Rather, a result like North Korea and Russia are possible if we do not get our government to start following the constitution and respecting our fundamental liberties.
Personally, I don't understand why all these pro-mass surveillance people don't just move to North Korea. It already has all that they want, or what they'll eventually get if they keep pushing their hardcore authoritarian agendas.
I think it's more likely that people won't remember this at all than it is that they'll remember someone submitting some paper with words some people arbitrarily deem to be bad.
Change for the sake of change is just a waste of everyone's time, since they need to adapt to the new way of doing things. If your little changes don't have practical benefits, then they're just useless, and worse, harmful.
Also, reading that guy's comment, he didn't actually compare his opponent to nazis or Hitler, anyway. He just said "If your logic applies here, then let's apply that same logic to the nazis."
By that logic, I can extend your argument to "All Americans are bad dudes" because they have done nothing to rein in the US Military complex, US IP complex, US entertainment complex and US meddling in foreign politics, not to mention the doubletalk used in dealing with the US itself.
No you can't, because that's not the same logic. People working directly for an evil organization that conducts mass surveillance is absolutely different from merely being a citizen of a country that does evil things. By remaining with the evil organization, you are helping them conduct mass surveillance far more than if you were merely a citizen of the country they operate in.
But if there are people in the NSA that are good people, then they are certainly planning to leak information like Snowden did or otherwise sabotage the organization.
It's also logically fallacious. Either respond to their specific arguments or don't bother. Whether the comparison or analogy is valid depends entirely on the situation.
And 'losing' an argument doesn't even make sense to begin with, unless you're talking about bullshit popularity contests. I love it when you have people arguing with each other and insisting that the other person "lost" the argument because they violated some arbitrary 'rule.'
As someone who cares about freedom and privacy, I don't support mass surveillance of any form, regardless of whether it's used against foreigners or not. I just think that we should have standards before we're allowed to spy on someone.
You are utterly ignorant of what Godwin's law is. Godwin's law deals with the probability of people making such comparisons or analogies. It does *not* say that the comparisons or analogies are false, or that the person making them 'loses' the argument (What does that even mean?).
Saying that someone 'loses' just because they make a certain analogy or comparison is just a non sequitur. You must respond to the specific arguments they made.
In my judgment, most of the third parties I've seen would be worse than the Democrats and Republicans.
Worse than The One Party, which gave us 'lovely' things like protest permits, mass surveillance, the TSA, unfettered border searches, unjust asset forfeiture, draconian copyright laws, constitution-free zones, free speech zones, anti-mask laws, FCC censorship, obscenity laws, stop-and-frisk, DUI checkpoints, the drug war, preemptive warfare, and a number of other nasty things? It's rather hard to believe that *most* third parties could possibly be worse than that, unless you only looked at extremely authoritarian ones.
Regardless, it's not hard to find ones that are better than The One Party. The One Party resists change and will make it nearly impossible for those who wish to enact significant changes to move forward.
Look at the Tea Party and its effect on Republicans.
Hardly any effect, then? It's still full of worthless authoritarian scumbags.
He said "Draft" is gone, you changed it to "Selective Service" which is simply a prerequisite of a Draft. Convenient distinction. There has been no draft since 1973, at the end of the Vietnam war. Suffice it to say, that we have had two full generations of draftable people never see a draft. It is effectively gone.
Nonsense. All that means is that we haven't had an opportunity to use one. Unless we've fully banned the very concept of a draft, we could still have one.
and haven't ever reached the point of 0% you are just trying to make an impossible point out of ignorance.
Impossible point? A draft is not impossible in the least, given everything else our lovely government scumbags are doing. It just takes the right situation, which we haven't yet seen.
The reason I want an explicit ban on the draft is because it violates the very principles to which "the land of the free and the home of the brave" is supposed to aspire. I would think you'd agree.
Interestingly, its Richard Nixon that campaigned on ending the draft and the Selective Service, and Carter that re-instituted the Selective Service in 1980. I know, I was alive back then, and someone under the age of 20 probably has no clue about. Liberals have indoctrinated young people so much they thing Democrats are champions of Civil Rights (while they opposed civil rights movement in the 60s) and opposition to the draft.
What does this have to do with anything? Both parties are full of authoritarian scumbags.
With age, comes wisdom that youth and exuberance is in need of. So, no, children cannot teach adults anything useful in general. A child may be wise, but adults tend to be wiser than children.
Actually, that's not necessarily true. There are different kinds of wisdom; it all depends on the subject. A 70 year old who wasted all of their time doing nothing won't have much wisdom to offer. Someone who specialized in a certain subject will have different kinds of experiences and advice than someone else who specialized in another subject. It's more complicated than just having X amount of something called "wisdom."
And furthermore, again, the difference isn't all that phenomenal to begin with. The reality is that most people, young or old, are simply unintelligent, unwise, and mostly useless.
First, nobody - even the most ardent interventionist
There are people who believe in magical sky daddies. There are people like ISIS. You say that *nobody* has ever advocated such a viewpoint? Nonsense. Such a viewpoint is much less hard to understand than so many other viewpoints that you already know exist.
The only people that even use the term are ironically usually the political left who, if they had their druthers, WOULD enable just such a thing likely under UN auspices.
I'm just someone who wants real small government opposes preemptive warfare and playing world police. People may not admit it, but when they suggest that we invade other countries to try to stop Bad Thing, they are suggesting we play world police. It often isn't even in our best interest. We could keep invading the middle east forever and it would change little, as history (the thing the world police advocates hate) has proven time and time again.
I can't stand pieces of garbage who claim they want small government but want anything but. Also, "the left" (i.e. mostly fools who for The One Party, much like "the right") has so many warmongers as well, as we see with the whole ISIS nonsense. Anti-war my ass. Show these gullible fools some emotional imagery and you can get them to support any war, regardless of how useless it is or how bad it is in other places that we completely ignore.
So contrary to what you've said, there are many people who advocate such a thing. No, they don't usually explicitly state they want us to be the world police, but it is reflected in their actions. When they want us to engage in preemptive warfare and hunt down maniacs in desert countries, you know they want us to be the world police.
What the naive don't seem to understand is that you don't get to "not play". It's not a choice. If millions are being slaughtered in Rwanda, action OR INACTION is making a statement about US interests, values, and cost/benefit calculations, upon which then other states will plan their expectations about our behavior.
I do not have a problem with making statements. Here it is: Let's not play world police or engage in preemptive warfare. Our self-interest can be that we will stick with our principles.
Basically: grow the fuck up. The world's more complicated than you apparently understand.
Would you say the same to me if I said I'm against mass surveillance, the TSA, and a number of either violations of our fundamental liberties? I oppose such things out of sheer principle. I would oppose all of them even if they did keep us safe.
My point is that even if our actions did have some beneficial effect, I would still oppose them out of principle, because preemptive warfare and playing world police is nonsense. It's a shame that so many people in "the land of the free and the home of the brave" don't seem to have an ounce of principle.
It's not like I'm opposed to defending ourselves from an actual country who attacked us in some significant way, but when you suggest that we hunt down maniacs in desert countries because they blew up a few buildings, when you suggest that we declare war on the very concept of terrorism, when you suggest that we screw with a sovereign country for trying to get WMDs, or when you suggest that we attack other countries because they might attack us at some unspecified point in the future, you're an authoritarian scumbag.
That's just another type of self-fulfilling prophecy. By giving up and not doing anything, you're just bringing your chances of changing anything down to absolute 0, rather than simply being low.
Funny, I was just about to say that government malfunction can be blamed on people who DO vote. Don't get me wrong - I vote. But I'm starting to feel like a sucker for doing so, 'cause the new boss is always the same as the old boss, and nothing ever changes except the facade and the window dressing.
You might want to try not voting for evil scumbags, or if you're fooled by their silly advertisements, you might want to try doing actual research on them. Had you done both of these things, you'd know that voting for The One Party candidates is the problem. Vote third party. Saying you won't because there's little chance they'll win is a self-fulfilling prophecy. But even if they don't win, enough people voting for them can send a message to The One Party. It's better than actively voting for evil, anyway; I do it on principle.
Just saying "abolish the NSA" leaves one wide open to the rebuttal "who then will keep on eye on China, Russia, and actual terrorists like ISIS? "
That's not a valid rebuttal in "the land of the free and the home of the brave," or for any free country really. Our fundamental liberties are simply more important than safety, and it's extremely unsettling that most people living in the land of the free don't seem to care at all about the constitution or even our most basic liberties. As far as I'm concerned, such people can move to North Korea, which already has everything they could possibly desire in a government.
It's all well and good to hand-wave about what the constitution does, but the literal constitution does not directly address the issue. It must be interpreted and the interpretation is then applied. Interpretation is where legislation becomes necessary.
You're an insufferable fool. The spirit and the wording of the 4th amendment both clearly prohibit mass surveillance.
The 4th says you are secure in your person, papers, and effects. Why would it say "paper"? To literally protect your paper? No, to protect the information on the paper. What is the NSA collecting? Nearly everyone's information, even if they're not suspects of any sort and the government doesn't have a warrant.
And do you really believe that the founders would have allowed the government to conduct this sort of mass surveillance had it been used against them? When writing the constitution, they took action against all sorts of injustices they knew of at the time, such as general warrants. They very likely would've done the same to mass surveillance had they known about it.
Finally, the constitution itself does not *explicitly grant* the government the power to conduct this sort of mass surveillance. The constitution is a whitelist of things the government can do, not merely a blacklist of things it can't.
So no, the constitution can indeed be applied here; it's just that the government ignores the constitution, much like you apparently do. You think that because it doesn't explicitly say that mass surveillance is forbidden, that it must not be; that is an extremely ignorant understanding of the constitution.
Not in the constitution either, so yet another place where legislation comes in to play.
It may not be, but I think we need a constitutional amendment. Especially so that harsh punishments can be handed out for anyone who okays violations of the constitution. Right now, absolutely nothing happens.
I did not chose 25 randomly. 25 used to be the voting age in the U.S.
That in itself was arbitrary.
Well, the draft is gone so that argument fails now.
But the Selective Service is *not* gone. We need a constitutional amendment banning drafts, since they infringe upon people's fundamental liberties.
And besides that, that's the main problem with such arguments. Just because someone at age X is able to do Y, that doesn't mean they should also be able to do Z. Maybe they shouldn't be able to do Y either? Now, I'm not an authoritarian scumbag who would support all these restrictions, but still. I just think that, rather than resorting to arguments like "I can join the army at age 18, so I should be able to vote as well!" might point out inconsistencies in society's attitude, but they aren't too logical.
It is much easier to manipulate the young precisely because they lack the experience that provides the context to discern ulterior motives or to recognize alternative perspectives.
Not much easier. Again, you could open up a history book and see that adults' abilities to resist manipulation is quite overrated. We as a species are easy to manipulate.
So it's not just a question of whether adults *can* be manipulated; not only can they be manipulated, but our dear government thugs do it all the time, and have little trouble while doing it.
On the contrary, it would have a powerful effect.
On people's liberties, you mean. I hope you don't also claim to want Small Government, because you seem to want the opposite.
And then you proceed to write nonsense about leftists, democrats, and other bogeymen. You seem to be a partisan fool who is duped by our crappy two party system. If that is so, The One Party thanks you for your cooperation. Interestingly enough, people who buy into the left-vs-right false dichotomy have themselves been manipulated, or at worst, they are ignorant fools who truly believe it's a good thing. You also seem to assume that most people will just suddenly change their minds after a few years of working, but I don't really see where you've shown that to be so.
So forgive me if I can't take your little rant seriously.
And here I thought I would have to search to find an example of the ignorance of youth not grasping the concept of life experience.
If I'm interpreting this correctly, this is yet another example of True Genius where you assume that anyone who disagrees with you must be young. I assure you that not all adults are illogical, and I am quite offended by your implication; I might not be perfectly rational all the time, but I do try.
In reality, I don't have any problem with life experience, and I think it is very valuable. It's just that I want people to respond to other people's arguments rather than spewing forth ad hominems.
A 17-year old may have a logical argument, but it is not often one based on any level of real experience.
Arguments stand on their own merits. If you wish to respond to their arguments and tell them how wrong you think they are and why, then by all means, do so.
You might also notice society agrees as well.
Society has given us mass unconstitutional surveillance, the TSA, the Unpatriotic Act, slavery, institutionalized sexism, and a number of other nasty things. Now, I'm not saying that it would be better if kids ran everything; just that appealing to society isn't a very convincing thing to do.
There are NO teenagers running countries, no matter their IQ level.
Given what our democratically-elected adult officials have given us, I'm of the opinion that you could replace congress and the president with drunken monkeys and little would change. In fact, I suspect that things would be slightly better, since at least they would find it difficult to vote away our liberties.
No, that is not what he said. That is how you twisted what he said, which only shows that some adults act more like kids who haven't learned anything.
No, it doesn't show any such thing; you arbitrarily decided that it does.
In any case, he didn't respond to any specific arguments she made, and focused almost entirely on age, and then randomly concluded that the voting age should be 25. I do not think my interpretation was unreasonable in the least, given all that. If that person wants to come forward and clarify themselves, then fine.
You see, it is easy to manipulate the young minds, and if you tell them something is so, they will believe it, and if you can convince adults that kids know more than they do, you can control the world. This doesn't mean kids cannot contribute. It also doesn't mean kids are less intelligent than adults. In fact, i know some kids who are smarter than many adults. Which says more about the adults than it does the kids.
It's easy to manipulate anyone. That's why we have nonsense like the TSA, the NSA's mass surveillance, the Unpatriotic Act, and a host of other unconstitutional trash. People are easy to manipulate. People who are optimistic seem to like to believe that children and adults are almost completely separate, but the reality is that, in general, both groups are filled with irrational, short-sighted fools. Raising the voting age to 25 would change literally nothing; you could allow babies to vote and it would still change little.
Even if "the woman" said gamers were werewolf pedophiles from Mars, the backlash from the community demonstrated that what she said was true.
Now that's simply a non sequitur. The fact that some people said some things you think are misogynistic does not make them a majority, so *backlash alone* does not prove what she said was true.
Unless you have some reliable scientific evidence and scientific consensus showing that most gamers engaged in such behavior, I simply have no reason to take what you said there seriously.
You want equality? When may men have the right to bodily integrity? Or are you suggesting women should enjoy living with mutilated genitals as well for equality?
How do you know he isn't against male genital mutilation?
Slashdot Mirror
Rather, a result like North Korea and Russia are possible if we do not get our government to start following the constitution and respecting our fundamental liberties.
Personally, I don't understand why all these pro-mass surveillance people don't just move to North Korea. It already has all that they want, or what they'll eventually get if they keep pushing their hardcore authoritarian agendas.
I think it's more likely that people won't remember this at all than it is that they'll remember someone submitting some paper with words some people arbitrarily deem to be bad.
You're absolutely right. Only in utopias do the concepts of standards and limited government exist.
Better to just never, ever change, right?
Change for the sake of change is just a waste of everyone's time, since they need to adapt to the new way of doing things. If your little changes don't have practical benefits, then they're just useless, and worse, harmful.
Also, reading that guy's comment, he didn't actually compare his opponent to nazis or Hitler, anyway. He just said "If your logic applies here, then let's apply that same logic to the nazis."
By that logic, I can extend your argument to "All Americans are bad dudes" because they have done nothing to rein in the US Military complex, US IP complex, US entertainment complex and US meddling in foreign politics, not to mention the doubletalk used in dealing with the US itself.
No you can't, because that's not the same logic. People working directly for an evil organization that conducts mass surveillance is absolutely different from merely being a citizen of a country that does evil things. By remaining with the evil organization, you are helping them conduct mass surveillance far more than if you were merely a citizen of the country they operate in.
But if there are people in the NSA that are good people, then they are certainly planning to leak information like Snowden did or otherwise sabotage the organization.
It's also logically fallacious. Either respond to their specific arguments or don't bother. Whether the comparison or analogy is valid depends entirely on the situation.
And 'losing' an argument doesn't even make sense to begin with, unless you're talking about bullshit popularity contests. I love it when you have people arguing with each other and insisting that the other person "lost" the argument because they violated some arbitrary 'rule.'
As someone who cares about freedom and privacy, I don't support mass surveillance of any form, regardless of whether it's used against foreigners or not. I just think that we should have standards before we're allowed to spy on someone.
You are utterly ignorant of what Godwin's law is. Godwin's law deals with the probability of people making such comparisons or analogies. It does *not* say that the comparisons or analogies are false, or that the person making them 'loses' the argument (What does that even mean?).
Saying that someone 'loses' just because they make a certain analogy or comparison is just a non sequitur. You must respond to the specific arguments they made.
In my judgment, most of the third parties I've seen would be worse than the Democrats and Republicans.
Worse than The One Party, which gave us 'lovely' things like protest permits, mass surveillance, the TSA, unfettered border searches, unjust asset forfeiture, draconian copyright laws, constitution-free zones, free speech zones, anti-mask laws, FCC censorship, obscenity laws, stop-and-frisk, DUI checkpoints, the drug war, preemptive warfare, and a number of other nasty things? It's rather hard to believe that *most* third parties could possibly be worse than that, unless you only looked at extremely authoritarian ones.
Regardless, it's not hard to find ones that are better than The One Party. The One Party resists change and will make it nearly impossible for those who wish to enact significant changes to move forward.
Look at the Tea Party and its effect on Republicans.
Hardly any effect, then? It's still full of worthless authoritarian scumbags.
He said "Draft" is gone, you changed it to "Selective Service" which is simply a prerequisite of a Draft. Convenient distinction. There has been no draft since 1973, at the end of the Vietnam war. Suffice it to say, that we have had two full generations of draftable people never see a draft. It is effectively gone.
Nonsense. All that means is that we haven't had an opportunity to use one. Unless we've fully banned the very concept of a draft, we could still have one.
and haven't ever reached the point of 0% you are just trying to make an impossible point out of ignorance.
Impossible point? A draft is not impossible in the least, given everything else our lovely government scumbags are doing. It just takes the right situation, which we haven't yet seen.
The reason I want an explicit ban on the draft is because it violates the very principles to which "the land of the free and the home of the brave" is supposed to aspire. I would think you'd agree.
Interestingly, its Richard Nixon that campaigned on ending the draft and the Selective Service, and Carter that re-instituted the Selective Service in 1980. I know, I was alive back then, and someone under the age of 20 probably has no clue about. Liberals have indoctrinated young people so much they thing Democrats are champions of Civil Rights (while they opposed civil rights movement in the 60s) and opposition to the draft.
What does this have to do with anything? Both parties are full of authoritarian scumbags.
With age, comes wisdom that youth and exuberance is in need of. So, no, children cannot teach adults anything useful in general. A child may be wise, but adults tend to be wiser than children.
Actually, that's not necessarily true. There are different kinds of wisdom; it all depends on the subject. A 70 year old who wasted all of their time doing nothing won't have much wisdom to offer. Someone who specialized in a certain subject will have different kinds of experiences and advice than someone else who specialized in another subject. It's more complicated than just having X amount of something called "wisdom."
And furthermore, again, the difference isn't all that phenomenal to begin with. The reality is that most people, young or old, are simply unintelligent, unwise, and mostly useless.
First, nobody - even the most ardent interventionist
There are people who believe in magical sky daddies. There are people like ISIS. You say that *nobody* has ever advocated such a viewpoint? Nonsense. Such a viewpoint is much less hard to understand than so many other viewpoints that you already know exist.
The only people that even use the term are ironically usually the political left who, if they had their druthers, WOULD enable just such a thing likely under UN auspices.
I'm just someone who wants real small government opposes preemptive warfare and playing world police. People may not admit it, but when they suggest that we invade other countries to try to stop Bad Thing, they are suggesting we play world police. It often isn't even in our best interest. We could keep invading the middle east forever and it would change little, as history (the thing the world police advocates hate) has proven time and time again.
I can't stand pieces of garbage who claim they want small government but want anything but. Also, "the left" (i.e. mostly fools who for The One Party, much like "the right") has so many warmongers as well, as we see with the whole ISIS nonsense. Anti-war my ass. Show these gullible fools some emotional imagery and you can get them to support any war, regardless of how useless it is or how bad it is in other places that we completely ignore.
So contrary to what you've said, there are many people who advocate such a thing. No, they don't usually explicitly state they want us to be the world police, but it is reflected in their actions. When they want us to engage in preemptive warfare and hunt down maniacs in desert countries, you know they want us to be the world police.
What the naive don't seem to understand is that you don't get to "not play". It's not a choice. If millions are being slaughtered in Rwanda, action OR INACTION is making a statement about US interests, values, and cost/benefit calculations, upon which then other states will plan their expectations about our behavior.
I do not have a problem with making statements. Here it is: Let's not play world police or engage in preemptive warfare. Our self-interest can be that we will stick with our principles.
Basically: grow the fuck up. The world's more complicated than you apparently understand.
Would you say the same to me if I said I'm against mass surveillance, the TSA, and a number of either violations of our fundamental liberties? I oppose such things out of sheer principle. I would oppose all of them even if they did keep us safe.
My point is that even if our actions did have some beneficial effect, I would still oppose them out of principle, because preemptive warfare and playing world police is nonsense. It's a shame that so many people in "the land of the free and the home of the brave" don't seem to have an ounce of principle.
It's not like I'm opposed to defending ourselves from an actual country who attacked us in some significant way, but when you suggest that we hunt down maniacs in desert countries because they blew up a few buildings, when you suggest that we declare war on the very concept of terrorism, when you suggest that we screw with a sovereign country for trying to get WMDs, or when you suggest that we attack other countries because they might attack us at some unspecified point in the future, you're an authoritarian scumbag.
That's just another type of self-fulfilling prophecy. By giving up and not doing anything, you're just bringing your chances of changing anything down to absolute 0, rather than simply being low.
Funny, I was just about to say that government malfunction can be blamed on people who DO vote. Don't get me wrong - I vote. But I'm starting to feel like a sucker for doing so, 'cause the new boss is always the same as the old boss, and nothing ever changes except the facade and the window dressing.
You might want to try not voting for evil scumbags, or if you're fooled by their silly advertisements, you might want to try doing actual research on them. Had you done both of these things, you'd know that voting for The One Party candidates is the problem. Vote third party. Saying you won't because there's little chance they'll win is a self-fulfilling prophecy. But even if they don't win, enough people voting for them can send a message to The One Party. It's better than actively voting for evil, anyway; I do it on principle.
Just saying "abolish the NSA" leaves one wide open to the rebuttal "who then will keep on eye on China, Russia, and actual terrorists like ISIS? "
That's not a valid rebuttal in "the land of the free and the home of the brave," or for any free country really. Our fundamental liberties are simply more important than safety, and it's extremely unsettling that most people living in the land of the free don't seem to care at all about the constitution or even our most basic liberties. As far as I'm concerned, such people can move to North Korea, which already has everything they could possibly desire in a government.
It's all well and good to hand-wave about what the constitution does, but the literal constitution does not directly address the issue. It must be interpreted and the interpretation is then applied. Interpretation is where legislation becomes necessary.
You're an insufferable fool. The spirit and the wording of the 4th amendment both clearly prohibit mass surveillance.
The 4th says you are secure in your person, papers, and effects. Why would it say "paper"? To literally protect your paper? No, to protect the information on the paper. What is the NSA collecting? Nearly everyone's information, even if they're not suspects of any sort and the government doesn't have a warrant.
And do you really believe that the founders would have allowed the government to conduct this sort of mass surveillance had it been used against them? When writing the constitution, they took action against all sorts of injustices they knew of at the time, such as general warrants. They very likely would've done the same to mass surveillance had they known about it.
Finally, the constitution itself does not *explicitly grant* the government the power to conduct this sort of mass surveillance. The constitution is a whitelist of things the government can do, not merely a blacklist of things it can't.
So no, the constitution can indeed be applied here; it's just that the government ignores the constitution, much like you apparently do. You think that because it doesn't explicitly say that mass surveillance is forbidden, that it must not be; that is an extremely ignorant understanding of the constitution.
Not in the constitution either, so yet another place where legislation comes in to play.
It may not be, but I think we need a constitutional amendment. Especially so that harsh punishments can be handed out for anyone who okays violations of the constitution. Right now, absolutely nothing happens.
College graduate deniers
What are college graduate deniers?
I did not chose 25 randomly. 25 used to be the voting age in the U.S.
That in itself was arbitrary.
Well, the draft is gone so that argument fails now.
But the Selective Service is *not* gone. We need a constitutional amendment banning drafts, since they infringe upon people's fundamental liberties.
And besides that, that's the main problem with such arguments. Just because someone at age X is able to do Y, that doesn't mean they should also be able to do Z. Maybe they shouldn't be able to do Y either? Now, I'm not an authoritarian scumbag who would support all these restrictions, but still. I just think that, rather than resorting to arguments like "I can join the army at age 18, so I should be able to vote as well!" might point out inconsistencies in society's attitude, but they aren't too logical.
It is much easier to manipulate the young precisely because they lack the experience that provides the context to discern ulterior motives or to recognize alternative perspectives.
Not much easier. Again, you could open up a history book and see that adults' abilities to resist manipulation is quite overrated. We as a species are easy to manipulate.
So it's not just a question of whether adults *can* be manipulated; not only can they be manipulated, but our dear government thugs do it all the time, and have little trouble while doing it.
On the contrary, it would have a powerful effect.
On people's liberties, you mean. I hope you don't also claim to want Small Government, because you seem to want the opposite.
And then you proceed to write nonsense about leftists, democrats, and other bogeymen. You seem to be a partisan fool who is duped by our crappy two party system. If that is so, The One Party thanks you for your cooperation. Interestingly enough, people who buy into the left-vs-right false dichotomy have themselves been manipulated, or at worst, they are ignorant fools who truly believe it's a good thing. You also seem to assume that most people will just suddenly change their minds after a few years of working, but I don't really see where you've shown that to be so.
So forgive me if I can't take your little rant seriously.
And here I thought I would have to search to find an example of the ignorance of youth not grasping the concept of life experience.
If I'm interpreting this correctly, this is yet another example of True Genius where you assume that anyone who disagrees with you must be young. I assure you that not all adults are illogical, and I am quite offended by your implication; I might not be perfectly rational all the time, but I do try.
In reality, I don't have any problem with life experience, and I think it is very valuable. It's just that I want people to respond to other people's arguments rather than spewing forth ad hominems.
A 17-year old may have a logical argument, but it is not often one based on any level of real experience.
Arguments stand on their own merits. If you wish to respond to their arguments and tell them how wrong you think they are and why, then by all means, do so.
You might also notice society agrees as well.
Society has given us mass unconstitutional surveillance, the TSA, the Unpatriotic Act, slavery, institutionalized sexism, and a number of other nasty things. Now, I'm not saying that it would be better if kids ran everything; just that appealing to society isn't a very convincing thing to do.
There are NO teenagers running countries, no matter their IQ level.
Given what our democratically-elected adult officials have given us, I'm of the opinion that you could replace congress and the president with drunken monkeys and little would change. In fact, I suspect that things would be slightly better, since at least they would find it difficult to vote away our liberties.
No, that is not what he said. That is how you twisted what he said, which only shows that some adults act more like kids who haven't learned anything.
No, it doesn't show any such thing; you arbitrarily decided that it does.
In any case, he didn't respond to any specific arguments she made, and focused almost entirely on age, and then randomly concluded that the voting age should be 25. I do not think my interpretation was unreasonable in the least, given all that. If that person wants to come forward and clarify themselves, then fine.
You see, it is easy to manipulate the young minds, and if you tell them something is so, they will believe it, and if you can convince adults that kids know more than they do, you can control the world. This doesn't mean kids cannot contribute. It also doesn't mean kids are less intelligent than adults. In fact, i know some kids who are smarter than many adults. Which says more about the adults than it does the kids.
It's easy to manipulate anyone. That's why we have nonsense like the TSA, the NSA's mass surveillance, the Unpatriotic Act, and a host of other unconstitutional trash. People are easy to manipulate. People who are optimistic seem to like to believe that children and adults are almost completely separate, but the reality is that, in general, both groups are filled with irrational, short-sighted fools. Raising the voting age to 25 would change literally nothing; you could allow babies to vote and it would still change little.
Even if "the woman" said gamers were werewolf pedophiles from Mars, the backlash from the community demonstrated that what she said was true.
Now that's simply a non sequitur. The fact that some people said some things you think are misogynistic does not make them a majority, so *backlash alone* does not prove what she said was true.
Unless you have some reliable scientific evidence and scientific consensus showing that most gamers engaged in such behavior, I simply have no reason to take what you said there seriously.
You want equality? When may men have the right to bodily integrity? Or are you suggesting women should enjoy living with mutilated genitals as well for equality?
How do you know he isn't against male genital mutilation?
Arguments stand on their own merits. Respond to the specific arguments she is making.
Anyone who questions child prodigies is obviously just jealous, and being jealous invalidates your arguments. My logic cannot be defeated.
You're young; therefore, all of your arguments are 100% incorrect.
That is brilliant logic. You are a true genius.