Most of the mass-shooters in the last ten years have been either under mental health treatment and medications or were until just prior to their crimes.
Citation needed. While many mass shooters have a history of mental illness, the majority don't. Look at the facts: https://www.nytimes.com/intera...
Laws already on the books that should have stopped at least some of the mass shootings were not enforced.
So what happens if you pass more laws and bans and they too are not enforced? Pass more laws?
Let's start by funding improvements to the background check system, and requiring it for private sales. You can see that many of the mass shooters purchased guns legally and passed background checks, even when they shouldn't have. This offers a meaningful mechanism for reducing gun violence and saving lives, and doesn't even require anything more than making sure that existing systems work better.
The cartels will have a new cash commodity to sell Americans. Even better, these weapons won't have any restrictions. Think of street criminals with fully-automatic weapons, RPGs, grenades, landmines, 'Stinger'-type anti-aircraft rockets, and more.
That's already happening, for the small subset of people that have any interest in it - an acquaintance of mine got an unlicensed full-auto AK without much trouble at all. The big question is WHY people would want these things in the first place. What the hell are you going to do with a landmine? Somehow cartels haven't created a massive black market for military-grade weaponry in Europe, or Japan... why would it suddenly spring up out of nowhere? Where would this massive demand come from? Remember, you don't have the addictive properties of alcohol or drugs to drive sales, and guns aren't consumable to guarantee repeat customers.
Stop with the knee-jerk emotional bullshit. Use that lump of gristle 3 feet above your ass for something more than a hat rack.
Why don't you take your own advice, instead of painting fantasy scenarios where gun control inexplicably turns the U.S. into a Mad Max world overnight?
No, a gun is purposely built and designed to fire a projectile. A slingshot is designed to do the same thing, so is a BB gun, so is a potato gun... So, unless it is used illegally, it is not purpose built to kill.
This is just silly, and makes it seem as though you are being intentionally obtuse. Firearm technology was invented and exists for the sake of causing injury to people or animals. More advanced firearms can cause more injury, faster, and with greater precision and consistency. The same can be said of swords, bow and arrow, or any of the other weapons you describe. The primary utility of any of these is killing something - a bow and arrow that couldn't kill a deer would be a failure for the hunter using it. The utility of a gun for self defense or hunting is directly measured by its lethality - otherwise you could defend your home with a slingshot, right? This is distinct from a technology like a car - a car that sucks at killing is a better car, a gun that sucks at killing isn't a very effective gun.
By your logic, a guillotine isn't purpose built to kill unless used illegally. After all, a guillotine can be used to slice watermelons! The ACTUAL USAGE of a tool IN NO WAY modifies what the tool is designed to do. If I use a hammer to murder somebody, that doesn't change the intent of the hammer builder.
One last thing, I don't know of anywhere in the US (at least no state I"ve lived in) that requires any form of training in order to drive a car or get a license.
This is an old argument, going back to Newton and Leibniz. Newton favored momentum (p=mv), Leibniz favored what we now call kinetic energy (KE = 1/2mv^2). Turns out that they were each right, in their own way - there are scenarios (like some types of collisions) where momentum is conserved, and so is useful for various calculations, but it turns out that energy is one of the most fundamental quantities in all of physics, and governs the operation of everything in the universe.
Armchair physics aside, the actual numbers say that trucks and SUVs aren't any safer than midsize sedans: https://www.accessmagazine.org...
Ultra-compacts are a bit less safe, than larger cars, yes. But the only real difference between an SUV and a midsize or larger car from a safety perspective is that while an SUV or truck doesn't make you any safer than a car would, it is far more likely to kill anybody you collide with.
Recent Volt owner here, and I bet the Volt beats your Subie off the line. You'll win in the 0-60MPH and 1/4 mile, but from 0-30MPH, electric is amazingly quick because of the immense torque - you also don't have downshifts that effectively count as periods of 0 acceleration.
So, I think for the use case you describe, a Volt would probably be competitive with a WRX (and undoubtedly much better than a Cherokee).
Newsflash: Kids who spend their weekends staying up till 4AM partying or binging on Netflix or gaming do a pretty shitty job on their Monday morning schoolwork.
What I dislike about these sorts of studies is the implication that we have no control over our internal clocks. Parents, if you care, enforce a reasonable bedtime and/or curfew for your kids. Teenagers, if you care, learn to wake up on time, which means going to bed earlier.
People act like it's rocket science, but people have pretty much always understood this basic principle... Ben Franklin and Aristotle both talked about it, for starters. If you have stuff to do early in the morning, get some sleep. If you can't do that, then you are prioritizing your late night funtimes over your early morning responsibilities.
If you make that choice, it's on you. Own it and the consequences that come from it.
You admit that Trump cannot actually infringe on anybody's rights without help from Congress and concurrence from the Courts yet you think I'm being hypercritical over my constitutional stance?
Nobody's rights are being infringed here...
You: "Trump says he wants to shit all over civil liberties and become a dictator for life, but he can't because of checks and balances, so everything is fine and I support him".
You are the one claiming that "one whole side wants to rip up the constitution". Before throwing around such accusations, you should understand what your own guy actually stands for. And maybe, you know, learn some history and understand why it is written the way it is.
Nope, I'm not really outraged. I'm just disappointed that so many people will blindly support a guy who is on record vocally opposing basic civil liberties, and legitimately worried about these ugly and concerning authoritarian trends. I thought we were better than that... and I thought that people calling themselves constitutionalists would actually recognize grave threats to its principles. Take DJT's comments on Xi Jinping becoming the de facto dictator of China: "He's now president for life. President for life. No, he's great. And look, he was able to do that. I think it's great. Maybe we'll have to give that a shot some day."
It's complete and utter bullshit to support a guy like that and claim to care at all about the constitution.
Some highlights: Tasked his former chief of staff with looking into changing the country’s libel laws. Reportedly asked then-FBI Director James Comey to jail reporters who publish classified information. Said it is “frankly disgusting the way the press is able to write whatever they want to write” in a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Threatened to cancel the broadcast licenses of media companies that offer negative coverage of him. Threatened to change libel laws to make it easier to sue publishers and news organizations following the release of an unflattering book. Threatened legal action against a journalist and publisher over a book that includes critical statements about him. When the father of a slain Muslim American soldier criticized Trump in a speech during the Democratic National Convention, Trump said the father “has no right to stand in front of millions of people and claim I have never read the Constitution.”
And, his own words: "“Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag - if they do, there must be consequences - perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail!”"
Just because there are checks and balances that have kept Trump from destroying free speech doesn't mean he hasn't tried.
Let's set matters of legality aside for a moment - what's the ethical response?
What's legal is unambiguous and isn't being debated (at least not by me). What is being debated is what's right, and what's good, and what should be legal.
If I happen to shoot somebody who was attempting to assault me when I'm minding my own business, that's their choice, not mine.
Wrong. If you shoot somebody, you are responsible. Full stop. You have the weapon, you are the one who is responsible for it being fired. How you respond is your choice. Sure, the hypothetical criminal made a choice to take a risk, but that in no way removes your own agency. It's like you mowing down a pedestrian and saying "if I happen to run over somebody who was attempting to jaywalk when I'm minding my own business, that's their choice, not mine."
Deadly force is only justified as a last resort to prevent some other violence. It's not worth killing someone to defend a wallet, a car, groceries, or your TV.
But I do see where one side of this whole debate is ready to rip up the constitution and the legal basis of this country by hook or crook. So, maybe it is, but what a mess that would be.
I know what you mean... I hate how Trump is so clearly opposed to free speech, freedom of religion, and checks and balances on the executive branch.
If you want to be taken seriously as a "Constitutionalist", you ought to get equally offended when your side goes off the rails.
The message needs to be: the world is chaos, and your job is to reduce the chaos through sacrifice. Find something in the world that needs fixing, that makes the world a better place, and strive as hard as you can to fix it. Sacrifice means putting off todays gratification for a better future. A surgeon spends 15 years of hard work before he is an expert saving lives and creating order.
So while I get what youtube is trying to do, I think it will be entirely ineffective.
I really disagree with most of your points but I agree with this sentiment. You would probably consider me a leftist, but from where I'm standing it looks to me like the GOP are the ones who don't want to sacrifice... celebrating tax cuts that will saddle our kids with the taxes we should be paying now. Where is the example of putting off today's gratification in the current GOP? Where is the attitude that says I should sacrifice something personally to help someone who is worse off than me, or even to help my future self?
It seems to me that Trumpism has done more to erode your suggested ethic than any political movement in living memory.
For the record, I don't think that conservatives are the source of this degenerate attitude, but I do believe they are currently infected with it. I don't believe liberals are the source either. In reality, I think you've got a country so far removed from its beginnings and so accustomed to prosperity that it has forgotten what created that prosperity in the first place - which are IMO liberty, a sense of civic duty, and a practical empiricism. Right now, major forces across and beyond the political spectrum are instead pushing for authoritarianism, complacency, and anti-intellectualism.
If you think leftists are the root of the problem, you're just buying into the establishment narrative.
There is no — and there can not be — any higher authority deciding, whether to allow a particular person to exercise their right and any law to the contrary is just that, unconstitutional.
Wrong. There is a higher authority than the constitution: the people. This is made clear by the constitution itself, in that it makes provisions for amendment and modification when enough elected representatives desire it. The government derives its authority from the consent of the governed, and any piece of paper only has power insofar as the people believe it does. This is both true idealistically and as a practical matter - history shows that government that is not working as desired by the governed will eventually be changed, democratically or through revolution.
Let's assume this is true - is murdering someone who is committing a nonviolent crime actually self defense? Or for that matter, possibly committing a violent one? Let's set matters of legality aside for a moment - what's the ethical response?
I'm reminded of a guy who was getting mugged by a teenager in the inner city... this guy could tell that the kid was scared to death and desperate, and offered to buy him dinner: https://www.npr.org/2008/03/28...
That story has made me reconsider how I might handle such a situation. Would it be preferable if this kid was dead?
Seriously: Do the math for 300,000,000 people. It would bankrupt the country in ONE YEAR.
Do your own math, genius. UBI would not be a flat payout to 300,000,000. There are only 240M adults in the US, for starters. In reality, it would essentially be a $12,000 reverse tax to the most impoverished, and taper off with increased income. It would replace welfare and possibly social security, which come out to nearly $2T. It's not hard at all to construct a UBI system that comes out revenue neutral (or even positive).
It gets rid of the backwards incentive structure of welfare. It reduces all the complexity and bureaucracy of the current entitlement programs. Realistically, UBI would cost a hell of a lot less than the tax handout the GOP just gave to the rich. Rather than approaching the problem with the nuance of a struggling 2nd grader, do the math for yourself, understand how it is meant to work, and then you can make an informed argument against the idea.
As mentioned I'm well aware this isn't rational behavior. But that's the point. None of this is rational. If human beings were rational we'd stop making tanks and build solar farms & desalination plants instead.
Can I just say, as someone who is generally allied with liberals, that this kind of shit is why you guys get a bad rap? Your argument is LITERALLY: "People are doing irrational things, so I will embrace my own variety of irrationality."
To paraphrase: A stupidity for a stupidity makes the whole world stupid. This is the postmodernist trash-thought that has systematically rotted (some pieces of) academia and totally eaten away at the soul of America. Demand EVIDENCE! Go to the data FIRST, BEFORE you make your opinions. Truth DOES exist in the world, and reality does not bend to our political whims. Seek out opportunities to PROVE YOURSELF WRONG. We need to appreciate the complexity of policy, and seek to understand and react appropriately, rather than just impulsively pushing stuff that feels good.
At a time when the GOP is going Full Retard, the left has an opportunity to be the adults in the room, and advocate evidence-driven policy based on cold, hard facts. But we're all doomed if the Democrats try to beat the GOP at the stupidity game.
Why would we think things would be any different in the future? Because whenever the damn Republicans start handing out deregulation cool-aid it has a tendency to end badly.
These are general fears based on an overall Republican ideology, but to be honest all signs suggest that their current political dominance will be very short-lived, and they have made no gestures whatsoever towards removing nuclear safety regulations. Point to something specific that you're concerned about, otherwise it just seems like you are flailing about to try to make this a partisan thing when it really isn't.
I dislike Trump as much as the next guy, but so far his administration has demonstrated pretty clearly that checks and balances are alive and well, and there's no reason at all to think that there will be any impact whatsoever on something as uncontroversial and politically unsexy as nuclear power plant safety.
It's irrational rationality. Running an unsafe nuclear power plant because you don't like paying taxes and don't trust the government is irrational. But if you've already accepted that level of irrationality then the next rational thing to do is not run the plant in the first place.
If I understand what you're saying, you're suggesting that nuclear power plants will be privatized, and therefore unsafe? Maybe you are suggesting this because of what happened with Fukushima?
The thing is, a majority of nuclear power plants in the U.S. are already privatized (but heavily regulated). That exact arrangement has provided the extraordinary safety record that we observe from nuclear energy. Why would you think things would be any different in the future? There's no movement I'm aware of to abandon those proven safety regulations, and so the most reasonable expectation is that nuclear energy will continue to demonstrate the same, exceptional level of safety and reliability that it always has.
The model does not include the cost of nuke plants that melt down, even though we know they do that periodically.
Come on, man, this is just blatant FUD. "Periodically" meaning 3 real incidents, EVER. Compare deaths from nuclear to constant deaths from solar (workers falling off roofs), wind (workers falling of turbines), hydroelectric (workers falling off dams, dams failing and wiping out entire towns), natural gas (workers dying in fires), coal (workers dying in fires AND dying in mines AND bystanders dying from lung disease), and you see that nuclear is far and away the safest energy source out there. Three completely separate references for you, all of which concur: https://www.nextbigfuture.com/... https://ourworldindata.org/wha... https://www.forbes.com/sites/j...
There are a few good reasons to be wary of nuclear - frequent schedule/budget overruns being chief among them. There's also a huge cost for facility decommissioning that hasn't really been handled adequately. But safety concerns are outright lies - nuclear energy is literally and provably the safest form of energy that exists. That argument is bad and you should feel bad for making it.
This is similar to the way vanpools can work - and there are a few of them going already. Basically, there's a website where you put in your home and work address, along with your work hours, and then it will tell you about other riders going the same way at the same time. All you need is a rendezvous point on the home end, and then the van drops people off at their door on the work end.
I'm kind of surprised that this isn't more of a thing yet... it saves money, but is faster and more flexible than public transport. I also get a ton of reading done on the van. Uber or Lyft could easily implement this kind of thing with their existing app infrastructure as well - add a subscription option or something, you could even just let existing commuters sign up with Uber and then try to match people with them, both on a scheduled basis and on-demand... you add one stop to your commute per passenger, but earn $100 per head every month, for instance. I bet a lot of people would make that trade, on both sides.
I've worked as a developer in similar environments - where there are a lot of smart people with a background in math, physics, EE, or aerospace, who've googled their way to a moderate level of programming proficiency (they can probably hack together a script to do just about anything) but have zero understanding of code style, modularity, maintainability, or quality.
Some of the things that I wish everybody understood:
Very basic ideas about rules of thumb and sniff tests for maintainability and readability - avoid functions with 30 arguments, maybe? Try to identify discrete pieces of functionality and organize your code that way for easy reuse. Break up a few of those 500-line functions, mmkay? Regression testing and unit testing. How, when, where, and why. For the love of god, please comment. Also, HOW to comment (document data, document the WHY of your code) Profiling. Actually measure your shit and understand it before you launch a 1-year-long ground-up rewrite, where you repeat all the same mistakes. Style guides. The fast and easy way to prevent ocular injury in the workplace.
"What you were told" isn't evidence though, and makes for a pretty weak argument. Plus, the argument I made was about Japan, so your argument would be more pertinent if you were speaking to that specifically.
Doing some preliminary reading, it turns out Japan has just as much violence in their media as the U.S. does (and Japan and the U.S. increasingly trade entertainment back and forth, so that will tend to equalize things). That said, there are important differences: http://www.medialit.org/readin...
It's pretty fascinating, actually:
One of the major findings was that the amount of violence on Japanese and American television is roughly the same. The nature of the Japanese television violence, however, is different. Violent scenes are less frequent in Japanese-produced programs, yet tend to last longer, are more realistic and place a much greater emphasis on physical suffering.
The study also found that the violent acts in American-produced programs were equally performed by "good guys" and "bad guys," and the assaults were overwhelmingly against villains - individuals for whom the audience has little compassion and whose demise is often cheered. In Japanese-produced shows more than twice as many violent acts were performed by "bad guys," with the heroes suffering the consequences 75 percent of the time.
The researchers concluded that, compared to American shows, Japanese programs emphasize the consequences of violence. The modern-day hero in Japanese drama, much like the classic samurai figure, is noble, honest, highly disciplined and hard-working. When these heroes are wounded or killed, it arouses distress and evokes sympathy rather than applause.
So, if you want to blame anything in the American media, perhaps blame the pervasive action-hero ethic underlying most media - the idea that problems are best solved by killing the "bad guys". If you have someone who is already accustomed to the idea that violence is frequently the best solution, then all that remains to make somebody violent is to make them perceive someone else as a "bad guy". Then, the rest of the mental framework is already in place for rationalizing that violence.
That said, suppose that this is indeed the case - what should we do about it? Ban this type of media? Huge issues there with freedom of speech. I could see an argument for adjusting rating systems... maybe we say that no kid's media can portray good guys committing violence.
I expect there would be pushback there as well, though. It seems to me that the people who appreciate this "action movie" ethic are substantially similar to the AR-15 toting gun culture.
So what's the point here? The point is that 1. It's a parenting thing. First and foremost. Parents shouldn't let their children bake in front of screens as a substitute for imparting social and civic values or as a substitute for education. 2. It's also a commercial thing. We do have laws about marketing at and entering into contracts with children on the grounds that children aren't fully-formed adults capable of making their own decisions. Laws at all levels of government treat that sort of commercial activity as predatory in many cases and no one bats an eye on 1A grounds because even though it doesn't say it in the Constitution, we all have a notion that children aren't fully capable of being rational actors. Actually it comes close to saying it because we have a Constitutional upper limit (but no lower limit) on federal voting age.
So what's it all add up to? Maybe there is a role for government in helping parents rein in potentially harmful influences on children. What role exactly? I don't know off the top of my head. As you say...there's a need for objective information to make an informed decision, but like all research, it'll be motivated by an anecdotal observation...namely that children are impressionable.
There is no real evidence to suggest that TV is the problem, although plenty of studies have been done. It's also disappointing to me that you would rather have the government control parenting techniques than discuss restrictions on firearms. I would have more respect for conservatives if they weren't so eager to sacrifice freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion (all of which are threatened by your suggestions) for the sake of keeping gun purchases convenient.
If you care about the national debt, you should never, ever vote a Republican into the Oval Office. Their stated goal ("starve the beast" philosophy) is to increase the debt to try to force the government to shrink. Like increasing your credit card debt to force yourself to be more frugal.
The only real outlier is Reagan who spent a tonne of cash.
The Republicans DID actually have a claim to the "fiscal conservative" label prior to Reagan. Trickle-down economics, unfunded tax cuts, and the intentional deficits of "starve the beast" changed all that. So again, you aren't actually addressing my argument, which is about Reagan-era Republicans, and the Republicans of today in particular. In the OP, I made the claim that no Republican since Nixon has lowered deficits on average, so attempted rebuttals based on Democrats and Republicans from more than 50 years ago aren't pertinent. The critical question is who you ought to vote for, here and now, if you care about the national debt, and the GOP of today demonstrates a far greater propensity for fiscal irresponsibility. Look at your own figures for the last several decades:
Obama D 68% Bush R 101% Clinton D 32% HW_Bush R 54% Reagan R 186% Carter D 43%
Your own numbers show that each Democrat is adding far less to the debt than the Republican that preceded him, while every Republican that takes over from a Democrat sends the debt soaring again. Which supports my contention - that post-Reagan Republicans run up deficits, and the Democrats drive them back down like responsible adults. Step away from the familiar narrative and look at the numbers honestly.
Slashdot Mirror
Most of the mass-shooters in the last ten years have been either under mental health treatment and medications or were until just prior to their crimes.
Citation needed. While many mass shooters have a history of mental illness, the majority don't. Look at the facts: https://www.nytimes.com/intera...
Laws already on the books that should have stopped at least some of the mass shootings were not enforced.
So what happens if you pass more laws and bans and they too are not enforced? Pass more laws?
Let's start by funding improvements to the background check system, and requiring it for private sales. You can see that many of the mass shooters purchased guns legally and passed background checks, even when they shouldn't have. This offers a meaningful mechanism for reducing gun violence and saving lives, and doesn't even require anything more than making sure that existing systems work better.
The cartels will have a new cash commodity to sell Americans. Even better, these weapons won't have any restrictions. Think of street criminals with fully-automatic weapons, RPGs, grenades, landmines, 'Stinger'-type anti-aircraft rockets, and more.
That's already happening, for the small subset of people that have any interest in it - an acquaintance of mine got an unlicensed full-auto AK without much trouble at all. The big question is WHY people would want these things in the first place. What the hell are you going to do with a landmine? Somehow cartels haven't created a massive black market for military-grade weaponry in Europe, or Japan... why would it suddenly spring up out of nowhere? Where would this massive demand come from? Remember, you don't have the addictive properties of alcohol or drugs to drive sales, and guns aren't consumable to guarantee repeat customers.
Stop with the knee-jerk emotional bullshit. Use that lump of gristle 3 feet above your ass for something more than a hat rack.
Why don't you take your own advice, instead of painting fantasy scenarios where gun control inexplicably turns the U.S. into a Mad Max world overnight?
No, a gun is purposely built and designed to fire a projectile. A slingshot is designed to do the same thing, so is a BB gun, so is a potato gun... So, unless it is used illegally, it is not purpose built to kill.
This is just silly, and makes it seem as though you are being intentionally obtuse. Firearm technology was invented and exists for the sake of causing injury to people or animals. More advanced firearms can cause more injury, faster, and with greater precision and consistency. The same can be said of swords, bow and arrow, or any of the other weapons you describe. The primary utility of any of these is killing something - a bow and arrow that couldn't kill a deer would be a failure for the hunter using it. The utility of a gun for self defense or hunting is directly measured by its lethality - otherwise you could defend your home with a slingshot, right? This is distinct from a technology like a car - a car that sucks at killing is a better car, a gun that sucks at killing isn't a very effective gun.
By your logic, a guillotine isn't purpose built to kill unless used illegally. After all, a guillotine can be used to slice watermelons! The ACTUAL USAGE of a tool IN NO WAY modifies what the tool is designed to do. If I use a hammer to murder somebody, that doesn't change the intent of the hammer builder.
One last thing, I don't know of anywhere in the US (at least no state I"ve lived in) that requires any form of training in order to drive a car or get a license.
Are you serious, or just trolling?
https://dmv.dc.gov/service/obt...
Here's the summary of requirements to get licensed:
Application
Documentation
Vision Screening
Knowledge Test
Road Test
Photograph
Fees
This is an old argument, going back to Newton and Leibniz. Newton favored momentum (p=mv), Leibniz favored what we now call kinetic energy (KE = 1/2mv^2). Turns out that they were each right, in their own way - there are scenarios (like some types of collisions) where momentum is conserved, and so is useful for various calculations, but it turns out that energy is one of the most fundamental quantities in all of physics, and governs the operation of everything in the universe.
Armchair physics aside, the actual numbers say that trucks and SUVs aren't any safer than midsize sedans:
https://www.accessmagazine.org...
Ultra-compacts are a bit less safe, than larger cars, yes. But the only real difference between an SUV and a midsize or larger car from a safety perspective is that while an SUV or truck doesn't make you any safer than a car would, it is far more likely to kill anybody you collide with.
Recent Volt owner here, and I bet the Volt beats your Subie off the line. You'll win in the 0-60MPH and 1/4 mile, but from 0-30MPH, electric is amazingly quick because of the immense torque - you also don't have downshifts that effectively count as periods of 0 acceleration.
So, I think for the use case you describe, a Volt would probably be competitive with a WRX (and undoubtedly much better than a Cherokee).
Newsflash: Kids who spend their weekends staying up till 4AM partying or binging on Netflix or gaming do a pretty shitty job on their Monday morning schoolwork.
What I dislike about these sorts of studies is the implication that we have no control over our internal clocks. Parents, if you care, enforce a reasonable bedtime and/or curfew for your kids. Teenagers, if you care, learn to wake up on time, which means going to bed earlier.
People act like it's rocket science, but people have pretty much always understood this basic principle... Ben Franklin and Aristotle both talked about it, for starters. If you have stuff to do early in the morning, get some sleep. If you can't do that, then you are prioritizing your late night funtimes over your early morning responsibilities.
If you make that choice, it's on you. Own it and the consequences that come from it.
You admit that Trump cannot actually infringe on anybody's rights without help from Congress and concurrence from the Courts yet you think I'm being hypercritical over my constitutional stance?
Nobody's rights are being infringed here...
You: "Trump says he wants to shit all over civil liberties and become a dictator for life, but he can't because of checks and balances, so everything is fine and I support him".
You are the one claiming that "one whole side wants to rip up the constitution". Before throwing around such accusations, you should understand what your own guy actually stands for. And maybe, you know, learn some history and understand why it is written the way it is.
Nope, I'm not really outraged. I'm just disappointed that so many people will blindly support a guy who is on record vocally opposing basic civil liberties, and legitimately worried about these ugly and concerning authoritarian trends. I thought we were better than that... and I thought that people calling themselves constitutionalists would actually recognize grave threats to its principles. Take DJT's comments on Xi Jinping becoming the de facto dictator of China: "He's now president for life. President for life. No, he's great. And look, he was able to do that. I think it's great. Maybe we'll have to give that a shot some day."
It's complete and utter bullshit to support a guy like that and claim to care at all about the constitution.
Prove it. When did Trump oppose free speech?
Here's a list for you: https://www.aclu.org/blog/free...
Some highlights:
Tasked his former chief of staff with looking into changing the country’s libel laws.
Reportedly asked then-FBI Director James Comey to jail reporters who publish classified information.
Said it is “frankly disgusting the way the press is able to write whatever they want to write” in a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Threatened to cancel the broadcast licenses of media companies that offer negative coverage of him.
Threatened to change libel laws to make it easier to sue publishers and news organizations following the release of an unflattering book.
Threatened legal action against a journalist and publisher over a book that includes critical statements about him.
When the father of a slain Muslim American soldier criticized Trump in a speech during the Democratic National Convention, Trump said the father “has no right to stand in front of millions of people and claim I have never read the Constitution.”
And, his own words:
"“Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag - if they do, there must be consequences - perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail!”"
Just because there are checks and balances that have kept Trump from destroying free speech doesn't mean he hasn't tried.
But I AM saying that it's perfectly legal.
Read what I wrote, please:
Let's set matters of legality aside for a moment - what's the ethical response?
What's legal is unambiguous and isn't being debated (at least not by me). What is being debated is what's right, and what's good, and what should be legal.
If I happen to shoot somebody who was attempting to assault me when I'm minding my own business, that's their choice, not mine.
Wrong. If you shoot somebody, you are responsible. Full stop. You have the weapon, you are the one who is responsible for it being fired. How you respond is your choice. Sure, the hypothetical criminal made a choice to take a risk, but that in no way removes your own agency. It's like you mowing down a pedestrian and saying "if I happen to run over somebody who was attempting to jaywalk when I'm minding my own business, that's their choice, not mine."
Deadly force is only justified as a last resort to prevent some other violence. It's not worth killing someone to defend a wallet, a car, groceries, or your TV.
But I do see where one side of this whole debate is ready to rip up the constitution and the legal basis of this country by hook or crook. So, maybe it is, but what a mess that would be.
I know what you mean... I hate how Trump is so clearly opposed to free speech, freedom of religion, and checks and balances on the executive branch.
If you want to be taken seriously as a "Constitutionalist", you ought to get equally offended when your side goes off the rails.
The message needs to be: the world is chaos, and your job is to reduce the chaos through sacrifice. Find something in the world that needs fixing, that makes the world a better place, and strive as hard as you can to fix it. Sacrifice means putting off todays gratification for a better future. A surgeon spends 15 years of hard work before he is an expert saving lives and creating order.
So while I get what youtube is trying to do, I think it will be entirely ineffective.
I really disagree with most of your points but I agree with this sentiment. You would probably consider me a leftist, but from where I'm standing it looks to me like the GOP are the ones who don't want to sacrifice... celebrating tax cuts that will saddle our kids with the taxes we should be paying now. Where is the example of putting off today's gratification in the current GOP? Where is the attitude that says I should sacrifice something personally to help someone who is worse off than me, or even to help my future self?
It seems to me that Trumpism has done more to erode your suggested ethic than any political movement in living memory.
For the record, I don't think that conservatives are the source of this degenerate attitude, but I do believe they are currently infected with it. I don't believe liberals are the source either. In reality, I think you've got a country so far removed from its beginnings and so accustomed to prosperity that it has forgotten what created that prosperity in the first place - which are IMO liberty, a sense of civic duty, and a practical empiricism. Right now, major forces across and beyond the political spectrum are instead pushing for authoritarianism, complacency, and anti-intellectualism.
If you think leftists are the root of the problem, you're just buying into the establishment narrative.
There is no — and there can not be — any higher authority deciding, whether to allow a particular person to exercise their right and any law to the contrary is just that, unconstitutional.
Wrong. There is a higher authority than the constitution: the people. This is made clear by the constitution itself, in that it makes provisions for amendment and modification when enough elected representatives desire it. The government derives its authority from the consent of the governed, and any piece of paper only has power insofar as the people believe it does. This is both true idealistically and as a practical matter - history shows that government that is not working as desired by the governed will eventually be changed, democratically or through revolution.
Self defense is a basic natural right.
Let's assume this is true - is murdering someone who is committing a nonviolent crime actually self defense? Or for that matter, possibly committing a violent one? Let's set matters of legality aside for a moment - what's the ethical response?
I'm reminded of a guy who was getting mugged by a teenager in the inner city... this guy could tell that the kid was scared to death and desperate, and offered to buy him dinner: https://www.npr.org/2008/03/28...
That story has made me reconsider how I might handle such a situation. Would it be preferable if this kid was dead?
Seriously: Do the math for 300,000,000 people. It would bankrupt the country in ONE YEAR.
Do your own math, genius. UBI would not be a flat payout to 300,000,000. There are only 240M adults in the US, for starters. In reality, it would essentially be a $12,000 reverse tax to the most impoverished, and taper off with increased income. It would replace welfare and possibly social security, which come out to nearly $2T. It's not hard at all to construct a UBI system that comes out revenue neutral (or even positive).
It gets rid of the backwards incentive structure of welfare. It reduces all the complexity and bureaucracy of the current entitlement programs. Realistically, UBI would cost a hell of a lot less than the tax handout the GOP just gave to the rich. Rather than approaching the problem with the nuance of a struggling 2nd grader, do the math for yourself, understand how it is meant to work, and then you can make an informed argument against the idea.
As mentioned I'm well aware this isn't rational behavior. But that's the point. None of this is rational. If human beings were rational we'd stop making tanks and build solar farms & desalination plants instead.
Can I just say, as someone who is generally allied with liberals, that this kind of shit is why you guys get a bad rap? Your argument is LITERALLY: "People are doing irrational things, so I will embrace my own variety of irrationality."
To paraphrase: A stupidity for a stupidity makes the whole world stupid. This is the postmodernist trash-thought that has systematically rotted (some pieces of) academia and totally eaten away at the soul of America. Demand EVIDENCE! Go to the data FIRST, BEFORE you make your opinions. Truth DOES exist in the world, and reality does not bend to our political whims. Seek out opportunities to PROVE YOURSELF WRONG. We need to appreciate the complexity of policy, and seek to understand and react appropriately, rather than just impulsively pushing stuff that feels good.
At a time when the GOP is going Full Retard, the left has an opportunity to be the adults in the room, and advocate evidence-driven policy based on cold, hard facts. But we're all doomed if the Democrats try to beat the GOP at the stupidity game.
Why would we think things would be any different in the future? Because whenever the damn Republicans start handing out deregulation cool-aid it has a tendency to end badly.
These are general fears based on an overall Republican ideology, but to be honest all signs suggest that their current political dominance will be very short-lived, and they have made no gestures whatsoever towards removing nuclear safety regulations. Point to something specific that you're concerned about, otherwise it just seems like you are flailing about to try to make this a partisan thing when it really isn't.
I dislike Trump as much as the next guy, but so far his administration has demonstrated pretty clearly that checks and balances are alive and well, and there's no reason at all to think that there will be any impact whatsoever on something as uncontroversial and politically unsexy as nuclear power plant safety.
It's irrational rationality. Running an unsafe nuclear power plant because you don't like paying taxes and don't trust the government is irrational. But if you've already accepted that level of irrationality then the next rational thing to do is not run the plant in the first place.
If I understand what you're saying, you're suggesting that nuclear power plants will be privatized, and therefore unsafe? Maybe you are suggesting this because of what happened with Fukushima?
The thing is, a majority of nuclear power plants in the U.S. are already privatized (but heavily regulated). That exact arrangement has provided the extraordinary safety record that we observe from nuclear energy. Why would you think things would be any different in the future? There's no movement I'm aware of to abandon those proven safety regulations, and so the most reasonable expectation is that nuclear energy will continue to demonstrate the same, exceptional level of safety and reliability that it always has.
The model does not include the cost of nuke plants that melt down, even though we know they do that periodically.
Come on, man, this is just blatant FUD. "Periodically" meaning 3 real incidents, EVER. Compare deaths from nuclear to constant deaths from solar (workers falling off roofs), wind (workers falling of turbines), hydroelectric (workers falling off dams, dams failing and wiping out entire towns), natural gas (workers dying in fires), coal (workers dying in fires AND dying in mines AND bystanders dying from lung disease), and you see that nuclear is far and away the safest energy source out there. Three completely separate references for you, all of which concur:
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/...
https://ourworldindata.org/wha...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/j...
There are a few good reasons to be wary of nuclear - frequent schedule/budget overruns being chief among them. There's also a huge cost for facility decommissioning that hasn't really been handled adequately. But safety concerns are outright lies - nuclear energy is literally and provably the safest form of energy that exists. That argument is bad and you should feel bad for making it.
That would be every town in the United States from May to August.
I'm not kidding either.
WHOOOOSH is not just the sound of everyone's A/C being turned on in the summer...
This is similar to the way vanpools can work - and there are a few of them going already. Basically, there's a website where you put in your home and work address, along with your work hours, and then it will tell you about other riders going the same way at the same time. All you need is a rendezvous point on the home end, and then the van drops people off at their door on the work end.
I'm kind of surprised that this isn't more of a thing yet... it saves money, but is faster and more flexible than public transport. I also get a ton of reading done on the van. Uber or Lyft could easily implement this kind of thing with their existing app infrastructure as well - add a subscription option or something, you could even just let existing commuters sign up with Uber and then try to match people with them, both on a scheduled basis and on-demand... you add one stop to your commute per passenger, but earn $100 per head every month, for instance. I bet a lot of people would make that trade, on both sides.
I've worked as a developer in similar environments - where there are a lot of smart people with a background in math, physics, EE, or aerospace, who've googled their way to a moderate level of programming proficiency (they can probably hack together a script to do just about anything) but have zero understanding of code style, modularity, maintainability, or quality.
Some of the things that I wish everybody understood:
Very basic ideas about rules of thumb and sniff tests for maintainability and readability - avoid functions with 30 arguments, maybe? Try to identify discrete pieces of functionality and organize your code that way for easy reuse. Break up a few of those 500-line functions, mmkay?
Regression testing and unit testing. How, when, where, and why.
For the love of god, please comment. Also, HOW to comment (document data, document the WHY of your code)
Profiling. Actually measure your shit and understand it before you launch a 1-year-long ground-up rewrite, where you repeat all the same mistakes.
Style guides. The fast and easy way to prevent ocular injury in the workplace.
"What you were told" isn't evidence though, and makes for a pretty weak argument. Plus, the argument I made was about Japan, so your argument would be more pertinent if you were speaking to that specifically.
Doing some preliminary reading, it turns out Japan has just as much violence in their media as the U.S. does (and Japan and the U.S. increasingly trade entertainment back and forth, so that will tend to equalize things). That said, there are important differences: http://www.medialit.org/readin...
It's pretty fascinating, actually:
One of the major findings was that the amount of violence on Japanese and American television is roughly the same. The nature of the Japanese television violence, however, is different. Violent scenes are less frequent in Japanese-produced programs, yet tend to last longer, are more realistic and place a much greater emphasis on physical suffering.
The study also found that the violent acts in American-produced programs were equally performed by "good guys" and "bad guys," and the assaults were overwhelmingly against villains - individuals for whom the audience has little compassion and whose demise is often cheered. In Japanese-produced shows more than twice as many violent acts were performed by "bad guys," with the heroes suffering the consequences 75 percent of the time.
The researchers concluded that, compared to American shows, Japanese programs emphasize the consequences of violence. The modern-day hero in Japanese drama, much like the classic samurai figure, is noble, honest, highly disciplined and hard-working. When these heroes are wounded or killed, it arouses distress and evokes sympathy rather than applause.
So, if you want to blame anything in the American media, perhaps blame the pervasive action-hero ethic underlying most media - the idea that problems are best solved by killing the "bad guys". If you have someone who is already accustomed to the idea that violence is frequently the best solution, then all that remains to make somebody violent is to make them perceive someone else as a "bad guy". Then, the rest of the mental framework is already in place for rationalizing that violence.
That said, suppose that this is indeed the case - what should we do about it? Ban this type of media? Huge issues there with freedom of speech. I could see an argument for adjusting rating systems... maybe we say that no kid's media can portray good guys committing violence.
I expect there would be pushback there as well, though. It seems to me that the people who appreciate this "action movie" ethic are substantially similar to the AR-15 toting gun culture.
So what's the point here? The point is that
1. It's a parenting thing. First and foremost. Parents shouldn't let their children bake in front of screens as a substitute for imparting social and civic values or as a substitute for education.
2. It's also a commercial thing. We do have laws about marketing at and entering into contracts with children on the grounds that children aren't fully-formed adults capable of making their own decisions. Laws at all levels of government treat that sort of commercial activity as predatory in many cases and no one bats an eye on 1A grounds because even though it doesn't say it in the Constitution, we all have a notion that children aren't fully capable of being rational actors. Actually it comes close to saying it because we have a Constitutional upper limit (but no lower limit) on federal voting age.
So what's it all add up to? Maybe there is a role for government in helping parents rein in potentially harmful influences on children. What role exactly? I don't know off the top of my head. As you say...there's a need for objective information to make an informed decision, but like all research, it'll be motivated by an anecdotal observation...namely that children are impressionable.
Many countries that have dramatically lower crime rates have very similar TV viewing habits: https://www.statista.com/stati...
Japan consumes essentially the same amount of TV. Yet our murder rate is 26 times higher: http://www.nationmaster.com/co...
There is no real evidence to suggest that TV is the problem, although plenty of studies have been done. It's also disappointing to me that you would rather have the government control parenting techniques than discuss restrictions on firearms. I would have more respect for conservatives if they weren't so eager to sacrifice freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion (all of which are threatened by your suggestions) for the sake of keeping gun purchases convenient.
If you care about the national debt, you should never, ever vote a Republican into the Oval Office. Their stated goal ("starve the beast" philosophy) is to increase the debt to try to force the government to shrink. Like increasing your credit card debt to force yourself to be more frugal.
The only real outlier is Reagan who spent a tonne of cash.
The Republicans DID actually have a claim to the "fiscal conservative" label prior to Reagan. Trickle-down economics, unfunded tax cuts, and the intentional deficits of "starve the beast" changed all that. So again, you aren't actually addressing my argument, which is about Reagan-era Republicans, and the Republicans of today in particular. In the OP, I made the claim that no Republican since Nixon has lowered deficits on average, so attempted rebuttals based on Democrats and Republicans from more than 50 years ago aren't pertinent. The critical question is who you ought to vote for, here and now, if you care about the national debt, and the GOP of today demonstrates a far greater propensity for fiscal irresponsibility. Look at your own figures for the last several decades:
Obama D 68%
Bush R 101%
Clinton D 32%
HW_Bush R 54%
Reagan R 186%
Carter D 43%
Your own numbers show that each Democrat is adding far less to the debt than the Republican that preceded him, while every Republican that takes over from a Democrat sends the debt soaring again. Which supports my contention - that post-Reagan Republicans run up deficits, and the Democrats drive them back down like responsible adults. Step away from the familiar narrative and look at the numbers honestly.