I'll give one example of how my though processes have evolved. The whole "Gay Marriage" thing has caused me to re-evaluate what marriage is, and how we as society chooses to define it.
You have socially conservatives who have history on their side as defining Marriage between Man and Woman. I have no problem with this. You have Gay Activists wanting to redefine marriage to be, between two people. I have no problem with this.
But you further have gay activists wanting "benefits" granted by government to apply to gay marriages, and that is where the breakdown starts. Because you also have a group (several smaller groups lumped together) that want another definition of marriage, for the purposes of "plural" marriages (i.e. Polygamy) (see sects of Mormans and Muslims)
And then you have others, who have rightly pointed out that by the "gay" definition of marriage, a man should be able to "marry" his daughter for the benefits granted by government (inheritance tax avoidance).
Which gets me to my current view, which is Government has no objective in defining marriage, at all, except to grant special rights and privileges to subclasses of people, not granted to other subclasses of people. This is inherently unfair to anyone not in a particular subclass (the gay activist argument). The problem being, the gay activist argument doesn't really solve the unfair nature, it just includes them into the privileged subclass.
My solution is that Marriage should not be defined by government. Period. It is after all, a religious liberty issue (see Mormon, Muslims etc) among other things. I also realize that this solution is highly unworkable due to customs of law that have built up over the years. However, the gay argument remains accurate, in that certain subclasses are privileged while others are not. Including gay marriage into the definition does not change this problem.
I have yet to have anyone be able to tell my why federal (or any other government) law should define marriage, in such a way that the government has a compelling reason to define marriage, with the sole exception of granting special privileges to a subclass of people. And if it is for that reason only, then the gay marriage advocates have already lost their point and the traditional marriage people have just as much right to try to define marriage their way as the gay have to want to be included. And at that point, we haven't solved anything.
Let me be more specific. When faced with two competing conspiracies (19 guys vs GWB engineered) I will choose the simpler of the two conspiracies. Yes, you are correct, that the 19 guys conspired, but that ceased being a conspiracy once it was exposed into action. The GWB Engineered conspiracy is still covert, and thus remains a "conspiracy".
No, it is a matter of short sighted leadership at the local level. Simply building out a Fiber to Premises would be feasible in a way that would bring data to every address in most cities. Bringing the dark fiber into a COLO facility would allow any number of companies the access to the Fiber to any particular address. Once that is done, competition again. However the Municipality would have to pull this off, and not leave it to Verizon or Comcast.
Short sighted, as they see the cable plant as being owned by the company (or leased) and not as a "service" the municipality is responsible for. It could be paid for by service fees (connect fee, monthly taxes on service etc) to cover the cost of Maintenance.
A one time build out, and return to competition would solve the whole problem. It is just a matter of willpower.
Girlintraining almost has it right. While we are not socialistic and have a government being a good big brother to us, we are pseudo-Capitalistic with the worst part of both Socialism and Capitalism in force. If we had a REALLY free economy, the problem would be solved quite quickly. The problem is, we don't have a friggin clue how to solve the problem infrastructure.
My solution would be to build out via a BOND measure, Fiber to the house/apt/business. Back haul it to a central facility or neighborhood closet, I don't care. Pay a guy to manage connecting Address A to Service Provider B in the closet, where Service Provider B is the company that Address A contracts service through. Allow for a certain number of Service Providers, via auction, to be able to install their CO-LO equipment in said facility, use that auction pricing to pay for the person in the closet connecting Addresses to Service Providers (or other means).
The Municipality would build out the FIOS infrastructure plant, not giving "franchise" rights to any single player. This would provide EACH Address the opportunity to buy whatever services they actually need from whomever they actually like. Bad Players would leave the marketplace, new players come in with compelling products that shake up the marketplace.
The Infrastructure would have to have a service fee for maintenance, based on usage of the FIOS plant. More expensive plans (tax on Service Provider plans) would pay a higher "service fee" and no fee would be charged for people who opt out.
If this were setup this way, the build out would be contracted, to bring FIOS plant to each Address/dwelling/Apt/Business, a bond measure would be the easiest means to achieving this build out.
This would give Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, and any other company access to every Address in the municipality via what is essentially "dark fiber". And the is no known downside, except for those companies.
I'm not a conspiracy advocate. I think 19 guys from mostly Saudi Arabia flew airplanes into buildings. What I find amazing are the people who think that GWB orchestrated it, while simultaneously believing he is the stupidest president ever; one the one hand he is pure evil genius and on the other hand a monkey is smarter than he is. Hilarious!
Thanks for proving why I changed my views. People like you, who hide behind the cloak of A/C comments. I didn't say I changed my views because people call me names. I said it doesn't help your cause. Which you seem to have completely missed. And if that is the best retort the the "elite" has to offer, it isn't much of one. Thanks for proving my case for me.
Socialist is to the right, what "Tea Party" is the to left. Just name calling to dehumanize your opponent. Of course, if you agree with those terms you might be one of the useful idiots that are on both sides.
This is because people in the US forget that WE the PEOPLE are the rulers. The moment that ceases to be, we have an OBLIGATION to overthrow our government. This is why we stopped teaching Declaration of Independence in schools. They don't want us to know these things.
What you fail to realize is that every society that sets up barriers to entry end up aristocratic in nature. This is why they setup barriers to entry, and use safety and security as the means to get the populace to let them setup these barriers.
Take for instance, the idea of a "contractor" needing a "license" to do any sort of work. It doesn't guarantee the work done, the skill level or any thing else. There are good and bad contractors, and only in the VERY WORST cases does the "state" do anything regarding revoking a license once granted. I've seen good work, and Ive seen crappy work, a "contractor's license" means nothing to me.
BUT I do see it for what it really is. A barrier to entry. Cosmetology License, same thing. And the worst one is the Courts. A law license doesn't mean SHIT other than a person is trained enough to pass the bar. How bad is a society that a common man cannot represent himself in a court because the laws are so complicated that it takes 8 years AND a test to be able to navigate a court system.
Indians (and Chinese to a lessor degree) have a lot less overhead to deal with. But the progressives don't understand this, and keep raising the overhead and then wonder how Detroit ends up a shell of a city, just 70 years after its heyday. Let the people work, without government interference, and watch what happens*
* And watch a progressive mention dirty air and water. Before you make a comment, please look at Detroit and tell me if Progressive politics kept Detroit sparkling clean? It is a cesspool of decay.
I am a government Employee, middle class (barely) and in the Tech field. I'm Libertarian, and staunchly against most "progressive' politics simply for one reason. Most of progressive politics never takes into account the individual rights when they are infringed upon by the majority.
But you're okay with George Soros, a convicted felon donating Millions to Progressive Causes through secret organizations to hide where it is coming from?
IMHO, unless you speak to Soros and Koch in the same tone, you're nothing but a hypocrite. They are the same. But this is typical of the Progressives, they don't mind when it is THEIR guy mucking up the politics.
News isn't what is reported, that is MSM. What is news is what nobody else has heard because they are too busy watching MSNBC and FOX. I've found that what shapes peoples opinions are the "news" they follow, the stuff that isn't really on anyone else's radar. Shallow people have no news other than what MSM tells them. They pick sides MSNBC / FOX and that is all they know.
I've become much more libertarian since I came to slashdot. Nothing like having people tell you you're an idiot simply because you disagree with them on policy. Yeah, liberal elitism has turned me completely away from anything "socialism". Rarely have the people in ivory towers ever figured the world as it really is, only as it should be.
[Eph 6:12 KJV] 12 For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high [places].
DeHumanizing is not a "Christian value". It is a value of many many belief systems. The easiest way to kill your enemy is to dehumanize them. If you say someone is the devil, you have dehumanized them, however, people are not the devil or demons.
And just because I reject your hypothesis doesn't mean I'm absurd. SOME Christians do this, doesn't mean it is a tenant of the faith. THAT is something you believe in order to dehumanize Christians.;)
Then Socialism has killed and tortured MILLIONS of people. And very recently.
I mean if you're going to paint with a broad stroke, over a long period of time, socialists and "progressives" should be ashamed of their history. But it wasn't YOUR version of socialsm... I get that. But claiming all of "Christianity" responsible for what happened 500 years ago, that is pretty damning of socialism if you apply the exact same measure.
I find your post most amusing, simply because it ignores the "Gun killed a teacher, guns bad" vs "box cutter killed teacher, student bad" doesn't compute with people like you. My point, which you OBVIOUSLY missed, was student kills teacher in both cases, in one you blame the gun on the other you don't blame the box cutter. Why the difference?
Can't blame them for trying to keep the blacks on the DNC plantation. As black people are waking up the need for a new colored skin group has arisen. There are a number of well spoken black republicans and there are more everyday. The Monopoly of the DNC is over, which is why they are fighting to get as many latinos into the country and voting as soon as possible through amnesty. It is why they want programs and voting without IDs or proof of citizenship / legal residency. If they can lock in the Latino vote like the Black Vote (90%) the white slave masters will conitinue to win seats in the house and Senate. But heaven forbid that the Blacks and Latinos figure out that Most Conservatives don't care what color skin people have. Demonize them anyway, it is the only way to win.
But if he did it with a box cutter would you blame the parents for leaving the box cutter out? Because that also happened just this week. Is that "negligence causing death" too? Do you want those parents jailed then?
Perhaps it isn't the tool that caused the violence, it is the person using the tool!
Here is the statistic that should shut people like you up for good. Suicide and Murder Rates for the US and Great Britain are about the same. One has strict gun control laws and the other does not. Suicide by guns in the US far outpace Suicide by guns in the UK, yet the overall rates are almost identical. The same is true for murder rates. In fact, if you exclude the cities in the US with the strictest gun control laws (DC, Chicago etc) which also happen to have the highest murder rates by guns, the murder rates in the US is actually LESS than most other countries.
The problem is, the facts don't line up with the Liberal Logic. Less guns do not produce less violence. This means people are violent with whatever tool they find handy, just like killing themselves. We should address the reasons for violence, not the method.
I mean just recently, you had a trained military person beheaded in broad daylight by a couple guys with knives. AND nobody stopped them. Nobody could. In America, you would have had someone (or a few someones) kick the shit out of the guys before they could finish cutting the soldiers head off.
Sorry, I don't want to live in a Society that is so scared of everything that people don't step up and face evil directly. Call it "Rugged Individualism", something Liberals can't understand and therefore despise.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm still a bat shit crazy Libertarian. ;)
I'll give one example of how my though processes have evolved. The whole "Gay Marriage" thing has caused me to re-evaluate what marriage is, and how we as society chooses to define it.
You have socially conservatives who have history on their side as defining Marriage between Man and Woman. I have no problem with this.
You have Gay Activists wanting to redefine marriage to be, between two people. I have no problem with this.
But you further have gay activists wanting "benefits" granted by government to apply to gay marriages, and that is where the breakdown starts. Because you also have a group (several smaller groups lumped together) that want another definition of marriage, for the purposes of "plural" marriages (i.e. Polygamy) (see sects of Mormans and Muslims)
And then you have others, who have rightly pointed out that by the "gay" definition of marriage, a man should be able to "marry" his daughter for the benefits granted by government (inheritance tax avoidance).
Which gets me to my current view, which is Government has no objective in defining marriage, at all, except to grant special rights and privileges to subclasses of people, not granted to other subclasses of people. This is inherently unfair to anyone not in a particular subclass (the gay activist argument). The problem being, the gay activist argument doesn't really solve the unfair nature, it just includes them into the privileged subclass.
My solution is that Marriage should not be defined by government. Period. It is after all, a religious liberty issue (see Mormon, Muslims etc) among other things. I also realize that this solution is highly unworkable due to customs of law that have built up over the years. However, the gay argument remains accurate, in that certain subclasses are privileged while others are not. Including gay marriage into the definition does not change this problem.
I have yet to have anyone be able to tell my why federal (or any other government) law should define marriage, in such a way that the government has a compelling reason to define marriage, with the sole exception of granting special privileges to a subclass of people. And if it is for that reason only, then the gay marriage advocates have already lost their point and the traditional marriage people have just as much right to try to define marriage their way as the gay have to want to be included. And at that point, we haven't solved anything.
Let me be more specific. When faced with two competing conspiracies (19 guys vs GWB engineered) I will choose the simpler of the two conspiracies. Yes, you are correct, that the 19 guys conspired, but that ceased being a conspiracy once it was exposed into action. The GWB Engineered conspiracy is still covert, and thus remains a "conspiracy".
No, it is a matter of short sighted leadership at the local level. Simply building out a Fiber to Premises would be feasible in a way that would bring data to every address in most cities. Bringing the dark fiber into a COLO facility would allow any number of companies the access to the Fiber to any particular address. Once that is done, competition again. However the Municipality would have to pull this off, and not leave it to Verizon or Comcast.
Short sighted, as they see the cable plant as being owned by the company (or leased) and not as a "service" the municipality is responsible for. It could be paid for by service fees (connect fee, monthly taxes on service etc) to cover the cost of Maintenance.
A one time build out, and return to competition would solve the whole problem. It is just a matter of willpower.
Girlintraining almost has it right. While we are not socialistic and have a government being a good big brother to us, we are pseudo-Capitalistic with the worst part of both Socialism and Capitalism in force. If we had a REALLY free economy, the problem would be solved quite quickly. The problem is, we don't have a friggin clue how to solve the problem infrastructure.
My solution would be to build out via a BOND measure, Fiber to the house/apt/business. Back haul it to a central facility or neighborhood closet, I don't care. Pay a guy to manage connecting Address A to Service Provider B in the closet, where Service Provider B is the company that Address A contracts service through. Allow for a certain number of Service Providers, via auction, to be able to install their CO-LO equipment in said facility, use that auction pricing to pay for the person in the closet connecting Addresses to Service Providers (or other means).
The Municipality would build out the FIOS infrastructure plant, not giving "franchise" rights to any single player. This would provide EACH Address the opportunity to buy whatever services they actually need from whomever they actually like. Bad Players would leave the marketplace, new players come in with compelling products that shake up the marketplace.
The Infrastructure would have to have a service fee for maintenance, based on usage of the FIOS plant. More expensive plans (tax on Service Provider plans) would pay a higher "service fee" and no fee would be charged for people who opt out.
If this were setup this way, the build out would be contracted, to bring FIOS plant to each Address/dwelling/Apt/Business, a bond measure would be the easiest means to achieving this build out.
This would give Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, and any other company access to every Address in the municipality via what is essentially "dark fiber". And the is no known downside, except for those companies.
I'm not a conspiracy advocate. I think 19 guys from mostly Saudi Arabia flew airplanes into buildings. What I find amazing are the people who think that GWB orchestrated it, while simultaneously believing he is the stupidest president ever; one the one hand he is pure evil genius and on the other hand a monkey is smarter than he is. Hilarious!
Thanks for proving why I changed my views. People like you, who hide behind the cloak of A/C comments. I didn't say I changed my views because people call me names. I said it doesn't help your cause. Which you seem to have completely missed. And if that is the best retort the the "elite" has to offer, it isn't much of one. Thanks for proving my case for me.
Socialist is to the right, what "Tea Party" is the to left. Just name calling to dehumanize your opponent. Of course, if you agree with those terms you might be one of the useful idiots that are on both sides.
This is because people in the US forget that WE the PEOPLE are the rulers. The moment that ceases to be, we have an OBLIGATION to overthrow our government. This is why we stopped teaching Declaration of Independence in schools. They don't want us to know these things.
What you fail to realize is that every society that sets up barriers to entry end up aristocratic in nature. This is why they setup barriers to entry, and use safety and security as the means to get the populace to let them setup these barriers.
Take for instance, the idea of a "contractor" needing a "license" to do any sort of work. It doesn't guarantee the work done, the skill level or any thing else. There are good and bad contractors, and only in the VERY WORST cases does the "state" do anything regarding revoking a license once granted. I've seen good work, and Ive seen crappy work, a "contractor's license" means nothing to me.
BUT I do see it for what it really is. A barrier to entry. Cosmetology License, same thing. And the worst one is the Courts. A law license doesn't mean SHIT other than a person is trained enough to pass the bar. How bad is a society that a common man cannot represent himself in a court because the laws are so complicated that it takes 8 years AND a test to be able to navigate a court system.
Indians (and Chinese to a lessor degree) have a lot less overhead to deal with. But the progressives don't understand this, and keep raising the overhead and then wonder how Detroit ends up a shell of a city, just 70 years after its heyday. Let the people work, without government interference, and watch what happens*
* And watch a progressive mention dirty air and water. Before you make a comment, please look at Detroit and tell me if Progressive politics kept Detroit sparkling clean? It is a cesspool of decay.
I am a government Employee, middle class (barely) and in the Tech field. I'm Libertarian, and staunchly against most "progressive' politics simply for one reason. Most of progressive politics never takes into account the individual rights when they are infringed upon by the majority.
But you're okay with George Soros, a convicted felon donating Millions to Progressive Causes through secret organizations to hide where it is coming from?
IMHO, unless you speak to Soros and Koch in the same tone, you're nothing but a hypocrite. They are the same. But this is typical of the Progressives, they don't mind when it is THEIR guy mucking up the politics.
He's the guy who gets his news from John Stewart and Colbert :-D
News isn't what is reported, that is MSM. What is news is what nobody else has heard because they are too busy watching MSNBC and FOX. I've found that what shapes peoples opinions are the "news" they follow, the stuff that isn't really on anyone else's radar. Shallow people have no news other than what MSM tells them. They pick sides MSNBC / FOX and that is all they know.
I've become much more libertarian since I came to slashdot. Nothing like having people tell you you're an idiot simply because you disagree with them on policy. Yeah, liberal elitism has turned me completely away from anything "socialism". Rarely have the people in ivory towers ever figured the world as it really is, only as it should be.
I thought they were talking about 4Chan. Imagine my surprise they weren't.
United Soviet Socialist Republic
Christianity's declared enemy isn't human.
[Eph 6:12 KJV] 12 For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high [places].
DeHumanizing is not a "Christian value". It is a value of many many belief systems. The easiest way to kill your enemy is to dehumanize them. If you say someone is the devil, you have dehumanized them, however, people are not the devil or demons.
And just because I reject your hypothesis doesn't mean I'm absurd. SOME Christians do this, doesn't mean it is a tenant of the faith. THAT is something you believe in order to dehumanize Christians. ;)
Do you equally blame the box cutter owners for their not locking up a the box cutter?
The analogy is X used Y to do Z, in one case you want W to be charged for allowing access to a Y, but not in the other.
Then Socialism has killed and tortured MILLIONS of people. And very recently.
I mean if you're going to paint with a broad stroke, over a long period of time, socialists and "progressives" should be ashamed of their history. But it wasn't YOUR version of socialsm ... I get that. But claiming all of "Christianity" responsible for what happened 500 years ago, that is pretty damning of socialism if you apply the exact same measure.
I find your post most amusing, simply because it ignores the "Gun killed a teacher, guns bad" vs "box cutter killed teacher, student bad" doesn't compute with people like you. My point, which you OBVIOUSLY missed, was student kills teacher in both cases, in one you blame the gun on the other you don't blame the box cutter. Why the difference?
Take out the "Gun control City" violence and see what the rates are, which is explicitly stated in my post.
Or put it another way, Wyoming has a very low crime rate, with a very high gun ownership rate. Correlation doesn't equate to causation.
http://www.cityrating.com/crime-statistics/wyoming/#.UmqW0XdGat8
Can't blame them for trying to keep the blacks on the DNC plantation. As black people are waking up the need for a new colored skin group has arisen. There are a number of well spoken black republicans and there are more everyday. The Monopoly of the DNC is over, which is why they are fighting to get as many latinos into the country and voting as soon as possible through amnesty. It is why they want programs and voting without IDs or proof of citizenship / legal residency. If they can lock in the Latino vote like the Black Vote (90%) the white slave masters will conitinue to win seats in the house and Senate. But heaven forbid that the Blacks and Latinos figure out that Most Conservatives don't care what color skin people have. Demonize them anyway, it is the only way to win.
But if he did it with a box cutter would you blame the parents for leaving the box cutter out? Because that also happened just this week. Is that "negligence causing death" too? Do you want those parents jailed then?
Perhaps it isn't the tool that caused the violence, it is the person using the tool!
Here is the statistic that should shut people like you up for good. Suicide and Murder Rates for the US and Great Britain are about the same. One has strict gun control laws and the other does not. Suicide by guns in the US far outpace Suicide by guns in the UK, yet the overall rates are almost identical. The same is true for murder rates. In fact, if you exclude the cities in the US with the strictest gun control laws (DC, Chicago etc) which also happen to have the highest murder rates by guns, the murder rates in the US is actually LESS than most other countries.
The problem is, the facts don't line up with the Liberal Logic. Less guns do not produce less violence. This means people are violent with whatever tool they find handy, just like killing themselves. We should address the reasons for violence, not the method.
I mean just recently, you had a trained military person beheaded in broad daylight by a couple guys with knives. AND nobody stopped them. Nobody could. In America, you would have had someone (or a few someones) kick the shit out of the guys before they could finish cutting the soldiers head off.
Sorry, I don't want to live in a Society that is so scared of everything that people don't step up and face evil directly. Call it "Rugged Individualism", something Liberals can't understand and therefore despise.
Nothing scarier to someone trying to control your life than your ability to say "NO FUCKING WAY".