal judge???), “why would anyone want to replace a system that has worked well (secular democracy) for 200 years with one (theocracy) that never worked at all?
I can just imagine the fun the fundie xians would have in their third world hellhole with its capital in Austin, Texas. Huting down witches, apostates, heretics, and scientists and killing them. Until they ended up poor, starving, and epidemics starting picking them off en masse. Maybe the Mexicans would end up invading in a police action just to keep them from running the borders and causing refugee problems in central America.
“Maybe I should just stay in Ireland.”
From seeing that… I think the US needs people like you to stay in there, PZ.
The republican party is classist. Brain damage is reserved for the masses which believe they belong to the class the republican are trying to protect.
Could someone explain to me why the hell, when ever someone suggests a faster, less idiotic way, to find out who someone is, like… a law breaker, maybe, certain people automatically leap to the, “gubberment gonna jail us all!”, or that the local version of the CIA is going to want to know what brand of toilet paper they buy, or just for logic sake, ***could use the information***, in such cases, if they had it? Seriously. We get the occasional flake like this in the store once in a while, they don’t want their name in the computer, because the CIA might browse it somehow. They also tend to be the ones that think fluoride is a mind control drug (usually to keep people from thinking/in control, never mind that 90% of the US has it in the water, and we have one of the highest rates of domestic violence in the world, outside of places that probably don’t even use toothpaste), that the government regularly erases the identities of people, all the way back to their birth certificates and high school year books, to hide that they worked on secret UFO projects and discredit their completely nonexistent work, etc.
Seriously, if the government can pull that off, why the hell would they care if you once bought tweezers from Walmart? The only difference between, oh.. a drivers license and the national ID is that the license if state generated, only applies to people unwilling to break the law by driving without one, and wastes millions every year from red tape and stupidity, due to the fact that you have to run it against 50 databases, not one. Yet, they still do that, so… seriously, wtf?
I know.. too much to ask people scared to death about what the evil horrible government might do to use some common sense and realize that, if they wanted to do so, they don’t need 90% of the crap people worry about as “privacy invasion”, to manage it, and the first thing they would probably do is find every person that refused to get any kind of ID and jail/shoot them, *then* worry about the data they collected on everyone else. Or, does this possibility completely fail to percolate through their heads?
BTW PZ, you are a few days behind on this. The Repuclicrat leadership has already gone on a whine and hand wave tirade over this, claiming that, the poll was somehow rigged, or I don’t know.. Just about everything but denying that the crazies on their side, and some of their own leadership, believe any of it. After all, its damn hard to deny it, when most of this crap gets pasted on the news, and radio, by idiots from Rush to the infotainent shows like OReily’s Centrifuge style “no-Spin zone”, which the idiot went on some MSNBC show or other recently and declared, “Do you think my viewers don’t know that my show is actually intentionally biased?”, or.. in other words, ‘that I lie about both the content, substance and even title, of the show?’. lol
What I believe we observe in this poll is not just Dunning-Kruger Effect but also a significant amount of Stockholm Syndrome. Seriously.
Kagehi #107 wrote:
They’re saying the poll is wrong? That’s a bit reassuring, regardless of whether the results are accurate or not. At least they still feel it’s important to look normal. Imagine how horrible if the Republican leaders all responded with a thumb’s up and a “you betcha!”
@107 Kagehi
Well…maybe it’s because I don’t want to get all sorts of junk mail/junk email from your store?
Lincoln was wrong.
We should have allowed the South to succeed from the Union. Then, we’d have a choice: one country based on reality and compassion, and one based on religious mythology and fear.
raven #95
The Rushdoony Dominionists remind me of the 1960s hippies who wanted to tear down everything and replace it with wishful thinking. “It’ll be groovy, Man. You’ll love it.” Of course what the Dominionists want won’t be groovy but it’s just as full of wishful thinking as the hippies’ utopia.
As attractive as that notion is, the Confederate States of America would still have legally enforced segregation today, as bad as any of the Jim Crow laws.
My gut feeling is that they would not still have chattel slavery, but even if not, abolition would have been a very recent event.
The toll in human suffering would have been even greater. It’s not worth it.
If the Dominionists want to live in a theocracy, they should just find one and join it.
Free country, nothing is stopping them.
They won’t do it though. Bunch of hypocrits. They want to start one and force us to join it.
There was one started down in a place called Guyana. By the People’s Temple led by Reverend Jim Jones. IIRC, it didn’t end very well. Anyone heard anything lately from Jonestown?
I live in Chicago – trust me, segregation still exists, and it’s a Democratic stronghold.
That’s because a rich a**hole is still a rich a**hole, regardless of party or race or creed or religion (see: Michael Steele).
Plus, we’re all still slaves anyway – the “invisible chain to the factory” that is our mortgage, student loans, healthcare debt – it’s all very real. In front of our eyes, they dangle political freedoms that are our Bill of Rights with one hand, while chipping away at our economic freedom with the other (and in an Orwellian twist, calling economic enslavement “freedom”.)
Few Americans are less than a few paychecks away from destitution. But hey, at least they have the “right to bear arms!!”
In a speech by (I believe) Jerry Coyne, he said the most realistic and true thing I’d heard in a while: what we need, at the end of the day, is to teach valuable math and critical thinking skills to children at a very young age, across the board, to every American child, and do it WELL.
Then we’ll see what Fox News ratings are in just one generation. And how many groups fighting for “Creationism” in the biology room are still left standing.
a_ray_in_dilbert_space:
I do wonder whether it’s time for a “we have to talk” moment on a national scale. No secession–let’s just have an amicable divorce. Divide the country into chronically red and chronically blue states, and let the flip-floppers like Colorado and Ohio have referenda. Split up government assets based on the relative populations of redlandia and bluetopia. Subsidize people desperate to move to the other side. Allow some appropriate horse-trading: for example, any national labs in red states get moved to blue ones, and the blue ones make restitution by–I don’t know–building some new red-state NASCAR tracks or something.
Then stand back and wait fifty years to see which model produces a better society. But I want the other side to promise to build walls at the borders. They already seem to love the idea, but more to the point, after a few decades of life in the Perfect Theocapitalist Oligarchy, I’m betting that they’re going to be clawing at the gates en masse, trying to get back to where all the wealth isn’t concentrated in the hands of 0.03 percent of the population, and where the per capita income of everybody else isn’t less than that of Burkina Faso.
Modern segregation, by white flight and private discrimination, is not legally enforced, and people of color have legal recourse when they are discriminated against.
The difference is important, even if not total.
Wage slavery is not as brutal as chattel slavery, and conflating the two, as “we’re all still slaves anyway” does, minimizes the horrors of the latter.
I am not a slave and my ancestors have not been slaves in the last ~400 years as far as I know. As a result I have substantial privilege not shared by my black neighbors. It would be unconscionable to suggest that my situation is so similar as to warrant the unqualified label of slavery.
Yes, at least they do have that right, a valuable part of self-defense when one lives in a desperate neighborhood in desperate times.
At #14:
John McCain was *not* born within the United States, but in the Panama Canal Zone. But this clearly wasn’t a problem for the Republicans.
Of course wage slavery isn’t as brutal as chattel slavery. But it still exists. And whether segregation happens through legal enforcement or zoning, urban planning, tax, or economic policies, well, it still happens. This was the whole point of Lee Atwater’s Southern Strategy, in essence: to ensure segregation remained, along with the inability to move upwards in economic class.
We should ask why there are neighborhoods so desperate, not arm ourselves as some sort of band-aid cure. There are desperate neighborhoods in most economically developed countries -we seem to be the only ones who think we need guns. But the point of that statement wasn’t to attack gun ownership, it was to make the point that it’s a distraction these days: our political freedoms are stressed to the point of making us look away from our economic oppression.
I’m gay, non believer, hard-line secularist, pro choice, and a social-democrat.
Perhaps the saddest part of this poll is that there seems to be about 3 out of 4 republicans who hold views that make them most unlikely to be open to even discuss alternate ideas with folks like me. An open discussion which can only be based on eidence and rational arguments.
How can we ever solve any of our community or international problems without such an open discussion ?
WTF is with the large numbers of “not sure”? I don’t think that’s normal for polls, is it?
anyway:
no, it isn’t. the Dark Ages is what historians used to call the period between the fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of the Holy Roman Empire. The Medieval Period and the Dark Ages are not synonyms.
they do know this, they just prefer to believe there’s a vast, illegal conspiracy that elected a foreign devil, rather than accepting that their country really, voluntarily elected a black Democrat, and there’s shit all they can do about this until at least the next elections.
I suspect this has more to do with Europe turning from a war-torn, mismanaged backwater feudal clusterfuck into actual civilized countries. That, plus they ran out of free land to give out to immigrants in the U.S.
WTF is this fear of a national ID card, anyway? no one has ever explained this to me in a way that didn’t sound paranoid. I mean, I’ve had one since I turned 16, and I don’t remember ever hearing of any abuses of this… but maybe I just wasn’t paying attention?
uh… yes. issues of bodily autonomy do supersede almost all other concerns. And most definitely supersede whines about taxes, ID cards, idle talk about detention centers, and pretty much everything else theoretically positive your conservative party might have to offer (at least as far as you have presented it here)
add to this the complete incompetence of the Democratic party as evidenced by the recent special election, and there’s a pretty good chance that the next two elections (2010 and 2012) will be disturbingly bad for the sane part of the population. While I still think Obama will probably win, I’m not at all convinced that Senate and Congress won’t turn into teabagging cesspools.
that’s not accurate for a country with more than two viable parties. In the U.S., one has to chose the lesser of two evils (or decide to become a protest voter and not give a fuck about the outcome); everywhere else, it’s possible to find a party that resembles one’s beliefs closer than that; if you’re determined enough and that sort of person, you can even found your own, and make things happen. In Germany for example, the Green party went from non-existence to being part of the ruling coalition in about 30 years.
and do these views you dislike weigh heavier than the nasty shit coming out of your conservative party? personally, I doubt it and I suspect that objectively speaking this would be true for you as well, but you’re already invested in the Conservative party, but not in the Lib Dems. it’s like breaking up with a girlfriend you’ve been with for years :-p
Both will be required. If we look like we’ll soon be successful in winning economic freedom/power, the rich will initiate violence against us as they have in the past, and the police will not protect us.
In any case there is plenty of violence not related to economic conditions, which greater economic equality will not alleviate.
Most economically developed countries have armed citizens. The United States’ gun culture is unique, but not for merely having guns.
I agree wholeheartedly. I just bristle when the alleged irrelevance of the Second Amendment is used to make that argument.
Alleged? What does the second amendment do for anyone, besides increase the supply of guns in the populace (which is part of why our gun crime rate is so high).
Please, please don’t tell me you think violent, armed revolution has been useful more then.. oh, I’d say twice…
SGBM:
That’s bad. But would you also give a similar telling off to anyone who plans to vote for US Democrats? – since they have recently shown themselves willing to restrict reproductive rights or compromise on them.
Epikt,
It seems unlikely that one would have to wait fifty years before a major disruption (eg economic collapse and/or war)changes the course of things to come.
Two ideologically radically opposed North American nations of those sizes next to one another is a very unstable proposition and a recipie for disaster.
The last known experiment (the partition of Germany) lasted only about 40 years and ended peacefully.
I sincerely doubt this one would last that much an have such a happy ending.
Jadehawk,
“Idle talk?” As I explained, there are refugees and asylum-seekers being locked away and deprived of basic civil rights, in worse conditions than convicted criminals, while the bureaucracy processes their paperwork. Detention centres are a seriously important issue. I’m not saying a Conservative government will necessarily change the situation markedly, but the status quo certainly seriously discredits Labour. The issue certainly isn’t “idle talk”, and I’m surprised that you would dismiss it as such, considering that it concerns the civil rights of some of the most vulnerable and oppressed people in society.
There’s a grain of truth in that; I’m certainly heavily invested in the Conservative Party, having been an active supporter for several years, and having lots of friends who are Conservative activists. So I will admit that I’m not the person to evaluate this on a 100% objective basis (and there are other British commenters here who will certainly provide an opposing viewpoint). But I do sincerely believe, and think there is evidence, that the UK Conservative Party of today is broadly committed to liberal values and individual freedom, and that a Conservative government will be, at the very least, better on these issues than the current Labour one.
Plus, I would have to reiterate that the Lib Dems are pro-EU. This means that they are willing to perpetuate the iniquitous Common Agricultural Policy, and the system of bureaucratic trade barriers and subsidies that literally starves people in the developing world.
she’s talking about the Stupak amendment to the Health Care bill, I think
Walton,
Aside from the fact that being pro-EU doesn’t necessarily mean that one doesn’t want to improve things, what are the Tories going to propose once they win the election ? To leave the EU ?
talking about it but not doing shit about it is idle talk; you have shown me nothing to believe the conservative commitment to ending them goes any further than that. so, we’re comparing an issue that is actually regularly voted on (whether women should be allowed to have abortions when they want/need them), with one that is merely talked about, but not actually up for actions. If the conservatives were actually planning on really closing them, that would be different, but they aren’t, and they won’t.
will you someday actually inform yourself about what precisely it is that causes the starvation, or will you just continue to spout superficial judgments about this issue?
what are the Tories going to propose once they win the election ? To leave the EU ?
are you sure that isn’t actually on the table?
I do see a lot of young people like our confused Walton thinking it was a bad idea to get involved with the EU to begin with.
IIRC, hasn’t Walton mentioned his utter disdain for the EU previously?
I thought agricultural subsidies impoverished the farmers of the third world; For it to be responsible for starvation, it would have to not feed the local buyers of any given farmer while simultaneously destroying that farmer. I guess I can see how that’s possible, but I’m not entirely sure how, unless farmers can’t get seeds from their own stock.
It would be a joke if their numbers were few. But the numbers aren’t few, so they are not a joke. They are a serious threat to the future prosperity and America, and the peace of the world.
One could speculate as to the probably outcomes of WWI, WWII, and the Cold War, if the U.S. had been divided into two mutually hostile states. (And no, I have not read any of the available fiction about such speculations!)
So I guess you could say the Union/U.S. did the world a favor? Took one for the team, by absorbing the (possibly lethal-jury’s still out on that) poison of the Confederacy into itself?
SUBSIDY SUBSIDY SUBSIDY SUBSIDY. It’s like Mallard Fillmore on a different channel. I’m not sure how he feels about it outside of that, because it drowns out all other signals.
Oh, right. It’d certainly be a fair complaint.
Jadehawk, OM #121
In Britain if one wants one can disappear anonymously into the vast wastelands and uncharted wildernesses of the kingdom. Police, creditors, and other coercive types will never be able to track you down and find you. That’s because there’s no national ID system.
But if one were implemented there would be checkpoints on every corner, the police would stop every vehicle at 50 metre intervals to grunt “papers, please”, and anonymity would be a thing of the past. It would be the end of FREEDOM!
Somehow certain Britons haven’t noticed that every other country has some sort of ID system in place yet the Geheime Staatspolizei isn’t prevalent and unchecked.
Walton brought the example of Haiti for the EU agricultural policy, which is a bit strange: While the EU has damaged people in third world countries with it, I think in Haiti it’s more the US agricultural policy that damaged the farmers there.
If you criticize the EU for doing something, shouldn’t you also be critical of similar US policies?
Do you really think that the UK would change course after leaving the EU? Or wouldn’t it still be confined by the policies of the US and the EU?
Jadehawk, OM #121,’Tis Himself, OM #135
It’s not all fear. For some it was just more interference from a government they don’t like. But for many it’s a lot of money for no obvious benefit. Talk about how having ID cards would stop terrorism and illegal immigration were soon deflated and very little was left. Anyway I would expectit’s dead in the water now on cost grounds.
I am. I equally deplore the US Farm Bill and the US policy of agricultural protectionism, and I’ve repeatedly spoken out against it here.
That’s true. It also didn’t change that you were capitalizing off the Haiti disaster by using them as an example despite having, you know, countries you’re ACTUALLY HURTING to use instead. But no, Haiti has tragedy capitol, so you used it as an example of THE EU IS RUINING COUNTRIES.
Ichthyic,
Not that I know. Not realistic. Not for the next 5 years.
But maybe Walton has more insider information.
When I saw the title, I thought “No, but it helps”
We [the UK Tory party] oppose compulsory ID cards and the ID database, arbitrary detention without trial, restrictions on political speech and demonstrations, and the other illiberal measures which have been taken in the name of the “war on terror”. – Walton
Oh yeah? How long do you think those policies will last if “you” win an outright majority. I’ll predict here: most of them will be reversed within a year.
Walton just wants to see happen to food production what happened to manufacturing : that the large distributors source from where it can be produced the cheapest.
Then Europe and the US can become 100% service economies. With many more real estate agents, financial traders and lawyers.
He doesn’t understand that the most important for the future is building resilience into the system, not buiding it out. That means having regions of the world that are semi-autonomous w.r.t to providing for their basic needs.
More exactly: no measures will be taken to reverse any of them, and before two years are up, a Tory government will be adding to them. You are such a sucker, Walton.
But as a Conservative activist, I have hopes that, with a Conservative government in power, I and others can campaign within the party for a more liberal and sane policy on these matters. – Walton.
Jesus wept. Walton, wake up. When a political party gains power, the influence of activists becomes as near zero as makes no difference. Do you think activists in “New Labour” wanted the authoritarian and racist measures you rightly condemn?
negentropyeater, et al: No, the party doesn’t plan to leave the EU, as it wouldn’t be practical at the present time.
Knockgoats: I agree (and said myself above) that parties tend to lose their vaunted commitment to individual freedom once they are in power. But while this is a legitimate reason to be sceptical about the prospects of real change, it doesn’t negate the fact that it is still worth doing whatever one can to campaign for real change. A Conservative government probably won’t do everything I want it to do, but I have hopes that it will at least be better than the status quo.
Walton,
What do you mean “not practical” ? They could easily do it if they wanted to.
Do you mean rather, “not in the UK’s best interest” ?
:D How did it take so long for someone to say it?
Walton – I actually think your heart is in the right place. Make the case that food, land, and water should be commodities.
Walton, I seem to recall that there was a Conservative government in power for a substantial part of my lifetime. Could you rehearse for us some of the efforts they made during that time to ease the lives of refuge-seekers, or their commitment at that time to civil liberties, particularly those of leftists and sexual minorities?
[Damme this crappy signin process that can’t actually use my actual google name!]
?
Sorry, Walton. You try very hard but I’m going to judge the conservatives on their record and not on their PR – which changes three times a week even before the election date is known.
Can you not see that as evidence that the party’s internal tensions will either leave them completely ineffectual or shift them to where the big money and the loudest voices are? That’s the far right and you know it.
mb
A Conservative government probably won’t do everything I want it to do – Walton
A Conservative government will do exactly what big business tells it to do. Which will certainly include the ID database (with the information being sold to business, which would find it extremely useful – this will be sold as a cost-cutting measure), further increases in surveillance and the repression of dissent, and staying in the EU.
For non-Brits, the point about the ID issue is far less the ID card itself, than the national database associated with it. This will bring together a great deal of information about each individual from separate sources, giving the government an unprecedented ability to monitor our activities. When combined with the other measures Walton mentions, and the ever-increasing physical surveillance and powers to intercept communications, it’s clear that the infrastructure for an authoritarian state is well on the way yo being assembled. On this matter, I agree with Walton; our point of disagreement is his incredibly naive belief that the Tories will do anything other than continue, and quite possibly accelerate the process.
It didn’t, of course, start with New Labour: Thatcher’s smashing of union rights, gutting of local democracy, erosion of professional self-management, increases to police powers and surveillance etc. began it: in effect, she went far towards dismantling civil society, leaving individuals to face the overwhelming power of the market and the state alone. As she said: There is no such thing as society. This was of course false, but she did whatever she could to make it true. “New Labour” has continued the process.
One more point: Walton’s insensate hatred of the EU is a remnant of his glibertarian convictions. Objectively, its trade policies are no worse than those of the USA, and there is no reason to think dismantling it would lead to a reduction in trade barriers against poor countries or export subsidies. It deserves neither the hatred he has for it, nor the adulation it evokes among some others.
@#149 (I assume this is Maureen Brian, though please correct me if I’m wrong):
Well, even at the height of IRA terrorism, the Thatcher government never extended the period of detention without trial to more than four days. New Labour, by contrast, has taken it to 42 days, and wanted to take it as far as 90. Nor did any Conservative government ever try to introduce ID cards, or ban demonstrations in the vicinity of Parliament.
That’s not to say that there weren’t plenty of illiberal laws in the UK pre-1997; there were. But Labour have kept in place most of the illiberal laws, and added far more. Not only have they enacted a raft of authoritarian measures to “combat terrorism”, they have gone further and further in the desire to appear “tough on crime”. The prison population is constantly increasing (which benefits no one except the growing private correctional industry). And, with the advent of Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs), a de facto criminal penalty can be disguised as a civil order, therefore avoiding giving the defendant any of the ordinary protections of the criminal process. Not to mention that one of Labour’s few sensible measures – downgrading marijuana from a “Class B” to a “Class C” drug (which in itself was an inadequate measure, as it should IMO have been legalised completely) – was reversed a couple of years later; and Professor David Nutt, the government’s drugs adviser, was recently forced to resign for pointing out that the current policy on drug criminalisation is absolutely insane.
Basically, I’m not going to pretend that the Conservatives have a stellar record on civil liberties. But Labour since 1997 has been one of the most illiberal governments in the UK in living memory, and has systematically undermined individual freedom. Thousands of new statutes have been enacted, creating thousands of new criminal offences. I think it’s time for a change of direction.
SC @#150: Sorry, I should have made clear that I was responding to Knockgoats’ post at #144, not his post at #145.
We all remember how Margret Thatcher supported the citizenry against the big, bad gummint. Her efforts on behalf of coal miners and other unionists were particularly notable. Her support of the Greater London Council and the other municipal county councils was inspiring. Her masterpiece, the Community Charge or poll tax, shifted the tax burden on those who deserved to pay the tax.
I suppose that makes sense, especially in light of the dramatic limitations and abuses of civil rights that the “War on Terrorism” bills have created…
No, it was finn. I understand how all us googlers look alike tho.
Why would you think that a Tory government would actually change direction? Just because they say they will? Doesn’t the example of Obama’s aboutface the minute he got power give you any pause? Could you give us an example of a government following one that had expanded government power giving up that expanded power?
Like her buddy Pinochet.
Just to add to that, I’ve been living in the uk for 5 months now, and the kind of patronizing attitude the UK government has to its citizens is astounding. Now, I always thought it was bad in the Netherlands as well, where carrying an ID card is mandatory btw, but here..
Basically you need to show your ID when buying alcohol in the supermarket when you look under 25. Nevermind that you only have to be 18 to legally buy it.. But that I can understand. What I don’t understand is why you have to show your ID when buying anything sharp… a big knife I can understand, but scissors? a potato peeler?? really? Do you really feel the need to protect the children that much? Sometimes its best to let them learn by mistake you know..
So I can see how people are afraid of what they might do with a national database, even if they have nothing but good intentions.
No. And that’s why I advocate actively campaigning for individual liberties, whatever party is in power. I also support the enactment of a written constitution with an entrenched Bill of Rights, so that the power of government to deprive individuals of basic civil liberties will be more limited.
But in the short term, we all have to choose which way to vote in the general election. Labour is thoroughly discredited. I’m not necessarily trying to convince you, or anyone else here, to vote Conservative; but I’m explaining why I think it is a morally defensible option, in preference to Labour.
Walton,
You must be aware of just who funds the conservative party? Whatever happens they will come asking if the conservatives win. It may be less obvious in the UK but “he who pays the piper calls the tune” tends to be the way politics works.
And times have changed. New Labour’s “great works” have moved the whole playing field. As Knockgoats said the infrastructure has or is being built. My own feeling is that the ID card scheme is too expensive and the UK goverment’s poor record with IT will save the day. But that might be my faulty wishful thinking.
The use of a gun to resist attempted rape reduces the likelihood of rape.
More than twice, yes. I’m not hoping for one.
But the alternative is to assume that either the richest people should not be separated from their wealth, or they can be separated from their wealth without violence. The latter might somehow be true, but it’s hard to foresee, and I’d rather we keep our options open, considering that they have regularly initiated violence against the rest of us in the past whenever it appeared we might win by peaceful democratic means. We may not even be talking about armed revolution so much as organized self-defense.
If there were a viable alternative — say, if the Republicans were better on abortion rights, or if we had a third party with federal seats like the UK has the Liberal Democrats — then yes.
Walton does have such an option, while the best we in the US can do right now is challenge and oust Blue Dog Democrats in the primaries.
With the general fucked-up-edness of our Congress, it’s hard to say exactly when a poorly amended bill should be left for dead. While I want the Stupak amendment stripped, one can see why even the House progressives may eventually come around to vote for the Senate bill (though I won’t shed a tear if they wipe their asses with the whole thing).
The UK bill in question is not even some messy “compromise” like Hyde or Stupak. It’s a stand-alone bill that does nothing but limit abortion rights. There is no excuse for a single MP to vote for it, let alone 80% of Conservative MPs. Those 20% of Labour MPs who voted for it should have their hands chopped off. (I kid. Maybe.)
Republicans are so authoritarian, which is anithetical to the American experiment and therefore anti-American. The media like to create this imaginary polemic of liberal-left versus conservative-right; this poll shows that so many Americans are conservative-left, centrist, authoritarian and liberal-right. This is why I like people like Ron Paul. (I don’t agree with his policy and wouldn’t vote for him, but we need more choice because we are offered two right-wing parties).
Yep, that was it
————–
It’s not just the numbers, but the sucking up to them…
Similarly – except sixth anniversary and a tiny twinge of regret at leaving california ‘winters’ when we got 4ft of snow last winter…
This world has no shortage of idiots, whether they’re republican, democrat, Americans or Europeans. Singling out one group of them for extra special attention is bad news for everyone. Instead of attacking a group of people for a belief lets start a discussion about the real culprit behind all human stupidity, arrogance, ego, detachment, greed. Writing books comparing neo-cons to jihadists has about the same effect as having a debate with a creationist. Usually one side feels vindicated, the other pissed off but both with new vigor to start the next argument. At the end of the day no work is actually done or accomplished. The key is to get back into the lab, get back into the capital building, get back onto the streets and lead by the example of hard work and civility. The rest will come out in the wash.
Walton,
That was me at 151 but I see finn has already alerted you to that.
I agree with both you and Knockgoats that this drive to ever more surveillance is a worry. Given the total inability of all governments either to design an IT system or provide a tight brief for someone with the necessary skill, though, I’m just as worried that all that money could be far better spent by someone who actually knows what he’s doing.
Besides, I already have an ID card – issued 1942, PM Churchill – with a stamp giving permission for the infant me to travel to Belfast. Then there’s my National Insurance record from 1958 – PM Macmillan – and so on and so forth. They already have masses of information and experience shows that the more they have the less able they are to manage it.
(I refer you to Chris Grayling making a complete ass of himself over statistics in the last couple of days.)
As I was a leftist student when MI5 were at their most paranoid, they’ve probably got me too but what the hell? The inabilty of governments to design systems plus an average amount of human ingenuity means that life will continue – even if they ever do get this IT database up and running. Which I very much doubt.
Just look at what a raging success the War on Drugs c 1971 has been – 2500 addicts in the UK before, possibly millions now. That daft idea sprang from the same mindset, has also cost a fortune and I just hope to live long enough to see a Home Secretary admit that it has been a total failure. I expect the new improved ID system to go the same way.
maureen brian
Since ID cards are pretty much a proxy (in the context of UK politics as I understand them these days, which isn’t to well since I don’t live there anymore so don’t get all over-excited) for the state owning everyone’s bodies, then yes I’d say they may well be more important. Extending a bad thing from half the population to all of it surely cannot be seen as a good thing. It appears to me that governments all around the world are trying to establish complete control over pretty much every aspect of everyone’s lives by whatever means they think can be got away with – religion, terrorists, ersatz freedoms, simple brute force, Hollywood movies, whatever.
The way reproductive freedoms, usually women’s, are restricted is appalling but it’s only a part of the picture of overall oppression.
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_rap_percap-crime-rapes-per-capita
Notably, Australia is up there pretty high. But among others, Japan, Britain, and Denmark are lower then the US; Sweden isn’t even on there. And with the exception of Australia, all are also higher density then the US. It’s possible that this is due to other factors (I really need to get off my ass and fix my database access; JSTOR is one I KNOW I should be able to)
Oh really now. What were you thinking? Because I’d like to inform you of a few little countries like..
Iran, the USA, Haiti, France, France Round 2, Russia, China (At least two rounds off the top of my head), Mexico (Many, many rounds), Cuba, Cuba Round 2, India (At least one round), Russia, Sri Lanka, South America full stop…
Mind, I’m not going solely by removing the government in power. That raises the success rate by a pretty fair amount… by lowering the bar substantially. I’m also going by improving the actual lot of the people (It’s a testament to how difficult it is that Haiti doesn’t qualify). I’m more inclined to believe that the US got lucky (And dealt with a power on another continent, which for obvious reasons helps a lot) then I am that armed revolution is a useful thing to do. And this is as someone who wasn’t particularly joking advocating it when Bush was in power (And with Obama not having fixed what made me say it about Bush).
Yeah, guess there is a reason to support Ron Paul’s existence after all. We /do/ need other real options.
sgbm,
Thanks for the pointer on the open thread, though in fact I came to this one before going back there. I think Walton has half a point on the abortion issue: in the UK it is and will remain a “free vote” issue, so the appropriate course of action at a general election is to look at the views of the candidates, and rule out those who do not make clear that they would vote against restrictions. Of course, that’s not what he’s saying he’ll do, because he is still committed to the Conservative Party. However, this allegiance is clearly weakening!
Agreed.
In the fight you don’t aim to change the minds of the crazies. It rarely works. Delusion is very flexible. Rather than looking at all the arguments and choosing the most reasonable one they start with their conclusions and look for any rationalization that seems semi-plausible (no matter convoluted, unparsimonious or nonsensical it might be). Or they just critize the other side while completely ignore any faults with their ideas.
What you really aim for is the people in the middle. It’s important that they know the real Republican party, rather than the PR mask they hide behind. Yeah things don’t always move as fast we’d like in politics, but if let their nonsense go unchallenged things can easily go bad quickly.
Walton,, Mail, Express, Times, Telegraph etc. How much support for the rights of immigrants, asylum seekers and those suspected of supporting terrorism, for reducing the prison population or for legalising cannabis do you see there?
Scan the Tory-supporting press – the
*crickets*
thank you man
http://www.elitchat.com
JayF,
True.
How can one have an open discussion with a group that refuses any ?
Read my comment here.
About three quarters of them are stuck with their delusions and permanent brain damage. I’m not sure hard work and civility is going to be sufficient help.
“comment here” was supposed to link to my comment here
Jay F. says, “This world has no shortage of idiots, whether they’re republican, democrat, Americans or Europeans. Singling out one group of them for extra special attention is bad news for everyone.”
Well, except this one group has a track record of pandering to any group of idiots–including anti-science, Xtian deathcult nutbags whow want to put scientists into concentration camps–that can put it into power.
I will quit bashing the Republican party when it accepts physical reality as a plank in the party platform. Until then, it is us or them. Friends don’t let idiots drive the country.
The problem is that the dominant fully delusional Palinbeckesque part of the Republican party seems to be picking up confidence as it moves along.
A_ray _etc had a hell of an idea a few messages ago: instead of waiting for the backward states to secede maybe the rest of us should join Canada!
I’m sure our northern neighbor would be cautious about who gets in, but that’s a good thing. We could shift the whole balance of North American economic and political power in a European direction and in so doing assure that the throwbacks would never be able to mount a serious threat, except to their own unfortunate people.
The moral dilemma of consigning lots of people to living under the thumb of the resulting theo-capitalistic nightmare (talk about being “Left Behind”) can be solved by having a generous but careful immigration policy towards the many refugees that are sure to result.
It’s time for a “Take Back America” movement!
I’m finding this an interesting read so far: The Authoritarians.
Hat-tip to She Who Chatters.
I’ve never really understood why progressives idealize Canada the way they do. Certainly our immigration statistics don’t reflect that Americans are jumping at the chance of being here. Usually it’s us trying to escape to south of the 49th.
Do you believe Barack Obama was born in the United States, or not?
Yes 42
No 36
Not Sure 22
It amazes me how quickly some people will dismiss the capabilities and influence of agencies like the NSA, FBI, ICE, Secret Service, and least of all the IRS. Do they really think these institutions are ignorant of Obama’s birthplace? Do they really believe that a non-‘murican could live in the White House under the eye of the Secret Service? What a bunch of fucking imbeciles.
Did they first qualify the respondents by asking: Are you a complete moron? Some of the results are unsurprising but some are totally out-to-lunch, even for dyed-in-the-wool Republicans. I recently became a citizen of this country and when I see Palin topping the “whom I’d vote for” list – in ANY poll – I begin to wonder if I’ve done the right thing!!
Off the top of my head, better distribution of wealth, UHC, Gay marriage, and less religious insanity.
Are you stupid or something? This isn’t exactly complex.
This is Fuckosoreass. Both stoopid and something fits the bill. Total idjit loser.
WTF are you talking about? what “usually”? The only Canadians I know who would want to move to the U.S. are those in film and journalism (because LA and NY respectively offer far more glamorous options for them), whereas most Americans I know are at least daydreaming about fleeing across the border.
you’re talking to a person who has quoted David Duke, and used the Whirled Nut Daily as a reference. what do you expect?
I really only posed the question to get wiseass comments out of everyone else. I am disappoint.
I saw this poll a few days ago as well. I’ve been saying for years now that the Republicans are sliding right off the edge of the crazy scale and no one ever seems to listen to me. :(
I love this one:
These people wouldn’t know a socialist if one punched them in the face.
What you see, if I remember right about some news bits from a number of years back, is that in such countries is a wide mixture of stupid BS. On the “conservative” side you get extreme conservatives, usually local, that lie about the plans of those outside to poison the people, or the like, or steal any food produced, then claim it was someone else’s fault, and so on. From the “labor” side you get an almost libertarian idiocy, where every damn seed, being that they where made for drought conditions, or high yield, or what ever else, being “patented”, and the people that own those being *very* willing to a) refuse to let people buy it, if its not grown how they demand, *and* b) not allow the farmers to *keep* any seed from the stock, since its not their stock, it the patent holder’s, since they are “licensing” them the right to use what they are given, then later sold, if they actually make any money, but **never** produce more crops from seeds, saved from the prior crop.
There is red tape and stupidity all over this stuff, and people on all sides trying to make money, or gain power, through it. But, in general, *most* of the problems are from the right wingers and power mongers in their own countries, making the red tape and ruin sometimes hitting the farmers from the people “helping” seem like a mosquito bite may seem to someone bitten repeatedly by a poisonous snake.
A lot of problems are due to all the idiots in the way. And that *includes* the ones playing patent games and other stupid BS, who make farmers, government officials, and everyone else, distrust *all* of the people trying to help, not just the few caught pulling this stuff. Its quite literally a case of 1-2 rotten apples, and a whole bag full of rotten *everything else* spoiling every other apple in the barrel. Fix one problem, and there are still 15 other assholes screwing up the process, some of them the supposed “leaders” of the very people being helped.
Kagehi,
Staying in Ireland would be a great choice to escape religious nutjobs. Oh, except they made blasphemy illegal, with a 25,000-euro fine.
Details.
I’d LOVE to see the Bible taught in schools. Can I help write the curriculum?
“OK, kids, we’ve read the story of Adam and Eve and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. We see that the serpent told them that if they ate from the tree, they’d gain knowledge. God told them that they’d die that same day. Adam lived to be over 900 years old, and Eve bore him many children. They learned the difference between good and evil.
Who was telling them the truth? God, or the serpent?”
As for this survey, I’m not sure how much I’d trust a left-liberal’s survey of Republicans. Oh, yeah . . . about as much as I’d trust Glenn Beck’s next survey of Democrats. Bet he’d report that “85% of Democrats think Obama is going to put gas in their tank and pay their rent”.
The United States has made considerable efforts to increase the rate of rape reporting in recent decades, and yet we know that most rapes are still not reported to police.
We may expect that while the United States’ rate is over twice as high as your statistics suggest, the rate in many of those nations which have not made similar policing reforms is likely to be higher still.
Anyway, I apologize that I’m not sure what your point was. It is true that a victim’s use of a gun reduces the likelihood of an attempted rape becoming a rape. Unfortunately the vast majority of women are not routinely carrying guns in self-defense. But among those who are, the Second Amendment is allowing them a valuable tool of resistance.
If I only have to list more than two, then the revolutions in the United States, France, and Cuba 1959 have all improved the lives of the citizens. Comparing Haiti with its pre-revolution past, I’m not sure you’re right to rule it out, either.
In any case it could be true that armed revolution is usually useless, and yet also true that we should keep that option open as a last resort. It’s not a solution for the United States today, but we do not know what the future holds.
This is not the proximate reason why citizens should be armed, I do not bring it up of my own accord, and I’d rather not talk about it.
This is an experiment I’m keen to conduct. ;)
To avoid sounding so ridiculous in the future, try reading. The poll was not conducted by Daily Kos, but by the independent polling firm Research 2000.
Sure it’s half a point, Knockgoats, as I’ve acknowledged, even though every time he brings it up he acts like he’s telling me something brand new.
It doesn’t mean what he wants it to mean, that the Conservative party is not anti-woman. A stance doesn’t need to be party policy if it’s nevertheless shared by 80% of MPs.
Not only that, he advocates for the Conservative party in general, so helping all their candidates, including all the anti-choice MPs.
It might be another matter if he’d quit quacking about “a Conservative government will be better for the UK” and stick to evangelizing for a particular pro-choice candidate.
Re Canada:
All I’m saying is that the country is not the oasis it is frequently built up to be. I’m guessing all the things mentioned don’t have as much weight in deciding whether to move here as our higher taxes and cold weather and the irritating way we say “about”. However, in terms of religious insanity, I think you underrate our potential. We have many people who are religious, and though the majority are fairly moderate, flare ups can and do happen.
no one is claiming it’s the Elysian Fields up there, but it’s still better by any measure most people I know care about*; basically, it’s relatively better than the U.S., not the best, nor the best in could be; and higher taxes are only an issue if you’re so wealthy, basic living-expenses barely register on your expenses, because otherwise everything else (health-insurance, college, etc.) is still cheaper, so you still end up with more money in your pocket.
—-
*including myself, who has lived on both sides of the 49th (and in close proximity to it, on either side)
and the irritating way we say “about”.
…and you want us to take that seriously?
go.
away.
Umm. How about some evidence/statistics that having a gun decreases the odds of an attempt becoming an actual rape. See, in the real world you need facts to back a position. Such facts require a) evidence of how many rapes “do” happen, b) how many are successful in general, and c) how many where stopped by guns. Near as I can see you can’t give (a), since you don’t have (a), you can’t say anything about (b), and (c) is just more of the, “Well, I know being armed stopped X criminal in Y case, so lets ignore cases A->Q where the criminal had the gun, and the victim didn’t.” There isn’t any evidence that implies it has a significant effect on *any* crimes, other than that it can and *does* escalate things from dangerous to deadly, in many cases, which I don’t think.. or would hope at least, isn’t what you intended.
SC,
Wow, that’s a pretty big task. I won’t attempt to give you a full answer now, as I need more time to think about it, but here are some initial thoughts.
Firstly, you’re asking for several very different arguments. Food is in a different category from land, since food in general needs to be produced, and therefore has production value; the people who work to produce food need to make a profit. By contrast, as I understand it, land has no production value but only scarcity value; that is, land is not produced by anyone, and the only reason why land is a commodity is because the amount of it is limited.
As such, the arguments against the commodification of land are much stronger than the arguments against the commodification of food. Hence why there was at one time a whole political school of thought (called “Georgism” or “geolibertarianism”) which argued that land should not be owned privately and should all be the property of the community, but that all other commodities should be bought and sold in a free market. As I understand it, Georgists wanted to abolish income and sales taxes, and instead wanted the state to make its money primarily from land rents, as all land would be state-owned.
My argument against this, though, would be this: if a person or corporation owns a piece of land, he or she has an incentive to look after it and to use it in a sustainable way, so that it will continue delivering profit in the future. By contrast, if land is owned in common by the whole community, each individual has an incentive to exploit it as much as he or she can, and to put as little as possible into ensuring its sustainability. So there is an argument for the private ownership of land, though I do find Georgism attractive to some extent. As a compromise, I would say that it is entirely legitimate for the state to impose property taxes on the value of land. Since land is not something that is produced through human effort, there’s no obvious moral reason why it should be privately owned by anyone; and so, though as a society we allow the private ownership of land, I would argue that the owners of land have a responsibility to their surrounding community.
As to water, water in its natural state isn’t a commodity. No one owns the rain; and though many lakes and rivers are privately-owned, the owner cannot stop the water flowing elsewhere or evaporating. Rather, as I understand it, the commodity value attaches to water that is collected and provided for human use – which is an activity that involves human labour and technology, and therefore has a production value. Again, the workers and enterprises whose efforts cause water to be piped into our homes need to make a living. In many countries, of course, water supply (being a technical monopoly) is provided by publicly-owned enterprises operated by national or municipal government, and I don’t particularly have a problem with this.
I could be talking utter nonsense, as I’m way outside my field of expertise here. Apologies if I’ve missed the point of your post, and I realise this is nowhere near a full answer. It’s just some initial thoughts, which I will expand on later when I’ve done some research.
How interesting that the lovely Will Hutton should be on much the same track as I was @ 167.
I confess to having discussed such things with him but that was more than a decade ago. Perhaps I learned something!
These people wouldn’t know a socialist if one punched them in the face. – OurDeadSelves
Must. Resist. Temptation. Volunteer. Be. That. Socialist!
By contrast, if land is owned in common by the whole community, each individual has an incentive to exploit it as much as he or she can, and to put as little as possible into ensuring its sustainability. – Walton
What you’re arguing against here is an “open access regime”, where any member of the community can do as they like on community land. Garrett Hardin did appalling damage by mislabelling it “The Tragedy of the Commons”, legitimising the state-grabbing and subsequent privatization of common land in many parts of the world. Open access is, I think I’m right in saying, never the case with such land – and rarely even with community-owned water. There are complex rules of use, systems of mutual surveillance, and graduated penalties for infractions. Read something – anything – by Elinor Ostrom, who won the 2009 Nobel Prize for Economics for her work in this area. As far as private ownership meaning you look after the land – this had merit in times when capital was less mobile. Now, the most profitable thing to do can often be to maximise short-term returns and shift the capital elsewhere, or cut down the native forest and plant oil palm or soya for export.
Incidentally, although this wasn’t your main point and is tangential to the argument, land is no more usable in its “natural” state than water. This is a major reason why you are wrong to oppose all agricultural subsidies (as opposed to export subsidies specifically): they are essential to keep land (and the buildings, fences, tracks, etc. and the skilled labour force) in good condition for when the next big crop failure comes – and one thing we can learn from history is that, oh yes, it will come.
Walton #199
Walton has got to page 5 of Economics for Dummies.
There are many versions of Georgism (named after political economist Henry George), ranging from rhetorical formulations barely distinguishable from communism, to voluntary market-based arrangements sometimes described as geo-libertarian. It is difficult to get a clear picture of Georgist doctrine, because its proponents tend to slide from one version to another logically incompatible one, according to the exigencies of the argument. We may charitably assume that this is because they often lack a sufficiently precise or coherent understanding of their own beliefs and proposals.
The Georgist answer to this objection is land use is leased. The lessee would improve the land to improve the productivity and profitability of the land. This might be done in conjunction with the lessor government or solely by the lessee. In real life a renter may plant flowers in front of a rented house, even though the flowers will remain with the house when the renter moves out.
I’m not surprised at the last part of this statement. Walton is often impressed by the impractical and fantastic when it comes to economics.
Walton has read page 7 of Economics for Dummies.
Water is usually collected in a reservoir which sits on land owned by either a private or public owner. Transportation of water to the consumer is normally through publicly owned pipes. But more importantly, water has a scarcity value. In arid or semi-arid areas water is not readily available to the consumer. Walton in rainy England may not realize it, but large parts of the world already have a water shortage. Between 1980 and 1990, due to a number of factors including drought, the southern boundary of the Sahara moved south about 130 km.
In the western US water has been a commodity for over a hundred years. Water use is leased and controlled by state and federal governments and is the subject of much political wrangling.
While I’m not familiar with the exact numbers of all of them there, I know for a fact that you have something like 3% the reported rapes in Japan that you do in Merika. I’m pretty sure that more then 15% is reported. The problem with that argument is that it assumes vast differences in rape reporting in other countries, and while that might be a safe presumption in some cases(Japan, to say the very least. Fucking misogynists), you’re pretty much asking for me to accept out of hand that only Merika has ‘good’ rape reporting with that argument. You need to present evidence that other countries have bad rates of it. Really bad, in some cases.
Also, for the record, if I recall correctly, most unreported rapes are Date and Acquaintance Rapes, where they didn’t put up sufficient resistance to properly count it as a crime to begin with, thus negating any benefit from a gun.
My point is, high gun control doesn’t seem to actually raise the rape rate. In fact, each of those countries has extra factors that should raise the rape rate independently, and yet Merika has a higher rate just the same. So while you do have a study that suggest guns reduce it, you also something of a problem in that Merika has some of the most liberal gun control laws in the developed world, and one of the highest rape rates as well. If the second amendment doesn’t produce real results on your line of argument, you can’t claim it’s a bulwark that actually protects us from rape. Probably for the best, really, considering what handguns do to your risks of self and family injury.
Which french one? The French Revolution (late 1700s) was a bloodbath that lead to 30 years of tyranny and ultimately intermittent problems throughout the 1800s. The latest revolution,w hich removed the 5th republic and established the 6th one, killed parliamentary democracy in exchange for a pseudo-democracy (Under De Gaulle), and then a weak one (After his death). It was armed revolt against a democracy, which might count as auto-fail, really.
Also, counting the United States sort of misses that we had a failed one here. I’m sure you’re familiar with the Confederate States of Merika.
Cuba? In what sense is replacing a dictator with a dictator a win?
Perhaps we should, but I doubt it. In any case, gun ownership prior to a revolution is probably not necessary to facilitate an actual armed revolution. I’m not sure we have any good evidence of it having been a problem, at least.
I’m sorry, but while the Founding FAthers were right to include the second from their perspective, history has shown them to be wrong on several counts. This is one of them. Guns in the hands of a civilian populace do precious little good. While I wouldn’t restrict it entirely, I would want to heavily regulate it, so as to ensure that the civilian gun supply (Which is the same gun supply that criminals mostly dip into) is small. Simple supply and demand increases the price on gun ownership. Well, economics will dictate a much higher price, but not for that reason (Yay black markets).
@Pygmy Loris and Kagehi:
It sounds like the reasons why the developing world is failing is a hell of a lot more complicated then MERIKA HAS SUBSIDIES, at least. I’m absolutely positive that export ones aren’t helping, of course, but it sounds hella complex, jeez @.@;
@ strange gods before me and Knockgoats:
I’ll hold ’em and you punch ’em. ;)
Meaning no disrepect, I’m one after all, but I do occasionally get the feeling that folks around here are sometimes a bit cloistered and self-referential, not to say tribal. Here’s a report from the “real” world:
I sent my brother and sister-in-law a link to the Daily-Kos survey. They live in deep fly-over country in upstate New York(!), and this was my sister-in-law’s response:
I suggested that she read up on the Stockholm Syndrome http://tinyurl.com/dxpk8w (I believe that the Tea Partyers et al. are suffering from it and that Fox News is no less than seditious, BTW) and consider moving to New Zealand. Canada is perilously too close.
Rutee, Shrieking Harpy of Dooooom
Of course the reasons the developing world has so many problems are greater than agricultural subsidies in the developed world. After all, there’s more to hunger in the developed world than just our subsidies, and hunger is only one of the problems facing many developing countries.
Neocolonialism, predatory corporations, corrupt governments, ineffective governments, natural resource depletion due to former colonial governments, etc are just a few of the problems in many developing countries. They’re interrelated too. Neocolonialism and predatory corporations seek to corrupt government officials and keep regulation out of the countries producing untold human suffering.
Anyway, Republicans are crazy. They have a clear disconnect with reality that I find particularly disturbing. Obama and the other spineless Dems need to realize the right-wing is going to call them socialist no matter what they do, so they might as well be socialists. At least we could get some real health-care reform out of it
Well there’s the problem young man. We need to be making more land.
It is possible, just a little tricky. You might find http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_habitat a place to start a little reading. So what happens to economics when there is no scarcity? What would the rich do to prevent a world(s) where anyone can have pretty much anything they want?
consider moving to New Zealand.
there’s fuckall money here, though, so make sure you bring plenty (meaning: a metric fuckton), if you plan to really stay here.
or, if you don’t mind living perpetually like a grad student…
‘Tis, I admitted that I was way outside my field of expertise. I don’t know much about economics at all. But SC asked me a question – a very broad and difficult question – which I thought I ought to make some attempt at answering. I thought it would be better to offer an answer somewhat more analytical than “most (sane) people think food, land and water should be commodities” (argumentum ad populum) and “most economists think food, land and water should be commodities” (argument from authority).
Ask me about law, civil liberties, human rights, the criminal justice system, British politics, or something else in which I actually have expertise. In economics, a subject I have never studied or really read up on, I only have the knowledge of the average semi-informed layman, and I’m not personally equipped to engage in an argument that requires any economic knowledge.
Okay, then why do you have such firmly held beliefs that you will insist on repeating to everyone else who will listen? Those two things don’t link well.
That aside, sociologists disagree that food and water, at the very least, should be commodities. To the best of my recollection, studies have shown that the less you have to struggle to simply survive, the more likely you are to do well, because the less likely you are for any given disaster to wipe you out. That’s the argument, and while I do’nt have some of the corroborating studies available to me this second, I’m reasonably sure I can find them.
How about I already gave evidence: http://www.jstor.org/pss/800645
Data on resistance is taken from reported rapes, which is better than nothing and has the same reliability as our data on other aspects of rape, data which already informs public policy in many ways that you make no criticism of. It’s the best we have for anything, and if it’s good enough to draw other conclusions, it’s not suddenly inadmissible when we talk about guns.
Of course if the perpetrator is armed against an unarmed victim, that increases the rate of completion. But now you’re trying to ask whether guns are a net positive. That was not the question. The question was whether
whether guns do anything good for anyone. And that much is established: they do good for those women who use them to resist rape.
I’m quite sure that the world would be a better place if the Queen of the Fairies came with her Elvish minions and spirited all the guns away to Arcadia.
Trouble is, in the real world, it’s much easier to disarm victims than it is to disarm perpetrators.
Here we have a case where individual women are reducing personal harm to themselves, and I do not want to take away their tools of self-defense. I do not want to reduce women’s options for individual freedom and safeguards of bodily autonomy. Do you?
Quoting from the literature: “(3) Most forms of resistance are not significantly associated with higher rates of victim injury. The exceptions are unarmed forceful resistance and threatening or arguing with the rapist; (4) Even these two forms of resistance probably do not generally provoke rapists to injure their victims, as ancillary evidence concerning assaults and robberies indicates that resistance rarely precedes injury. Attack against the victim appears to provoke victim resistance, rather than the reverse; (5) Only about three percent of rape incidents involve some additional injury that could be described as serious. Thus it is the rape itself that is nearly always the most serious injury the victim suffers.”
While I’m willing to assume accuracy and honesty on your part, you /do/ know that JStor is behind a paywall, don’t you?
Then you’ll have no trouble explaining why the US has such a disproportionately high rape rate, what with our second ammendment and our guns fairly freely in the hands of the civilian populace. I know real life can be inconvenient to square with studies, but…
And it actually doesn’t necessarily establish that guns help those women in a way that, say, pepper spray would not if the number of civilian guns were reduced. Nor does it comment on aspects other then rape. I have no /actual/ argument against “Yeah, guns are great if you have them”, but you A: Probably don’t (Even if you support them, going off my jackass professor) and B: It sucks for you if the other guy does, and shouldn’t.
You call rape reporting that is over 50% broken “good”?
The United States has a rape culture, but it is not somehow unique in this regard. Patriarchy dominates nearly every inhabitable square kilometer of Earth. The reasonable assumption is that other nations are likely to suffer similarly from rape underreporting unless demonstrated otherwise. It’s silly to assume that they are free of patriarchy, free of rape culture.
So you bring up the United Kingdom. Your data from 2002 reports 13395 rapes in that nation. That is probably not inclusive of attempted rapes; an inclusive number from 2000 gives 25300. That same source says that the actual number is between 118000 and 295000. So there’s the magnitude of underreporting in the UK, about 4x to 11x.
What what what? Acquaintance rape is not defined by lack of resistance, and lack of resistance does not mean it doesn’t count as a crime. Also, there is no indication that a gun would not work for deterrence or resistance against acquaintance rape; you made that up.
I didn’t claim that it did. And I’m not going to engage with strawmen.
There’s your problem. The study does not suggest that guns reduce rape attempts, only that they work for those women who use them. And these relatively rare women are not likely to have an easily observable effect on general rape rates.
We would need a much higher rate of gun-carrying — herd immunity — for the mere possibility of armed resistance to act as a deterrence to rape, appreciably lowering rape rates.
So the women who have actually defended themselves from rape do not count as real results.
Not much, when you actually count it up. Cigarettes are a much more guaranteed kill for self and family. But that doesn’t give you the right to decide for other people that they’re not allowed to smoke. This was a juicy red herring. Other people’s risk factors are their own to choose.
Bourgeois piffle. Most French people did not experience tyranny, the Napoleonic Code guaranteed human rights never acknowledged under the ancien régime, and Napoleon crushed feudalism and theocracy throughout Europe. There were people hoping to be conquered by his armies so that they could be free.
No, counting the United States is counting the armed revolution that founded the United States. The later civil war is another matter, one which ended relatively well, a welcome conclusion made possible by the instigation of John Brown and others like him.
In the sense that quality of life under Castro has been tremendously higher than under Batista. The Cuban people have personal security, more than they had before, which they count a celebrated improvement they would not give up.
Enjoy electoral failure.
Because of all the people who should be disarmed, we must first disarm the poor!
Capital consistently proves functionally immune to disarmament. But labor can be disarmed. I must assume that, as for Walton, this is a feature and not a bug of your plan.
As a citizen of New Zealand, (though resident in Australia at the mo), it is heartening to see how often it is mentioned as a place of refuge, as sort of liberal, sensible, Shangri-la. Just one thing. If you all think that you are going to just nip down there when the shit really hits the fan, can you wait till after I move back, so that the price of property doesn’t get any more ridiculously high than it already is.
Cheers.
I’m sorry I can not provide a more easily available source. But the evidence is there.
And I already did. Very few women carry guns in self-defense. Do you understand this?
I don’t care, and if this is what you want, then I don’t care about that either.
I am intent on offering individual women the right to make their own decisions on how they prefer to defend themselves, rather than taking away their options. Those women who have been trained in self-defense that emphasized pepper spray are welcome to use pepper spray, and those who have been trained with firearms are welcome to use firearms.
I am not willing to make that decision for women, and if that is your intent, then I am not willing to let you succeed in making that decision for women. (Good thing you’ve already lost and will continue to lose in the Supreme Court.)
You asked what good the Second Amendment does for anyone. This is an answer. I am satisfied with showing that it does benefit those women who choose to exercise their rights; individual choice and bodily autonomy is what’s important to me.
Gun subsidies for people living in poverty would alleviate this.
Indeed, but again it’s the victim you can easily disarm, not the perpetrator.
Walton, I really recommend you read a basic economics book or, better yet, take a basic economics course. If you’re going to make economical arguments you need to know something about economics.
Do you not know what air quotes mean? Seriously?
I don’t actually disagree. Are you claiming the US has an especially high number of reports relative to other countries? What drives you to that conclusion?
Frankly, all else approaching equal, I expect Britain to have more rapes, because their population density is much higher. Though, they also have a better distribution of wealth.
Still, taken in a vacuum, that is bad for the UK. And then you remember that the US’ unreported STILL puts them higher.
From a legal standpoint? Yes, resistance or outright force is in fact the thing that makes it start being a crime. Here, don’t just take my word for it. This is from the opinion of Jones v. State (1992).
Believe me on this, as it’s an ideological point that causes me a lot of self hatred because I want to protect innocent women from jackass men and innocent men from jackass women and have no idea how to accomplish both. The thing that makes it count as rape in a court of law (Which is where criminal reporting will count it) is that you had to resist with just short of, or actual, violence. Just saying No is not sufficient for it to match the legal elements of Rape if there isn’t a threat of violence, and most acquaintance rape lacks the threat of violence. Sorry to burst your bubble there, skippy, but with most rape being acquaintance rape, I suspect that most of your failures to report (And reports that don’t pan out into successful prosecutions) are coming from cases where physical resistance isn’t being used because they KNOW the person, even though we as human beings KNOW that an ethical line was crossed that violated those women. They’re probably even LESS likely to shoot them with a gun then they are to slap them.
Okay, then let me ask you this; What do you think gun control will do for the rape rate? If you think it will not decrease it, why doesn’t that square with reality?
Nice appeal to emotion. Rape Rate: Still high as hell. Unless nearly everyone has guns, they’ll just pick off the weak, or the unprepared, and if everyone has guns we have a very different set of violent crime problems involving the escalation of otherwise non-violent situations. Or violent situations that only involved a thrown kitchen knife, or…
Bourgeois? Odd choice of words there, but given later content I suspect I know where it’s coming from. Nonetheless, I believe you’re forgetting little things like Napoleon not actually touching most absolutist regimes, his universal drafts, his use of the rural poor (Who are some of the few who benefited in France at any rate) to justify his utter takeover of the country. And since you tried to invoke Napoleons actions against foreign countries (I really just meant France got pretty screwed, rather then commenting on Europe as a whole there) as a pro or a con, then let’s go ahead and add his introducing Total War to the mix. You know, little things like utterly destroying the civilians’ will to fight and causing massive death due to a stupid war for expansion he started?
As well, there are people who come to America thinking the American Dream is real, if that’s the evidence you want. Horatio Alger created a lovely myth, but the evidence doesn’t support it was real there. Though I’ll grant, since Europe was less urbanized and Napoleon was alright to the rural poor, the evidence of THAT myth’s truth is stronger then the evidence for Alger’s pieces of sunshine and rainbows.
I think it’s a bit of a stretch to say life got better for Southern Black People in any short term sense following the civil war. Sure, they were free… to live as permanent tennants under white landowners who nearly owned you outright ANYWAY because they had the cops in their pocket and you owed them so fucking much money you could never walk away. And god forbid you were white and NOT a landowner and now forced to live under Sharecropping as well. Then there was all the death and devastation of the war itself, and the utter destruction of Southern Infrastructure by General Sherman.* The only folks who you might be able to say benefited are the ones who left immediately-if-not-sooner, and you damned a lot of white people in the process.
As to the Revolutionary War, yes, I agree, and you don’t have to sell it to me. The United States as a whole did benefit a great deal from that armed fight. I just think it’s a bit laughable to forget they had a very real, very painful failed revolution later on. I personally consider us very lucky to get one.
Hm. Given the relatively bloodless fight, you might have a point here. Without widespread violence due to your fight, you can get away with much smaller gains. Of course, if it isn’t a bloody fight, it isn’t a very good claim for violent revolution either, now is it?
You’re advocating that we actually try to protect our rights against corporations through violence, and you’re talking to me about Electoral Failure? Why don’t we try talking about how likely you are to get elected by advocating real reforms that would actually prevent their legal abuses, hm? Oh wait, that’s also unelectable. That isn’t a real point, and you know it.
Hah! You think organized labor is going to have a hard time getting access to and affording purchases from the black market if it actually needs them? By the way, how often has violence worked out for Labor again? And how often in the US does Big Business rely on outright violence? Puh-leeze.
Violence is explicitly a matter of small criminals and organized crime, not for big business and white collar crime, so don’t pull any populist or blue collar bullshit on me. You wanna stop Big Business’ various abuses and White collar Crime? I’m right there with you. But violent crime has nothing to do with it, and the reforms needed for that have fuck all to do with the second amendment anyway. You are at best myopic in your search for an ideological nemesis you can fight with again and again, and at worst a fool for pursuing this line of logic regarding my hope to control the supply of guns. You want to curb big business? Poke into campaign finance reform and laws that govern the prosecution of corporations and those who lead them. That’s where you can theoretically get some response.
In point of fact, it’s based on what I know of Poland and Australia. Very, very few people have guns. Full Stop. It’s too much hassle, and it’s too expensive. If you really want one though, it’s there to be had (I assume Poland doesn’t have much wild life to hunt, I suppose, so they have even less of a ‘need’). There IS a black market to buy guns from.. but ultimately the only people who benefit are organized crime. Not big business.
By the way, it’s really cute of you to assume my positions on matters I’ve openly stated and all, but I’m pretty sure I’ve stated outright in this thread that part of the reason I like Canada? Better distribution of wealth.
*I have a great deal of respect for Sherman, which is one of the many reasons why if some idiot were to call me a ‘traitor’ to the South, I could only agree. The man took the best course of action to cut the war short by as much as possible. Dissonance with Nappy? Maybe if Nappy didn’t start wars I could live with him doing it.
You can keep repeating this, but effective gun control exists outside fo the US. You can in fact keep guns from getting into the hands of petty criminals.
You can’t make them totally disarmed, but pepper spray vs. knife is a pretty good win when all you want to do is run the fuck away.
And actually reducing the incidence of rape is what’s important to me, particularly without raising the incidence of other crimes and injuries. You can blab all you want about the few heroes, but it ignores that the great majority of people aren’t. Less guns is less violent crime overall, and overall safer citizens.
I find it interesting that no one in the US has decided to start a new party. Name it the “Secular Republican Party”, grab the remaining sane members of the republicans and the members of the Democrats that are really more comfortable with a Republican party that is sane and sideline the whole wingnut set. The new parties only operating difference to the old is that the members must be committed secularists (not atheists – just believe in the separation of church and state).
Sounds like a good idea to me: a party which is fiscally and economically conservative, and also committed to secularism, individual freedom and reason. Unfortunately, I don’t know if it would get off the ground, as the American right has been so thoroughly hijacked by the wingnuts.
Well, there is of course the Tea Party
Tea Party.
I think Sarah Palin stops the Tea Party from having any hope of being secular.
creating trons at #82 – Sorry for the late reply, I have been occupied. I checked with my contacts and Judge Roy Bean’s is still doing fine in Daphne on the Eastern Shore. I have not been there for years, only seem to get to Mobile for funerals and the like anymore.
Ciao, JeffreyD
I think Sarah Palin stops the Tea Party from having any hope of being anything but a gigantic fucking joke.
“I pledge allegiance, to the flag, of the United States of America; and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
They’d add in “under God” because they think it’s important, but they ignore the words already there. Or perhaps they view indivisibility as merely recognizing history as well, instead of being an aspiration to be and remain united states.
These people are not patriots.
First time commenter. I sympathise with Walter. Personally, I struggle to see myself either as right or left wing. I lean towards liberalism, but find it too idealistic and some aspects unworkable or just naive. I strongly dislike against liberals too.
The reason is this. Human beings tend to view the world as being specifically created for them. Christianity EXPLICITLY says this which is why perhaps many conservatives/right wingers think we can use the Earth as we wish, with no consequence. They generally hold the view, resource wise that the Universe was built to accommodate human development and consumption. Conservatism is possible an offshoot of this archaic religious sentiment, but the secular left hasn’t really left this idea behind, only transformed it. Again, I see here (maybe I’m wrong), the legacy of a false starting assumption.
However, I find similar sentiment in the left. While there is an acknowledgment that the environment we are born into is limited, and without specific design parameters to accommodate our whims, socially it seems they are still stuck with this mentality. The Universe may not have been created to provide is with a consequence free unlimited pool of resource, but I think liberalism fails to realise that in the same manner, human evolution didn’t evolve us to be able to socially have freedom and the ability to organise society around liberal ideological principles. While we may MORALLY, hold certain principles, the basic physics, laws of human behaviour and social dynamics make an ideologically moral stance not necessarily the most desirable practical one. In the end, politics has to apply ideals to a perpetually flawed template.
The failure in left/right wing politics is partly due to the reluctance to accept the fact that we are the result of an unthinking process, one unconcerned with our own notions and ideals of dignity/freedom, etc. We’ve seen the horrors of the 20th century in trying to apply theoretical ideals in the real world, without acknowledging the framework to make that political theory work just doesn’t exist.
For example, it may well be morally ideal to take a particular immigration stance, but only under ideal circumstances. It may well be morally ideal to support free markets, but only under ideal circumstances. To many free marketeer and socialists argue that their system would work, given the right circumstances.
The Rev. says “I think Sarah Palin stops the Tea Party from having any hope of being anything but a gigantic fucking joke.”
Of course, we just finished 8 years in Jan. 2009 where the US Presidency was a gigantic fucking joke. And it is not as if we didn’t know in in 2000. The man was a dry drunk who had failed at everything he had ever undertaken–still batting 1000!
Dear OurDeadSelves, Knockgoats and Strange gods before me.
In re recognition of socialist – can I use the clue by four to get their attention before you act? Can I help? Huh?
Walton, please tot up the amount of column inches you’ve produced on Pharyngula, over the years, devoted to libertarian arguments. Contrast that with your admission that you know little about economics. Is there not a contradiction here?
Should you not have become informed on a topic before opining on it?