I'm not sure what SCOTUS cases you're referencing, but back in December, a judge ruled that the "Mall of the Americas" is private property and they can bar people from using it as a forum for a political protest.
Donald Trump has what's known as "Fuck You" money. His wealth is such that he can say and do whatever the hell he wants and if anyone whines about it, he can just say "Fuck You." He's free to speak his mind because he doesn't have to fear being kicked out of school or losing his job/business and doesn't really have to fear for his personal safety.
I think it's more sinister for a number of reasons. Ben Bernanke openly admitted that his goal at The Federal Reserve was to destroy rates of return available on "safe" investments like certificates-of-deposit, money markets, etc. His motivation being to encourage consumption and to coerce people into riskier assets like stocks. i.e. force risk-averse savers into the Wall St. gambling casino to serve as more prey for people with HFT capabilities and inside information. If we are forced to go cashless, we will be in a situation where we actually have to pay a bank just to hold our wealth(negative interest rates?). No more money under the mattress. This will also make bank-runs and capital flight impossible because there's nothing to withdraw. Countries are also considering financial "reforms" which can allow bank "bail-ins". Rather than putting the taxpayers on the hook for bailouts of TBTF banks, depositors could simply have their wealth confiscated to recapitalize the bank. When the Cyprus banking crisis was in full swing (and depositors with balances over 100k Euros were forced to take a haircut), the Canadian government proposed a scheme which included the possibility of:
"rapid conversion of certain bank liabilities into regulatory capital."
"certain bank liabilities" = YOUR savings account. i.e. they're suggesting that in the event that a TBTF bank gets in trouble, it could simply seize your savings to recapitalize itself.
This stuff is getting scary. Anyone notice that the BoJ recently announced negative interest rates on bank reserves? I don't pretend to understand this stuff, but it seems like the global economy is now dependent on perpetual debt accumulation, a game that needs to end somewhere. Guess the USA federal government could rack up another $20 or $30 trillion dollars in debt by borrowing from The Fed, but consumers seem to have reached "peak debt". Where does this debt accumulation game end? We had the internet bubble, the housing bubble, and now it seems like we've got a government debt bubble.
Agree with your AR vs. AK points, but this is totally wrong:
"The cheapest of AK-47's can be polished up to stand next to the best in a couple hours"
I've seen, handled and fired Russian, Chinese, Romanian and Bulgarian models. No amount of polish could possibly make that Romanian POS stand up to the Russian model.
The USA government's "advice" was probably some of the worst advice imaginable! It was never "OK". As you might recall, they were advising people to eat a whole bunch of breads and cereals to get their daily calories and to consume very little meat. That "advice" has contributed heavily to the obesity problem and general poor health of the people in this country. I think the government employees knew that their advice was going to make people fat and sick and it worked exactly as they intended.
"My first rule: I don't believe anything the government tells me" -George Carlin
I think this whole scheme is insane, but it's nevertheless revealing. If a government can eliminate its current welfare expenditures and then provide every poor person with a basic income while reducing overall spending, what does it say about the current system? Doesn't that mean that government is doing a terrible job in administering all of its current welfare programs?
Think about the USA. What would happen if governments eliminated Obamacare, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, SNAP, EITC and all of the other welfare programs and simply used the funds to boost poor people's incomes? As a back-of-the-envelope calculation, assume those programs cost ~$1.8T per year. Then, suppose that money is instead transferred directly to every household with income below the median, which is ~60M households. That would mean $30,000 per household! Why do we still have people living in abject poverty with that amount of government expenditure? This certainly doesn't paint a flattering picture of the existing welfare state.
"Pickering concludes, 'What Evans apparently doesn't realize is that because of the thermal inertia of the oceans, within narrow bounds we can already predict what global temperatures will be in 2019, 2024, and 2029...' "
A major part of science is the ability to verify a theory by independently repeatable experiments and observations. Predicting the future is not "science". You can create a predictive model by retro-fitting current observations to past data, looking at trends and making certain assumptions, but it's still only a model. Such a model can be used, but it should never be "believed". That's the problem with the global warming *cough* "Climate Change" alarmists. They honestly think they KNOW what global temperatures are going to be over the next several decades based on their climate models. The same types of models from decades ago made all sorts of dire predictions that never came to fruition and the same is true of today's models.
There are people that connect something as critical as their home heating system to the internet and allow the manufacturer to automatically push out firmware updates to their thermostats? And there are people who design (and other people who buy) a thermostat that requires f***ing batteries when most homes with thermostats controlling the central heating system are also wired for AC power?
LOL Supporting a guy whose every promise will make the government bigger and more powerful substantially downgrades your threat level.
If you read the DHS report on right wing extremism, you'll see that people who supported Ron Paul or vote for Libertarian or Constitution Party candidates, those who believe in state sovereignty, display revolutionary war symbols, etc. are singled out as potential "extremists/terrorists". Obviously if you want smaller government, you're a "threat" to government even if your means are entirely peaceful. Their report on left wing extremism is shorter and seems almost exclusively focused on the environmental movement, so if you're any sort of environmental activist, that's a ++ on your threat score too.
I suppose if Big Brother can set a blanket protection so that parents don't have to fear every local PD and child welfare bureaucrat it's a good thing. It still irks me when I see an article about how government thinks it has the power to tell us what we're "allowed" to do. Seriously? People need permission to exercise their own judgement when it comes to raising their kids? Reality has obviously been turned upside down, but We, The People are supposed to be in charge and via The U.S. Constitution, we tell the government what it's "allowed" to do.
Go to "Cop Block" or "Filming Cops" to see hours of police abuse and violence against citizens. That's the interesting stuff.
If you want a sample of what most "coptube" footage would look like, just park at your local doughnut shop, or beside the road and stare out the windshield.
"something like 90% of the American population want tighte controls on guns"(sic)
Not sure where you got that info, but it's obvious BS. If the "90%" claim was true, it would be easy for this overwhelming majority to elect anti-gun legislators. Hell, if 90% of the population wanted gun control, even a Constitutional amendment would be feasible!
"the arms manufacturers [hold] the whole country to ransom"
Singling out the National Shooting Sports Foundation (the firearms industry trade association and lobbying group) as the poster child for Washington DC corruption is completely absurd. Their expenditures and influence are absolutely negligible compared to the telecom, banking, energy, pharmaceutical and other business lobbies. There's no way that the NSSF could convince legislators to vote against the will of 90% of their constituents. Only the bankers can manage to do that.
The NRA, a 501c(4), is powerful, not because of lobbying $$$, but because it has over 4.5 million dues-paying members and millions more donors and supporters. If gun control is so popular in the USA, why aren't tens of millions of people joining and contributing to all of the anti-gun groups out there? That would be one way for them to get their voices heard. Anti-gun groups can't even get 4 million people to join for free, let alone get them to pay annual dues to support the cause.
It is illegal to buy a gun "over the internet" (as in provide your address and CC# and have the item delivered to your door). You can of course use the internet to advertise firearms for sale, but they can only be shipped to a licensed dealer. The dealer is then required to perform a background check before turning it over to the buyer. As for gun shows, all sales are subject to the exact same regulations (including background checks) that apply in a gun store. There is no "gun show loophole". Renting a space at a gun show is expensive, so all the tables and displays you see are set up by licensed dealers. You can purchase a gun in a private transaction, but buyer and seller must meet face-to-face. No background check is required, but there are still many applicable laws. e.g. No sales of long guns to people under 18, no handgun sales to anyone under 21, no handgun sales to people from other states, etc. A more appropriate term for this type of thing would be the "Classified Ads Loophole".
There exists a legitimate threat, as evidenced by San Bernardino, Paris and other successful attacks that militant groups have been able to pull off. I think we can also expect many more of these going forward. That threat is being greatly exaggerated however. We need to keep cool and examine it at a rational level. It's unfortunate that people don't seem to have the slightest understanding of probabilities. e.g. comparing the odds of being killed or injured by a terrorist vs. the odds of being killed or injured in a traffic accident.
We can't cower in fear of this exaggerated threat and allow government to crack down on Free Speech in the name of protecting us. We also can't allow them to use these incidents as an excuse to enact further gun control or turn the nation into more of a police state than it already is.
F*** Lauren Weinstein and all of the censors (and gun grabbers) who would undermine liberty in the name of safety.
The REAL (and obvious!) solution is a radical shift in the USA government's policy of relentless militarism which has caused death, destruction, instability and massive human suffering in Middle Eastern countries.
Q: Why do we tax tobacco? A: So people will smoke less.
Q: Why do we tax income? A: So people will... oh, wait...
Gimme a break with your "society" bullshit and just say "government". Let's put aside the fact that confiscating people's wealth under threat of violence is morally wrong to begin with and assume government must take wealth in some fashion. Apart from the inflation tax, the income tax is the most regressive tax imaginable. Why would you create a disincentive for people to engage in producing wealth? The mere fact that people are creating value benefits the society and increases its prosperity. If you want to tax something, tax consumption. Consumption is the destruction of value. Although it's necessary to eat food, burn fuel, etc. consuming things reduces the overall wealth of the society. The USA economy based on "consumption" is a 30 year illusion which was only made possible by vast amounts of debt accumulation. As long as people persist in the ridiculous belief that "consumer spending" is the path to prosperity, the economy is going to suffer. We should scrap the personal and corporate income tax entirely and replace them with the "Fair Tax"(fairtaxdotorg) then take other steps to transition back to a production economy. Our debt-fueled consumption economy and government "stimulus" economy is a house of cards.
Another set of leaked documents they received allowed them to write a whole series of articles about the federal government's drone program. AFAIK, the source of that leak has yet to be identified and the feds have been refusing to comment. The most frustrating thing about drone wars, bank bailouts, foreign invasions, mass surveillance, etc. is that these scumbags fund themselves by confiscating our wealth.
At least he cited a source. Do you have a link to nasa.gov which explains the difference?
Seems like the "climate change" alarmists are willing to constantly manipulate their data and revise their models to reach the preordained conclusion. What's tragic is that no matter how many times they're fooled, people are still completely vulnerable to a barrage of fear mongering. "Climate change" is just the latest iteration of the Red scare and the terrorist scare. One that appeals to the political left more than the right. Be afraid! Be afraid! We're all going to be burned alive! Only government can save us!
One nuclear war would solve the global warming (*cough* "Climate Change") problem. It would put so much dust and debris into the atmosphere that the warming effect of the sun could be temporarily eliminated. A few hundred million dead humans and cows would also help. Of course "global cooling" would then become the crisis like it was back in the 1970s.
Ridiculous. Making it illegal to hire a murderer or start a riot is not a limitation on free speech. Such laws are in place to prohibit you from infringing on the rights of others, namely the potential murder victim or the people who will suffer injury and property destruction as a result of your riot. If you read the linked article, these people are asking for something a little more extreme than the removal of content like that.
"user complaints about racist content were often rebutted by Facebook, claiming that the post does not violate its community standards."
I'm sure that a post attempting to incite violence against others would be deleted immediately upon detection. As far as removing anything that the PC crowd would consider "racist", FB should be prepared to do a lot of deleting.
If you're the least bit interested in preserving freedom of expression, that "solution" is much worse than having private companies delete so-called "hate speech" from their websites.
There are millions (billions?) of people who have to fear reprisal for voicing their opinions or even reporting unpopular facts. Taking away anonymity (assuming there was a way to do so) would do more to stifle political dissent than deter politically incorrect "hate speech". Few places in the world have anything like the First Amendment. People will obviously self-censor facts and opinions which could result in them being persecuted and that will include a lot more than "hate speech"(whatever the f**** that means).
"Everything is super-locally governed... system of government doesn't really allow much 'top down' lawmaking"
In principle, not in practice. If that's your observation, you're seeing only the vestiges of what the system is supposed to be like. The USA was founded on the basis of the state governments being the supreme power. The federal government was granted very limited powers by The Constitution and the Tenth Amendment specifically delegates ALL other powers to the states and The People. It was supposed to be difficult to "get things done" because "top down" power was rightly seen as dangerous! The country grew and prospered into the world's economic and military super-power under this system of limited federal power.
The long-term historical trend, dating back at least to the mid 1800s, is accumulation of power by the federal government at the expense of state and local governments. The War for Southern Independence and its aftermath probably marked the biggest federal power grab. Numerous Supreme Court decisions throughout the years have continued the trend. Not to say this was 100% bad, but it is still part of the trend of undermining state sovereignty and centralizing power in the federal government. There's a good book called "Who Killed The Constitution" which documents much of this. Federal government more than tripled in size over the course of the 20th century, from ~7% of GDP to well over 20% of GDP. We have more "top down" governance right now than at any time in history and the result has been an utter disaster for the nation.
I could go on and on, but our "patchwork" system was good. If all the states reclaimed their rightful power, they could be legislative laboratories for other states to observe. People could also vote with their feet. Don't like your progressive/socialist state government? Fine, pack up and move to a state that's more to your liking. We see this to a very limited extent with people going to states where medical marijuana is legal. It would be awesome if we had similar options over a much larger spectrum of issues.
There were plenty of civilizations before Christianity came along. The basic tenets of what would eventually evolve into democratic and republican forms of government were formulated in ancient Greece. The Roman Republic was around for close to 5 centuries before Jesus came along. If anything, Christianity has been a curse on Western civilization, impeding knowledge and holding back progress at every turn.
I'm inclined to think that you're being too harsh on the drone operators and too nice to the government. Don't you think the abuses people have committed with their UAVs is mostly due to negligence and/or stupidity. I highly doubt that people are deliberately flying their equipment anywhere and everywhere to make a political statement about their "rights". Same with people who own guns. The gun rights activists aren't the ones committing crimes and using firearms irresponsibly.
"Politicians... are the same lazy bums that we are. They couldn't care less what you do. As long as you are not a threat to anyone."
As long as you aren't a threat to THEM you mean. Besides, the new rules aren't being formulated by politicians. These regulations are the work of FAA bureaucrats. ALL bureaucrats have one basic motivation: To preserve and expand their own power. They certainly don't give a f*** about what's good for the public. Endless amounts of rules and regulations are their job security.
People have been forming societies on the basis of the geography in which their parents procreated for 1000s of years. Those geographies, despite being somewhat arbitrary, have also been associated with a particular cultural and "national" identity. The people within those boundaries have also typically taken up arms to defend themselves against others seeking to invade their territory. Are you mocking the idea that someone who emerged from their mother's vagina in Italy identifies as "Italian" and might have the audacity to think that they have collective ownership of the nation called "Italy"?
Getting way off topic here, but... You forgot about "jury box" in your list, which is typically considered option #3, the theory being that juries can nullify unjust laws by refusing to convict people who break them. Of course government courts have long since prohibited defendants from making a case based on that argument however. By your definition, I guess most of the countries in the world throughout human history have/had poorly designed systems of government. Governments which respect freedom of speech, elections and due process (including a right to trial by jury) are the rare exceptions. Even in supposedly free places like the USA, these things are little more than an illusion and the government is hell bent on eradicating the "ammo box" option. Central government is a failed institution. Secession would open up all sorts of opportunities for improving quality of life.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not sure what SCOTUS cases you're referencing, but back in December, a judge ruled that the "Mall of the Americas" is private property and they can bar people from using it as a forum for a political protest.
Donald Trump has what's known as "Fuck You" money. His wealth is such that he can say and do whatever the hell he wants and if anyone whines about it, he can just say "Fuck You."
He's free to speak his mind because he doesn't have to fear being kicked out of school or losing his job/business and doesn't really have to fear for his personal safety.
I think it's more sinister for a number of reasons. Ben Bernanke openly admitted that his goal at The Federal Reserve was to destroy rates of return available on "safe" investments like certificates-of-deposit, money markets, etc. His motivation being to encourage consumption and to coerce people into riskier assets like stocks. i.e. force risk-averse savers into the Wall St. gambling casino to serve as more prey for people with HFT capabilities and inside information. If we are forced to go cashless, we will be in a situation where we actually have to pay a bank just to hold our wealth(negative interest rates?). No more money under the mattress. This will also make bank-runs and capital flight impossible because there's nothing to withdraw. Countries are also considering financial "reforms" which can allow bank "bail-ins". Rather than putting the taxpayers on the hook for bailouts of TBTF banks, depositors could simply have their wealth confiscated to recapitalize the bank. When the Cyprus banking crisis was in full swing (and depositors with balances over 100k Euros were forced to take a haircut), the Canadian government proposed a scheme which included the possibility of:
"rapid conversion of certain bank liabilities into regulatory capital."
"certain bank liabilities" = YOUR savings account. i.e. they're suggesting that in the event that a TBTF bank gets in trouble, it could simply seize your savings to recapitalize itself.
This stuff is getting scary. Anyone notice that the BoJ recently announced negative interest rates on bank reserves? I don't pretend to understand this stuff, but it seems like the global economy is now dependent on perpetual debt accumulation, a game that needs to end somewhere. Guess the USA federal government could rack up another $20 or $30 trillion dollars in debt by borrowing from The Fed, but consumers seem to have reached "peak debt". Where does this debt accumulation game end? We had the internet bubble, the housing bubble, and now it seems like we've got a government debt bubble.
Agree with your AR vs. AK points, but this is totally wrong:
"The cheapest of AK-47's can be polished up to stand next to the best in a couple hours"
I've seen, handled and fired Russian, Chinese, Romanian and Bulgarian models. No amount of polish could possibly make that Romanian POS stand up to the Russian model.
The USA government's "advice" was probably some of the worst advice imaginable! It was never "OK".
As you might recall, they were advising people to eat a whole bunch of breads and cereals to get their daily calories and to consume very little meat. That "advice" has contributed heavily to the obesity problem and general poor health of the people in this country. I think the government employees knew that their advice was going to make people fat and sick and it worked exactly as they intended.
"My first rule: I don't believe anything the government tells me" -George Carlin
Now THAT is good advice.
I think this whole scheme is insane, but it's nevertheless revealing. If a government can eliminate its current welfare expenditures and then provide every poor person with a basic income while reducing overall spending, what does it say about the current system? Doesn't that mean that government is doing a terrible job in administering all of its current welfare programs?
Think about the USA. What would happen if governments eliminated Obamacare, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, SNAP, EITC and all of the other welfare programs and simply used the funds to boost poor people's incomes? As a back-of-the-envelope calculation, assume those programs cost ~$1.8T per year. Then, suppose that money is instead transferred directly to every household with income below the median, which is ~60M households. That would mean $30,000 per household! Why do we still have people living in abject poverty with that amount of government expenditure? This certainly doesn't paint a flattering picture of the existing welfare state.
"Pickering concludes, 'What Evans apparently doesn't realize is that because of the thermal inertia of the oceans, within narrow bounds we can already predict what global temperatures will be in 2019, 2024, and 2029...' "
A major part of science is the ability to verify a theory by independently repeatable experiments and observations. Predicting the future is not "science". You can create a predictive model by retro-fitting current observations to past data, looking at trends and making certain assumptions, but it's still only a model. Such a model can be used, but it should never be "believed". That's the problem with the global warming *cough* "Climate Change" alarmists. They honestly think they KNOW what global temperatures are going to be over the next several decades based on their climate models. The same types of models from decades ago made all sorts of dire predictions that never came to fruition and the same is true of today's models.
There are people that connect something as critical as their home heating system to the internet and allow the manufacturer to automatically push out firmware updates to their thermostats?
And there are people who design (and other people who buy) a thermostat that requires f***ing batteries when most homes with thermostats controlling the central heating system are also wired for AC power?
WTF? x1e6
"Vote for Bernie in 2016! +10000"
LOL Supporting a guy whose every promise will make the government bigger and more powerful substantially downgrades your threat level.
If you read the DHS report on right wing extremism, you'll see that people who supported Ron Paul or vote for Libertarian or Constitution Party candidates, those who believe in state sovereignty, display revolutionary war symbols, etc. are singled out as potential "extremists/terrorists". Obviously if you want smaller government, you're a "threat" to government even if your means are entirely peaceful.
Their report on left wing extremism is shorter and seems almost exclusively focused on the environmental movement, so if you're any sort of environmental activist, that's a ++ on your threat score too.
I suppose if Big Brother can set a blanket protection so that parents don't have to fear every local PD and child welfare bureaucrat it's a good thing. It still irks me when I see an article about how government thinks it has the power to tell us what we're "allowed" to do. Seriously? People need permission to exercise their own judgement when it comes to raising their kids?
Reality has obviously been turned upside down, but We, The People are supposed to be in charge and via The U.S. Constitution, we tell the government what it's "allowed" to do.
"we need a coptube website."
Go to "Cop Block" or "Filming Cops" to see hours of police abuse and violence against citizens. That's the interesting stuff.
If you want a sample of what most "coptube" footage would look like, just park at your local doughnut shop, or beside the road and stare out the windshield.
"something like 90% of the American population want tighte controls on guns"(sic)
Not sure where you got that info, but it's obvious BS. If the "90%" claim was true, it would be easy for this overwhelming majority to elect anti-gun legislators. Hell, if 90% of the population wanted gun control, even a Constitutional amendment would be feasible!
"the arms manufacturers [hold] the whole country to ransom"
Singling out the National Shooting Sports Foundation (the firearms industry trade association and lobbying group) as the poster child for Washington DC corruption is completely absurd. Their expenditures and influence are absolutely negligible compared to the telecom, banking, energy, pharmaceutical and other business lobbies. There's no way that the NSSF could convince legislators to vote against the will of 90% of their constituents. Only the bankers can manage to do that.
The NRA, a 501c(4), is powerful, not because of lobbying $$$, but because it has over 4.5 million dues-paying members and millions more donors and supporters. If gun control is so popular in the USA, why aren't tens of millions of people joining and contributing to all of the anti-gun groups out there? That would be one way for them to get their voices heard. Anti-gun groups can't even get 4 million people to join for free, let alone get them to pay annual dues to support the cause.
It is illegal to buy a gun "over the internet" (as in provide your address and CC# and have the item delivered to your door). You can of course use the internet to advertise firearms for sale, but they can only be shipped to a licensed dealer. The dealer is then required to perform a background check before turning it over to the buyer.
As for gun shows, all sales are subject to the exact same regulations (including background checks) that apply in a gun store. There is no "gun show loophole". Renting a space at a gun show is expensive, so all the tables and displays you see are set up by licensed dealers.
You can purchase a gun in a private transaction, but buyer and seller must meet face-to-face. No background check is required, but there are still many applicable laws. e.g. No sales of long guns to people under 18, no handgun sales to anyone under 21, no handgun sales to people from other states, etc. A more appropriate term for this type of thing would be the "Classified Ads Loophole".
There exists a legitimate threat, as evidenced by San Bernardino, Paris and other successful attacks that militant groups have been able to pull off. I think we can also expect many more of these going forward. That threat is being greatly exaggerated however. We need to keep cool and examine it at a rational level. It's unfortunate that people don't seem to have the slightest understanding of probabilities. e.g. comparing the odds of being killed or injured by a terrorist vs. the odds of being killed or injured in a traffic accident.
We can't cower in fear of this exaggerated threat and allow government to crack down on Free Speech in the name of protecting us. We also can't allow them to use these incidents as an excuse to enact further gun control or turn the nation into more of a police state than it already is.
F*** Lauren Weinstein and all of the censors (and gun grabbers) who would undermine liberty in the name of safety.
The REAL (and obvious!) solution is a radical shift in the USA government's policy of relentless militarism which has caused death, destruction, instability and massive human suffering in Middle Eastern countries.
Q: Why do we tax tobacco?
A: So people will smoke less.
Q: Why do we tax income? ... oh, wait ...
A: So people will
Gimme a break with your "society" bullshit and just say "government". Let's put aside the fact that confiscating people's wealth under threat of violence is morally wrong to begin with and assume government must take wealth in some fashion.
Apart from the inflation tax, the income tax is the most regressive tax imaginable. Why would you create a disincentive for people to engage in producing wealth? The mere fact that people are creating value benefits the society and increases its prosperity. If you want to tax something, tax consumption. Consumption is the destruction of value. Although it's necessary to eat food, burn fuel, etc. consuming things reduces the overall wealth of the society.
The USA economy based on "consumption" is a 30 year illusion which was only made possible by vast amounts of debt accumulation. As long as people persist in the ridiculous belief that "consumer spending" is the path to prosperity, the economy is going to suffer.
We should scrap the personal and corporate income tax entirely and replace them with the "Fair Tax"(fairtaxdotorg) then take other steps to transition back to a production economy. Our debt-fueled consumption economy and government "stimulus" economy is a house of cards.
Another set of leaked documents they received allowed them to write a whole series of articles about the federal government's drone program. AFAIK, the source of that leak has yet to be identified and the feds have been refusing to comment.
The most frustrating thing about drone wars, bank bailouts, foreign invasions, mass surveillance, etc. is that these scumbags fund themselves by confiscating our wealth.
At least he cited a source. Do you have a link to nasa.gov which explains the difference?
Seems like the "climate change" alarmists are willing to constantly manipulate their data and revise their models to reach the preordained conclusion.
What's tragic is that no matter how many times they're fooled, people are still completely vulnerable to a barrage of fear mongering. "Climate change" is just the latest iteration of the Red scare and the terrorist scare. One that appeals to the political left more than the right. Be afraid! Be afraid! We're all going to be burned alive! Only government can save us!
One nuclear war would solve the global warming (*cough* "Climate Change") problem. It would put so much dust and debris into the atmosphere that the warming effect of the sun could be temporarily eliminated. A few hundred million dead humans and cows would also help.
Of course "global cooling" would then become the crisis like it was back in the 1970s.
Ridiculous. Making it illegal to hire a murderer or start a riot is not a limitation on free speech. Such laws are in place to prohibit you from infringing on the rights of others, namely the potential murder victim or the people who will suffer injury and property destruction as a result of your riot.
If you read the linked article, these people are asking for something a little more extreme than the removal of content like that.
"user complaints about racist content were often rebutted by Facebook, claiming that the post does not violate its community standards."
I'm sure that a post attempting to incite violence against others would be deleted immediately upon detection. As far as removing anything that the PC crowd would consider "racist", FB should be prepared to do a lot of deleting.
If you're the least bit interested in preserving freedom of expression, that "solution" is much worse than having private companies delete so-called "hate speech" from their websites.
There are millions (billions?) of people who have to fear reprisal for voicing their opinions or even reporting unpopular facts. Taking away anonymity (assuming there was a way to do so) would do more to stifle political dissent than deter politically incorrect "hate speech". Few places in the world have anything like the First Amendment. People will obviously self-censor facts and opinions which could result in them being persecuted and that will include a lot more than "hate speech"(whatever the f**** that means).
"Everything is super-locally governed ... system of government doesn't really allow much 'top down' lawmaking"
In principle, not in practice. If that's your observation, you're seeing only the vestiges of what the system is supposed to be like. The USA was founded on the basis of the state governments being the supreme power. The federal government was granted very limited powers by The Constitution and the Tenth Amendment specifically delegates ALL other powers to the states and The People. It was supposed to be difficult to "get things done" because "top down" power was rightly seen as dangerous! The country grew and prospered into the world's economic and military super-power under this system of limited federal power.
The long-term historical trend, dating back at least to the mid 1800s, is accumulation of power by the federal government at the expense of state and local governments. The War for Southern Independence and its aftermath probably marked the biggest federal power grab. Numerous Supreme Court decisions throughout the years have continued the trend. Not to say this was 100% bad, but it is still part of the trend of undermining state sovereignty and centralizing power in the federal government. There's a good book called "Who Killed The Constitution" which documents much of this. Federal government more than tripled in size over the course of the 20th century, from ~7% of GDP to well over 20% of GDP. We have more "top down" governance right now than at any time in history and the result has been an utter disaster for the nation.
I could go on and on, but our "patchwork" system was good. If all the states reclaimed their rightful power, they could be legislative laboratories for other states to observe. People could also vote with their feet. Don't like your progressive/socialist state government? Fine, pack up and move to a state that's more to your liking. We see this to a very limited extent with people going to states where medical marijuana is legal. It would be awesome if we had similar options over a much larger spectrum of issues.
There were plenty of civilizations before Christianity came along. The basic tenets of what would eventually evolve into democratic and republican forms of government were formulated in ancient Greece. The Roman Republic was around for close to 5 centuries before Jesus came along.
If anything, Christianity has been a curse on Western civilization, impeding knowledge and holding back progress at every turn.
I'm inclined to think that you're being too harsh on the drone operators and too nice to the government. Don't you think the abuses people have committed with their UAVs is mostly due to negligence and/or stupidity. I highly doubt that people are deliberately flying their equipment anywhere and everywhere to make a political statement about their "rights". Same with people who own guns. The gun rights activists aren't the ones committing crimes and using firearms irresponsibly.
"Politicians ... are the same lazy bums that we are. They couldn't care less what you do. As long as you are not a threat to anyone."
As long as you aren't a threat to THEM you mean. Besides, the new rules aren't being formulated by politicians. These regulations are the work of FAA bureaucrats. ALL bureaucrats have one basic motivation: To preserve and expand their own power. They certainly don't give a f*** about what's good for the public. Endless amounts of rules and regulations are their job security.
People have been forming societies on the basis of the geography in which their parents procreated for 1000s of years. Those geographies, despite being somewhat arbitrary, have also been associated with a particular cultural and "national" identity. The people within those boundaries have also typically taken up arms to defend themselves against others seeking to invade their territory.
Are you mocking the idea that someone who emerged from their mother's vagina in Italy identifies as "Italian" and might have the audacity to think that they have collective ownership of the nation called "Italy"?
Getting way off topic here, but...
You forgot about "jury box" in your list, which is typically considered option #3, the theory being that juries can nullify unjust laws by refusing to convict people who break them. Of course government courts have long since prohibited defendants from making a case based on that argument however.
By your definition, I guess most of the countries in the world throughout human history have/had poorly designed systems of government. Governments which respect freedom of speech, elections and due process (including a right to trial by jury) are the rare exceptions. Even in supposedly free places like the USA, these things are little more than an illusion and the government is hell bent on eradicating the "ammo box" option. Central government is a failed institution. Secession would open up all sorts of opportunities for improving quality of life.