Why is it that worshipers label all atheists as 'raging' while they play no-true-scotsman fallacy games when challenged about atrocities done in the names of their religions? It's perfectly normal to find such toxic irrationality enraging, especially when it's used to justify limiting liberty or committing murder.
1. Avoiding responsibility? The US federal government vs budget. They don't fix the problem because they don't have to. No one is holding a gun to their head or threatening them with jailtime. In contrast, what happens if the average citizen quits paying his bills? How about the law? the fed flubs the law all the time, whenever it's inconvenient..and they all pat each other on the ass, calling it 'reaching across the aisle'... more like one giant reach around.
2. hiding money? "sorry, we needed this money for a REDACTED, REDACTED, and REDACTED for the REDACTED program. Your roads wo'nt be repaired, your schools will be underfunded, because we need more money!. Oh, sorry, gotta run to vote 'yes' on the internet sales tax bill!"
Governments are used by the wealthy to keep the common folk at bay. It could easily be argued that's the reason for their existence in the first place.
What's read by women as 'confrontational' is read by (healthy) men as direct and to-the-point dialog: a critical component of an efficient, effective employee, especially in technology work. Thus the argument could be made that the 'confrontational' interaction is a relevant way to vet relevant character traits.
1. there are a lot of men who aren't 'given a chance' either. That's life. It's not fair. Men are expected to know, understand, and respect this. Why aren't women held to that? They're equals after all..
2. It doesn't matter if the industry is male or female dominated. By itself, it's not proof of systemic discrimination. Men and women tend to have different temperamental imperatives that cause them to make different kinds of choices in life. That's fine. The problem is that feminists (and by extension, leftist philosophy) think that humans are infinitely malleable constructs. That's crazytalk. Offering equal opportunity training/outreach programs in order to maximize hiring pools is fine. It just needs to be open to everyone.
3. Too bad. Men have to tolerate an increasing amount of feminization in everything nowadays that makes them feel out of place and guilt tripped into thinking their own male-centric behavior patterns are unacceptable. Elements of this can be found in the media/entertainment, in the law, in office politics, on college campuses (and highschools too), and in government. For a growing number, it's hitting points of intolerability. Frankly, forcing androgyny on everyone by demanding women act more masculine, and men act more feminine, is a mistake that creates misery for both genders.
No, it's confused white knights like you who are missing the point. The way guys like you treat women is contrary to 'empowerment' or 'equality' or any other term as used by feminists. You've absorbed the loony feminist propaganda in primary and collegiate level schooling as well as the 'manners' your father (from another era) taught you and are trying to reconcile them. While that's understandable, you must realize you can't! They are fundamentally incompatible. Your entire post being an ad hominem attack on men who openly question such double standards, is evidence of this irrationality. Start holding women to the same expectations you hold for men in any given situation. That's the only way women will ever have the chance of earning respect as equals..real respect, not the grudgingly superficial acknowledgement that PC policies demand. The one thing feminists never seem to grasp is that it is impossible to force someone to respect another. Respect is earned by complying with the standards the former holds for the latter.
If women can hack it with the guys, they should have no problem understanding that if they want the same respect guys give each other for accomplishments achieved, they'll have to do it without the preferential treatment. If they need that chattel privilege to survive, then they aren't equal, and should be deferring to mens' judgment in these areas. I don't have a problem with either system, really, but I do have a problem with government and/or culturally enforced double standards. If she's the better applicant based on relevant attributes, she should get the job/school placement/raise/promotion/etc, but if I am, I should get it.
Then there's the whole concept of radical egalitarianism driving all of this. Sorry, but equal opportunity != equal outcome, nor is equal outcome necessarily 'fair'. Only children reason that way. Using the latter as a measurement of the success of the former is craziness.
Fine. If "life isn't fair" and women are equally human, they should be able to handle the same lessons the same way men have to. Why treat them as an elevated caste? They don't need it...right? Conversely, if a better qualified man is selected against because of his gender for the sake of a less qualified woman, it must be considered an equal affront to 'social justice' as it would the other way around.
Being equals, women shouldn't be so easily duped into demanding entitlements by leftist parties hungry for political platforms. They should want to be free of that! The issue isn't about manliness, it's about the feminist hypocrisy in using discrimination as the solution for discrimination. Women are either equals or they are not. There is no middle ground where they get to operate in 'equality' mode where it benefits them and then switch to chattel status when the going gets too tough. If they are equal, and men are expected to treat them as such, they can open their own doors, pay for their own meals, pass the same military training regimens, etc as the men have to. However, if women are not equals and thus need law-driven chattel privilege to survive, that's ok too, but it also means they have to defer to mens' judgment, even when they don't agree with it. You cannot separate power from responsibility while maintaining a stable society.
It is not men's role to simply suck it up. They're supposed to stand up for themselves too. It's just that neochivalry in combination with feminist-tainted culture has made it nearly impossible to do. This is not healthy for society. It puts men in a double bind that keeps them in adolescent limbo while women run around taking advantage like spoiled adolescents (kardashian syndrome). Guys like you are the problem, not the solution. You're a white knight hypocrite who pretends to consider women as equals, while knowing (and thus treating them) otherwise, without having the balls to call them out on their bullshit. It's guys like you who enable feminism and elevate it to scripture status.
What?! That statement makes strange assumptions. If they were hiring based on ability in the first place, the 'candidate pool' is already as large as possible. There is no alternate 'best candidates-with-more-women' pool by definition because the candidates are already stacked based on relevant attributes. Gender isn't supposed to be one of them, but I guess feminists don't mind gender discrimination as long as it's used to select FOR women. This is a typical example of the hypocrisy found in cultural marxism.
Despite what feminists will say, there's no guarantee the results would be a 50/50 split between the genders. In fact, it is highly unlikely, and driven mostly by the type of job being filled. Women are drawn to some types of jobs and men to others. There's no need for it to be 50/50. Such assumptions are childish at best, and frankly, seeing so many adults these days reason this way is quite scary.
Certainly not today, where women are selected FOR with extreme bias in corporate, academic, and government settings; not because they're more gifted, genetically superior, or any of the other implied barbs feminists make against males, but just because they're women. That is gender discrimination, and no it is no more justified than the inverse they claim to fight. People with this mentality are insecure hypocrites who want to hide their selfish motivations.
No. Difference alone does not make one more qualified. Applicants must be judged on relevant attributes, but gender isn't one of them..at least, that's the argument.
How do you know this? Skill testing should focus on testing such skillsets, not character assessment. The gender doesn't matter. Just pick the best applicant.
It's interesting that you're willing to acknowledge differences in the genders when you want to show women in a positive light (they have different strengths), but in situations where men naturally do better (trying hard to be 'fair and equal' is not enough), suddenly it's a social problem that needs intervention. I wonder if you are just unaware of how much propagandic swill you've swallowed since your college years. It's hypocritical and, frankly, insane. I recommend you reevaluate your position, that is, if you are truly interested in hiring the best candidates and not just cowering to peer pressure to be 'politically correct'.
Except that you're trying to equate an ethical dilemma to simple legality. That IS a fallacy... and yes, according to the 'equality' style fairness pitched by the left, forcing men to sacrifice themselves for women and children is discriminatory. It's just that they don't want to admit that all their 'fighting oppression' rhetoric is blustering that hides selfish motives..
What if the same company wanted to exclude women for the sake of some 'social experiment'? If the law allowed it, would you be ok with it? The point is that we're all supposed to be equal before the law. That includes men. Carving out legal exceptions and bypasses for certain castes just reinforces such castes.
the people responsible are the ones who committed the crimes, not the people who coulda-shoulda-woulda been in positions to prevent it if they had done X more.
They're not comparing windows 8 to an ipad. They're comparing windows 8 to windows 2k/xp/vista/7. You are right that a pad's interface is even more limited, but it was never designed for complex workflows. A desktop PC is.
A little corner menu is simple. A full screen menu with oversized tiles on a 23" screen is retarded. Search boxes that let the user have fun guessing what he's looking for are a royal pain. Sticking them on every dialog box and menu is the designer's way of telling the user "I don't know what I'm doing, so here, do the work for me."
I do not want my local experience to mimic internet search engines. There's no reason for such broad ambiguity for the simple task of starting a program. At that point, just get rid of the whole gui and run everything from a shell prompt...right? At least that has tab-complete.
No one is saying it's impossible to use. They're saying it's a pain in the ass compared to previous versions. Obviously, you agree because you hacked around metro with 'classic start menu' in order to make that mess useful. What I don't get is why you didn't install windows 7 in the first place.
Simple. You can't. Both hands are supposed to be on the wheel by default. The only time your right hand should leave the wheel is when it's time to shift. Your 'honey' should have her belt on if she has any sense of self preservation left.
Unfortunately, the FCC licensing of the spectrum removes the meat of that claim. If the spectrum is publicly owned, the public shouldn't have to pay for licenses to use it however it sees fit. This is similar to socialist countries calling themselves "The Peoples' Republic of...". On paper it's true, but in reality, it's not. If the spectrum were truly open, it would be chaos; completely unusable for all but local communications.
It's the cell customers who are creating a public disturbance with the cell carriers' service and license. If the store is popular, asking people one at a time to hang up takes up too much time. Passive signs don't work either. The best way to handle it is to jam, preferably with a passive 'faraday cage' when possible. If not, then low power jammers should be used. If customers want to use their phones, they have to go outside. If they don't like losing service while shopping, they can go elsewhere.
sorry, forgot to say one more thing.. as far as marriage goes, I think the state should not get involved with it, period. That frees up legal adults to enter whatever contracts they like with whomever they like.
As far as bullying goes, like I said in my other post, a lot of it comes from the systemic problems in schools, but as individuals, kids need to learn coping skills to deal with it, and adults need to be more tolerant of schoolyard squabbling.. better they have it out with fists in 6th grade than let it simmer in passive aggressive squabbling until losing it senior year. Of course, fist fights result in borderline expulsions nowadays: a prime example of that oversensitive culture overreacting.
Adoption isn't a right. It's a privilege and for good reason.
Anyone has a right to dress and act how they choose, but, like I said before, others also have the right to judge you fit or unfit in some context as a result. It's society's job to ensure children mature and become as personally secure as possible. It is not society's job to encourage and then prop up insecurity, no matter what the hilarys, obamas, and other sob story hucksters of identity politics would have us think.
Judgement free zones are not a right. See, the problem with identity politics is that certain groups are shielded from criticism. So the employer of a gay person has to tread lightly when the gay employee doesn't do a good job, or risk a lawsuit. This is true for women and non-white people as well. Any accusation can be deflected with a counteraccusation of discrimination (or in the case with women, outright assault). Conversely, when a protected group member gets a promotion/access to exclusive schooling/wins a legal case etc, the unprotected groups are left wondering whether this person got it by earning it, or due to (legal or white knighted) political manipulation. This PC culture has invaded nearly every aspect of life.
People in free societies do not have the right to not be criticized because the same right to wear their shit on their shoulders if they choose gives others the right to criticize (or complement) in response. In order to protect this, our culture needs to (re)learn the coping skills that, really, all people should have learned by age 15. What we have today is a culture that runs crying to the courts every time its butt gets hurt. The solution is to fix the oversensitivity, not to whitewash everything down to the lowest common denominator in order to avoid offense. The latter builds even more sensitive people who'll bitch about even smaller minutiae. -- The people advocating for restrictions should be the ones who have to justify themselves. -- I think there's plenty of examples, both from media outlets and in anecdotal experiences about the passive aggressive bullying and psychological manipulation that goes on in american public schools these days. The fact these shooters are targeting schools (for many, the one they graduated from) instead of just going apeshit in random places with lots more targets, suggests that their school experiences played a large role in their motivations.
Simply locking the tools away will not stop people from taking things apart. All it might do is raise the difficulty bar slightly, so instead of 26 kids dying by gunfire, it'll be 260 kids dying from a homemade explosive. The latter is harder to make/use and thus needs more motivation, but it does a lot more damage The right way to deal with these kinds of issues is to find the systemic sources and minimize them. Jumping to reactionary containment policies just builds pressure to the next critical point, resulting in more extreme reactions and counterreactions that are ultimately self defeating for everyone.
Remember there are several definitions of fairness: equality and equity. I'm a fan of equity..ie earned reward.
Typical liberal doctrine says they want equal rights.Yet their methods (laws passed, policies enacted) build systemic bias in society that benefits one group over another under the assumption (or made up malarkey) that there's an existing, systemic, opposing bias (some would call this a conspiracy theory). To my knowledge, there are no federal laws creating quotas for gays yet.. If they retain power long enough, you can bet there will be eventually. I don't just want rights for gays. I want rights for every citizen.
---
For the immediate future, you're right. However, history has shown that governments tend to draw more and more power to themselves no matter how they're designed to resist that natural tendency. So, when deciding policy, I'd rather encourage a culture that knows how to handle firearms and stand up for its rights, than a soccer mom culture that fears its own shadow. The latter is easily manipulated into losing other rights, not just because it's not armed, but because it has learned helplessness syndrome. From a psychological perspective, taking gun rights away just helps grow that soccer mom impotence. I realize that today's culture is not the midwest of the 1880s, but I dont want it becoming the 'soft' (or even eastern bloc) socialism of 1980s+ Europe either. There are elements from the former that we need to relearn in order to keep us away from the latter.
Slashdot Mirror
Why is it that worshipers label all atheists as 'raging' while they play no-true-scotsman fallacy games when challenged about atrocities done in the names of their religions? It's perfectly normal to find such toxic irrationality enraging, especially when it's used to justify limiting liberty or committing murder.
Because, while entertaining hypotheses can be interesting, using them to justify war, censorship, or other state policy are two very different things.
Governments can be used in similar manners..
1. Avoiding responsibility? The US federal government vs budget. They don't fix the problem because they don't have to. No one is holding a gun to their head or threatening them with jailtime. In contrast, what happens if the average citizen quits paying his bills? How about the law? the fed flubs the law all the time, whenever it's inconvenient..and they all pat each other on the ass, calling it 'reaching across the aisle'... more like one giant reach around.
2. hiding money? "sorry, we needed this money for a REDACTED, REDACTED, and REDACTED for the REDACTED program. Your roads wo'nt be repaired, your schools will be underfunded, because we need more money!. Oh, sorry, gotta run to vote 'yes' on the internet sales tax bill!"
Governments are used by the wealthy to keep the common folk at bay. It could easily be argued that's the reason for their existence in the first place.
What's read by women as 'confrontational' is read by (healthy) men as direct and to-the-point dialog: a critical component of an efficient, effective employee, especially in technology work. Thus the argument could be made that the 'confrontational' interaction is a relevant way to vet relevant character traits.
You can't always fix people problems either, because when it's tried, it creates more problems for society than it solves.
1. there are a lot of men who aren't 'given a chance' either. That's life. It's not fair. Men are expected to know, understand, and respect this. Why aren't women held to that? They're equals after all..
2. It doesn't matter if the industry is male or female dominated. By itself, it's not proof of systemic discrimination. Men and women tend to have different temperamental imperatives that cause them to make different kinds of choices in life. That's fine. The problem is that feminists (and by extension, leftist philosophy) think that humans are infinitely malleable constructs. That's crazytalk. Offering equal opportunity training/outreach programs in order to maximize hiring pools is fine. It just needs to be open to everyone.
3. Too bad. Men have to tolerate an increasing amount of feminization in everything nowadays that makes them feel out of place and guilt tripped into thinking their own male-centric behavior patterns are unacceptable. Elements of this can be found in the media/entertainment, in the law, in office politics, on college campuses (and highschools too), and in government. For a growing number, it's hitting points of intolerability. Frankly, forcing androgyny on everyone by demanding women act more masculine, and men act more feminine, is a mistake that creates misery for both genders.
No, it's confused white knights like you who are missing the point. The way guys like you treat women is contrary to 'empowerment' or 'equality' or any other term as used by feminists. You've absorbed the loony feminist propaganda in primary and collegiate level schooling as well as the 'manners' your father (from another era) taught you and are trying to reconcile them. While that's understandable, you must realize you can't! They are fundamentally incompatible. Your entire post being an ad hominem attack on men who openly question such double standards, is evidence of this irrationality. Start holding women to the same expectations you hold for men in any given situation. That's the only way women will ever have the chance of earning respect as equals..real respect, not the grudgingly superficial acknowledgement that PC policies demand. The one thing feminists never seem to grasp is that it is impossible to force someone to respect another. Respect is earned by complying with the standards the former holds for the latter.
If women can hack it with the guys, they should have no problem understanding that if they want the same respect guys give each other for accomplishments achieved, they'll have to do it without the preferential treatment. If they need that chattel privilege to survive, then they aren't equal, and should be deferring to mens' judgment in these areas. I don't have a problem with either system, really, but I do have a problem with government and/or culturally enforced double standards. If she's the better applicant based on relevant attributes, she should get the job/school placement/raise/promotion/etc, but if I am, I should get it.
Then there's the whole concept of radical egalitarianism driving all of this. Sorry, but equal opportunity != equal outcome, nor is equal outcome necessarily 'fair'. Only children reason that way. Using the latter as a measurement of the success of the former is craziness.
Fine. If "life isn't fair" and women are equally human, they should be able to handle the same lessons the same way men have to. Why treat them as an elevated caste? They don't need it...right? Conversely, if a better qualified man is selected against because of his gender for the sake of a less qualified woman, it must be considered an equal affront to 'social justice' as it would the other way around.
Being equals, women shouldn't be so easily duped into demanding entitlements by leftist parties hungry for political platforms. They should want to be free of that! The issue isn't about manliness, it's about the feminist hypocrisy in using discrimination as the solution for discrimination. Women are either equals or they are not. There is no middle ground where they get to operate in 'equality' mode where it benefits them and then switch to chattel status when the going gets too tough. If they are equal, and men are expected to treat them as such, they can open their own doors, pay for their own meals, pass the same military training regimens, etc as the men have to. However, if women are not equals and thus need law-driven chattel privilege to survive, that's ok too, but it also means they have to defer to mens' judgment, even when they don't agree with it. You cannot separate power from responsibility while maintaining a stable society.
It is not men's role to simply suck it up. They're supposed to stand up for themselves too. It's just that neochivalry in combination with feminist-tainted culture has made it nearly impossible to do. This is not healthy for society. It puts men in a double bind that keeps them in adolescent limbo while women run around taking advantage like spoiled adolescents (kardashian syndrome). Guys like you are the problem, not the solution. You're a white knight hypocrite who pretends to consider women as equals, while knowing (and thus treating them) otherwise, without having the balls to call them out on their bullshit. It's guys like you who enable feminism and elevate it to scripture status.
What?! That statement makes strange assumptions. If they were hiring based on ability in the first place, the 'candidate pool' is already as large as possible. There is no alternate 'best candidates-with-more-women' pool by definition because the candidates are already stacked based on relevant attributes. Gender isn't supposed to be one of them, but I guess feminists don't mind gender discrimination as long as it's used to select FOR women. This is a typical example of the hypocrisy found in cultural marxism.
Despite what feminists will say, there's no guarantee the results would be a 50/50 split between the genders. In fact, it is highly unlikely, and driven mostly by the type of job being filled. Women are drawn to some types of jobs and men to others. There's no need for it to be 50/50. Such assumptions are childish at best, and frankly, seeing so many adults these days reason this way is quite scary.
Certainly not today, where women are selected FOR with extreme bias in corporate, academic, and government settings; not because they're more gifted, genetically superior, or any of the other implied barbs feminists make against males, but just because they're women. That is gender discrimination, and no it is no more justified than the inverse they claim to fight. People with this mentality are insecure hypocrites who want to hide their selfish motivations.
No. Difference alone does not make one more qualified. Applicants must be judged on relevant attributes, but gender isn't one of them..at least, that's the argument.
How do you know this? Skill testing should focus on testing such skillsets, not character assessment. The gender doesn't matter. Just pick the best applicant.
It's interesting that you're willing to acknowledge differences in the genders when you want to show women in a positive light (they have different strengths), but in situations where men naturally do better (trying hard to be 'fair and equal' is not enough), suddenly it's a social problem that needs intervention. I wonder if you are just unaware of how much propagandic swill you've swallowed since your college years. It's hypocritical and, frankly, insane. I recommend you reevaluate your position, that is, if you are truly interested in hiring the best candidates and not just cowering to peer pressure to be 'politically correct'.
Except that you're trying to equate an ethical dilemma to simple legality. That IS a fallacy... and yes, according to the 'equality' style fairness pitched by the left, forcing men to sacrifice themselves for women and children is discriminatory. It's just that they don't want to admit that all their 'fighting oppression' rhetoric is blustering that hides selfish motives..
What if the same company wanted to exclude women for the sake of some 'social experiment'? If the law allowed it, would you be ok with it? The point is that we're all supposed to be equal before the law. That includes men. Carving out legal exceptions and bypasses for certain castes just reinforces such castes.
the people responsible are the ones who committed the crimes, not the people who coulda-shoulda-woulda been in positions to prevent it if they had done X more.
It's the fault of the person who stole your information...or at least it should be. Today's over litigious society probably disagrees.
well it kinda makes sense.. the start menu was where the user would go to 'start' a procedure. One of those procedures was shutting down.
They're not comparing windows 8 to an ipad. They're comparing windows 8 to windows 2k/xp/vista/7. You are right that a pad's interface is even more limited, but it was never designed for complex workflows. A desktop PC is.
A little corner menu is simple. A full screen menu with oversized tiles on a 23" screen is retarded. Search boxes that let the user have fun guessing what he's looking for are a royal pain. Sticking them on every dialog box and menu is the designer's way of telling the user "I don't know what I'm doing, so here, do the work for me."
I do not want my local experience to mimic internet search engines. There's no reason for such broad ambiguity for the simple task of starting a program. At that point, just get rid of the whole gui and run everything from a shell prompt...right? At least that has tab-complete.
No one is saying it's impossible to use. They're saying it's a pain in the ass compared to previous versions. Obviously, you agree because you hacked around metro with 'classic start menu' in order to make that mess useful. What I don't get is why you didn't install windows 7 in the first place.
Simple. You can't. Both hands are supposed to be on the wheel by default. The only time your right hand should leave the wheel is when it's time to shift. Your 'honey' should have her belt on if she has any sense of self preservation left.
Unfortunately, the FCC licensing of the spectrum removes the meat of that claim. If the spectrum is publicly owned, the public shouldn't have to pay for licenses to use it however it sees fit. This is similar to socialist countries calling themselves "The Peoples' Republic of...". On paper it's true, but in reality, it's not. If the spectrum were truly open, it would be chaos; completely unusable for all but local communications.
It's the cell customers who are creating a public disturbance with the cell carriers' service and license. If the store is popular, asking people one at a time to hang up takes up too much time. Passive signs don't work either. The best way to handle it is to jam, preferably with a passive 'faraday cage' when possible. If not, then low power jammers should be used. If customers want to use their phones, they have to go outside. If they don't like losing service while shopping, they can go elsewhere.
sorry I missed the 'not'. been a long day.
sorry, forgot to say one more thing.. as far as marriage goes, I think the state should not get involved with it, period. That frees up legal adults to enter whatever contracts they like with whomever they like.
As far as bullying goes, like I said in my other post, a lot of it comes from the systemic problems in schools, but as individuals, kids need to learn coping skills to deal with it, and adults need to be more tolerant of schoolyard squabbling.. better they have it out with fists in 6th grade than let it simmer in passive aggressive squabbling until losing it senior year. Of course, fist fights result in borderline expulsions nowadays: a prime example of that oversensitive culture overreacting.
Adoption isn't a right. It's a privilege and for good reason.
Anyone has a right to dress and act how they choose, but, like I said before, others also have the right to judge you fit or unfit in some context as a result. It's society's job to ensure children mature and become as personally secure as possible. It is not society's job to encourage and then prop up insecurity, no matter what the hilarys, obamas, and other sob story hucksters of identity politics would have us think.
Judgement free zones are not a right. See, the problem with identity politics is that certain groups are shielded from criticism. So the employer of a gay person has to tread lightly when the gay employee doesn't do a good job, or risk a lawsuit. This is true for women and non-white people as well. Any accusation can be deflected with a counteraccusation of discrimination (or in the case with women, outright assault). Conversely, when a protected group member gets a promotion/access to exclusive schooling/wins a legal case etc, the unprotected groups are left wondering whether this person got it by earning it, or due to (legal or white knighted) political manipulation. This PC culture has invaded nearly every aspect of life.
People in free societies do not have the right to not be criticized because the same right to wear their shit on their shoulders if they choose gives others the right to criticize (or complement) in response. In order to protect this, our culture needs to (re)learn the coping skills that, really, all people should have learned by age 15. What we have today is a culture that runs crying to the courts every time its butt gets hurt. The solution is to fix the oversensitivity, not to whitewash everything down to the lowest common denominator in order to avoid offense. The latter builds even more sensitive people who'll bitch about even smaller minutiae.
--
The people advocating for restrictions should be the ones who have to justify themselves.
--
I think there's plenty of examples, both from media outlets and in anecdotal experiences about the passive aggressive bullying and psychological manipulation that goes on in american public schools these days. The fact these shooters are targeting schools (for many, the one they graduated from) instead of just going apeshit in random places with lots more targets, suggests that their school experiences played a large role in their motivations.
Simply locking the tools away will not stop people from taking things apart. All it might do is raise the difficulty bar slightly, so instead of 26 kids dying by gunfire, it'll be 260 kids dying from a homemade explosive. The latter is harder to make/use and thus needs more motivation, but it does a lot more damage The right way to deal with these kinds of issues is to find the systemic sources and minimize them. Jumping to reactionary containment policies just builds pressure to the next critical point, resulting in more extreme reactions and counterreactions that are ultimately self defeating for everyone.
Remember there are several definitions of fairness: equality and equity. I'm a fan of equity..ie earned reward.
Typical liberal doctrine says they want equal rights.Yet their methods (laws passed, policies enacted) build systemic bias in society that benefits one group over another under the assumption (or made up malarkey) that there's an existing, systemic, opposing bias (some would call this a conspiracy theory). To my knowledge, there are no federal laws creating quotas for gays yet.. If they retain power long enough, you can bet there will be eventually. I don't just want rights for gays. I want rights for every citizen.
---
For the immediate future, you're right. However, history has shown that governments tend to draw more and more power to themselves no matter how they're designed to resist that natural tendency. So, when deciding policy, I'd rather encourage a culture that knows how to handle firearms and stand up for its rights, than a soccer mom culture that fears its own shadow. The latter is easily manipulated into losing other rights, not just because it's not armed, but because it has learned helplessness syndrome. From a psychological perspective, taking gun rights away just helps grow that soccer mom impotence.
I realize that today's culture is not the midwest of the 1880s, but I dont want it becoming the 'soft' (or even eastern bloc) socialism of 1980s+ Europe either. There are elements from the former that we need to relearn in order to keep us away from the latter.