I think a draft is actually a good deterrent against aggressiveness - an all-volunteer army means if soldiers are fighting and dieing it's by their choice and the general populace can accept it more easily. On the other hand if random people's children are being drafted there will be far more public outcry against the war.
I often prefer freedom over safety. This is one of those cases. I consider it a great threat to freedom when your government can force you to go die in a war that is perhaps unjust, and that is why I would support a constitutional amendment banning all forms of drafting.
1) Then you only catch criminals _after_ they have commited the crime.
Or if you have evidence that they're very likely going to commit the crime.
2) Then you will let a lot more dangerous criminals walk away
I prefer this to arresting people for speech. That said, it doesn't have to be legal to hire a murderer to do your bidding for you.
wold work in the real world.
You'd be surprised just how resilient the 'real world' is.
Government _already_ restricts harmful speech.
I'm well aware of this, but I don't have to agree with it.
you should be campaigning to legalize death threats and conspiracy to commit crime.
What have we been arguing about?
And the restricting should be done at the local (not federal) level, because I believe descentralized government leads to greater freedom.
That just leads to the government violating people's rights at the local level. I prefer things I believe are fundamental rights to be spelled out in the constitution and to also restrict local governments. Every other local law is fine, though.
I don't think goernmnet officials are angels, but I still think the government can server a useful function.
Such a right does not exist either as a constitutional right
Incorrect, I believe. The constitution itself makes no such distinctions. However, some interpretations of it differ.
If the absollute right to say anything existed
I don't believe in absolute rights.
You believe in the right to conspire to murder?
As soon as someone takes actual actions to murder another person, they're fair game, I think.
They don't magically lose anything, because the right to disrupt funerals does not exist in the first place.
I believe it should. Please do not complain about those people who wish to restrict politically incorrect speech in the future; to me, it makes you look like a hypocrite, and I don't believe you've said anything that convinces me that you're different. You seem to just want to restrict speech so people don't get their feelings hurt.
Pornography is not an opinion.
I didn't say it was.
2.) I did not just say it is "just different", I gave you a comparative analysis of the consequences of restricting politicla/religious/philosophical speech versus the consequences of restricting pornography.
And I told you that allowing the government to restrict speech or expression just because you think it's harmful, you don't like it, or you think it's offensive is naive and ignores the countless number of abusive governments that have existed throughout history.
But to say that it makes them into killers or has any significant effect on them is just as ridiculous, in my opinion. As far as I know, crime statistics don't demonstrate either.
None of this applies to pornography. Restricting pornography only means that a few people (precisely the ones who did not want it strongly in the first place) will either masturbate less, or will masturbate with just their imagination. Don't portray this as a human rights violation.
I see it as a violation of the fundamental right to freedom of expression. Opinions are speech. Political opinions are speech. It's all speech/expression, and saying it's 'just different' won't make it so. Saying, "I don't like it and it's not political speech, so the government should restrict/ban it" completely ignores that people in the government are not perfect beings who can do no wrong, but are normal, corruptible human beings. I cannot understand how anyone who knows of history's long line of abusive governments can honestly say that they want the government to have the ability to restrict certain speech/expression simply because they don't like it or personally think it's harmful.
There are crucial differences between political/religious/philosophical speech, and pornography:
And if you allow speech/expression/content to be banned because some people are offended by it or think it's harmful, anything could be banned.
Not at funerals.
Oh, right. They magically lose their right to free speech at funerals. I don't exactly want the government to have to the power to arbitrarily decide that certain areas are constitution-free zones, sorry.
No. The Brazilian bill would prohibit "homophobic" speech in itself , while I only ask the Westboro guys to maintain a certain distance from funerals if they want to express their happiness that the guy has died. They can still express their ideas, in the words that they choose, by printing books, distributing pamphlets (though not at the funerals), or placing outdoors, to their hearts content.
In other words, you just don't want them to do it in a way that you don't like (but only for speech that offends certain people!). I see. I don't want to see another Slashdot comment from you, but you're free to make comments elsewhere.
With all respect, I think you allowed misplaced Libertarian dogma to get in the way of reason.
I think you've foolishly just expressed your opinion as a fact, and believe that you place too much trust in the government.
Seriously? You think that if you refuse to go through the porn-o-scope, the President will put you on his personal kill list alongside the worst mass-murdering terrorists in the world?
Which comment did you read?
Get real: the people on that list are stone-cold psychopath murderers, leading cadres of stone-cold murderers, most of them trying to murder Americans.
Oh, it seems you've read the list. Would you care to give me a link to it?
But no sane person would argue that you should be able to advertise heroine anywhere you want.
I suppose I'm not sane by your standards, then. Oh, and plenty of people would say that heroine is a bit different from pornography.
This way, people who really want it would get it all the same, but undecided people would not be enticed to fall for it.
Why don't we just legally bar you from posting comments except in certain secluded websites? That way, people who really want it would get it all the same, but undecided people would not be enticed to fall for it.
But there is a huge difference between expressing a crazy idea, and preying on emotionally devastated people who are mourning a fallen soldier.
The fact that people are offended by what they do does not mean they have no right to free speech. A moment ago you were complaining about people who have no problem violating the rights of people who say things that are deemed 'politically incorrect', yet here you are advocating for something similar to what they would want...
Oh, that's how you interpreted it. Well, I actually intended to ask for actual evidence.
If someone says that death threats should be banned, will you demand proof that death threats can disrupt a person's life?
How are death threats relevant to a ban on pornography? That said, I'm against bans on death threats.
You claimed that I said women "are not interested in sex". I did not say it. Straw man.
Actually, I only intended to comment on the fact that you neglected to mention women at all in your examples. If you want me to be precise, I could rephrase my previous statement as a question.
Duh, 90% of porn consists of men humiliating women.
I'm not sure where that statistic came from or why it matters.
Also, everyone heard the story of the guy who wants to sodomize his wife, but she will not allow it.
I've never heard of that. Are you referring to a specific story, or idle gossip in general? If the latter, then I suppose I've heard of such stories, but again, this is all anecdotal evidence. I highly doubt that has anything to do with pornography, though.
I have never heard the story of the woman who begs to be sodomized by her husband, but he will not allow it.
Again, if you're referring to individual stories, then I have.
It was a cheap personal attack.
We're going to have to agree to disagree on the "cheap" part.
Fortunately that doesn't violate anyone's fundamental rights!
it's a simple precaution, but it restricts your freedoms, yet you do it.
When I lock my own door, the government is not restricting my freedoms. Your example is irrelevant to the matter at hand.
The difference here being that the TSA is tasked with the safety of the passengers and airline employees just as you may be tasked with the safety of those in your home.
And in my opinion, the TSA is tasked with violating everyone's fundamental rights and I would therefore consider their entire job morally wrong.
The courts allow it because congress allowed it, and congress allowed it because that's what a majority of their constituents want.
To me, it's pretty clear that it violates the violates the constitution, and as far as I know, the majority doesn't have absolute power in the US.
They have real world examples engraved in their memories after 9/11.
So they point to a single example and say, "See! The bogeyman is going to get us! Give us security theater or the terrists will destroy us!" Well, maybe they do...
I think so, yes. In the US, at least, courts have recognized that censoring or banning porn violates freedom of speech/expression. Of course, this isn't happening in the US...
Is it like the freedom to distribute heroine?
Well, I'm against the war on drugs, so...
but I see no freedom to distribute pornography.
I'd say that's a rather limited view of freedom, then.
The Brazillian House of Deputies has approved a bill (which is now in the Senate) that punishes with 3 years of jail any speech that expresses disapproval of homosexual behavior. I don't see Slashdot complaining.
I certainly find that objectionable. I've repeatedly said that, for example, the Westboro Baptist church should be able to continue their protests.
All of my college friends who watched pornography (two of them liked child pornography, by the way) were into the hard practices I described above. I have never seen a friend who is satisfied by "mild" pornography.
Oh, so anecdotal evidence, then? Exactly as I thought.
Asking a guy to prove that "once you stimulate your imagination with sexual fantasies, you will likely try to act them out" is like asking a guy to prove that "if you go into night club and starting insulting a young, strong, aggressive-looking guy, you will likely get into a fight"
In other words, it's like asking you to provide actual evidence to back up your arguments rather than just saying that a certain conclusion is 'common sense'? Sounds fine to me.
And the straw man award goes to...
Straw man? Not really. You repeatedly say that the wife wouldn't want to do these things and that the porn will make the guy become less interested in his wife while not even mentioning women once. I found that odd, so I commented on it.
No. But nice ad hominem there.
I didn't intend for it to discredit anything you said. It was simply an observation of mine.
I disagree with the courts. The courts can say whatever they want, but I think it's pretty clear that they're not standing for people's rights at this point.
As I said, if they were treated as potential terrorists, they would be arrested, or put on a no fly list.
But they do hope to find terrorists. They check everyone because they want to see if they have anything suspicious. Everyone is thought to potentially be a terrorist. The thing is, though, that they have no evidence that anyone is even a terrorist, but they're still being treated as potential terrorists in my book.
You would prefer they just let this person on a plane anyway?
Sure. Now that the cockpit doors are secured (the only truly worthwhile thing done since 9/11), they can't really do much damage with planes anyway. At this point, they'd be better off bombing the checkpoints.
Just get the government out of the airports.
That said, I also don't' think he could comprehend the destructive power a single person can wield these days, and the hundreds or even thousands of people a single person can kill, whether unbalanced, or using premeditation.
Safety is more important than security in most cases, in my opinion.
Do you have a list of these US citizens being arrested and classified as terrorists at a US airport
I never said anyone was classified as a terrorist. I said that everyone is being treated like potential terrorists. Since the government quite clearly violates the constitution right out in the open, it wouldn't surprise me if normal people ended up on a list of suspected terrorists.
I do question that this kill list contains anything but terrorists, or suspected terrorists.
It doesn't seem to take much to become a "suspect terrorist" these days. Everyone gets molested at airports for being possible terrorists, and being a suspected terrorist is just a step up from that.
The guy starts watching videos of erotic stripping. Then he starts watching videos of crude intercourse, and before he knows it he is into bizarre sexual practices and even things like simulated rape, incest, group sex, bestiality, and sometimes child pornography.
It sounds like you have a strong imagination to me. Or at least anecdotal evidence to back up some of this nonsense.
Once you put bizarre sex fantasies in there, you will most likely try to act them out. This leads to promiscuity, adultery, humiliation and self-humiliation, conjugal discord (because the wife is not willing to act out, and is in fact disgusted by, the fantasies of the husband), STDs and abortion.
I don't really know what to say other than... prove it.
because the wife is not willing to act out, and is in fact disgusted by, the fantasies of the husband
Yes. Women aren't interested in sex, and only men are interested in 'bizarre' sexual acts.
If civilians can do it without any special authorization, then it's fine for law enforcement to do it.
I disagree. This would allow the government to spy on people en masse as long as it's technically possible for a civilian to do it. The problem is that the government has virtually unlimited resources compared to citizens and could outsource their spying to corporations and then later collect the data (if the corporations allowed civilians to collect the data too, that is).
Slashdot Mirror
I think a draft is actually a good deterrent against aggressiveness - an all-volunteer army means if soldiers are fighting and dieing it's by their choice and the general populace can accept it more easily. On the other hand if random people's children are being drafted there will be far more public outcry against the war.
I often prefer freedom over safety. This is one of those cases. I consider it a great threat to freedom when your government can force you to go die in a war that is perhaps unjust, and that is why I would support a constitutional amendment banning all forms of drafting.
1) Then you only catch criminals _after_ they have commited the crime.
Or if you have evidence that they're very likely going to commit the crime.
2) Then you will let a lot more dangerous criminals walk away
I prefer this to arresting people for speech. That said, it doesn't have to be legal to hire a murderer to do your bidding for you.
wold work in the real world.
You'd be surprised just how resilient the 'real world' is.
Government _already_ restricts harmful speech.
I'm well aware of this, but I don't have to agree with it.
you should be campaigning to legalize death threats and conspiracy to commit crime.
What have we been arguing about?
And the restricting should be done at the local (not federal) level, because I believe descentralized government leads to greater freedom.
That just leads to the government violating people's rights at the local level. I prefer things I believe are fundamental rights to be spelled out in the constitution and to also restrict local governments. Every other local law is fine, though.
I don't think goernmnet officials are angels, but I still think the government can server a useful function.
Well, so do I. Just not here.
I also think that's bad and should be changed.
The law says don't cross the white line if the light is red.
Humans aren't robots.
Such a right does not exist either as a constitutional right
Incorrect, I believe. The constitution itself makes no such distinctions. However, some interpretations of it differ.
If the absollute right to say anything existed
I don't believe in absolute rights.
You believe in the right to conspire to murder?
As soon as someone takes actual actions to murder another person, they're fair game, I think.
They don't magically lose anything, because the right to disrupt funerals does not exist in the first place.
I believe it should. Please do not complain about those people who wish to restrict politically incorrect speech in the future; to me, it makes you look like a hypocrite, and I don't believe you've said anything that convinces me that you're different. You seem to just want to restrict speech so people don't get their feelings hurt.
Pornography is not an opinion.
I didn't say it was.
2.) I did not just say it is "just different", I gave you a comparative analysis of the consequences of restricting politicla/religious/philosophical speech versus the consequences of restricting pornography.
And I told you that allowing the government to restrict speech or expression just because you think it's harmful, you don't like it, or you think it's offensive is naive and ignores the countless number of abusive governments that have existed throughout history.
Yes, he could have said "Once I had kids, my views...." instead of "Once you have kids, you view ".
Indeed he could have. But it doesn't mean much for the correctness of someone's previous beliefs when his/her views change to begin with.
But what he's saying, in my experience, is mostly true, if not always true for everyone.
Well, my point was that I've seen a few parents who aren't paranoid and irrational.
Once you have kids, you view of these things change,however.
And I suppose you speak for all parents, don't you?
How is somebody who has a poor grasp of reality supposed to interpret this information?
Who knows? Why should the grand majority of us who aren't 'crazy' have to suffer just because there are a few 'crazy' people?
We live in a very screwed up society.
I agree, but I think it's because people often seem to enjoy sacrificing freedom for safety.
But to say that it makes them into killers or has any significant effect on them is just as ridiculous, in my opinion. As far as I know, crime statistics don't demonstrate either.
None of this applies to pornography. Restricting pornography only means that a few people (precisely the ones who did not want it strongly in the first place) will either masturbate less, or will masturbate with just their imagination. Don't portray this as a human rights violation.
I see it as a violation of the fundamental right to freedom of expression. Opinions are speech. Political opinions are speech. It's all speech/expression, and saying it's 'just different' won't make it so. Saying, "I don't like it and it's not political speech, so the government should restrict/ban it" completely ignores that people in the government are not perfect beings who can do no wrong, but are normal, corruptible human beings. I cannot understand how anyone who knows of history's long line of abusive governments can honestly say that they want the government to have the ability to restrict certain speech/expression simply because they don't like it or personally think it's harmful.
There are crucial differences between political/religious/philosophical speech, and pornography:
And if you allow speech/expression/content to be banned because some people are offended by it or think it's harmful, anything could be banned.
Not at funerals.
Oh, right. They magically lose their right to free speech at funerals. I don't exactly want the government to have to the power to arbitrarily decide that certain areas are constitution-free zones, sorry.
No. The Brazilian bill would prohibit "homophobic" speech in itself , while I only ask the Westboro guys to maintain a certain distance from funerals if they want to express their happiness that the guy has died. They can still express their ideas, in the words that they choose, by printing books, distributing pamphlets (though not at the funerals), or placing outdoors, to their hearts content.
In other words, you just don't want them to do it in a way that you don't like (but only for speech that offends certain people!). I see. I don't want to see another Slashdot comment from you, but you're free to make comments elsewhere.
With all respect, I think you allowed misplaced Libertarian dogma to get in the way of reason.
I think you've foolishly just expressed your opinion as a fact, and believe that you place too much trust in the government.
Seriously? You think that if you refuse to go through the porn-o-scope, the President will put you on his personal kill list alongside the worst mass-murdering terrorists in the world?
Which comment did you read?
Get real: the people on that list are stone-cold psychopath murderers, leading cadres of stone-cold murderers, most of them trying to murder Americans.
Oh, it seems you've read the list. Would you care to give me a link to it?
But no sane person would argue that you should be able to advertise heroine anywhere you want.
I suppose I'm not sane by your standards, then. Oh, and plenty of people would say that heroine is a bit different from pornography.
This way, people who really want it would get it all the same, but undecided people would not be enticed to fall for it.
Why don't we just legally bar you from posting comments except in certain secluded websites? That way, people who really want it would get it all the same, but undecided people would not be enticed to fall for it.
But there is a huge difference between expressing a crazy idea, and preying on emotionally devastated people who are mourning a fallen soldier.
The fact that people are offended by what they do does not mean they have no right to free speech. A moment ago you were complaining about people who have no problem violating the rights of people who say things that are deemed 'politically incorrect', yet here you are advocating for something similar to what they would want...
You asked for anecdotal evidence, you got it.
Oh, that's how you interpreted it. Well, I actually intended to ask for actual evidence.
If someone says that death threats should be banned, will you demand proof that death threats can disrupt a person's life?
How are death threats relevant to a ban on pornography? That said, I'm against bans on death threats.
You claimed that I said women "are not interested in sex". I did not say it. Straw man.
Actually, I only intended to comment on the fact that you neglected to mention women at all in your examples. If you want me to be precise, I could rephrase my previous statement as a question.
Duh, 90% of porn consists of men humiliating women.
I'm not sure where that statistic came from or why it matters.
Also, everyone heard the story of the guy who wants to sodomize his wife, but she will not allow it.
I've never heard of that. Are you referring to a specific story, or idle gossip in general? If the latter, then I suppose I've heard of such stories, but again, this is all anecdotal evidence. I highly doubt that has anything to do with pornography, though.
I have never heard the story of the woman who begs to be sodomized by her husband, but he will not allow it.
Again, if you're referring to individual stories, then I have.
It was a cheap personal attack.
We're going to have to agree to disagree on the "cheap" part.
Do you lock your house at night?
Fortunately that doesn't violate anyone's fundamental rights!
it's a simple precaution, but it restricts your freedoms, yet you do it.
When I lock my own door, the government is not restricting my freedoms. Your example is irrelevant to the matter at hand.
The difference here being that the TSA is tasked with the safety of the passengers and airline employees just as you may be tasked with the safety of those in your home.
And in my opinion, the TSA is tasked with violating everyone's fundamental rights and I would therefore consider their entire job morally wrong.
The courts allow it because congress allowed it, and congress allowed it because that's what a majority of their constituents want.
To me, it's pretty clear that it violates the violates the constitution, and as far as I know, the majority doesn't have absolute power in the US.
They have real world examples engraved in their memories after 9/11.
So they point to a single example and say, "See! The bogeyman is going to get us! Give us security theater or the terrists will destroy us!" Well, maybe they do...
People have a freedom to distribute pornography?
I think so, yes. In the US, at least, courts have recognized that censoring or banning porn violates freedom of speech/expression. Of course, this isn't happening in the US...
Is it like the freedom to distribute heroine?
Well, I'm against the war on drugs, so...
but I see no freedom to distribute pornography.
I'd say that's a rather limited view of freedom, then.
The Brazillian House of Deputies has approved a bill (which is now in the Senate) that punishes with 3 years of jail any speech that expresses disapproval of homosexual behavior. I don't see Slashdot complaining.
I certainly find that objectionable. I've repeatedly said that, for example, the Westboro Baptist church should be able to continue their protests.
All of my college friends who watched pornography (two of them liked child pornography, by the way) were into the hard practices I described above. I have never seen a friend who is satisfied by "mild" pornography.
Oh, so anecdotal evidence, then? Exactly as I thought.
Asking a guy to prove that "once you stimulate your imagination with sexual fantasies, you will likely try to act them out" is like asking a guy to prove that "if you go into night club and starting insulting a young, strong, aggressive-looking guy, you will likely get into a fight"
In other words, it's like asking you to provide actual evidence to back up your arguments rather than just saying that a certain conclusion is 'common sense'? Sounds fine to me.
And the straw man award goes to...
Straw man? Not really. You repeatedly say that the wife wouldn't want to do these things and that the porn will make the guy become less interested in his wife while not even mentioning women once. I found that odd, so I commented on it.
No. But nice ad hominem there.
I didn't intend for it to discredit anything you said. It was simply an observation of mine.
The courts would disagree.
I disagree with the courts. The courts can say whatever they want, but I think it's pretty clear that they're not standing for people's rights at this point.
As I said, if they were treated as potential terrorists, they would be arrested, or put on a no fly list.
But they do hope to find terrorists. They check everyone because they want to see if they have anything suspicious. Everyone is thought to potentially be a terrorist. The thing is, though, that they have no evidence that anyone is even a terrorist, but they're still being treated as potential terrorists in my book.
You would prefer they just let this person on a plane anyway?
Sure. Now that the cockpit doors are secured (the only truly worthwhile thing done since 9/11), they can't really do much damage with planes anyway. At this point, they'd be better off bombing the checkpoints.
Just get the government out of the airports.
That said, I also don't' think he could comprehend the destructive power a single person can wield these days, and the hundreds or even thousands of people a single person can kill, whether unbalanced, or using premeditation.
Safety is more important than security in most cases, in my opinion.
No, they are being treated like a potential threat to the passengers on the plane.
That is, everyone is being treated as potential terrorists. Anyone who tries to get on a plane has their constitution rights violated.
Do you have a list of these US citizens being arrested and classified as terrorists at a US airport
I never said anyone was classified as a terrorist. I said that everyone is being treated like potential terrorists. Since the government quite clearly violates the constitution right out in the open, it wouldn't surprise me if normal people ended up on a list of suspected terrorists.
I do question that this kill list contains anything but terrorists, or suspected terrorists.
It doesn't seem to take much to become a "suspect terrorist" these days. Everyone gets molested at airports for being possible terrorists, and being a suspected terrorist is just a step up from that.
The guy starts watching videos of erotic stripping. Then he starts watching videos of crude intercourse, and before he knows it he is into bizarre sexual practices and even things like simulated rape, incest, group sex, bestiality, and sometimes child pornography.
It sounds like you have a strong imagination to me. Or at least anecdotal evidence to back up some of this nonsense.
Once you put bizarre sex fantasies in there, you will most likely try to act them out. This leads to promiscuity, adultery, humiliation and self-humiliation, conjugal discord (because the wife is not willing to act out, and is in fact disgusted by, the fantasies of the husband), STDs and abortion.
I don't really know what to say other than... prove it.
because the wife is not willing to act out, and is in fact disgusted by, the fantasies of the husband
Yes. Women aren't interested in sex, and only men are interested in 'bizarre' sexual acts.
You're not by chance a wacky puritan, are you?
And how often does that happen? Even if it did, how is violating people's freedom by banning it a good solution?
So parents would welcome it if the government wanted to lock everyone up in padded rooms? Safety is what's important, after all!
If civilians can do it without any special authorization, then it's fine for law enforcement to do it.
I disagree. This would allow the government to spy on people en masse as long as it's technically possible for a civilian to do it. The problem is that the government has virtually unlimited resources compared to citizens and could outsource their spying to corporations and then later collect the data (if the corporations allowed civilians to collect the data too, that is).