It would be interesting to change policy to make sure that a president is always considered under oath during press conferences. Then we could get them for even more interesting perjury like "We're winning the war in Vietnam" and "No, we're not selling weapons to our enemies to fund rebels in illegally." Put them under oath for the big stuff and see what comes out.
Then again, the result would probably be no more press conferences...
... be committed to philosophical naturalism. This means they won't typically admit as evidence observations that seem contrary to their naturalistic world view, and consider if wrong for any policy planning to do so. As you might imagine, to theists and other supernaturalists, that view is excessive and leads to other classes of policy errors. (Hmmm... I'm having trouble thinking of an example of this, though. Anyone?)
It would be very interesting to see an example, I agree. Given that science can't really investigate the supernatural (except inasmuch as it can debunk specific factual claims--a feature that most supernaturalists tend to get pissed off about), there isn't much they could do with observations that point toward the supernatural. In fact, I'm fairly convinced that the supernatural is, by definition, impossible to support or investigate, so I'd be hard pressed to come up with an example of a piece of evidence to point toward the supernatural to begin with.
What weirds me out is that nobody gets irritated at auto mechanics for going straight to naturalistic causes of car trouble. No discussion of evil spirits, possession, the alignment of the stars, etc. Even when they can't quite figure out what's wrong, they never think out of the box, and everybody gives them a pass for their obvious failure of imagination.
In general, lamp shades act as filters that attenuate certain bands. If you don't have a particular color frequency to begin with, a lamp shade isn't going to help you any. The problem with certain lighting isn't that it's "too white" but rather that there are some frequencies that just aren't there (at least, not in sufficient quantities). For example, if you start with a bulb that produces only green light, all the filters and shades in the world aren't going to get any red photons out of it.
You've spent an entire paragraph accusing everyone else of having absolutely no clue... but provided no indication that you do.
Actually, this started with me suggesting that random shit off of the Internet isn't the best way to figure out a relatively complex topic, especially when well vetted books on the subject are available. This stems from my observation that people who get their economics education from the aforementioned random shit do things like claim that the value of money should always go up (for no apparent reason) or that the Federal Reserve is a for-profit entity or that its books are never audited. Those discussions usually end up going off the deep end, ending with vague descriptions of conspiracies that are never articulated well enough to be sensible but which, for some reason, are more sensible than the obvious conclusion: fiat money works, and money of any sort works best for institutions that have a lot of it.
That's pretty much the definition of the Federal Reserve. They mint the coins, they print the cash, they number everything, and they control the interest rates at which they allow the US Gov't and the public to lease that coined money and printed cash. I know you're getting off on your rant but you're ignoring the rather obvious facts to do it.
The Fed is not for profit. Full stop. It has a rather unusual corporate structure involving private banks, but the private banks aren't running the show. That makes a pretty big difference. People throw around wild accusations about the Fed being some sort of money-hungry entity with huge profit motives, but they're never able to explain sensibly exactly how the people who actually make the decisions profit from them.
For as much as you're saying that nobody else has a clue you're certainly ignoring the concept of debt.
Please continue. How, exactly, is the availability of credit a problem? The misuse of debt financing certainly is, but that's a different matter entirely. Take that up with people who abuse credit cards or with your local congress-critter as he borrows money and spends it on silly things.
Well, except at the part where the bank and politicians work together to sign debt for everyone else. Just how far outside of the scope of reality do you prefer to be?
OK. Let's go a little bit deeper. Let's say (to use a wild example) that our glorious leaders decide to engage in expensive and ill-considered foreign adventurism. Let's ignore the fact that we were dumb enough to elect them for the moment. They issue bonds to pay for it. The Fed has no control over this fact. With or without the Fed and with or without fiat currency, those bonds are issued via auction on the open market--a market in which banks and the Fed are just another buyer (noting that last I checked, the Fed held just shy of 5% of our public debt). Depending on prevailing economic conditions, the Fed may or may not buy or sell bonds to tweak the money supply. The decision to do so is made by a board dominated by government appointees with no profit incentive either way. Make no mistake, the politicians are the driving force behind public debt, and they'd be doing it regardless of how the system is structured.
But a few extra $500 billion dollar spending bills on top of an already $13 trillion dollar debt just might make things a little more difficult for you, and a little easier for the bankers?
Take it up with Congress and the President. They're the ones borrowing the cash.
And just who signed the paperwork for those $500 billion dollar spending bills and that $13 trillion dollar debt?
The Treasury Department. Specifically, the Bureau of Public Debt. Note that the Federal Reserve is not to be found at that link destination.
Neither Japan nor Germany devolved into such an all out state of unrest and civil war in the times they were occupied after war. Occupation of a country and installation of a new government are common things after armed conflicts. A population that would rather kill their countrymen than build a nation with them is not.
Yeah, I can see how the Bush Administration couldn't possibly have seen this clusterfuck coming. Really. It's not like it was obvious to the rest of us who don't topple foreign governments for a living or anything.
Right, because being fully indoctrinated in following someone else's rigged game is precisely what I would want to do.
Well, it's just a simple observation of mine that practically everybody on/. I've talked to about the Federal Reserve system and fiat money haven't had a clue what they were talking about on matters of fact, much less interpretation of those facts. You have to understand the basics before you can even start to engage in meaningful debate on the topic, and it's clear that the people who promote videos like "The Money Masters" generally didn't do that. The number of quack armchair economists out there is stunning to me, especially when it becomes obvious that they're not well enough informed to even explain the basic workings of the banking system, much less engage in subtle debates about its implications. They're the lunatic creationists of the economic world.
Right, because it's such a huge conspiracy to think that world banks exist, or that their executives are at all interested in profit margins.
No, that's not particularly crazy. What's crazy is to think that for-profit banks somehow the puppet masters of the supply of the US dollar and that they're manipulating currency to keep the people poor. Yes, there's a tiny grain of truth to it, but the reality is not nearly that simple. The mere fact that banks make shitloads of money isn't enough to prove the conspiracy. If you can describe a system in which interest is earned and present discounted values are taken into account, banks can and will make lots of money off of it. It's not because they're pulling the strings through an international conspiracy of the Jews, Knights Templar, Illuminati, and Freemasons. It's because being a (well run) bank is a good gig, just like being a (well run) casino is. You position yourself where money is flowing, leverage yourself like crazy, hedge risk down to a minimal level and watch the money come rolling in. No conspiracy required.
Please. If you want to go through life just "making it" at the level which someone else has created for you that's your choice. Please don't bother the rest of us who aspire to something greater.
The Man isn't keeping you down. Not understanding our financial system might, but that's another matter. All I was pointing out to the grandparent poster is that if you're going to delve into the world of nutball conspiracy theories, you might want to get educated enough on the topic that you can critically evaluate their claims. The idea that what you find in a college level textbook is "indoctrination" while random crap you read on the Internet is gospel is not a good way to start your education in any topic. At least, I wouldn't want to hire a surgeon or lawyer who think so.
I know that a lot of Slashdotters think that because they can program a computer, they're smarter than everybody else. They can code, so they know more about economics than economists. They can code, so they know more about evolution than biologists. They can code, so they know more about medicine than doctors. All I'm suggesting is that people get their shit together before delving into nuanced debates on topics well outside their areas of expertise.
We enjoy more freedoms now than ever. We enjoy more transparency in government.
Your point is well taken, but it's also worth noting that the reason it's true is not because people were complacent about it being better than before, but rather because of that generation's subset of "whiners" complaining that it wasn't good enough.
While the Supreme Court is ruling that they should be commander-in-chief of the armed forces (intelligence gathering troops at the NSA in this case)...
No, they'd be ruling on what the executive is allowed to do as commander-in-chief. Somebody has to make that decision somewhere along the line, and the history of allowing leaders to decide on the extent of their own power is not a pretty one.
I guess I don't understand the wish for an all-powerful Supreme Court. I guess it gets around those messy elections with people choosing their leaders and governing themselves -- those can be inconvenient for some people.
Most of us just appreciate a judiciary that can hold the other branches accountable to the Constitution. WA lot of us just aren't thrilled with the idea that a wink and a promise is the only thing between the President and unlimited power.
Since most of what we know came from from the administration based on your thinking how do you even know if the program existed?
Ummm... by considering the motivations of the parties involved? Under which circumstances does the administration have incentive to lie and what would they be likely to say? Do you seriously think that those aren't meaningful considerations?
In historical terms, Bush's wiretaps and even Gitmo are positively tame. Washingon shot suspected British spies in his army on sight. Lincoln flat out suspended Habeas Corpus to deal with Confederate spies / terrorists. Wilson basically suspended the constitution for citizens of German descent during World War I, and Roosevelt broke the Constitution in so many ways that it cannot even really be enumerated.
I also think that comparing our "war" on terror to any of the above conflicts shows a significant lack of historical perspective.
If you're going to get into studying money and banking, you're probably better off reading about it in some economics and finance textbooks in the library anyway. I wouldn't bother with conspiracy theorist videos until I had a good grounding in the subject first.
I'd argue that this gives the federal government the ability to tax to pay for the things that are their job. The other option would be to change the constitution to match what we are doing. I'm a rule follower.
So, by writing that they have the right to lay taxes to do X, Y and Z, you're saying that by Z they meant "X and Y"? Why put Z in there at all, then? I'm not so sure that that's "rule following" as much as it is wishful parsing by somebody who doesn't trust government and wishes its powers were more limited. One may argue that by "and promote the general welfare" they actually meant to write nothing at all and it was just a funny slip of the pen, but I'm guessing that's probably not the case.
The Mass. Supreme Court used Lawrence as a basis to establish gay marriage in Mass.
The Mass. ruling cited Lawrence a number of times because the reasoning was similar, but the ruling was based on the Massachusetts Constitution, not the federal one. One would be hard pressed to argue that the Massachusetts ruling followed directly from Lawrence.
There's no way to say that the state has an interest in preventing polygamy when gay marriage is Constitutionally required to be legal. It's just a question of when.
That's a different question, though. Lawrence simply states that the state's moral disapproval, in the absence of a compelling state interest, does not constitute a constitutionally valid reason for infringing on the rights of a class of people. It doesn't necessarily follow that the state doesn't have a compelling interest in preventing polygamy (although I strongly suspect that it does not). If, according to the Massachusetts Constitution, banning gay marriage is unconstitutional, I suspect that banning polygamy is arguably unconstitutional as well, but it doesn't follow directly from Lawrence. Moreover, I still believe that Lawrence was the right decision, regardless of whether it opens the doors to other things that people see as icky. Ickyness and moral outrage are not a reasonable basis for the state to deny rights to a minority group. Frankly, that's why I'm not particularly comfortable with the government being in the marriage business in the first place.
Again, though, back to the topic at hand, there appears to be a strong conservative movement against a ruling that says that the state doesn't have the right to infringe upon the rights of a class of individual in the absence of a compelling state interest. Given that they're basically arguing to allow the state the power to make any arbitrary law it wants for no reason other than the whims of the legislature, it doesn't sound to me like this case supports your thesis that conservatives always come down on the side of increased freedom. The idea of "Rights and freedom for all and limited government power except inasmuch as it prevents us from beating up on our current favorite bogeyman" is not exactly the moral high ground.
Yes, I read it. Public schools can have any kind of speech at all at graduations, except no religion.
Yep. Pretty much. That's what happens when your government is set up to stay out of the religion business entirely. I'm sure that the people who are clamoring for mass prayer at graduations would change their tune the moment a valedictorian took time out of his speech to have everybody voluntarily kneel toward Mecca. Best to keep that can of worms tightly sealed.
And prayers must be prohibited by student speakers if the speeches are reviewed in advance. It's at least somewhat anti-freedom.
Well, you could frame it as "anti-freedom" or as a limit on government power (and the ability of private citizens to use the government's power). I tend to see it that way, mainly because if you're not in the Christian majority when everybody stands to start praying "voluntarily" it looks an awful lot like an exercise of government power and not a simple matter of freedom.
Public schools tend to be hostile toward (Christian) religion, but seem to have learned the rules over the years. I'll grant that the subject has been somewhat over-hyped. It wasn't nearly as easy to find examples as I thought.
I really don't buy into the idea that public schools are hostile toward Christianity any more than I buy into the general narrative of the embattled Christian majority against an onslaught of anti-religion whackos. The reality is that for every case you can come up with in which an overzealous teacher or administrator squelches a student's freedom to practice, I can probably come up with an even more egregious case of a school board trying to put organized prayer into schools, movements to bring creationism into science classes, and generally showing favoritism toward the majority religion. Yes, the reason those overzealous school district employees exist is because schools have been sued a lot. They haven't been sued for no reason, though. Schools full of children are the easiest and most common places for establishment clause violations to occur, and there have been a lot of bad ones over the years.
Getting back to the topic (sort of), I think that the whole thread is slightly off base in framing this as a "which wing is more pro-freedom" argument. Both sides use "freedom" as a great buzz word, but it's really more about government power. Yes, the two are closely tied together, but I think that there's a distinction. One might argue that an establishment clause violation in a school doesn't really infringe on the "freedom" of the students it affects. Even so, it's clearly an abuse of overreaching government power. As I see it, the liberal side of the political spectrum is all for increasing government power when it comes to regulating businesses and firearms, while the conservative side has no problem increasing government power when it comes to establishing religion or granting police powers. There's definitely a balance to be had for all of those issues, but I tend to fall in more on the left simply because I find the former less scary (although I do support the right to bear arms, there's clearly a balance somewhere between "no pointy sticks for anybody" and "free nukes for kids upon graduating from elementary school"). Taxes for ill-conceived social programs annoy me, as do silly nanny laws designed to keep adults from taking informed risks, but they don't get me nearly as worked up as laws telling me what I can do with my private parts, when I can buy liquor, or that my phone calls may be tapped without judicial oversight.
I suppose it's a matter of personal preference. What do you want the government to waste your money on, and which unnecessarily broad powers would you rather have the government abusing? Vote accordingly.
It seems the ACLU has moved on to harassing the Boy Scouts.
Yeah, it leaves them to the states or the people. Texas is a state. Texas should have repealed the law because it was anachronistic. Instead, the Supreme Court said the US Constitution explicitly protects sodomy as a right and prohibits states from making laws against it. The Constitution does no such thing.
I don't think it's nearly as clear as that. I don't agree with the reasoning of the court in Lawrence (they used the 14th Amendment, which was reasonable and relatively narrow, but I think that a stronger stance should have been made on the 9th Amendment). Remember, when the Bill of Rights was being debated, the strongest argument against it was that the existence of enumerated rights necessarily implied that other rights were not protected. The 9th Amendment was put into place for that reason, so I strongly doubt that the 10th Amendment was inserted specifically to invalidate the 9th in the case of state governments. I tend to fall in with the reasoning in Griswold v. Connecticut (which was over birth control):
To hold that a right so basic and fundamental and so deep-rooted in our society as the right of privacy in marriage may be infringed because that right is not guaranteed in so many words by the first eight amendments to the Constitution is to ignore the Ninth Amendment and to give it no effect whatsoever.
Given that precedent, I don't see how they could reasonably have ruled otherwise (unless, of course, they found the rather strange 14th Amendment argument so much more compelling than the reasoning in Griswold).
I don't hear you saying he's incorrect though.
He's incorrect. I strongly believe that the 10th Amendment was not designed to be a wildcard for unlimited power to state governments, given the attitudes and writings of the framers and relevant court cases before Lawrence. I don't see any reason to believe that even a state government has the right to make a law that has such an intimate effect on individual rights in the absence of any legitimate public interest. I also believe that the only reason Santorum got his panties in such a bunch over it was the fact that kicking gays around was a key part of his platform and this ruling played into the "culture wars" narrative that has so energized his base. "Help the poor downtrodden heterosexual protestant majority against the terrifying onslaught of the gay minority" has historically been a great way of turning out votes. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure he believed every word of it. I just don't believe that it was about constitutional law.
Bigamy and polygamy will be made legal as the result of the Lawrence case. It's only a question of when.
Nonsense. Lawrence had nothing to do with marriage contracts. It had to do with the inherent right to privacy in the absence of a compelling public reason to violate it. Trying to connect the two is just so much scare mongering. While I happen to believe that the government should start offering marriage rights to gay couples or get out of the marriage business altogether, I don't see any reasonable argument one might use for Lawrence to be the basis for any such decision. Even so, if the court somehow managed to make that sort of leap, the problem would not be with the ruling in Lawrence but rather with an insane leap of logic on the part of the court. Complain about that ruling if it happens, but until then, I think that the court was right, if for the wrong reasons*.
*My guess is that the 14th Amendment provided the most narrow result. Invoking the 9th Amendment, while more sensible IMO, would probably be construed as a much more sweeping decision that was broadly applicable because it would give a very vague amendment some very clear minimum boundaries. That sort of thing is typically not the Supreme Court's style.
ACLU THREATENS TO SUE SCHOOLS OVER GRADUATION PRAYER
And this is exactly the type of blatant misrepresentation I'm talking about. Did you read the link? The ACLU threatened to sue because what was being proposed was organized prayer at a graduation ceremony. Not prayer at school by a student. Not a student talking about how religion helped her succeed. It was of the "Let's all rise and pray together" variety, and that falls outside the realm of what's allowed. People get all worked up and act as though thugs are coming and and taking bibles from children. The reality is, they're allowed to pray all they want. Schools just aren't allowed to have organized prayer at their school functions. I'd hardly call that an infringement on freedom.
Going down that list, I don't see any examples of what I was asking for. I see a handful of ill-informed teachers going way over the line (and some examples of teachers acting appropriately). Some are extraordinary stretches (a public school district refusing to provide a publicly funded sign language interpreter to a private Catholic school as an example of religious discrimination--WTF?) that make me question the details of the ones that do sound like reasonable complaints. No examples of lawsuits or any legal activity trying to prevent students from praying in school. Hell, they're even invoking Edwards v Aguillard as an example of religious freedom being infringed upon. As much as it may seem to be the case, religious people are not exactly a downtrodden minority in this country, as much as the Liberty Legal Institute may think they are.
That's because the Supreme Court was wrong. The Constitution doesn't prohibit the states from having anti-sodomy laws. It's not about sodomy, it's about the court saying they don't care what the Constitution says. The ruling was/is illegitimate. We'd actually like to have a Constitutional government, not one where we're ruled by the whims of 9 unelected guys in robes.
Let's go back to that constitution for a moment. I think it says something about rights not enumerated. I also don't think that it really gives Congress the power to make such sweeping laws when there's no compelling argument that they're promoting the general welfare in the process.
Quoting Santorum:
"If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything."
That doesn't sound particularly pro-freedom to me, really. It's also not particularly surprising, given the conservative penchant for being "pro freedom" until there's a chance to regulate somebody's bedroom habits. Make no mistake, if the court had said that Congress didn't have the power to impose a national health plan, you wouldn't have heard a peep from Santorum or most if his ilk. This was all about being perfectly satisfied with a law that did nothing more than restrict the freedom of an unpopular minority.
As much contempt as the right tends to show for those "9 unelected guys in robes" they've done a very good job of keeping the minority from being dumped on by a majority that is, to keep on the subject of this thread, decidedly anti-freedom for anybody not like them.
You're thinking of 50 years ago. This no longer applies. Mainstream conservatives don't intend any interference with private, consensual sex.
I don't know about that. There was quite a lot of outcry from the conservative "mainstream" when the Supreme Court came out against the Texas sodomy laws. While I think of Rick Santorum mainly as a crazy man, I would consider him a mainstream conservative given the position he held in the Republican party at the time.
There's no prayer in public school. No one intends to mandate prayer in public school. Conservatives especially don't. Conservatives want children to be free to pray in school if they choose. Sometimes, they get opposed by "liberal" anti-religion groups. So conservatives are actually for freedom and liberal/leftist groups are against freedom in this case.
I'm going to have to challenge you on that one. If you can come up with a case in which this has happened and the "anti-religion" group was reacting to a child praying in school and not the school sponsoring prayer, I'll be impressed. The idea that there are groups out there who are trying to keep children from praying is up there with the idea that the communists are putting subliminal messages in music the kids these days listen to.
You do realize that the military is a duty of the government laid out in the constitution. Healthcare is not, so the feds can't (Legally) have anything to do with it.
Fer fuck's sake, have you ever heard of markets? More competition -> lower price.
The policy in question forces a net increase in demand, not an increase in competition. Based on what you wrote, you seem to think that private insurance companies are running at maximum efficiency and making zero economic profit. Is that the case?
I don't buy it because I consider insurance cowardly, thus immoral. I take care of myself and invest the money I save to develop a liquid buffer for emergencies.
I hope that you don't diversify your portfolio either. Hedging risk is...well...cowardly.
The problem with 1 and 3 is the very people who are using the emergency room for their regular doctor are going to wind up with the free health care, which is just transferring the cost from one thing to another.
Assuming the dollar values are exactly the same (I doubt that they are, though), you're neglecting an important fact: We're not "just" transferring the cost from one thing to another. We're also getting healthier people out of it, which is basically the whole point of health care.
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It would be interesting to change policy to make sure that a president is always considered under oath during press conferences. Then we could get them for even more interesting perjury like "We're winning the war in Vietnam" and "No, we're not selling weapons to our enemies to fund rebels in illegally." Put them under oath for the big stuff and see what comes out.
Then again, the result would probably be no more press conferences...
What weirds me out is that nobody gets irritated at auto mechanics for going straight to naturalistic causes of car trouble. No discussion of evil spirits, possession, the alignment of the stars, etc. Even when they can't quite figure out what's wrong, they never think out of the box, and everybody gives them a pass for their obvious failure of imagination.
In general, lamp shades act as filters that attenuate certain bands. If you don't have a particular color frequency to begin with, a lamp shade isn't going to help you any. The problem with certain lighting isn't that it's "too white" but rather that there are some frequencies that just aren't there (at least, not in sufficient quantities). For example, if you start with a bulb that produces only green light, all the filters and shades in the world aren't going to get any red photons out of it.
Actually, this started with me suggesting that random shit off of the Internet isn't the best way to figure out a relatively complex topic, especially when well vetted books on the subject are available. This stems from my observation that people who get their economics education from the aforementioned random shit do things like claim that the value of money should always go up (for no apparent reason) or that the Federal Reserve is a for-profit entity or that its books are never audited. Those discussions usually end up going off the deep end, ending with vague descriptions of conspiracies that are never articulated well enough to be sensible but which, for some reason, are more sensible than the obvious conclusion: fiat money works, and money of any sort works best for institutions that have a lot of it.
The Fed is not for profit. Full stop. It has a rather unusual corporate structure involving private banks, but the private banks aren't running the show. That makes a pretty big difference. People throw around wild accusations about the Fed being some sort of money-hungry entity with huge profit motives, but they're never able to explain sensibly exactly how the people who actually make the decisions profit from them.
Please continue. How, exactly, is the availability of credit a problem? The misuse of debt financing certainly is, but that's a different matter entirely. Take that up with people who abuse credit cards or with your local congress-critter as he borrows money and spends it on silly things.
OK. Let's go a little bit deeper. Let's say (to use a wild example) that our glorious leaders decide to engage in expensive and ill-considered foreign adventurism. Let's ignore the fact that we were dumb enough to elect them for the moment. They issue bonds to pay for it. The Fed has no control over this fact. With or without the Fed and with or without fiat currency, those bonds are issued via auction on the open market--a market in which banks and the Fed are just another buyer (noting that last I checked, the Fed held just shy of 5% of our public debt). Depending on prevailing economic conditions, the Fed may or may not buy or sell bonds to tweak the money supply. The decision to do so is made by a board dominated by government appointees with no profit incentive either way. Make no mistake, the politicians are the driving force behind public debt, and they'd be doing it regardless of how the system is structured.
Take it up with Congress and the President. They're the ones borrowing the cash.
The Treasury Department. Specifically, the Bureau of Public Debt. Note that the Federal Reserve is not to be found at that link destination.
No, that's not particularly crazy. What's crazy is to think that for-profit banks somehow the puppet masters of the supply of the US dollar and that they're manipulating currency to keep the people poor. Yes, there's a tiny grain of truth to it, but the reality is not nearly that simple. The mere fact that banks make shitloads of money isn't enough to prove the conspiracy. If you can describe a system in which interest is earned and present discounted values are taken into account, banks can and will make lots of money off of it. It's not because they're pulling the strings through an international conspiracy of the Jews, Knights Templar, Illuminati, and Freemasons. It's because being a (well run) bank is a good gig, just like being a (well run) casino is. You position yourself where money is flowing, leverage yourself like crazy, hedge risk down to a minimal level and watch the money come rolling in. No conspiracy required.
The Man isn't keeping you down. Not understanding our financial system might, but that's another matter. All I was pointing out to the grandparent poster is that if you're going to delve into the world of nutball conspiracy theories, you might want to get educated enough on the topic that you can critically evaluate their claims. The idea that what you find in a college level textbook is "indoctrination" while random crap you read on the Internet is gospel is not a good way to start your education in any topic. At least, I wouldn't want to hire a surgeon or lawyer who think so.
I know that a lot of Slashdotters think that because they can program a computer, they're smarter than everybody else. They can code, so they know more about economics than economists. They can code, so they know more about evolution than biologists. They can code, so they know more about medicine than doctors. All I'm suggesting is that people get their shit together before delving into nuanced debates on topics well outside their areas of expertise.
Most of us just appreciate a judiciary that can hold the other branches accountable to the Constitution. WA lot of us just aren't thrilled with the idea that a wink and a promise is the only thing between the President and unlimited power.
If you're going to get into studying money and banking, you're probably better off reading about it in some economics and finance textbooks in the library anyway. I wouldn't bother with conspiracy theorist videos until I had a good grounding in the subject first.
That's a different question, though. Lawrence simply states that the state's moral disapproval, in the absence of a compelling state interest, does not constitute a constitutionally valid reason for infringing on the rights of a class of people. It doesn't necessarily follow that the state doesn't have a compelling interest in preventing polygamy (although I strongly suspect that it does not). If, according to the Massachusetts Constitution, banning gay marriage is unconstitutional, I suspect that banning polygamy is arguably unconstitutional as well, but it doesn't follow directly from Lawrence. Moreover, I still believe that Lawrence was the right decision, regardless of whether it opens the doors to other things that people see as icky. Ickyness and moral outrage are not a reasonable basis for the state to deny rights to a minority group. Frankly, that's why I'm not particularly comfortable with the government being in the marriage business in the first place.
Again, though, back to the topic at hand, there appears to be a strong conservative movement against a ruling that says that the state doesn't have the right to infringe upon the rights of a class of individual in the absence of a compelling state interest. Given that they're basically arguing to allow the state the power to make any arbitrary law it wants for no reason other than the whims of the legislature, it doesn't sound to me like this case supports your thesis that conservatives always come down on the side of increased freedom. The idea of "Rights and freedom for all and limited government power except inasmuch as it prevents us from beating up on our current favorite bogeyman" is not exactly the moral high ground.
Yep. Pretty much. That's what happens when your government is set up to stay out of the religion business entirely. I'm sure that the people who are clamoring for mass prayer at graduations would change their tune the moment a valedictorian took time out of his speech to have everybody voluntarily kneel toward Mecca. Best to keep that can of worms tightly sealed.
Well, you could frame it as "anti-freedom" or as a limit on government power (and the ability of private citizens to use the government's power). I tend to see it that way, mainly because if you're not in the Christian majority when everybody stands to start praying "voluntarily" it looks an awful lot like an exercise of government power and not a simple matter of freedom.
I really don't buy into the idea that public schools are hostile toward Christianity any more than I buy into the general narrative of the embattled Christian majority against an onslaught of anti-religion whackos. The reality is that for every case you can come up with in which an overzealous teacher or administrator squelches a student's freedom to practice, I can probably come up with an even more egregious case of a school board trying to put organized prayer into schools, movements to bring creationism into science classes, and generally showing favoritism toward the majority religion. Yes, the reason those overzealous school district employees exist is because schools have been sued a lot. They haven't been sued for no reason, though. Schools full of children are the easiest and most common places for establishment clause violations to occur, and there have been a lot of bad ones over the years.
Getting back to the topic (sort of), I think that the whole thread is slightly off base in framing this as a "which wing is more pro-freedom" argument. Both sides use "freedom" as a great buzz word, but it's really more about government power. Yes, the two are closely tied together, but I think that there's a distinction. One might argue that an establishment clause violation in a school doesn't really infringe on the "freedom" of the students it affects. Even so, it's clearly an abuse of overreaching government power. As I see it, the liberal side of the political spectrum is all for increasing government power when it comes to regulating businesses and firearms, while the conservative side has no problem increasing government power when it comes to establishing religion or granting police powers. There's definitely a balance to be had for all of those issues, but I tend to fall in more on the left simply because I find the former less scary (although I do support the right to bear arms, there's clearly a balance somewhere between "no pointy sticks for anybody" and "free nukes for kids upon graduating from elementary school"). Taxes for ill-conceived social programs annoy me, as do silly nanny laws designed to keep adults from taking informed risks, but they don't get me nearly as worked up as laws telling me what I can do with my private parts, when I can buy liquor, or that my phone calls may be tapped without judicial oversight.
I suppose it's a matter of personal preference. What do you want the government to waste your money on, and which unnecessarily broad powers would you rather have the government abusing? Vote accordingly.
Frankly, it's sad to me that the ACLU gets so mu
He's incorrect. I strongly believe that the 10th Amendment was not designed to be a wildcard for unlimited power to state governments, given the attitudes and writings of the framers and relevant court cases before Lawrence. I don't see any reason to believe that even a state government has the right to make a law that has such an intimate effect on individual rights in the absence of any legitimate public interest. I also believe that the only reason Santorum got his panties in such a bunch over it was the fact that kicking gays around was a key part of his platform and this ruling played into the "culture wars" narrative that has so energized his base. "Help the poor downtrodden heterosexual protestant majority against the terrifying onslaught of the gay minority" has historically been a great way of turning out votes. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure he believed every word of it. I just don't believe that it was about constitutional law.
Nonsense. Lawrence had nothing to do with marriage contracts. It had to do with the inherent right to privacy in the absence of a compelling public reason to violate it. Trying to connect the two is just so much scare mongering. While I happen to believe that the government should start offering marriage rights to gay couples or get out of the marriage business altogether, I don't see any reasonable argument one might use for Lawrence to be the basis for any such decision. Even so, if the court somehow managed to make that sort of leap, the problem would not be with the ruling in Lawrence but rather with an insane leap of logic on the part of the court. Complain about that ruling if it happens, but until then, I think that the court was right, if for the wrong reasons*.
*My guess is that the 14th Amendment provided the most narrow result. Invoking the 9th Amendment, while more sensible IMO, would probably be construed as a much more sweeping decision that was broadly applicable because it would give a very vague amendment some very clear minimum boundaries. That sort of thing is typically not the Supreme Court's style.
Going down that list, I don't see any examples of what I was asking for. I see a handful of ill-informed teachers going way over the line (and some examples of teachers acting appropriately). Some are extraordinary stretches (a public school district refusing to provide a publicly funded sign language interpreter to a private Catholic school as an example of religious discrimination--WTF?) that make me question the details of the ones that do sound like reasonable complaints. No examples of lawsuits or any legal activity trying to prevent students from praying in school. Hell, they're even invoking Edwards v Aguillard as an example of religious freedom being infringed upon. As much as it may seem to be the case, religious people are not exactly a downtrodden minority in this country, as much as the Liberty Legal Institute may think they are.
Quoting Santorum: That doesn't sound particularly pro-freedom to me, really. It's also not particularly surprising, given the conservative penchant for being "pro freedom" until there's a chance to regulate somebody's bedroom habits. Make no mistake, if the court had said that Congress didn't have the power to impose a national health plan, you wouldn't have heard a peep from Santorum or most if his ilk. This was all about being perfectly satisfied with a law that did nothing more than restrict the freedom of an unpopular minority.
As much contempt as the right tends to show for those "9 unelected guys in robes" they've done a very good job of keeping the minority from being dumped on by a majority that is, to keep on the subject of this thread, decidedly anti-freedom for anybody not like them.