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Both Parties Ignore the Facts
An anonymous reader writes "Any democrat will tell you the republicans ignore the facts. Any republican will tell you the democrats ignore the facts. Turns out they're right. A new study monitored brain activity of partisans; they shun logic and use emotional processing centers to justify their candidate's contradictory statements. 'With their minds made up, brain activity ceased in the areas that deal with negative emotions such as disgust. But activity spiked in the circuits involved in reward, a response similar to what addicts experience when they get a fix.'"
I think one of the biggest problems facing our society is not being willing to acknowledge when the other group is correct or when we are wrong. Everyone is too convinced that they are correct that they are blind to the other person's point of view and opinions. This is spread all across the spectrum, not just in politics. Acknowledging when someone else is correct is good for you and good for relations. The person that you are discussing with will acknowledge that you are seeing their side and can listen to what they consider to be "reason" and they are more likely to listen to your point of view. Its just like here on Slashdot. Often times I get replies to my comments from people who have a different opinion or just have some smart ass remark. I understand, people have different opinions, and they are just as human as I am.
You can still acknowledge the other side and remain strong.
Enemies are people too.
Used to be in Roman times that the greatest senators of the republic were those who were the most stoic.
Now, it seems the most desired senators are those most likely to be on Jerry Springer.
My how the burning of Alexandria set us back much further than we could have thought.
My work here is dung.
Uphold it, stop worrying about the rest of the country or the rest of the world or even the rest of your state.
If you can, more power to you. The problem is, the rest of the country/world/state won't stop worrying about you.
Take the Jihad on Smoking, for example.
With their minds made up, brain activity ceased in the areas that deal with negative emotions such as disgust. But activity spiked in the circuits involved in reward, a response similar to what addicts experience when they get a fix.
This is what happens in the brain of religious people when praying. They go into a semi-trancelike state when they get their "god-fix". Rambling incoherently in 'tongues' while writhing on the floor is not a sign of omnipotent intelligence.
But yeah, you can prove anything with facts...
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
They allow you to join a club and make club membership more important in decision making than whether or not someone really represents you.
My biggest frustration with many republicans is the fact that they claim to be for small government, and this administration has been anything but small government.
My biggest frustration with democrats is that they claim to be all for civil liberties yet silently let pass things like Clinton's support of the clipper chip or Hilary's closed door meetings with insurance companies to hammer out a health care plan that benefitted them.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Definition of authoritarian adj 1: characteristic of an absolute ruler or absolute rule; having absolute sovereignty; "an authoritarian regime"; "autocratic government"; "despotic rulers"; "a dictatorial rule that lasted for the duration of the war"; "a tyrannical government" [syn: autocratic, dictatorial, despotic, tyrannical] 2: likened to a dictator in severity [syn: dictatorial] 3: expecting unquestioning obedience; "he was imperious and dictatorial"; "the timid child of authoritarian parents"; "insufferably overbearing behavior toward the waiter" [syn: dictatorial, overbearing] n : a person behaves in an tyrannical manner; "my boss is a dictator who makes everyone work overtime" [syn: dictator]
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
But activity spiked in the circuits involved in reward, a response similar to what addicts experience when they get a fix.
Instead of a War on Drugs, we have a War, on drugs.
this sort of "turning off" of logic happens to all people, not just politicians. Start a conversation about religion, and you'll see what I mean. I don't just mean fundamentalist Christians, either; atheists, agnostics, muslims (mac users?) are just as likely to get defensive if you start criticizing something they hold to be true. The key here is to place more value on the person that you're talking to than on yourself. If the other person knows/feels that, your conversation has the potential to be the civil, enlightening discourse that we really want.
Please share your dictionary. It is not the same as mine, which defines authoritarian as favoring blind submission to authority and/or favoring centralized monarchy or oligarchy with no limits on their power.
To be perfectly fair, authoritarianism comes in many forms, some of which are blind to the facts (Nero) and others of which are not (Stalin). The common thread is lack of any check on power, which is what we're working our way towards the more people rely on the federal government. And, by "people," I mostly mean entitlement-mentality asshats.
This is certainly worth keeping in mind the next time we have to endure another "Linux versus Microsoft" argument here on Slashdot, too. Why should our own dogma be any different? Personally, I knew this years ago. The only way a person could seriously advocate MySQL would be if their brain was turned off. It's perfectly obvious!
One of the newest members of congress and the youngest man in congress recently said that congress is like Junior High. What would you do if you were picked by the people to have a high paying job with a bunch of authority? (talk about ego) Then, on top of that, now that you are picked by a bunch of people for this you have all of these lobbying parties trying to buy you off by offering you all the stuff your heart desires. How would any of us react? I am not a good enough man to say I could fight that off. Then, because of the system, even the most well intended person doesn't get anywhere. But, they want to keep the power, popularity and especially all the perks. So, they, like a drug addict, will do what ever it takes to keep their fix. I don't think I would be any better. George Washington said a 2 party system would be bad. Could he have been right? Could it not be that one party is worse than the other but this is just a product of 2 parties? Could a 3rd powerful party help remedy this situation?
Evolution or ID?
You often witnesses a party acting more like their "opponent" because a very effective tactic of late has been to steal your opponent's position. There are dozens of very recent examples, but two glaring ones are Clinton's welfare reform and Bush's Medicare prescription drug coverage. This really helps swing voters to think that you're not an idealogue for one side or the other. Of course, it does nothing to sway radicals but then nothing would sway them.
The sorry fact though is that this has gone on long enough that there aren't very many differences between the two parties today.
I'm a big tall mofo.
Take the Jihad on Smoking, for example.
Actually, I blogged about smoking yesterday. The town my church is in is thinking of banning the SALE of cigarettes at all stores. They'll watch their convenience stores go bankrupt as many of them make a decent profit on cigarettes.
Yet I'd rather see cigarettes banned by stupid towns (people will drive a town over) than banned at the state or federal level. The same is true of cocaine, alcohol, porn, whatever -- if you want to ban it, just do it at the local level and I'll avoid your town if it is a product I support.
> Any other Slashdotters feel that politics today is just for the highest bidders and the most convincing liars
Yes, though I don't know why you specify 'today'.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
History repeatedly shows that the more government tries to get involved, the worse things get.
This really depends. If you are talking about issues on personally morality then you are correct. The alcohol and drug wars are a great example of the government trying to legislate morals. Government can not help a person find inner peace, only the individual can do that.
However, the government is generally succesful when implementing a communities infrastructure. Examples would be TVA and the Highway system. These infrastructures are the foundation of our modern economy. We can thank the government for that.
We can get Jack Thompson in the express line...
Demented But Determined.
Another study was done by a group of Republicans, and it seems that this particular study had been mistaken. Their findings were that only Democrats ignore facts, while Republicans do actually use the logic parts of their brains.
http://www.christiannerds.com/, TRUTH and Technology
Does this come as a surprise?
Personally I'm embarrassed at how ineffective our government has become. Sure they all tout that they act in a bi-partisan manner, but that is nothing more than the politically correct verbiage buzz word that they pretty much have to use.
Truth is that if you check just about any vote that has occurred over the last several years, you'll see that the votes are broken straight down the party lines -- except for a few that probably hit the wrong key during the vote.
Perfect example is the vote that happened yesterday for the new proposed Supreme Court Justice Alito. The vote was divided 100% down the party lines.
These people should be ashamed. We elected them to represent the beliefs of the state in which they represent, but it seems to always turn out that they cannot think for themselves. Rather they just follow their party's guidance.
Pathetic...
> I don't care what party you support, when you have two judges up for election to the supreme court and every single democrat on the election committe says something to the effect of "He's a loser and will not be a good judge" who are we kidding? Is this really the sad state of politics in America?
Yes. It's a sign that abortion has become the touchstone of American politics, and that the Supreme Court has come to be seen as a "higher legislature" that will vote your way if you can seat a majority.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
This is why to be scientifically credible, results of studies must be reproducible.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
That's probably the worst thing about USA politics. There's this fantasy that there are only two parties to choose from. Since they agree on so many things, the voters who believe this fantasy get absolutely no say whatsoever on many topics. Because the people who realise the truth are vastly outnumbered by the people in fantasy land, they don't get any say in many topics.
So basically, the voting public have no control over anything the Democrats and the Republicans agree on. That's not how democracies are supposed to work. Stop voting for Kodos!
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
You should think about this article a little harder. It's not just the parties in power that ignore the facts, but any of us with very strong convictions. That's as true for the revolutionaries as those currently in power.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Both parties appeal to their voters based on emotion, not logic. Take the Republicans for example, they have yet to make any serious attempts to:
1) Restore the RTKB to its 2nd amendment definition
2) Overturn Roe v. Wade by appointing justices to the SCOTUS that care more about the US Constitution than precedent
3) Provide viable reforms to the tax code
4) Tangibly reduce the regulation on business, especially small business, at the federal level which often strangles business in its infancy
5) Defend our country. Sorry country club boys, but it ain't just Mexicans coming across the border so either you hire legal grounds keepers and nannies, or you deal with a Muslim terrorist carrying a backpack nuke into your cushy suburb thanks to our lax border security. It's impossible to call them tough on national defense given the state of our immigration policy which shows no signs of being influenced by national security issues
Yet they still get voters based on:
1) A fear that gays will get married if they're not in control of the body politic
2) A fear that the hippies will take over ""
3) A fear that our kids will be corrupted by drugs || sex || alcohol ""
4) A few more terrorists will blow up a building or two "" (ironic in light of #5)
5) The democrats will win and make us Super Duper MegaBolshevik Uber-Communist (Bush's domestic spending is rather socialist when compared to a real conservative platform)
The democrats:
1) Appeal to their female base on fear: your right to abortion WILL go away and you'll be barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen for life if we aren't totally in control of the body politic.
2) Appeal to their minority base on racism fears
3) Appeal to their homosexual base on anti-homosexual fears
4) Appeal to their white middle class base on white guilt issues
So in short, if the politics of fear don't appeal to you, vote 3rd party. Any one of them will do.
People find similar results when studying brain activity of people playing chess - when considering a good move vs. considering a bad move. Does this mean that people ignore reason when playing chess?
We don't understand the brain, we don't understand how people reason and we don't understand how people make decisions. Anyone who claims otherwise is an idiot, a fraud or both. It is an interesting finding that certain particular areas of the brain "light up" when this particular sample of people are shown a particular sort of information in a particular way - but you can conclude nothing from this.
For myself, the part of my brain that handles emotional responses to complete bullshit is lit up like a XMas tree. Am I, as I type, ignoring reason?
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
There are other choices. http://lp.org/
Nobody cares.
As the right-wing Republicans have demonstrated so clearly, the way to political power is through values. Instead of citing world temparature statistics, ask people what they value. Do they value fresh air, abundant foliage, clean cities? Or do they value pollution, subsidies for big oil and murky rivers?
Look at the values of society today. They can be summarized by fear, isolation and scarcity. Everything we hear out of the far right can be reduced down to this. We're told to be afraid of terrorists, of immigrants, of gays and lesbians. We're told to lock our doors and make sure we keep as much of "our" money as we can, because we certainly don't have enough wealth in this country to go around. We're told to work as hard as we can to get our own, because no one's got our back. Hyper-individualism is the rule of the day.
If there's going to be change in this country, it's going to have to come as a result of a change in the conversation. We need to be talking about how we actually have abundance in this country and there is enough to build the kind of community we want to live in. There's enough to go around when we accept that each of us has a responsibility to contribute to the common good. There's enough to go around when we realize that we live in a connected community, not in isolated cabins on the frontier. There's enough to go around when we stop living in fear and start living in hope; when we realize that we support each other and we don't have to make it on our own.
This is the kind of political power that progressives need. Unfortunately, they're too damn busy being geeks, wonks and nerds to get it.
Of course, but liberals can be guilty of the behavior the article discusses. The Neocons, for example, are not Nazis, they're fascists. Nazis were members of a 20th century German political party. Fascism is a government structure. One label is namecalling. The other can be rationally discussed. Confusing the two blunts liberal response.
However, the government is generally succesful when implementing a communities infrastructure. Examples would be TVA and the Highway system. These infrastructures are the foundation of our modern economy. We can thank the government for that.
Government projects are generally extremely wasteful. Anything good the government would do will be done more efficiantly when the people involved are not coerced. And besides, if free individuals won't work together to make their own roads, why should they be forced to?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
It's nothing new ... my grandfather has written a few books on the human thought processes, and I typically cite his 'The Eight Common Errors in the Thinking Process' (pdf).
The quick summary (from the intro)
All this new research has done is support #2-4.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Go away, or I will replace you with a very small shell script.
Con men always work with this, they tell you what you want to hear so that you will end up trusting them and then they can scam you.
Linux fans, don't trust claims by say IBM on linux performance blindly, Mac fans doubt every single thing Steve Jobs tells you and MS fans.... well there is no helping some people.
That people like to have their ideas reinforced is pretty clear with the current world events involving armed conflicts between various factions. Why do I not say "war" or something like that? Because even that means taking sides. Call it war on terror and it becomes clear that america is the one fighting terrorists. I am pretty sure the other side claims however that it is america who is the one dealing in terror.
Some americans who are against their goverments actions happily claim that european media, the BBC especially is so much more un-biased then their own networks. Is it? Or does the BBC simply say what they want to hear? Same of course the other way around. Is all the european press simply anti-american or are they only guilty of saying something you don't want to hear?
Not to long ago I had an argument with an american about the race riots in france and the american claimed that in the US such things could not happen because immigrants were integrated into society better. Any recent immigrants in america want to reply on this? Apparently the riots in LA were not related to race.
It is intresting to see this article take on it. I hadn't suspected it ran so deeply. Then again it may be related to how we defend any decision we made wich later turns out to be bad. Wether we find out that the car we bought is considered bad by everyone else or the partner we choose turns out to be abusive. People like to stick with their decisions because we hate to admit we were wrong.
Linux zealots, mac slaves and MS apologists, all firmly believe their own myths and deny the enemies truths. Doesn't help at all when 99% of the time your in fact right. It makes it all the easier to think that 1 truth is a lie as well.
In dutch politics we had a few years a go a new person on the political scene who really upset the current balance as he was neither left nor right wing. The left claimed he was extreme right and the right claimed he was to left. He was for instance against continued immigration (far right) but also wanted to stop buying american fighter aircraft (far left). He was killed and dutch politics went back to the total crap it has always been but perhaps that is the only way forward. A party that is neither left nor right but simply does what is best for the country without being hunted by dogmatic views from some political ideologie.
A sort of enlighten socialism. Oh and before I get all the americans over me, remember that america is a socialist country as well. A true capatalist nation would have NO social security whatsoever. As long as tax money from the rich goes to those who are poor you are socialist. Take that you bunch of pinkos.
If you agree with what I said, BE AWARE! Am I only saying what you wanna hear? If you disagree, are you just in denial ignoring the facts?
In a way, all the responses to this article should be unmodded. Modding is after all only a way to reward those who say what you wanta hear and punish those who do not. If you don't believe me spend some real time meta-moderating.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I've even heard (sorry no reference for this) that it can happen in everyday motor tasks - some drivers even "wish" pedestrian's away and end up driving dangerously because of something like a confirmation bias in their desire to get where they are going. It's strange how the mind can fool itself. You'd think evolution would have removed it ("I want a drink of water but that tiger by the lake is stopping me - hey! If I ignore the tiger, I can have a drink!?!")
This has been known about (empirically) since the 1960's under cognitive confirmation bias, but I guess it's nice to see an activation study just to confirm what psychologists have known for decades (and that everyone else has known about for millenia).
bang goes my karma... again...
This issue of both parties ignoring the facts .. I think that is why even "christians" who supposedly follow the same book ..can have diametrically opposing views.
... the "Social conservatives" don't follow the bible.
.. when the Bible is extremely clear on this topic. They also want to build a wall on the southern border (bible says "if you build a high gate, you invite destruction") .. all of histories' walls are tourist attractions today (Great Wall, Hadrian's wall etc.)
l e-as-handbook.html
.. yet the bible is clear on this question as well .. http://www.carm.org/questions/interracial_marriage .htm http://www.christiananswers.net/q-sum/sum-g003.htm l and http://www.tbm.org/whatinterrac.htm
..Jesus used objective logic against it. Maybe that's what people need to use .. objective logic versus blind "adherence" to scripture.
Social conservatives think they are "moral" and that especially they like to think they are christian and follow the bible. Yet most of them actually do exactly the opposite of what the bible says.
Yet, on any given issue
For one thing, social conservatives oppose immigration/immigrants
http://www.churchworldservice.org/Immigration/bib
Yet most social conservatives would call for a halt to immigration (or at least non european immigration).
At one time a majority of them would have opposed interracial marriage
Very strangely the Numbers 12:1 reference used to be quoted (out of context) as a reason not to have interracial marriages.
So, when Jesus was tempted by the devil who was quoting scriptures
Oh, but libertarians are perfectly open-minded and don't simply hold to an ideological mantra at all. ;-)
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
Government projects are generally extremely wasteful. Anything good the government would do will be done more efficiantly when the people involved are not coerced. And besides, if free individuals won't work together to make their own roads, why should they be forced to?
Corporate projects are also extremely wasteful. If you ever work for a major company you will see that things could be done cheaper with a smaller company. However, the big company always gets chosen for their track record and stability. The Government is similar if one person leaves the government it won't fall apart. Build any roads lately? I bet you use roads on a daily basis.....
"Facts are stupid things."
sulli
RTFJ.
How did this study decide who was partisan? The article didn't say. Did they pick people out of rallies or fundraisers, or just people off the street who self-identified with a party?
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
(ignoring the flamebait)
Be Democrat locally. Be Republican locally. Join communities that accept your views and were you can truly vote with your feet if you disagree -- maybe moving a few miles. When you bring your authoritarian mandates to the federal government, you force your will on people who don't accept your authority.
VOTE!!! If enough people share your views then you will get your libertarian/green/free trade/whatever people into office. There is nothing that stops them from running. The fact is that many of us are happy with the [democrat|republican] party line (I'm the latter). Obviously. Look at the election polls. I will grant you there are many dumb voters. I will grant you that half the nation (roughly) doesn't turn out to vote. If they don't give a f*ck and give up their rights, that sucks but that's their right to do as well. It sucks and I'd love to see 100% turnout. But the fact is when an option presents itself - Pat Buchannan, Ralph Nader, David Cobb, etc - people just don't buy into. Bame marketing, blame not enough money to advertize, blame the fact that "republican" and "democrat" are so engrained in our minds its impossible to think of a third option - OK, whatever, but I'd like to think we are smarter than that. If you really hate the 2 parties, vote for the third option instead of not voting. Its not that hard. I don't see the point in moving everything to the community. What happens when I relocate a few years from now - now I have to re-mold another community into my image. Great. No thanks. This great country is the way it is and there are enough of us who like it. Authoritarian mandates? What authoritarian mandates? If you don't there are other countries with political systems you might enjoy - but I bet you might have to give up a few of the freedoms you enjoy here right now.
It's an economy of scale, too. Something paid for by a few thousand people for the benefit of those people will cost a certain amount. Something paid for by a larger group of people, like a few million, should cost less per person and achieve the same per-person results, sometimes drastically cheaper.
Also remember, the government didn't use to tax in the manner that they do now, or nearly as heavily as they do now. Taxes were predominately put upon imports, and that paid for the government. It wasn't until the 20th Century that an income tax successfully stuck against the populace from the Federal level.
I don't believe that anarchy would work any better than communism worked. Anarchy would require everyone to behave else things would degenerate into violent chaos as individuals who have a desire to achieve more, posess more, or have more status than others would exploit a lack of authority defined from the people to achieve their gains. Government perpetuates law enforcement and thus the possibility for recourse or retribution if an individual seeks gain at the peril of others, and I don't believe that society can ever do without that, as much as it would be utopian if it could be achieved.
Back to your original argument, wouldn't, "...the people involved...work[ing] together to make their own roads..." be a form of Government itself?
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
What this describes is the commonplace delusion. People do it all the time. They do it mainly to make life easier on themselves.
What is easier... going through life having made a decision about something and sticking to it... or constantly questioning your views and decisions and actions right up to the moment you have to commit to them?
We train our brains to think within constant boundaries. This helps us decide on a course of action much more quickly and keeps us from being overwhelmed and shutting down completely. We also do this to fit in with our community and gain their trust when making group decisions about communal objectives.
The problem with this methodology is that we decide to never re-evaluate our position. The reason we do this is that society judges us based on past expressions of opinion and labels us hypocrite if we decide to change.
The solution is to change society so that it becomes okay to change position. The barrier is how to set a standard of proof that the individual really has changed their opinion and can be counted on to stick by that opinion.
Anything less than what I've outlined here is an incomplete analysis of how views (religion, politics, preference, etc.) affect individuals within societal relationships.
A comparitive study would be to test the same brain activity within a group of social animals when a leading figure within the group that has majority support goes off and does something unacceptable... I suspect that the rest of the group will ignore the action (brain activity will show a similar response as in theis study) initially in order to maintain the social hierarchy and promote stability within the group... until it happens again and again, at which point they would stage a coup and 'elect' a new leader. We do the same, only on a much grander scale.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Remember that it was Republicans who freed the slaves, pushed the Civil Rights Act, and put more minorities in the Cabinet. As for the Democrats; well, we have Robert "KKK" Byrd and the blatant explotation of the black vote. What do I mean by that? Well, consider the social platforms of the Democratic party-- namely staunch defense of abortion, the push for homosexual marriages*, and opposition to religious expression-- and consider how those points conflict with the very spiritual base of African-Americans.
All the people who reelected Reagan in 1984 would probably disagree with you. "Are you better off than you were four years ago?"* I happen to think that the government should have absolutely nothing to do with marriage, which is a religious institution, and should instead offer "social partnership" licenses to basically any pair of cohabiting adults for tax and social purposes.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
The Republicans pay lip service to small government, fiscal responsibility, and strong family, but often act in ways conter to these ideals.
The Democrats pay lip service to civil liberties, social justice, and defending the "little guy", but often act in ways counter to these ideals.
The Libertarians pay lip service to freedom, but work for a society that is essentially a neo-fuedalism: the amont of power and rights you have is based on how much land you own and wealth you have. If you're not born to land, weath, and oppertunity-- well, sucks to be you, because there's no one to protect your freedom from those that have these forms of power.
The Greens pay lip service to enviornmental protection and social justice, but care more about ideological purity than the actual results of their actions. Thus, their actions often have results that are clearly counter to their aims, but because they're right dammit they do them anyway. They care more about being ideologically correct than about making a real difference for good.
Choosing a political party is just a matter of deciding who's lies are prettier and more appealing.
I would love a party that was fiscally responsible, beleived in personal freedom, social justice, enviornmental responsibility, supported small buisiness, supported real family values (i.e. NOT including "hatred" and "intolerance" and "close-mindedness"), was anti-corruption in government and business and supported government that did what was absolutely neccesary for a strong society, but no more than that. I doubt I will ever see such an animal. (well, one may come along that pays lip service to all these things, but more than that? Not bloody likely.)
4. Your brain considers every item that is compatible with the majority of its information in a given subject area to be correct and every item that is contradictory to its information to be incorrect. As a result, the brain has no internal way to know which items of its information are correct representations of the real world and which are not.
Yes, we do have an internal way to know which items are correct representations of the real world. It's an epistomological philosophy called science, and though it is a slow process requiring rigor and mental discipline, it works quite well. In fact, I would say it is the only way to have any certainty in knowledge.
The fruits of science are still fairly limited. We jave a fairly large pool of knowledge concerning chemistry and physics; we know a little less about biology; and we know almost nothing of sociology and psychology (outside of a few biological facts and a few statistics).
How do I know there is a large congruence between science and the real world? The results of that scientific knowledge are everywhere, in airplanes and longer life and jam and computers and interplanetary exploration and jam (more jam, perhaps) and big fuckoff buildings and psychological manipulation by politicians ("spin").
Granted, the fundamental basis of science is that scientific knowledge is subject to subtle or radical change as new evidence surfaces; but, we do have a fundamental tool for objectively gaining knowledge about our universe.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
History repeatedly shows that the more government tries to get involved, the worse things get. Even in US history we see how politicians have led to death, poverty and addictions.
"History shows" is a very broad statement. You're generalizing thousands of years of humanity. It's a statment that covers thousands of governments and billions of people. If you're trying to convince me of something, don't start with the authoritative-sounding "history shows" phrase. Thinktanks and pundits often use this tactic - it's flashy but not convincing.
When alcohol was illegal, the mob became the new provider. When cocaine was made illegal, the gangs created crack and cocaine blends for what used to be a positive medicinal product (ask any european dentist).
This is a statement about supply/demand and economics. It's not enough to generalize from these examples to all government intervention. The particulars of both the "drug war" and prohibition are very relevant - race, social mood, economics and political pandering all play roles. All are relevant to an understanding of these policy failures.
Taking hard earned wealth from people you don't know with the threat of a gun or jail is not what I consider emotionally-stable or even emotionally-available. Supporting either party offers just that -- free money by forcing others to part with it against their will.
Let's parse this:
Taking hard earned wealth from people you don't know...
How does "knowing" or "not knowing" somebody impact the ethics of wealth-taking? If I know you and rob you, is that ethically "better" than we being strangers? Maybe your issue is the "wealth-taking".
All governments tax, all governments take wealth from the nation's citizens and all governments usually tax with an implicit threat of jail. There's a reason for that - some people don't want to pay. But are all taxes immoral? If you answer yes, then you see governments as intrinsicly immoral or else you have a vision of human nature that isn't supported by fact.
is not what I consider emotionally-stable or even emotionally-available.
Ah - we must submit to your standard of emotional stability. No thanks.
Absolutely. Professor John Lott discovered that when more guns are sold to peaceful citizens, crime drops.
To use an overused example, imagine that you are a criminal and you have two towns to choose to rob a house from. One town lets anyone have a gun for any reason. The other town bans guns entirely. Which town will you go to?
Gun regulations give criminals the equivalent of a sign that says "Rob Me!" in your yard.
Anyone who'se ever done engineering in a group becomes rapidly familiar with the lack of a line between the social and objective dimensions of problem solving.
Someone makes a mistake, and they feel they need to defend it even though mistakes are an inevitable part of the process and everyone makes them, no matter how ingenious. Someone thinks of a plan, or their friend does, and they feel they need to defend it and advocate it even if they see a better plan, just because we are not only solving a problem, but constantly acting out our instinctive human drama in everything we do.
Political parties and movements and religions especially leverage this trait of human behavior extensively.
Orwell made his career writing about the phenomenon. Doublethink is a popular phrase these days, but many people are still surprised to learn the central concept underpinning it: that people can fervently believe something they know not to be true. They can actually do the work of cleaning up the broken glass while demanding you apologize for suggesting the window is broken... and they can earnestly believe it.
This leads to another great Orwell quote - a prediction of the future: "Imagine a boot stepping on a human face, forever."
Tired of Political Trolls? Opt Out!
At one point, everyone "needing" the product will use/go to the last few locations still allowing it, and these locations will reap so much money and wealth from these products that they just won't have any reason to ban them too.
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
I think putting some restrictive limits on the campaign spend would also be in the nations interest as it would allow self financed candidates to enter and campaign and get a chance to their policies out to the voters without breaking the bank.
I agree there needs to be campaign finance reform. Absolutely. This is a complex issue.
As there is a direct correlation between a successful election and the amount of money spent on a campaign, a self-financed election would allow the rich to get elected, while leaving the middle-class and poor out in the cold (figuratively and literaly). There needs to be a system that allows anyone with popular support to get elected.
Personally, I think the "party" system is broken. If we didn't label someone a "democrat" or "republican," they'd have to run on their ideas and ideals, and not on a built-in group of dupes, suckers, and sheep.
The only problem with that is, it would require the general public to think critically, and (as this article pointed out) that seems about impossible.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
It's not news that strong partisans are, well, partisan. The thing to notice here is that the article subject is repeating a meme that is a Republican talking point, getting used more and more desperately to hide rampant criminality. No, both parties do NOT run the K street project, and the last time there was a Democratic administration, the federal deficit SHRANK, and we were more or less at peace with the world.
The real problem is when organizations that have traditionally been neutral arbiters, holding people to truth in public discussions, are taking sides.
That's why little-d democracy in the US is in such serious trouble lately. It's virtually impossible to get out messages which highlight cases where the Republican talking points are flat-out lies ("nobody could have anticipated" New Orleans levee troubles, planes used as terror weapons, energy companies rigging markets, etc). Lies that are shaking the constitutional foundation of the country ... rather unlike anything that's attributable to the Democrats.
Partisanship isn't so much an issue. The problem is the extermination of honesty in traditionally non-partisan (not bipartisan) circles.
I live with the reality that exists or has been demonstrated, rather than with fantasy. We've seen what happens without government. Somalia. Afganistan. The Middle East, before Europe attempted to assert itself.
With no government, people attempt to take power. It happens in the form of dictatorships, theocracies, 'councils' of those looking to gain, etc.
Anarchy is great, in theory. Unfortunately as soon as you add people to the mix, then you have disagreements, which leads to fights. On a large enough scale you develop factions, which lead to direct conflict, action, and violence. And, you keep getting stuck with some form of organization, which is government.
I'd rather have a potentially just government that actually has laws to protect me from other individuals and from itself, even if it doesn't do the best job of it, than to have no law.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Please cite an example of racism in the Republican party.
Stromm Thurmond, an UNREPENTANT racist. Robert Byrd left the KKK long ago and has since stopped being a racist.
A) How is staunch defense of a woman's bodily sovereignty and therefore abortion "exploitation of the black vote"
B) How is supporting EQUAL RIGHTS for homosexuals "exploitation of the black vote"
C) Democrats are not against "religious expression", they're against mingling government and religion, which is expressly forbidden by the First Ammendment to the Constitution of the United States.
Now watch out - you may learn that Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, etc have been lying to you:
I, and no othe democrat who is taken seriously by other democrats, think you shouldn't be allowed to go worship whatever deit(y/ies) you want to on your own time and your own dollar. However it is expressly forbidden for government to promot religion A over religion B, religion over non-religion, non-religion over religion, etc. Government must remain neutral.
That means a teacher cannot lead students in prayer "no school prayer", however if a student wishes to spontaneously pray on their own they can do so in school if they are not disruptive (ie loud) - and we democrats will defend their right to do so agaisnt certain principles who go to far into being the PC-police.
That means you cannot have the Ten Commandments posted on government property (a myriad of postings from different religions in one spot doesn't help this - how do you represent non-religious people who therefore have no document)
That means laws cannot be passed just for religious reasons.
That means the government cannot give money to religious groups (it is impossible to do so equally even if the humans involved in allocating the funds weren't inherently biased individuals)
That mans "Intelligent Design" doesn't belong in science class since it isn't science - it belongs in study of world religions, and that "study of world religions" class cannot be a sham that is only teaching ID (like that one school in california tried to pull)
As for the success of reagan's economic policies i need only present the following
http://www.democrats08.com/media/us_deficit0.gif
I happen to think that the government should have absolutely nothing to do with marriage, which is a religious institution, and should instead offer "social partnership" licenses to basically any pair of cohabiting adults for tax and social purposes.
couldn't agree more
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
From the article summary:
A new study monitored brain activity of partisans; they shun logic and use emotional processing centers to justify their candidate's contradictory statements.
From your post:
Look, here's the first thing to understand. In a political debate, facts don't matter. Read that again. Facts don't matter. This has been shown over and over again. People respond to values, not facts. Progressives lose because they argue the facts.
I see; the problem with conservatves is they never use facts, dammit!
Does ANYONE else see some kind of connection here?
People are not as afraid or as disconnected as you think - especially so nowdays thanks to blogs. And that goes for both conservatives and liberals alike.
It is only when you admit both sides are capabile of rational thought and logical argumnets that you can start to make headway in some kind of realistic progress in unison.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You just described trying to buy alcohol in Arkansas. It's laughable to make it nearly impossible to legally purchase a product that is legal to own, legal to transport and legal to consume.
It's not a lie. It's the truth with lossy compression.
It's called the confirmation bias, and it happens to everyone. Even me.
Whenever you see information, your brain is hard-wired to interpret that information as best fits your current conclusions, and to forget or ignore parts of that information that don't fit as well.
Once you know the confirmation bias is there, however, you can more easily see yourself doing it, and perhaps mitigate the effects more easily. But it's still there!
Computer Go: Writing Software to Play the Ancient Game of Go
Some Christians, for example, might have a visceral reaction to the presentation of logical or scientific errors in the Bible; but at the same time, a non-believer would have a similar response to a believer's unshakable claim to a real spiritual presence in his or her life. In both cases the believer and non-believer are faced with information that threatens their ideas of the constitution of reality. But they're more than ideas. These beliefs are part of the fabric of each person's world -- they are the frame for experiencing and understanding space and time. Threats to faith (in God's existence or his absence) threaten one's sense of well-being.
Political beliefs, which may or may not be an extension of religious ones, are also a part of one's ideas about the structure of the world. For some, religious belief might tell them how they relate to God and the cosmos and the individuals they know in their lives. Political beliefs, though, tell them how institutions relate to one another and to individuals. Most likely, these political beliefs are an extension of religious ones, but they don't have to be. Threats to political beliefs like threats to political ones mess with people's core concepts of how the world is put together.
But this makes sense. A visceral reaction to contradictory information is a natural and even helpful response most of the time. You can't go around constantly re-evaluating what you believe and then changing your course of action -- that will make you completely ineffectual or crazy.
There's a reason large cities in texas have such low violent crime rates compared to other parts of the country.
A larger %age of the citizens have guns. on them.
By gun regulationists reasoning texas should have a HIGHER rate of violent crime.
Shadus
Remember that while they do use the same name, they are not the same people, don't have the same goals nor the same views on the world.
The Republican party was once standing at the left of the United States political scene. This is no longer the case, and there is no way in hell you can assimilate the current neo-con republican party with the humanitarian progressive republican party of the 19th century.
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
That's logical. If you only sell guns to people who'd never misuse them, of course crime will drop (or at the very least, not go up). However, ensuring sale of firearms only to such people, and ensuring that such firearms will never be stolen and misused is impossible. The statistical arguments for both sides conflict to be honest.
The only thing that blows about that model is that going through multiple municipalities sucks. As a real life example, the city of Carbondale, IL does not allow you to pssess a pistol (and it might even extend to all firearms, I'm not sure and can't be bothered to look it up right now) within its limits. Fair enough, but what if you're driving though from one town that allows it, to another? Well, you can get fined/arrested for breaking a municipal ordinance. That's the only city in the state that I'm aware of that has this law, but imagine if every city had a entire catalog of different laws than its neighbors. It would be a bitch to figure out all the different stupid laws municipalities like to pass, and then remember them when you visit each one. Stupid shit like what time the liquor store closess is no big deal, but when it comes down to vehicle codes and weapons possession laws, they can vary greatly.
Slashdot is proof that Sturgeon's Law applies to mankind.
Miami has the highest crime rate in the country, and has for some time. And the largest amount of guns per person. Highest murder rate, everything. There are plenty of arguments on both sides for this debate.
"Partisan".
Republicans are the only people who use this word, they and newscasters. It's a lovely thing, because they only use it as a term for people who call them liars.
As for the "balanced" folk, the newscasters, the majority of Americans: the truth, reality, the right answers, call it what you will, is not determined by looking at the "left" and the "right" and finding with certitute that reality lies somewhere in the middle, with liars hedged all about it on "both" "sides".
There are two sides in today's reality, the rightists with Bush as their titular head, and everyone else in the world, which the rightists term the "left".
That's why the Democrats are such a mess. They're absolutely everyone else that isn't Bush. They aren't a side, they're the majority of us, the contrarians to Bush's view of reality.
The rightists are monomaniacs, magical thinkers, borderline psychopathic personalities. They can't change their minds; it's not a concept they can understand. They have the truth, and everyone else can go to hell. Evidence, science, exposure, error, nothing can reach them. They lack empathy and think it a strength.
Bush and his co-thinkers have been wrong on the environment, tax cuts, terrorism, civil rights, causus belli, voting machines, the Swift Boat and Murtha smears, privacy, education, regulation, disaster relief, military reform, anti-missle tech, reactivating nuke weapon building, the UN, diplomacy, the powers of the executive, secret prisons, torture flights, torture, kidnapping, lying about same, secret executions, unpersoning American citizens in secret, being wrong about damned near every terrorist arrest and imprisonment, having the JAG's turn against him, the CIA turn against him, finally the military turn against him, the destruction of our preparedness for war, hiding personal military misconduct, wilderness preservation, the FCC, the internet(s), the Clinton's stealing furniture (Bush at least admitted they were wrong aboutthat, but who heard the retraction?, redistricting out of turn, bribery, treason in outing CIA ops for revenge, destroying the budget through tax cuts, borrowing from everywhere, on and on and on. He recognizes no error, no mistakes. At the "Q&A" last Monday, a student asked him why he cut education and student loans. He look confused, and denied he did it. Magical thinking. He can lie and not think it lying. This is the worst kind of madness. He enjoys lying. He thinks it artful. He laughs out loud as he fabricates, badly, on the fly.
There is nothing like this list of crimes against sanity on the "other" side. The truth is not in the middle, and both "partisan" sides are not equal in mendacity. The war in Iraq will cost two trillion at the end.We're broke. He's lying. All the 'pubs, even McCain, are lying even to this minute. The "other side" still thinks that they are playing a gentleman's game, as I watched the Alito hearings. They just don't understand what they are up against.
It's easy to play the fallacy of the false middle. It makes one seem wise, and has the advantage of relieving one of the hard work of making judgements based on actual knowledge. Reporters of the new school use it constantly. Thusly:
"Bush said today that the sky is green. Some Democratic spokesmen have said that the President is not being straight with the American people. Here are three talking heads to tell you why they are wrong."
All reporting thereforward is based on the Green Sky world, with occasional fillips of quotes from "partisans" saying that he might not be right. Entire cable networks dedicate there time to Green Sky stories, and it becomes the truth, inextricable. Later, geniuses talk about how both the Blue Sky and Green Sky "proponents" have not told the truth, and that they are addicted to their positions and their combat.
But the sky is fucking BLUE. It's not blue-green.
So your proof that Reaganomics didn't help the economy is based on a single indicator-- the national deficit. I'll play along. I looked on your chart and I noticed that the budget deficit was higher when Reagan left office. However, it was growing immensely when he came in at the same time interest rates were shicklingly high. It became a surplus when Clinton came into office. That was a laudable feat, but that fact that our defense and national security were gutted during that time span makes it suspect. In any case, it doesn't prove that supply-side economics doesn't work-- it proves that Clinton adopted those policies for his own, under a different name.
http://www.house.gov/jec/fiscal/tx-grwth/reagtxct/ reagtxct.htm
Following this paper, Clinton enacted tax cuts and the economy skyrocketed. At least, until the Internet Bubble burst in 1999-2000. Notice the steep dropoff during the last year of his presidency. Oh wait, that's supposed to be Bush's fault! My bad.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Culture, economic status, drugs, desperation, etc, have far more to do with violent crime than how many citizens carry guns.
No, that's an excellent SCOTUS nominee: regardless of his beliefs and attitudes on a subject, a Supreme Court Justice is supposed to determine what the LAW says on a subject. Umpires can't take sides, regardless of their personal beliefs & attitudes.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
Criminal's also like to avoid houses with dogs. Let's give the dogs guns!
There's no place like ~/
You know guys, Secrity is right. Let's just throw in the towel and call it a day. No way are we ever gonna get anywhere with this whole "limited govt thing." Deep down, all people really like Big Brother. Ours is a lost cause:'(
Support the FairTax
"the facts don't lie."
And just where do you get these 'facts'? According to the Congressional Budget Office and Census Bureau, inflation adjusted wages have risen (1973-2003) for all income deciles; even the lowest 10%. When you look at overall income the picture only gets better. The bottom quintile of US workers in 2003 was making 28% more (in inflation adjusted purchasing parity) than they did in 1967. Perhaps they could be better off with wiser economic policy, but the poor are certainly not getting poorer.
I don't know why this meme is so pervasive; probably just the lack of any real perspective. For example, my mother and her four siblings were raised in a home smaller than the one I share with just my wife, and her parents were considered solidly middle-class. I own a home that was built in 1947. It was originally ~1000 sq ft, almost exactly the median size for homes built in ~1950. In 2003 the median new home was over 2200 sq ft. The cost hasn't risen much either; about 3% per sq ft. Folks are making more disposable income and blowing it on bigger homes.
46 & 2
The case of slavery doesn't fit here. Suppose Town S has slavery, while Town N does not. In a free market of laws, someone disagreeing with Town S's policy could simply go to Town N. But of course, the people living in Town S who have a problem with slavery are not free to go to Town N, because, well... they're slaves.
A free market is all very well, provided that all participants are free. If some are slaves, then that market is definitely not free.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
There's a reason large cities in texas have such low violent crime rates compared to other parts of the country.
This presupposes that large cities in Texas have low violent crime rates. They don't.
The three largest cities in Texas would be (in order) Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio.
All three have higher rates (as of 2002) of Murder, Rape, and Aggravated Assault than NYC, and Houston and Dallas have higher Robbery rates than NYC as well.
NYC has some of the stricter gun control laws in the US.
And in response to the other poster I saw who replied to you, I don't know what Miami gun saturation is, but the violent crime rates are no where near the worst in US big cities.
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
I'm currently reading "Moral Politics," an interesting if repetitive book. It has been sufficiently repetitive that I've take a break and am reading the New Testament to square it against the author's points. I'm currently only mid-Luke, so my picture isn't re-complete. But I can state a few preliminary conclusions: (things in quotes are paraphrased extractions from memory)
Christ spoke out against immorality a few times, and most of those were within the context of marriage and divorce.
Christ was quite clearly against moral accounting by Man. "Vengence is mine, sayeth the Lord", "Forgive seventy times seven"
Christ was against making rule for others' behavior. "point out the speck in his eye, ignoring the log in your own"
But it seems to me that most of Christ's criticism was reserved for the Pharisees and Sadducees, in other words, "the establishment," the wealthy self-righteous who looked down on "those sinners."
One can take this however you want. I wish merely to point out the irony that those who wrap themselves in the flag and set themselves upon the Bible as a pedestal are acting as the Pharisees and Sadducees did. This is IMHO a clearly inconsistent position.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Firearms are illegal in the District of Columbia. And yet, somehow, criminals seem to have no problem with obtaining them and shooting each other.
;)
I've always found it interesting that shootings in DC don't make the news nearly as often as shootings in locations where guns aren't already illegal. Almost as if the news organizations don't want to admit that an outright ban doesn't work
Unfortunately many criminals have poor impulse control and critical reasoning... it's doubtful that they would consider something like this when it would mean having to travel somewhere else and delay their crime.
Virtually no criminal expects to be caught, which removes many of the things that rational people would see as deterrants (ie the death penalty).
I'd make a crappy criminal.
I wasn't aware people robbing stores deserved the death penalty, nor was I aware you were appointed head of vigilante justice. The right thing to do is fork over the money if he's got a gun, not try to shoot him and hope you don't miss. Money is only money.
Studies show that where politics involve more than 2 sides, people must actually justify their arguments rather than bash and demonize the other side, as there is no simple "other side" to blame for everything wrong.
Ofcourse, this is utterly unimagineable for people living in the US, and I will be flamed into oblivion being named labeled both Neocon, Liberal and what not.
Since I'll probably get bashed however I put this, let me put it this way: There's no politics or democracy in the US, only corrupt government and manipulation of the public. There, I said it. I have karma to burn.
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
Which is the exact reason gun laws don't work, only the law-abiding obey them. Do you really think that someone that has decided to rob or murder is concerned about breaking a gun law?
It's called the confirmation bias, and it happens to everyone. Even me.
But it doesn't happen to me! I'm different, and always view things based solely on logic. Mmm... It doesn't happen to me. It doesn't happen to me. I'm purely rational, never emotional. Oh yeah, that's the stuff. Right in the pleasure centers... It doesn't happen to me...
The enemies of Democracy are
It isn't just up to the police. You need to provide real oppertunities for people. Who is more likely to rob you, a poor crack addict or someone with a full-time job who isn't blowing their money on drugs? People need hope and jobs.
And are you so ignorant that you don't realize most black people are practicing Christians who are against abortion and homosexuality?
.they're in JAIL because we CAUGHT THEM.
Being "against" them and being "against someone's right to have one/be one" are two completely seperate things in the minds of MANY MANY people. There are many democrats who support choice but don't personally support abortion. I personally support choice fully and think it's the only responsible option in certain situations; but i believe that we should to a better job in preventing those situations through comprehensive sex education.
Our national defense and national security forces were not "gutted" under clinton as you assert - they were drawn down from wartime (gulf war I) levels and cold war levels to more piece time levels. MANY [if not most] of the cuts were made at the request of the pentagon because they were receiving funds they weren't spending. Furthermore the "the more money we give to defense the better it'll be" attitude is simply wrong. Our defense spending is woefully uneffecient to the point of almost being criminal. Eisenhower warned of the military-industrial complex and it's ability to bilk the public coffers and to manipulate public opinion and we IGNORED HIM. Defense spending needs to be made VASTLY VASTLY more efficient and then we can reduce it.
My brother served in the army under Clinton. He had no complaints. Oh and there was this entire bombing of the World Trade Center in clintons first year, what happen to those peopel? oh right..
The assertion that Clinton "gutted" the military is PURE BS.
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
Did he?:
Jesus, did I just hear you say, "the right thing to do is to fork over the money if he's got a gun"? By some very temporally localized definition of the word "safe", that might be the safest course of action, but how can you say that's the right thing to do? It's certainly the wrong thing for the criminal to do. Why is it the right thing to do to give up your property (or anything else)?
This isn't a matter of execution for robbery or vigilante justice. Follow the logic (try to turn off that emotion center from the article):
1) Stranger demands your property/cash, and has no right to do so.
2) You say, "no", which is about the only reasonable response to such a request.
3) Robber pulls gun, threatens your life in order to convince you to say yes.
4) Your response to the unlawful threat of lethal force by this criminal is pretty much unbounded.
If you decided to shoot him in order to stop this threat of unlawful lethal force, and succeed in doing so, you've done nothing wrong. The important distinction here is that you are not shooting someone for trying to take $50 from you. You're shooting them in order to stop the unlawful threat on your life, to defend yourself against lethal force. If they hadn't brought the lethal force to the table, then a simple "no" would have sufficed to protect one's property.
11*43+456^2
This reminds me of a quote from a TV show I saw when I was a kid:
guy calling into radio show with southern accent: "You know, if everyone carried around a sawed-off shutgun, there'd be a lot less crime!"
DJ's response: "Yeah, and a lot less people too, dork!"
To paraphrase - you're not going to stop criminals by giving everyone guns. You're just going to create "stronger" criminals - and a lot more people will die, criminals and non-criminals included.
Based on your example, I expect all the criminals robbing the town without guns, will have gotten their guns from the other town. They'll build up a veritable collection of guns, and once the town without guns increases their security (either through police, technology, or guns) then do you think the criminals are going to stop? No, they're gonna say, "Well... this town over here has a bunch of security now. This other town over here has no security, but i know a lot of'em have guns. But I bet I have *more* guns. Yeah, let's go boys!" So now, instead of some material goods being stolen, people are getting killed, maimed, what have you.
Look, the point of gun control is not to punish responsible citizens. The point is to make it harder for criminals to get guns.
I want to tie this back in to cigarettes, but my views on cigarettes are skewed due to public health care. Guns on the other hand create the same issues universally.
Money is only money
No, money is not only money. Money is a store of labor -- my labor. Laboring is part of why we live.
If someone decides they want to threaten me, on my property, and take from me, I will teach them the lesson of using forcing aggressively. I am fully in support of using force defensively on your own property to repel an attack, an intruder or any criminal. If they think they can take what is mine, they have another thing coming.
There is no difference to me between a thief, a rapist, a murderer or an arsonist. My body is my property, my land is my property and my business is my property. If my property is harmed directly by someone for bad reasons, I will defend my property completely.
Gun laws only make it more difficult for a criminal to get a gun if they don't have time to plan. So instead of getting a gun to kill a guy, they beat him with a baseball bat, stab him with a knife, or heck, shoot him with a crossbow.
There is no difference to me between a thief, a rapist, a murderer or an arsonist.
It is this kind of thinking that led to the death penalty for thieves back in medieval times (or maybe Dark Ages, not sure of the exact time frame). That led to greatly increased murder rates--after all, if you were going to be killed anyway if you got caught, you might as well kill the people trying to catch you. They can't kill you deader than they were already going to...
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
I agree that one of the major problems in politics is that observable facts are not used in the decisions making process. The root of the problem is not that the facts are ignored but that no one actually knows what the facts are and the party that controls the US government is not interested in finding them out.
Take the decision to go to war with Iraq, for example. We had the "fact" that Iraq was involved in 9/11, the "fact" that Iraq had WMD, the "fact" that Iraq intended to give these WMD to Al Qaeda to be used against the USA, the "fact" that the USA would be welcomed as liberators, the "fact" that as soon as Saddam Hussien was out of power Iraq would become a prosperous and stable democracy, the "fact" that democracy would ooze across the borders of Iraq and cause the entire Middle East to become stable and properous and democratic, etc.
The problem, as I see it, is that one party (the Republicans) controls at least two of the three branches of government and that the leaders of that party (Bush, Cheney, etc.) have no interest in using government resources to actually find out what the facts are. In the lead-up to the Iraq war, the Bush administration devoted no resources to providing the American people with a careful fact based analysis of what WMD Iraq actually had. Instead, the American people had to decide, based only on raw emotion, whether they trusted the Bush administration's "secret" evidence that Iraq had WMD along with the Bush administrations other claims.
This is still the situation. For example, when it comes to the decision of how long the USA should maintain troops in Iraq, the American people are faced with a similar dilemna. The Bush administration claims that 100,000+ troops are needed in Iraq to prevent the "terrorists" from "winning". The Bush administration has not provided any scientific proof based on obserable facts as to what effect the American troops are having in Iraq or what effects decreasing troop levels would have. There are reasons why having maintaining troop levels would be beneficial and there are reasons why decreasing troop levels would be beneficial.
Without a detailed study it is not possible to know what outcomes would be observed with a substantial reduction in troop levels. The Bush administration has not, however, shown any interest in actually doing such a fact based scientific study and, as a result, the American people are still put in a situation where they have to evaluate possible outcomes based only on whether they trust the Bush administration at a raw emotional level.
One reason why there are so many polarized ideals is due to the eradication of The Fairness Doctrine. There will never be a moderate position that is truly moderate in the United States; there will never be equitible debate on a grand scale in the media, until the Fairness Doctrine is reinstated.
In 1987 Reagan destroyed this precious aspect of democracy, which performed two very important things: it acknowledged that holders of valuable broadcast licenses had a duty to report news of interest to their constitutients, and it also gave citizens a right to peititon to have their side of a story heard in the media. When Reagan shot down this law, he paved the way for the new breed of media we see now, where editorial is intermixed with journalism, and we have 24-hour propaganda networks and extremist talk radio. This is why we now have a highly politically polarized populace who is incapable of recognizing 'facts.'
Nothing will change. Nothing. Until the Fairness Doctrine is reinstated. Every other attempt to alter the current course of corporate-dominated political policy will fail until there is a means by which more than one side gets a chance to air their issues in a fair manner.
People really need to understand this. It's THAT simple. It's all about the Fairness Doctrine. You can't organize an opposition party when the media has an interest in discrediting you. You can't even talk about important issues when the media won't report them. You can't create your own extremist broadcast network to counter another extremist broadcast network -- that doesn't work. The mainstream media must be forced to revert back to responsible journalism and giving equal time to opposing points of view. Without the Fairness Doctrine, nothing will change, and nothing else matters.
I'm in favor of making getting guns inconvenient, but LESS inconvenient than acquiring them illegally. People with a legitmate purpose can put up with the process-- assuming that you grant that the state is just enough to have a monopoly on force, then you can also grant that they have a legitimate interest in regulating firearms. Sometimes I feel like the NRA likes to gloss over the fact that for some kinds of weapon, YES, they are only designed to KILL PEOPLE.
Your little snipe about being a Democrat undermines your argument, rhetorically speaking. Didn't you RTFA?
Your theory in a nutshell: "the good people only use guns at the right time, and only the bad people use them for bad things". I don't really want to debate that statement, as that's a philosophical and moral framework, not a question about the effect of guns.
... then it's a win."
Here are facts: It's undeniable that a substantial fraction of the people who use guns are 18 or under. It's undeniable that the likelihood of someone dying is greater in a gunfight than in a knifefight. It's undeniable that guns carry with them risks like improper use, mistaken identity, and use by unauthorized persons such as children. And it's undeniable that Great Britain, which does not permit individual gun ownership, has long had a much lower homicide rate than the US. Kids with guns, fights turned deadly, higher homicide rate? The facts don't entirely support your proposition that "if you allow guns to be sold to anyone,
The debate over gun control is not fundamentally fact-based, it is philosophy-based, and it often tends toward cultural issues ("are we defend-ourselves-with-a-gun type people or not?").
Utter complete crap. If you are confronting an armed robber in your house after dark, you'll likely be dead long before the police arrive. There are a few "wrecking crews" operating in Houston right now. They've killed a few families. If they come to your house and you have access to a weapon and a phone, you're gonna call the police instead of attempting to stop the guys raping and killing your family? WTF?
This sig kills fascists.
In the US, we have all kinds of issues and debates being trolled to us by the media (abortion, immigration, gun laws, drug laws, think of the children, etc.) that we get distracted by all of this. This leaves very few people to actually keep an eye on the politicians, the lobbyists, and the corporations. While we heatedly debate the finer points of abortion, those in power are free to redirect the resources of the country to their friends and themselves. This includes both dems and reps. It is not partisan or political. Maybe they don't all do it, but the temptation is there.
"Teleporting Rodents with D-Cell Battery Displacement" theory -- IgnoramusMaximus (692000)
First of all, there are way more than two political parties. Thus, there are way more than two "sides", which most people ignorantly arguing politics fail to realize/acknowledge.
Second, the adversarial system is what's crushing the efficacy of our political system. With two major parties that have passed a great deal of legislation to keep it exclusively two major parties, we've set up a system that "us" vs. "them". The main problem with that is at any given point in time, about half of the people involved want the system to fail, so they can get their people in office. Democrats want Bush to fail just as much as Republicans wanted Clinton to fail (speaking in generalities, of course).
Both parties scream bloody murder at each other in order to scare people in to voting for them, if for no other reason than to make sure "the other side" doesn't win. Take any major issue in the past 20-30 years and measure as objectively as possible the change since the beginning of the issue. Have abortion rights changed significantly since Roe vs. Wade? No. Has Social Security collapsed? No. Have taxes gone up under both Republican and Democratic supervision? Yes.
For all of their shouting about the "crisis" of this or that, we're just fine. To the average American in their routine life, not a whole lot has changed as a result of any political action.
So stop shouting about how "they" are going to ruin everything, and start figuring out how to work with whoever IS in office to help them make the best choices.
the KillerB
This is just an instance of too much government creating the problems it says we need more government and more laws to solve.
The only reason we have to pay for someone else's substance addiction problem is because the government forces us to do so. Solution: No more tax-funded health care for treatment of addictions. If some members of society sympathize with the addict and want to help them, they can donate their own money to appropriate charities. The problem then belongs to the person who created it or to people who voluntarily want to help them. No more effects on unconsenting third parties, no more need for laws prohibiting it.
If the substances the person is consuming is harmful, then there will be consequences inherent in the activity - we don't need laws to create them.
You "forgot" an important example, but that's almost certainly either because it doesn't neatly fit into your preconceived notions, or because your history classes ignore it. The example is the large parts of Spain that were organized in Anarcho-syndicalist collectives during the Spanish Civil War. Orwell went to Spain a Socialist but once there, found he respected the Anarchists (Anarcho-syndicalists) more because of their ability to actually get things done while the Republicans (different meaning there and then than it has now in the USA), Communists, and Socialists bickered over politics.
You cited some examples of what happens in a "without government" situation (and I don't necessarily agree with that assessment). I'll remind you that Mussolini, Pol Pot, Stalin, and somebody Godwin prohibits me from mentioning were all able to do the horrible things they did because they used the power of governments. Would it be fair for me to say we've seen what happens when there is a government, citing these examples, and conclude that governments just don't work, except in theory?
FWIW, I'm not an anarchist, but I just hate seeing the same ol' lame authoritarian apologist arguments against anarchism (whether it be anarcho-capitalism, communist anarchism, anarcho-syndicalism, or any other variety) parroted. One who believes anarchy can work is no more naïve than one who believes government can work.
"It is nice to know that the computer understands the problem. But I would like to understand it too." --Eugene Wigner
And this is where a big part of the argument falls apart; if the mugger/robber isn't threatening you with immediate, lethal force, your justification for up and shooting him dead is not complete.
Otherwise, where do you draw the line? Someone with a baseball bat could be lethally dangerous; do you kill him? How about someone intentionally sideswiping your car on the freeway? Can you shoot him too?
I'm not a gun control fanatic. I believe that guns should be regulated at least as much as cars, and there should be a separate insurance category for gun ownership (as it is with cars; I don't agree that homeowner's insurance with a gun rider is the same). Having said that, I also believe that non-felons should be allowed to own guns; I don't have the moral/legal/ethical authority to deny anyone anything categorically.
I could have said more, but this should be enough to garner flames from both sides...
While I have no problem with (and encourage and teach) self-defense, "planting criminals" who "harm" your property is a serious crime. You do not get to be judge, jury, and executioner if some punk kid eggs your car, or even tries to steal it.
And you'd quite possibly get killed.
Whatever cash you lose is probably less than than the attorney fees plus lost wages you spend in court after killing the guy, or in the hospital if he wounds you - or your lost wages in the grave if he kills you.
If you're in a situation where repeated robbery is a threat to your ability to feed and house yourself, it may be worth it to fight. But in general, fighting an armed robber, who has the massive advantage of determining the time, place, and circstances of the encounter, is not the wise choice.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood