It is actually VERY prudent, to stop and think what could happen to any new law in light of this...and make sure that if something new IS passed, that it is passed as very specific to what is intended, and force the govt to pass new laws or amendments to said law if they want to extend its reach past its original meaning and intent.
Of course it is. But that's not the slippery slope conservatives talk about. Their slippery slope tends to consist of arguing that if this law is passed now, then another law further down some imagined slippery slope might be passed in the future. For example the ban on high capacity magazines. That provision in law can't be used for anything else. But there's the fear that some other gun-control law in the future might be more likely.
So, what you're saying is that limiting government power is doubleplus ungood badthink, and that everyone should love Big Brother, Winston?
It always amuses me when a right-winger quotes a novel written by a socialist, with the implication that it's insightful. Especially when it's a non-sequiteur.
Nice job with the ad hominem broad-brush.
There's no ad-hominem there. I'm discussing what you said, not saying you are full of crap, or insane.
Oh, right, history shows that you are full of crap, so you can't do that.... Please seek professional psychiatric help ASAP.
They also didn't "start" with gun control. Nor did the gun control enable Jewish persecution. The Jews had been persecuted for a long time before they were targeted with gun control. Indeed gun control came after Kristallnacht.
"The German Nazi Führer Adolf Hitler had objected to the party's previous leader's decision to use the word "Socialist" in its name, as Hitler at the time preferred to use "Social Revolutionary".[15] Upon taking over the leadership, Hitler kept the term but defined socialism as being based upon a commitment of an individual to a community.[15] Hitler did not want the ideology's socialism to be conflated with Marxian socialism. He claimed that true socialism does not repudiate private property unlike the claims of Marxism, and stated that the "Marxians have stolen the term and confused its meaning" and "Communism is not socialism. Marxism is not socialism."[16] Nazism favoured private property, freedom of contract, and promoted the creation of a national solidarity that would transcend class differences.[17][18] Nazism supported the outlawing of strikes by employees and lockouts by employers, because these were regarded as a threat to national unity.[19] Instead, the state controlled and approved wage and salary levels.[19]" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi
Nazis were to socialism what the Westboro Baptist Church is to Baptist Churches. Just because a group call themselves something doesn't mean they are it. Nor that they are like other people who have the same word in their title.
The Nazis were not anything that anybody other then Hitler would call socialists. They were fascists. Politics 101: socialism isn't the same thing as fascism.
Your comparison is ridiculously flawed, and shows the intellectual rigor of a 90 year old Alzheimer's patient.
Starting out a post with an ad-homimen. Not a good start, especially if you had aspirations to intellectual rigor.
1. In war, we are actively defending ourselves from a nation that is a threat.
Few of the countries that the US has gone to war with recently have been a threat to the US.
2. In the death penalty, we are defending society from someone who is a threat.
No. In order to execute someone, you first have to have them in custody. And when they are in custody society is already defended from the threat.
In abortion, what are we defending against?
Nothing more than you were in either point 1 or 2. The question is more, why are you wanting to force a woman into doing something she doesn't want to do?
Thanks for the compliment, although by skeptic I think you really mean "scientist".
No, I really did mean skeptic. I looked through your recent posts to work out who I was talking to here, and picking flaws in others science does seem to be what you use your scientific knowledge for rather than explaining or giving your particular insight from whatever your field is.
Not that there's anything wrong with that. But it's not the only way that scientists can choose to contribute to a forum.
The left is using fear [of guns], the only tool at their disposal, to sell changes to the constitution for political points.
No, the left is using actual massacres and gun death statistics to oppose what actually is. It's not some fear of what might be.
Gun owners are simply afraid, and it's because they've actually watched this happen before. In their lifetime.
It's impossible to tell which of the many value of "this" you mean here. What gun owners are afraid of is other gun owners. How do we square that circle?
It isn't about "death". It's about "innocent death"...But the death-penalty is aimed at those who are guilty of murder.
Except that there have been plenty of mistakes where innocents have been executed.
Defensive war is about protecting our innocent from invasion, and even some offensive wars are about protecting the innocent of other countries from oppressive regimes.
For the US, defensive wars are a vanishingly small proportion of the wars fought. And most of those killed in their offensive wars are innocents.
It's hard to judge someone from a 3 sentence post, and in this case I misjudged you. I have no idea whether you are a conservative or not. But you are clearly one of those rare things - a skeptic who actually has the skills to genuinely pull something apart. I salute you.
I maintain the general point about conservatives being anti-science, and I'll add that most who claim to be skeptics are nothing more than deniers. They don't have the skills to actually assess the scientific papers they dismiss.
Linking me to a conservative site spreading fear only underlines the point. Conservative politics are the politics of fear.
i can feel, see and hear their hate any day.
There you go. Classic talk of those who are motivated by fear rather than rationality.
(And I do hope you didn't make the mistake of thinking that 2 London guys calling themselves "The Muslim Patrol" is the same thing as what the conservative site rightly or wrongly calls "The Muslim Brotherhood". Or dou you imagine that every organisation with the word "Christian" in it is the same thing.)
On abortion the answer is simple. They want to ban abortion for the same reason they want to ban other types of murder. You may not agree that abortion is murder, but surely you can see the logic for someone who does think that abortion kills an innocent human.
Yet the same conservatives tend to be pro death-penalty and pro war. So no, that isn't logical.
Conservatives don't oppose the government staying out of the way when gay people hold wedding ceremonies officiated by religious officials as the gay couples make lifetime commitments to each other. What conservatives oppose is the government taking an active role in promoting such things.
"Promote" is classic conservative double speak. Does the government "promote" heterosexual marriage. By your standards they must do. So are you against that? A libertarian probably should be. Conservatives typically aren't.
Marriage for gays is only marriage if it means the same thing as it does for heterosexuals. And that includes things under the law such as next of kin, divorce proceedings and tax breaks. If you allow these things for one groups, but not for another, then you are not "letting people do what they want to do".
When the science doesn't fit with their conservative world view, then they dismiss the science, regardless of the fact that they have no information about how rigorously the particular bit of science was performed. They probably haven't even read the paper in question.
If conservatives are risk averse, why are a strong majority of successful businessmen and entrepreneurs conservative?
Because they and their businesses became successful in the environment of now and the past. They fear that change that isn't very obviously pro-business will be bad for their business.
If liberals love uncertainly and novelty, why are they the ones who push for the certainty and banality of pervasive welfare programs?
Altruism. They see people out there that need help.
As a small-"L" libertarian, I don't stick my hand into a fire because I "fear" it, but because there's a damned good reason not to. Likewise, being that government is like fire*, wanting to keep it small as possible while still accomplishing the minimum it must, and under strict limits, is equally not "fear".
That's just you justifying your fear. That you compared it to fire - one of the most primeval of all fears - is very telling. Of course people that are fearful tend to think their own fears are justified, even when they're not.
That it's a fear can be seen by examining what happens when libertarian feelings go to the extreme. They tend to hide out in the wilderness, surrounded by enough guns and ammunition to start a war. That's the extremity of fear, not rationality.
I've never heard of the bucket-filling concept before. It sounds ever so childish.
It seems like a very dangerous thing, this encouraging kindergarten kids to say nice things about each other. Far better they be trained to use free-speech to be nasty to each other, and defend themselves from the nastiness of others with guns.
Conservatism is the politics of fear. Whether it's conservative muslims that fear alcohol drinking and sexual liberation, and so set up their own vigilante neighbourhood watch, or the fear of a person posting on Slashdot about the behaviour of 2 London youths, as if this is some global pandemic that will certainly cross to the USA.
It's funny, I'm surrounded by mostly conservatives, and some (maybe most) don't object to the "universal background checks" so much as they object to what it'll really be.
Conservatism is the politics of fear. What you describe is typical. They're not opposed to what's actually being proposed, they are opposed to where they fear it might lead. Their imaginations always follow the worst case imaginable, even if it's improbable, and assume that's what will be.
"Conclusions It is established that tobacco use is a primary cause of cancer. We have outlined the main pathways by which tobacco use is involved in carcinogenesis, and we have discussed other agents involved in these pathways. The high prevalence of tobacco use in high-income countries has been of concern since the 1950s, when the health effects of smoking became apparent. The uptake of tobacco use in low-income countries will result in widespread disease over the next 30 years, unless we are successful in promoting smoking cessation."
This by 2 epidemiologists. What qualifications do you have to say their paper is wrong both in title and in conclusion? And no, reading "correlation is not causation" on Slashdot many times is not a qualification.
You attempted to "correct" my original statement. And my original statement is not wrong. The supermarkets in the UK have always fought against plastic bag bans. The fact that they've partially lost that fight in Wales, at least as far as a levy is concerned, doesn't change the fact that the supermarkets always fight to resist.
It might make more sense to you if you read the comment to which I originally replied. It was a suggestion that the ban in SF was a fiendish plot by the supermarkets. I was making the point that far from wanting bans and levies, the supermarkets fight against them. Yes, even in Wales.
Slashdot Mirror
It is actually VERY prudent, to stop and think what could happen to any new law in light of this...and make sure that if something new IS passed, that it is passed as very specific to what is intended, and force the govt to pass new laws or amendments to said law if they want to extend its reach past its original meaning and intent.
Of course it is. But that's not the slippery slope conservatives talk about. Their slippery slope tends to consist of arguing that if this law is passed now, then another law further down some imagined slippery slope might be passed in the future. For example the ban on high capacity magazines. That provision in law can't be used for anything else. But there's the fear that some other gun-control law in the future might be more likely.
So, what you're saying is that limiting government power is doubleplus ungood badthink, and that everyone should love Big Brother, Winston?
It always amuses me when a right-winger quotes a novel written by a socialist, with the implication that it's insightful. Especially when it's a non-sequiteur.
Nice job with the ad hominem broad-brush.
There's no ad-hominem there. I'm discussing what you said, not saying you are full of crap, or insane.
Oh, right, history shows that you are full of crap, so you can't do that.... Please seek professional psychiatric help ASAP.
Oh dear. You shot yourself in the foot there.
That's not an argument, that's just contradiction.
They also didn't "start" with gun control. Nor did the gun control enable Jewish persecution. The Jews had been persecuted for a long time before they were targeted with gun control. Indeed gun control came after Kristallnacht.
"The German Nazi Führer Adolf Hitler had objected to the party's previous leader's decision to use the word "Socialist" in its name, as Hitler at the time preferred to use "Social Revolutionary".[15] Upon taking over the leadership, Hitler kept the term but defined socialism as being based upon a commitment of an individual to a community.[15] Hitler did not want the ideology's socialism to be conflated with Marxian socialism. He claimed that true socialism does not repudiate private property unlike the claims of Marxism, and stated that the "Marxians have stolen the term and confused its meaning" and "Communism is not socialism. Marxism is not socialism."[16] Nazism favoured private property, freedom of contract, and promoted the creation of a national solidarity that would transcend class differences.[17][18] Nazism supported the outlawing of strikes by employees and lockouts by employers, because these were regarded as a threat to national unity.[19] Instead, the state controlled and approved wage and salary levels.[19]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi
Nazis were to socialism what the Westboro Baptist Church is to Baptist Churches. Just because a group call themselves something doesn't mean they are it. Nor that they are like other people who have the same word in their title.
The Nazis were not anything that anybody other then Hitler would call socialists. They were fascists. Politics 101: socialism isn't the same thing as fascism.
Your comparison is ridiculously flawed, and shows the intellectual rigor of a 90 year old Alzheimer's patient.
Starting out a post with an ad-homimen. Not a good start, especially if you had aspirations to intellectual rigor.
1. In war, we are actively defending ourselves from a nation that is a threat.
Few of the countries that the US has gone to war with recently have been a threat to the US.
2. In the death penalty, we are defending society from someone who is a threat.
No. In order to execute someone, you first have to have them in custody. And when they are in custody society is already defended from the threat.
In abortion, what are we defending against?
Nothing more than you were in either point 1 or 2. The question is more, why are you wanting to force a woman into doing something she doesn't want to do?
Thanks for the compliment, although by skeptic I think you really mean "scientist".
No, I really did mean skeptic. I looked through your recent posts to work out who I was talking to here, and picking flaws in others science does seem to be what you use your scientific knowledge for rather than explaining or giving your particular insight from whatever your field is.
Not that there's anything wrong with that. But it's not the only way that scientists can choose to contribute to a forum.
The left is using fear [of guns], the only tool at their disposal, to sell changes to the constitution for political points.
No, the left is using actual massacres and gun death statistics to oppose what actually is. It's not some fear of what might be.
Gun owners are simply afraid, and it's because they've actually watched this happen before. In their lifetime.
It's impossible to tell which of the many value of "this" you mean here. What gun owners are afraid of is other gun owners. How do we square that circle?
It isn't about "death". It's about "innocent death"...But the death-penalty is aimed at those who are guilty of murder.
Except that there have been plenty of mistakes where innocents have been executed.
Defensive war is about protecting our innocent from invasion, and even some offensive wars are about protecting the innocent of other countries from oppressive regimes.
For the US, defensive wars are a vanishingly small proportion of the wars fought. And most of those killed in their offensive wars are innocents.
It's hard to judge someone from a 3 sentence post, and in this case I misjudged you. I have no idea whether you are a conservative or not. But you are clearly one of those rare things - a skeptic who actually has the skills to genuinely pull something apart. I salute you.
I maintain the general point about conservatives being anti-science, and I'll add that most who claim to be skeptics are nothing more than deniers. They don't have the skills to actually assess the scientific papers they dismiss.
http://www.muslimbrotherhoodinamerica.com/
Linking me to a conservative site spreading fear only underlines the point. Conservative politics are the politics of fear.
i can feel, see and hear their hate any day.
There you go. Classic talk of those who are motivated by fear rather than rationality.
(And I do hope you didn't make the mistake of thinking that 2 London guys calling themselves "The Muslim Patrol" is the same thing as what the conservative site rightly or wrongly calls "The Muslim Brotherhood". Or dou you imagine that every organisation with the word "Christian" in it is the same thing.)
On abortion the answer is simple. They want to ban abortion for the same reason they want to ban other types of murder. You may not agree that abortion is murder, but surely you can see the logic for someone who does think that abortion kills an innocent human.
Yet the same conservatives tend to be pro death-penalty and pro war. So no, that isn't logical.
Conservatives don't oppose the government staying out of the way when gay people hold wedding ceremonies officiated by religious officials as the gay couples make lifetime commitments to each other. What conservatives oppose is the government taking an active role in promoting such things.
"Promote" is classic conservative double speak. Does the government "promote" heterosexual marriage. By your standards they must do. So are you against that? A libertarian probably should be. Conservatives typically aren't.
Marriage for gays is only marriage if it means the same thing as it does for heterosexuals. And that includes things under the law such as next of kin, divorce proceedings and tax breaks. If you allow these things for one groups, but not for another, then you are not "letting people do what they want to do".
Another tendency of conservatives: Anti-science.
When the science doesn't fit with their conservative world view, then they dismiss the science, regardless of the fact that they have no information about how rigorously the particular bit of science was performed. They probably haven't even read the paper in question.
If conservatives are risk averse, why are a strong majority of successful businessmen and entrepreneurs conservative?
Because they and their businesses became successful in the environment of now and the past. They fear that change that isn't very obviously pro-business will be bad for their business.
If liberals love uncertainly and novelty, why are they the ones who push for the certainty and banality of pervasive welfare programs?
Altruism. They see people out there that need help.
As a small-"L" libertarian, I don't stick my hand into a fire because I "fear" it, but because there's a damned good reason not to. Likewise, being that government is like fire*, wanting to keep it small as possible while still accomplishing the minimum it must, and under strict limits, is equally not "fear".
That's just you justifying your fear. That you compared it to fire - one of the most primeval of all fears - is very telling. Of course people that are fearful tend to think their own fears are justified, even when they're not.
That it's a fear can be seen by examining what happens when libertarian feelings go to the extreme. They tend to hide out in the wilderness, surrounded by enough guns and ammunition to start a war. That's the extremity of fear, not rationality.
Conservatives are for individual risk, and ALSO states rights which are inherently letting people do what they want to do.
Why are they opposed to gay marriage, if that's what some people want to do?
Conservatives are for individual risk, and ALSO states rights which are inherently letting people do what they want to do.
Then why do they tend to be in favour of banning abortion and opposed to drugs decriminalisation.
I've never heard of the bucket-filling concept before. It sounds ever so childish.
It seems like a very dangerous thing, this encouraging kindergarten kids to say nice things about each other. Far better they be trained to use free-speech to be nasty to each other, and defend themselves from the nastiness of others with guns.
Conservatism is the politics of fear. Whether it's conservative muslims that fear alcohol drinking and sexual liberation, and so set up their own vigilante neighbourhood watch, or the fear of a person posting on Slashdot about the behaviour of 2 London youths, as if this is some global pandemic that will certainly cross to the USA.
Upholder of rules and the status-quo vs creatives?
It's funny, I'm surrounded by mostly conservatives, and some (maybe most) don't object to the "universal background checks" so much as they object to what it'll really be.
Conservatism is the politics of fear. What you describe is typical. They're not opposed to what's actually being proposed, they are opposed to where they fear it might lead. Their imaginations always follow the worst case imaginable, even if it's improbable, and assume that's what will be.
I think what you are describing is Technocracy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocrats
"Conclusions
It is established that tobacco use is a primary cause of cancer. We have outlined the main pathways by which tobacco use is involved in carcinogenesis, and we have discussed other agents involved in these pathways. The high prevalence of tobacco use in high-income countries has been of concern since the 1950s, when the health effects of smoking became apparent. The uptake of tobacco use in low-income countries will result in widespread disease over the next 30 years, unless we are successful in promoting smoking cessation."
This by 2 epidemiologists. What qualifications do you have to say their paper is wrong both in title and in conclusion? And no, reading "correlation is not causation" on Slashdot many times is not a qualification.
You're a very typical denier.
You attempted to "correct" my original statement. And my original statement is not wrong. The supermarkets in the UK have always fought against plastic bag bans. The fact that they've partially lost that fight in Wales, at least as far as a levy is concerned, doesn't change the fact that the supermarkets always fight to resist.
It might make more sense to you if you read the comment to which I originally replied. It was a suggestion that the ban in SF was a fiendish plot by the supermarkets. I was making the point that far from wanting bans and levies, the supermarkets fight against them. Yes, even in Wales.