Remember that the US is supposed to be 'the land of the free and the home of the brave.' Free and brave people don't opt to ban things merely because they don't like seeing them; that's cowardly and unfree.
Laws against public sex? I think those are ok, too, since "your rights end where my rights begin," and I'd rather not see that, either.
Based on that logic, comments like yours to be banned. You know, "Your rights end where my rights begin." usually refers to someone doing direct, tangible harm to you, not just you seeing something you don't like.
In the US, we have a constitution. If the constitution doesn't give the government a certain power, then it doesn't have it. It does not have the power to limit speech. It does not have the power to prevent public nudity. Besides that, it's an awful idea to allow the states to ban public nudity. What about that racist fellow over there who doesn't like seeing black people in public? Therefore, ban black people.
In addition, if one's rights end where another's rights begin, how about this: You can't ban public nudity, because your right to not see things ends at another person's right to display them. Banning public nudity or sex would infringe upon their rights.
Perhaps you should stop being an insolent, hypocritical little puritan scumbag and just accept the fact that you're anti-freedom and move to North Korea.
You didn't qualify your original sweeping generalization calling it idiotic, so I didn't bother to do it here.
I think it was a mistake on my part to not do so.
If you meant to say, "in my opinion, calling something a 'first world problem' conflates subjectivity with objective standards." then just say that.
That's actually not an opinion, depending on what one means when they use the term "first world problem." I believe the problem is that it's not always clear what someone means when they say that.
People use euphemisms like "first world problem" to communicate a concept while avoiding being blunt or directly insulting.
I think it's too ambiguous to be truly useful.
Even if you are on the autistic spectrum, you need to understand that complaining about a large income tax payment while, say, volunteering at a homeless shelter would be tone deaf, rude, and likely to make others angry.
Whether it would make them angry or not is irrelevant to me. Whether it's rude is subjective.
I have already explained that by turning your logic around and hoping you would see this that one could try and argue to legalize all that is liked.
Which is a complete straw man, as I pointed out. I did not say, "If you like it, it should be legal." I said, "Just because you *don't* like it doesn't mean it should be banned." Do you see the difference, or will I have to baby you? If not, then I doubt you would disagree with me.
This apparently did not sink in for you, possibly because you have convinced yourself of your opinion being a rational and absolutely logical truth.
It did not sink in because your interpretation of what I said made absolutely no sense.
If politics finds that supporting an opinion gives them power then they will pursue it.
Obviously. That's not what's being debated. What's being debated is the morality of the situation, which is 100% different.
Laws are created by those who are in power and power is given through votes (at least in a democracy it is).
We're supposed to be a representative constitutional republic where tyranny of the majority is less pronounced.
Do you have an actual point that's relevant to my posts? In case you haven't noticed, I've been saying that prohibition is wrong. Telling me that I'm not in the majority, or that I don't hold all the power, is just pointing out the obvious. We probably wouldn't be having all these problems if that were the case, now would we? So what's your point?
I think you missed my point. Or perhaps I didn't make it clear. My solution is not to ban things, but to at the minimum, reduce what is publicly owned, so that society's preferences can be expressed.
Then that makes much more sense.
as you often must forego freedom if you want to interact with others.
I agree that that's true to some extent, but we've taken it much too far. The drug war and bans on public nudity are good examples.
Also, what is "unreasonable" is also subjective. I seriously, seriously hope you were just joking or trolling when you said that banning public nudity is okay for those reasons, because I'm even more vehemently opposed to that idea than I am to your argument about drugs in public places.
Government censorship is anti-freedom. Anti-nudity laws are anti-freedom. No free country would allow it.
Whether it's idiotic or not and whether it makes absolute sense or not is subjective. However, it all depends on what you mean by that. A lot of people mean, "X is worse than Y, so Y is objectively not bad." when they say "first world problem." That is a blatant non sequitur.
If you mean to say, "In my opinion, X is not a bad thing." then just say that.
Unfortunately, publicly-owned land and establishments creates unique problems for private property rights.
This is like the argument that censorship-happy puritans like to make to 'justify' the FCC's censorship, which is a clear violation of the first amendment. "It's publicly-owned, so your constitutional rights no longer apply!" Nope. I don't buy it. You don't get to censor things just because they're done in public, or any other such ridiculous reason.
Likewise, you don't get to ban something even if it has a trivial effect on you (inhaling second hand smoke occasionally isn't going to have much of an effect on 99% of people).
Furthermore, I think perhaps you don't fully understand what "land of the free" means. It doesn't mean "land of where I get to do whatever I want in a 'public' space." Rather, it means the "land where I am free to pursue life as I see fit, so long as I don't impose my freedom to the detriment of someone else's freedom."
"land of the free" means that freedom is valued extremely highly. I don't buy into the notion that anything with an indirect effect (having to pay more money in taxes, for instance) on you is fair game to be regulated, and nor do I buy into the notion that if something affects you in some trivial way (i.e. you smell smoke in a public place), that it's fair game to be banned. The bar, for me, is significantly higher than that. Take note that we're also supposed to be the home of the brave. So, time to start being brave.
It is unreasonable to expect to be able to go to the park in the nude, because most people would find that offensive
You don't get to ban something just because you don't like what you see. Offense is 100% subjective, and it's absolutely absurd that you think this is at all a good criteria for banning things. If they don't like it, then yeah, they can go away, rather than having government thugs impose their irrational values on everyone else.
I'm offended when other people are offended. Arrest those people who are offended by my nudity! Or are you going to appeal to the tyranny of the majority, as if that makes something more valid?
If we had a society where everyone was "free" to do whatever they want to do, it would be chaotic and highly unpleasant.
Straw man! Such a society would allow murder, and that's not what anyone is talking about. What I'm talking about is that it's not okay to limit people when their actions have some indirect effect on other people, or when people are subjectively offended. The latter is especially nonsensical, and yet you tried (and failed) to justify it.
I bet you're one of those people that want's to exercise their right to give me lung cancer just because I want to go to a bar.
I don't smoke, I don't drink, and I don't use drugs. Your bets are worthless and irrelevant.
I have no problems with drug use, but drugs that are smoked should be limited to certain areas, just like cigarettes are.
It's the property owner's decision. If you don't like it, then vanish. Public (as in owned by the public) areas are sort of gray areas in my opinion, but not private property.
If you take your kids to the park and I strip naked and start fapping away in their face is that fine too?
Stripping naked is your right, as long as you don't touch others. Laws against public nudity and sex are puritan garbage, too.
I don't want your pot smoke filling my house every night.
If it's your house, then exercise your rights over your private property and make them leave.
I want to be able to go to the park and not have to breathe it in.
Unless you own the park, you're out of luck. Sorry. There's plenty of things I don't want to see--including your comment--but I don't think I can just infringe on other people's freedoms just because I don't like something. I don't want to smell cigarette or pot smoke any more than you probably do, but I deal with it.
My experience from living in a place with legalized marijuana is that it is great for people who smoke and not great for people who don't, and I think having laws (and more importantly, proper enforcement of the laws), like no public use, which protect non-users is a good idea.
What about laws that protect users from authoritarians like yourself?
Look, if you don't want to live in 'the land of the free,' why not move elsewhere? There are plenty of countries that strive to be authoritarian hellholes, and you'd fit right in.
Also, colleges are quickly becoming nothing more than poor imitations of trade schools, instead of places where people go to increase their understanding of the universe around them. Too many losers who shouldn't go to college are getting loans and grants and consequently destroying the environment even for people who care about more than just getting a job. Colleges then seek to satisfy these people by becoming more like trade schools, and you end up with the worst of both worlds. This disease has even spread to some universities.
So to say that colleges provide rigorous work is becoming less true with each passing day, though most were never anything special to begin with.
I closely monitored the education of one particular child from kindergarten through twelfth grade in the local public school system. While there were problems, it was overall a very good education, leaving him well prepared for rigorous college work.
The fact that you think it was important to note that he was prepared for college, as if that's what the goal of education should be, indicates to me that you might not know what education is at all.
Rote memorization is not education. A one-size-fits-all solution is no solution at all. Teaching to the test is not education. Giving out worksheets that have you doing the same type of problem over and over again (e.g. "Find the missing side of the triangle using the Pythagorean theorem.") is not education. If none of those things were true of any of the schools (extremely unlikely), then that kid was just extremely lucky. More likely, though, your idea of education is off. Even if a teacher is 'good' and wants to give students a 'good' education, awful standards and bureaucracy usually get in the way.
Except that I didn't need to describe that, did I, since all involved schools were and are in the US, and there is a US educational system of pretty much uniform quality?
A grand majority of schools in the US are worse than garbage. That is simply a fact.
So, in your opinion, are DUI bans reasonable or not? Are speeding bans reasonable or not?
I think reckless driving should be the offense, regardless of whether you're drunk or speeding. So no. If you're drunk, but you're somehow driving well, then I don't really care. If you're swerving everywhere and putting other people in danger of direct harm, then that's where my line is crossed.
Either you admit that there is such a thing as a reasonable ban
I consider banning murder a "reasonable ban." Your entire post was nonsense.
On the contrary, you are the one who wants to live in a country without bans, which this country is not.
Nonsense again. What you're trying to do is sacrifice fundamental liberties for safety, while equating things that are not fundamental liberties to fundamental liberties and pretending that I'm the same as you. That's what makes you the same as those scumbags who support the TSA, the NSA surveillance, etc. You are no different.
So if you're intending to convince me that it's okay for the government to ban people from ingesting things into their own body, you're wasting your time, authoritarian. It'll never work.
So the fact that you need a prescription from a doctor to get penicillin, is that a violation of your fundamental rights?
I believe the government has no business banning such things, but there are people who would argue that some bans are significantly different than bans on recreational drugs.
I know how much alcohol I can handle and no goddamn state trooper is going to tell me that.08 is the "legal limit." Lets do away with speed limits and other traffic regulations as well. All they do is provide a source of revenue for corrupt police departments.
While I see what you're trying to do, this sort of nonsense is not going to work on me. Begone.
My right to mustard gas is protected under the second amendment dammit!
Indeed. There are a lot of freedom-hating scumbags who think that the 2nd amendment protects the right to own some modern weaponry but not others. They're mere hypocrites.
Don't accuse me of straw-manning because that is exactly what you did when you conflated a heroin ban with warrantless wiretapping.
Nope, that wasn't a straw man. You and your ilk are directly responsible for sacrificing freedoms in the name of safety, and at the expense of the constitution.
There is such a thing as a reasonable ban.
You can have all the 'reasonable' bans you want in North Korea, where you belong.
Slashdot Mirror
Nope, you can't. Too bad for you.
SOME regulation is needed.
And education.
2) No advertising.
I disagree with this one.
Remember that the US is supposed to be 'the land of the free and the home of the brave.' Free and brave people don't opt to ban things merely because they don't like seeing them; that's cowardly and unfree.
Laws against public sex? I think those are ok, too, since "your rights end where my rights begin," and I'd rather not see that, either.
Based on that logic, comments like yours to be banned. You know, "Your rights end where my rights begin." usually refers to someone doing direct, tangible harm to you, not just you seeing something you don't like.
In the US, we have a constitution. If the constitution doesn't give the government a certain power, then it doesn't have it. It does not have the power to limit speech. It does not have the power to prevent public nudity. Besides that, it's an awful idea to allow the states to ban public nudity. What about that racist fellow over there who doesn't like seeing black people in public? Therefore, ban black people.
In addition, if one's rights end where another's rights begin, how about this: You can't ban public nudity, because your right to not see things ends at another person's right to display them. Banning public nudity or sex would infringe upon their rights.
Perhaps you should stop being an insolent, hypocritical little puritan scumbag and just accept the fact that you're anti-freedom and move to North Korea.
You didn't qualify your original sweeping generalization calling it idiotic, so I didn't bother to do it here.
I think it was a mistake on my part to not do so.
If you meant to say, "in my opinion, calling something a 'first world problem' conflates subjectivity with objective standards." then just say that.
That's actually not an opinion, depending on what one means when they use the term "first world problem." I believe the problem is that it's not always clear what someone means when they say that.
People use euphemisms like "first world problem" to communicate a concept while avoiding being blunt or directly insulting.
I think it's too ambiguous to be truly useful.
Even if you are on the autistic spectrum, you need to understand that complaining about a large income tax payment while, say, volunteering at a homeless shelter would be tone deaf, rude, and likely to make others angry.
Whether it would make them angry or not is irrelevant to me. Whether it's rude is subjective.
I have already explained that by turning your logic around and hoping you would see this that one could try and argue to legalize all that is liked.
Which is a complete straw man, as I pointed out. I did not say, "If you like it, it should be legal." I said, "Just because you *don't* like it doesn't mean it should be banned." Do you see the difference, or will I have to baby you? If not, then I doubt you would disagree with me.
This apparently did not sink in for you, possibly because you have convinced yourself of your opinion being a rational and absolutely logical truth.
It did not sink in because your interpretation of what I said made absolutely no sense.
If politics finds that supporting an opinion gives them power then they will pursue it.
Obviously. That's not what's being debated. What's being debated is the morality of the situation, which is 100% different.
So I go without and am less happy for it.
Indeed, in order to be happy, you must Consume. Consume, Consumer! Consume! I command it! Waste all your money! Consume, Consume, Consume!
Ideally it would be as simple as not working there, but then you have to make a trade-off between being able to afford food, or breathing in drugs.
They've decided to make that trade-off themselves. It's not anyone's problem but their own.
Laws are created by those who are in power and power is given through votes (at least in a democracy it is).
We're supposed to be a representative constitutional republic where tyranny of the majority is less pronounced.
Do you have an actual point that's relevant to my posts? In case you haven't noticed, I've been saying that prohibition is wrong. Telling me that I'm not in the majority, or that I don't hold all the power, is just pointing out the obvious. We probably wouldn't be having all these problems if that were the case, now would we? So what's your point?
I think you missed my point. Or perhaps I didn't make it clear. My solution is not to ban things, but to at the minimum, reduce what is publicly owned, so that society's preferences can be expressed.
Then that makes much more sense.
as you often must forego freedom if you want to interact with others.
I agree that that's true to some extent, but we've taken it much too far. The drug war and bans on public nudity are good examples.
Decriminalize the public hunting of authoritarian politicians and their minions.
No, you are wrong. If what you are saying had any merit, then it would be possible to argue 'when someone likes it then it should also be made legal'.
Nope, that's a complete straw man on your part. Try comprehending what I'm saying before spewing forth such absolute nonsense.
So when people say they do not like it then, yes, it can mean that it should be banned.
Bandwagon fallacy. Not too good at this whole "logic" thing, are you?
Also, what is "unreasonable" is also subjective. I seriously, seriously hope you were just joking or trolling when you said that banning public nudity is okay for those reasons, because I'm even more vehemently opposed to that idea than I am to your argument about drugs in public places.
Government censorship is anti-freedom. Anti-nudity laws are anti-freedom. No free country would allow it.
Whether it's idiotic or not and whether it makes absolute sense or not is subjective. However, it all depends on what you mean by that. A lot of people mean, "X is worse than Y, so Y is objectively not bad." when they say "first world problem." That is a blatant non sequitur.
If you mean to say, "In my opinion, X is not a bad thing." then just say that.
Unfortunately, publicly-owned land and establishments creates unique problems for private property rights.
This is like the argument that censorship-happy puritans like to make to 'justify' the FCC's censorship, which is a clear violation of the first amendment. "It's publicly-owned, so your constitutional rights no longer apply!" Nope. I don't buy it. You don't get to censor things just because they're done in public, or any other such ridiculous reason.
Likewise, you don't get to ban something even if it has a trivial effect on you (inhaling second hand smoke occasionally isn't going to have much of an effect on 99% of people).
Furthermore, I think perhaps you don't fully understand what "land of the free" means. It doesn't mean "land of where I get to do whatever I want in a 'public' space." Rather, it means the "land where I am free to pursue life as I see fit, so long as I don't impose my freedom to the detriment of someone else's freedom."
"land of the free" means that freedom is valued extremely highly. I don't buy into the notion that anything with an indirect effect (having to pay more money in taxes, for instance) on you is fair game to be regulated, and nor do I buy into the notion that if something affects you in some trivial way (i.e. you smell smoke in a public place), that it's fair game to be banned. The bar, for me, is significantly higher than that. Take note that we're also supposed to be the home of the brave. So, time to start being brave.
It is unreasonable to expect to be able to go to the park in the nude, because most people would find that offensive
You don't get to ban something just because you don't like what you see. Offense is 100% subjective, and it's absolutely absurd that you think this is at all a good criteria for banning things. If they don't like it, then yeah, they can go away, rather than having government thugs impose their irrational values on everyone else.
I'm offended when other people are offended. Arrest those people who are offended by my nudity! Or are you going to appeal to the tyranny of the majority, as if that makes something more valid?
If we had a society where everyone was "free" to do whatever they want to do, it would be chaotic and highly unpleasant.
Straw man! Such a society would allow murder, and that's not what anyone is talking about. What I'm talking about is that it's not okay to limit people when their actions have some indirect effect on other people, or when people are subjectively offended. The latter is especially nonsensical, and yet you tried (and failed) to justify it.
I bet you're one of those people that want's to exercise their right to give me lung cancer just because I want to go to a bar.
I don't smoke, I don't drink, and I don't use drugs. Your bets are worthless and irrelevant.
I have no problems with drug use, but drugs that are smoked should be limited to certain areas, just like cigarettes are.
It's the property owner's decision. If you don't like it, then vanish. Public (as in owned by the public) areas are sort of gray areas in my opinion, but not private property.
If you take your kids to the park and I strip naked and start fapping away in their face is that fine too?
Stripping naked is your right, as long as you don't touch others. Laws against public nudity and sex are puritan garbage, too.
Rather, I think you should be left alone as long as you're not not causing direct harm to others and aren't about to do so. That is fundamental.
I don't want your pot smoke filling my house every night.
If it's your house, then exercise your rights over your private property and make them leave.
I want to be able to go to the park and not have to breathe it in.
Unless you own the park, you're out of luck. Sorry. There's plenty of things I don't want to see--including your comment--but I don't think I can just infringe on other people's freedoms just because I don't like something. I don't want to smell cigarette or pot smoke any more than you probably do, but I deal with it.
My experience from living in a place with legalized marijuana is that it is great for people who smoke and not great for people who don't, and I think having laws (and more importantly, proper enforcement of the laws), like no public use, which protect non-users is a good idea.
What about laws that protect users from authoritarians like yourself?
Look, if you don't want to live in 'the land of the free,' why not move elsewhere? There are plenty of countries that strive to be authoritarian hellholes, and you'd fit right in.
Also, colleges are quickly becoming nothing more than poor imitations of trade schools, instead of places where people go to increase their understanding of the universe around them. Too many losers who shouldn't go to college are getting loans and grants and consequently destroying the environment even for people who care about more than just getting a job. Colleges then seek to satisfy these people by becoming more like trade schools, and you end up with the worst of both worlds. This disease has even spread to some universities.
So to say that colleges provide rigorous work is becoming less true with each passing day, though most were never anything special to begin with.
I closely monitored the education of one particular child from kindergarten through twelfth grade in the local public school system. While there were problems, it was overall a very good education, leaving him well prepared for rigorous college work.
The fact that you think it was important to note that he was prepared for college, as if that's what the goal of education should be, indicates to me that you might not know what education is at all.
Rote memorization is not education. A one-size-fits-all solution is no solution at all. Teaching to the test is not education. Giving out worksheets that have you doing the same type of problem over and over again (e.g. "Find the missing side of the triangle using the Pythagorean theorem.") is not education. If none of those things were true of any of the schools (extremely unlikely), then that kid was just extremely lucky. More likely, though, your idea of education is off. Even if a teacher is 'good' and wants to give students a 'good' education, awful standards and bureaucracy usually get in the way.
Except that I didn't need to describe that, did I, since all involved schools were and are in the US, and there is a US educational system of pretty much uniform quality?
A grand majority of schools in the US are worse than garbage. That is simply a fact.
So, in your opinion, are DUI bans reasonable or not? Are speeding bans reasonable or not?
I think reckless driving should be the offense, regardless of whether you're drunk or speeding. So no. If you're drunk, but you're somehow driving well, then I don't really care. If you're swerving everywhere and putting other people in danger of direct harm, then that's where my line is crossed.
Either you admit that there is such a thing as a reasonable ban
I consider banning murder a "reasonable ban." Your entire post was nonsense.
On the contrary, you are the one who wants to live in a country without bans, which this country is not.
Nonsense again. What you're trying to do is sacrifice fundamental liberties for safety, while equating things that are not fundamental liberties to fundamental liberties and pretending that I'm the same as you. That's what makes you the same as those scumbags who support the TSA, the NSA surveillance, etc. You are no different.
I've not had alcohol at all, but I still support other people's freedoms to drink it.
So if you're intending to convince me that it's okay for the government to ban people from ingesting things into their own body, you're wasting your time, authoritarian. It'll never work.
So the fact that you need a prescription from a doctor to get penicillin, is that a violation of your fundamental rights?
I believe the government has no business banning such things, but there are people who would argue that some bans are significantly different than bans on recreational drugs.
I know how much alcohol I can handle and no goddamn state trooper is going to tell me that .08 is the "legal limit." Lets do away with speed limits and other traffic regulations as well. All they do is provide a source of revenue for corrupt police departments.
While I see what you're trying to do, this sort of nonsense is not going to work on me. Begone.
My right to mustard gas is protected under the second amendment dammit!
Indeed. There are a lot of freedom-hating scumbags who think that the 2nd amendment protects the right to own some modern weaponry but not others. They're mere hypocrites.
Don't accuse me of straw-manning because that is exactly what you did when you conflated a heroin ban with warrantless wiretapping.
Nope, that wasn't a straw man. You and your ilk are directly responsible for sacrificing freedoms in the name of safety, and at the expense of the constitution.
There is such a thing as a reasonable ban.
You can have all the 'reasonable' bans you want in North Korea, where you belong.
I wouldn't want someone who is drunk, either. Therefore, ban alcohol. Are you an idiot?
Besides, safety is not what matters. If you despise freedom that much, I'm sure North Korea would be happy to have you.