Freedom of religion is not a blanket excuse for doing anything you want. If it were, you could, say, dodge taxes by claiming that your religion prohibits them (if I remember correctly, Jehovah's Witnesses tried that at some point).
they aren't in any way evenly distributed along the political spectrum - the vast majority are some flavor liberal/left. Conservative viewpoints are dramatically underrepresented in general and more likely to be downmodded or not upmodded even without being in the batshit crazy demographic.
Anyway, you do have some point, but the reasons for these are objective. Simply put, conservative viewpoints tend to be more batshit crazy in general, and even if they're not, they're still wrong more often ("reality has a well-known liberal bias" and all that). Nevertheless, if you have a valid point, and if you can coherently articulate it, you will usually get upmodded even if it goes counter to the groupthink. It's just that some points are much harder to intelligently argue in favor of than the others.
There is a certain degree of inequality when it comes to the bar for getting upmodded. If you run with the groupthink, you can get easy upmods with just a single emotional statement with some invectives thrown in. If you're arguing against it, you have to be really persuasive. So if you look at all posts, there is a clear slant. But if you look at posts that actually contribute to the discussion, it's much more balanced.
Have a look at this old post of mine. It's about as anti-groupthink on Slashdot as you can get (note that this is back in 2009). And yet it doesn't have a single downmod, and one informative upmod. Why? Because I cited my sources and refrained from unsubstantiated attacks.
Humans are infamous for their groupthink in general. The Slashdot variety is actually pretty mild, if you have any baseline for comparison.
The telling thing is that people complain from all sides of various issues. For example, if you ask a libertarian, they'll tell you that Slashdot groupthink is liberal leaning socialist. If you ask a liberal, it's libertarian. But truth is, you see +5-modded comments from practically any perspective. About the only way to be consistently downmodded here without being a troll (or sufficiently troll-like in behavior, even if not deliberate, to make no difference) is to be a hardline creationist.
There's no such thing as "leaking to the rest of the Internet". The only way for stuff from Reddit to get elsewhere is for people to consciously take it there; it doesn't do it all by itself.
Here's another recent example, carefully documented. Pay special attention to the attitude of some people after all the claims were retracted as false.
"It has a chilling effect on other reports of sexual harassment. Even if Team Harpy were making things up out of whole cloth, women who experience sexual harassment but haven’t recorded the whole thing on tape are going to be terrified of being sued into the streets because few harrassers are going to admit to their behavior. We need to make it easier to report harassment, not harder — given incidents at tech conferences, the US Congress, and ALA itself."
This is in response of a man, accused of sexual harassment, suing his accusers for defamation. Apparently, even if you're innocent, you shouldn't fight back because it hurts the cause! And furthermore:
"While I think Mr. Murphy should stand down for the good of the profession and in the name of providing a safer environment for people to report harassment, I think that it would be in Mr. Murphy’s own best interest to stand down.... He should go for dropping the suit for the win. For himself and his profession. And to start building a comfort zone so we won’t have to judge anonymous allegations because people will feel free to come into the light and tell their stories."
i.e. even if you're innocent, stand down. "For the team".
I have to preface all this by saying that I personally identify with the much-maligned "progressive thought". I do believe in social justice in general, and I do believe that specific issues, such as discrimination against females, non-whites, non-heterosexuals and other minorities is very real and a problem that we have to deal with. At the same time - and precisely because of that! - I have to speak out; because it is my side and my cause, and I am responsible for the evil that people who share (or claim to share) it with me perpetrate in its name. I'm well aware that there are even more numerous equivalents on the other side of the fence, but they are well-documented and well-accepted among those whose opinion matters to me, and so I am not going to touch on that.
Now to the matter at hand. When I started digging into the recent slew of high-profile social justice activism cases, one thing stood out. It's not so much the quickness to act that is the problem in and of itself, as it is the readiness to do so based on conformance to stereotypes that the person has. Remember the Virginia university rape case? Pretty much every feminist and progressive outlet has published a scathing attack on the purported rapist - spending very little time on the fact that the only evidence to date is the testimony of the self-identified victim, but instead focusing on how this horrible event, which is obviously true (because, well, frat boys gonna rape, duh - "everybody knows", "common sense"...), is a testament to how horrible things are in general.
And then, when it turned out that not only there isn't anything else, but even said testimony has gaping consistency holes and outright falsehoods - did anyone apologize? Well, the website that broke the original story had the decency to, but I was surprised at the number of other places that doubled down on their take instead by basically claiming that it's all just lies (Jezebel is basically still doing that), or that in the absence of evidence to the contrary, the victim should be believed by default - even if there are inconsistencies in her story.
What really raised my hairs, though, was when they acknowledged that the story is false, but nevertheless demanded that the accused should be treated as guilty based on nothing but accusation alone as a generic rule, and that the self-identified victim should give extreme benefit of the doubt, and cannot even be questioned (because that is traumatic etc). Because, you see, actual rapes happen, and therefore if you don't support harsh measures, you support actual rapists - even if you are complaining about an actual false rape accusation. In other words, it's better for one innocent to suffer than for ten guilty persons escape.
I wish this was something that could be ambiguously interpreted or misunderstood by me, but no: the title of the piece that summed up that argument is literally No matter what Jackie said, we should generally believe rape claims". And it contains gems such as, "We should believe, as a matter of default, what an accuser says. Ultimately, the costs of wrongly disbelieving a survivor far outweigh the costs of calling someone a rapist. Even if Jackie fabricated her account, U-Va. should have taken her word for it during the period while they endeavored to prove or disprove the accusation". Go ahead, read it in its entirety, it's well worth it.
That particular article just left me speechless, for obvious reasons - I am a liberal, among other things, and this was anything but. But then I started digging into it, and have found out that this sort of stuff is not actually new, it's just that it's the first time it was broadcast so prominently to the general audience, and subscribed by so many. Yet if you start digging into the subculture - go visit the blogs where adherents cluster and discuss things in an environment where the
Arguably, a proper solution is to provide transactional semantics for modification. Saying, "okay, I'm beginning to write a new version... write... seek... write... seek... write... okay, I'm done". And let the OS and the FS take care of applying or reverting it, enforcing consistency, and so on.
For another example near and dear to conservatives' hearts, consider the Second Amendment. The Roberts court has ruled (District of Columbia vs. Heller, 2008) that the Second Amendment establishes an individual right to carry arms, despite the fact the amendment only mentions carrying arms in the context of a militia.
They didn't do so based solely on the "intent" argument, though (though it was definitely there). They also found that even from a purely textual perspective, the close reading of 2A makes it clear that the text distinguishes between the prohibition and the rationale for it, and the prohibition as worded ("shall not be infringed" with no qualifications) is broader than if you were to infer it from the rationale alone.
Though then they circled around and said that "shall not be infringed" still means that it can be infringed for "good enough" reasons (e.g. restricting criminals or mentally ill etc), so effectively it's moot anyway. Pure textualism has never been seriously considered by SCOTUS, ever.
Thompson did not design the Confederate battle flag - he designed the (second) Confederate state flag based on the already-existing battle flag design, by basically putting it on a white field (which for him had the symbolism expressed in the quotes that you cited, of white supremacy).
The battle flag was originally the flag of the "Army of Northern Virginia", and designed by William Porcher Miles. Not that he's any better, since he referred to slavery as the divine institution, and explicitly refuted the notions states in the Declaration of Independence, such as natural rights (which makes the use of that flag by Tea Partiers and their ilk even more hilarious). He also wanted to repeal the federal ban on importation of slaves, which was an extreme position even among the slavers.
So you think a right is only fundamental if it's listed in the Constitution? I take it you never read the 9th Amendment?
How could you possibly read what I wrote and came to that conclusion?
Like I said, I don't give a fuck about what's written in the Constitution when it comes to determining which rights are fundamental. The Constitution merely documents such rights, it does not create them. Just because something is not listed there doesn't mean it's not a right.
This goes for SCOTUS, too. Just because they come up with some retarded notion that a fundamental right is something "deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition" doesn't make it so. There are plenty of rights which weren't that are still important.
I am concerned with popular support because consent of the governed is a prerequisite for a non-tyrannical government. If you have a legal system which can override even a strong supermajority, said supermajority will simply demolish that system and institute a new one.
Ironically, you were talking about state veto over SCOTUS decisions, which are not law themselves, but are rather about whether some other law (federal or state) is unconstitutional. If this can be overridden, then you are providing the states with the means of passing more oppressive legislation so long as they have the will of enough of the majority to back it. So you're arguing in favor of popular support as well, just indirectly.
The 'confederate flag' being flown is because the state in question made some variation of it their state flag or such, from what I understand.
Not in case of South Carolina. There are still some states in the South that use some form of Confederate flag as part of their state flag (most notably, Mississippi, which specifically uses the battle flag as the saltire). But SC flag has no resemblance. However, they have placed a Confederate flag above their capitol back in 1960s as a symbol of their dislike for Civil Rights Act and other laws requiring desegregation and equal treatment of blacks. When it became controversial in late 90s, they have moved it off the capitol building and to a Confederate soldiers' monument that is next to it (and is on public land). They have also enacted a law prohibiting taking it down except with a 2/3 supermajority.
So in case of SC, this is indeed specifically about Confederate flag, and special treatment thereof to honor it.
If it does feature a swastika it would be illegal in Germany.
And why is that a good thing? It's one of the more stupid German laws restricting freedom of speech, IMO.
The use of swastika (and Confederate flag etc) in games depicting the events of an era, even fictionalized, is in proper historical context, and there's nothing wrong with it.
How can there be a right to secede to a government that refuses any political representation, and in fact all natural and civil rights, to almost half of its population?
It's not a legitimate government in the first place.
Those documents were authored by some of the very few southerners that actually owned slaves. Most did not, either for moral reasons or simply because they didn't have that kind of money.
Of course they were. The very few southerners who actually owned slaves were also the very few southerners who ran the government there!
They fought to just leave - and take their slaves with them.
Which, to remind, was 40% of the population of CSA. And over 50% in South Carolina specifically.
How can a government that is not representative of over half of its population, and explicitly denying any and all rights to that population, claim to be a popular government?
And if you believe that the only legitimate government is the one that represents the people, how can a slaver government even be legitimate in the first place?
If you want a supermajority, then how is it any different from the existing rules under which the states can already call for a constitutional convention and pass whatever amendments they want? It requires 3/4 of the states (which, by the way, still translates to just under 50% of popular support, if the smaller states band together).
I don't care what the court or the constitution say on this matter. Fundamental rights are not defined by the constitution, merely documented (or not) by it. That's why they're fundamental.
It's also not a fundamental right, as polygamy is not part of the traditions
You've got to be fucking kidding. How does being "part of the traditions" have any relevance to something being a fundamental right? Most fundamental rights that we enjoy these days were never traditional, starting with pretty much all women's rights.
Who even needs judicial review if you can override it by a simple majority (even worse in this case, because securing a majority of states would require, what, something like 20% of popular support, so long as it's all clustered in those states)?
You might as well just say that everything that Senate votes for is law and constitutional by definition, and be done with it.
Slashdot Mirror
Freedom of religion is not a blanket excuse for doing anything you want. If it were, you could, say, dodge taxes by claiming that your religion prohibits them (if I remember correctly, Jehovah's Witnesses tried that at some point).
they aren't in any way evenly distributed along the political spectrum - the vast majority are some flavor liberal/left. Conservative viewpoints are dramatically underrepresented in general and more likely to be downmodded or not upmodded even without being in the batshit crazy demographic.
Anyway, you do have some point, but the reasons for these are objective. Simply put, conservative viewpoints tend to be more batshit crazy in general, and even if they're not, they're still wrong more often ("reality has a well-known liberal bias" and all that). Nevertheless, if you have a valid point, and if you can coherently articulate it, you will usually get upmodded even if it goes counter to the groupthink. It's just that some points are much harder to intelligently argue in favor of than the others.
There is a certain degree of inequality when it comes to the bar for getting upmodded. If you run with the groupthink, you can get easy upmods with just a single emotional statement with some invectives thrown in. If you're arguing against it, you have to be really persuasive. So if you look at all posts, there is a clear slant. But if you look at posts that actually contribute to the discussion, it's much more balanced.
Have a look at this old post of mine. It's about as anti-groupthink on Slashdot as you can get (note that this is back in 2009). And yet it doesn't have a single downmod, and one informative upmod. Why? Because I cited my sources and refrained from unsubstantiated attacks.
Humans are infamous for their groupthink in general. The Slashdot variety is actually pretty mild, if you have any baseline for comparison.
The telling thing is that people complain from all sides of various issues. For example, if you ask a libertarian, they'll tell you that Slashdot groupthink is liberal leaning socialist. If you ask a liberal, it's libertarian. But truth is, you see +5-modded comments from practically any perspective. About the only way to be consistently downmodded here without being a troll (or sufficiently troll-like in behavior, even if not deliberate, to make no difference) is to be a hardline creationist.
There's no such thing as "leaking to the rest of the Internet". The only way for stuff from Reddit to get elsewhere is for people to consciously take it there; it doesn't do it all by itself.
Here's another recent example, carefully documented. Pay special attention to the attitude of some people after all the claims were retracted as false.
And here's another notable point in that scandal. I will just quote:
"It has a chilling effect on other reports of sexual harassment. Even if Team Harpy were making things up out of whole cloth, women who experience sexual harassment but haven’t recorded the whole thing on tape are going to be terrified of being sued into the streets because few harrassers are going to admit to their behavior. We need to make it easier to report harassment, not harder — given incidents at tech conferences, the US Congress, and ALA itself."
This is in response of a man, accused of sexual harassment, suing his accusers for defamation. Apparently, even if you're innocent, you shouldn't fight back because it hurts the cause! And furthermore:
"While I think Mr. Murphy should stand down for the good of the profession and in the name of providing a safer environment for people to report harassment, I think that it would be in Mr. Murphy’s own best interest to stand down. ... He should go for dropping the suit for the win. For himself and his profession. And to start building a comfort zone so we won’t have to judge anonymous allegations because people will feel free to come into the light and tell their stories."
i.e. even if you're innocent, stand down. "For the team".
I have to preface all this by saying that I personally identify with the much-maligned "progressive thought". I do believe in social justice in general, and I do believe that specific issues, such as discrimination against females, non-whites, non-heterosexuals and other minorities is very real and a problem that we have to deal with. At the same time - and precisely because of that! - I have to speak out; because it is my side and my cause, and I am responsible for the evil that people who share (or claim to share) it with me perpetrate in its name. I'm well aware that there are even more numerous equivalents on the other side of the fence, but they are well-documented and well-accepted among those whose opinion matters to me, and so I am not going to touch on that.
Now to the matter at hand. When I started digging into the recent slew of high-profile social justice activism cases, one thing stood out. It's not so much the quickness to act that is the problem in and of itself, as it is the readiness to do so based on conformance to stereotypes that the person has. Remember the Virginia university rape case? Pretty much every feminist and progressive outlet has published a scathing attack on the purported rapist - spending very little time on the fact that the only evidence to date is the testimony of the self-identified victim, but instead focusing on how this horrible event, which is obviously true (because, well, frat boys gonna rape, duh - "everybody knows", "common sense" ...), is a testament to how horrible things are in general.
And then, when it turned out that not only there isn't anything else, but even said testimony has gaping consistency holes and outright falsehoods - did anyone apologize? Well, the website that broke the original story had the decency to, but I was surprised at the number of other places that doubled down on their take instead by basically claiming that it's all just lies (Jezebel is basically still doing that), or that in the absence of evidence to the contrary, the victim should be believed by default - even if there are inconsistencies in her story.
What really raised my hairs, though, was when they acknowledged that the story is false, but nevertheless demanded that the accused should be treated as guilty based on nothing but accusation alone as a generic rule, and that the self-identified victim should give extreme benefit of the doubt, and cannot even be questioned (because that is traumatic etc). Because, you see, actual rapes happen, and therefore if you don't support harsh measures, you support actual rapists - even if you are complaining about an actual false rape accusation. In other words, it's better for one innocent to suffer than for ten guilty persons escape.
I wish this was something that could be ambiguously interpreted or misunderstood by me, but no: the title of the piece that summed up that argument is literally No matter what Jackie said, we should generally believe rape claims". And it contains gems such as, "We should believe, as a matter of default, what an accuser says. Ultimately, the costs of wrongly disbelieving a survivor far outweigh the costs of calling someone a rapist. Even if Jackie fabricated her account, U-Va. should have taken her word for it during the period while they endeavored to prove or disprove the accusation". Go ahead, read it in its entirety, it's well worth it.
That particular article just left me speechless, for obvious reasons - I am a liberal, among other things, and this was anything but. But then I started digging into it, and have found out that this sort of stuff is not actually new, it's just that it's the first time it was broadcast so prominently to the general audience, and subscribed by so many. Yet if you start digging into the subculture - go visit the blogs where adherents cluster and discuss things in an environment where the
Arguably, a proper solution is to provide transactional semantics for modification. Saying, "okay, I'm beginning to write a new version ... write ... seek ... write ... seek ... write ... okay, I'm done". And let the OS and the FS take care of applying or reverting it, enforcing consistency, and so on.
Filesystem interfaces are not transactional
That depends on the filesystem. NTFS, for example, has ACID snapshot-isolation transactions on filesystem level since Vista.
What happens if someone opens a file and changes a single 80-byte line inside, one byte at a time?
I have a hard time keeping my racist Confederate flag designers straight.
Do they have a natural tendency towards preferring the same sex in captivity? ~
For another example near and dear to conservatives' hearts, consider the Second Amendment. The Roberts court has ruled (District of Columbia vs. Heller, 2008) that the Second Amendment establishes an individual right to carry arms, despite the fact the amendment only mentions carrying arms in the context of a militia.
They didn't do so based solely on the "intent" argument, though (though it was definitely there). They also found that even from a purely textual perspective, the close reading of 2A makes it clear that the text distinguishes between the prohibition and the rationale for it, and the prohibition as worded ("shall not be infringed" with no qualifications) is broader than if you were to infer it from the rationale alone.
Though then they circled around and said that "shall not be infringed" still means that it can be infringed for "good enough" reasons (e.g. restricting criminals or mentally ill etc), so effectively it's moot anyway. Pure textualism has never been seriously considered by SCOTUS, ever.
Thompson did not design the Confederate battle flag - he designed the (second) Confederate state flag based on the already-existing battle flag design, by basically putting it on a white field (which for him had the symbolism expressed in the quotes that you cited, of white supremacy).
The battle flag was originally the flag of the "Army of Northern Virginia", and designed by William Porcher Miles. Not that he's any better, since he referred to slavery as the divine institution, and explicitly refuted the notions states in the Declaration of Independence, such as natural rights (which makes the use of that flag by Tea Partiers and their ilk even more hilarious). He also wanted to repeal the federal ban on importation of slaves, which was an extreme position even among the slavers.
So you think a right is only fundamental if it's listed in the Constitution? I take it you never read the 9th Amendment?
How could you possibly read what I wrote and came to that conclusion?
Like I said, I don't give a fuck about what's written in the Constitution when it comes to determining which rights are fundamental. The Constitution merely documents such rights, it does not create them. Just because something is not listed there doesn't mean it's not a right.
This goes for SCOTUS, too. Just because they come up with some retarded notion that a fundamental right is something "deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition" doesn't make it so. There are plenty of rights which weren't that are still important.
I am concerned with popular support because consent of the governed is a prerequisite for a non-tyrannical government. If you have a legal system which can override even a strong supermajority, said supermajority will simply demolish that system and institute a new one.
Ironically, you were talking about state veto over SCOTUS decisions, which are not law themselves, but are rather about whether some other law (federal or state) is unconstitutional. If this can be overridden, then you are providing the states with the means of passing more oppressive legislation so long as they have the will of enough of the majority to back it. So you're arguing in favor of popular support as well, just indirectly.
The 'confederate flag' being flown is because the state in question made some variation of it their state flag or such, from what I understand.
Not in case of South Carolina. There are still some states in the South that use some form of Confederate flag as part of their state flag (most notably, Mississippi, which specifically uses the battle flag as the saltire). But SC flag has no resemblance. However, they have placed a Confederate flag above their capitol back in 1960s as a symbol of their dislike for Civil Rights Act and other laws requiring desegregation and equal treatment of blacks. When it became controversial in late 90s, they have moved it off the capitol building and to a Confederate soldiers' monument that is next to it (and is on public land). They have also enacted a law prohibiting taking it down except with a 2/3 supermajority.
So in case of SC, this is indeed specifically about Confederate flag, and special treatment thereof to honor it.
If it does feature a swastika it would be illegal in Germany.
And why is that a good thing? It's one of the more stupid German laws restricting freedom of speech, IMO.
The use of swastika (and Confederate flag etc) in games depicting the events of an era, even fictionalized, is in proper historical context, and there's nothing wrong with it.
How can there be a right to secede to a government that refuses any political representation, and in fact all natural and civil rights, to almost half of its population?
It's not a legitimate government in the first place.
Your teacher was wrong. The North didn't wage war to free the slaves.
On the other hand, it doesn't mean that the South didn't wage war to keep the slaves. It did, and it was very upfront about it.
And that is why all symbols of CSA are intrinsically linked to racism, slavery and white supremacist ideology, and cannot be decoupled from it.
Those documents were authored by some of the very few southerners that actually owned slaves. Most did not, either for moral reasons or simply because they didn't have that kind of money.
Of course they were. The very few southerners who actually owned slaves were also the very few southerners who ran the government there!
They fought to just leave - and take their slaves with them.
Which, to remind, was 40% of the population of CSA. And over 50% in South Carolina specifically.
How can a government that is not representative of over half of its population, and explicitly denying any and all rights to that population, claim to be a popular government?
And if you believe that the only legitimate government is the one that represents the people, how can a slaver government even be legitimate in the first place?
You make the mistake of assuming that why the North fought the war is relevant to why the South fought the war. It's not.
The North fought to preserve the Union. The South fought to maintain slavery. It's as simple as that.
If you want a supermajority, then how is it any different from the existing rules under which the states can already call for a constitutional convention and pass whatever amendments they want? It requires 3/4 of the states (which, by the way, still translates to just under 50% of popular support, if the smaller states band together).
I don't care what the court or the constitution say on this matter. Fundamental rights are not defined by the constitution, merely documented (or not) by it. That's why they're fundamental.
It's also not a fundamental right, as polygamy is not part of the traditions
You've got to be fucking kidding. How does being "part of the traditions" have any relevance to something being a fundamental right? Most fundamental rights that we enjoy these days were never traditional, starting with pretty much all women's rights.
Who even needs judicial review if you can override it by a simple majority (even worse in this case, because securing a majority of states would require, what, something like 20% of popular support, so long as it's all clustered in those states)?
You might as well just say that everything that Senate votes for is law and constitutional by definition, and be done with it.