Here's the long-list from a famous -hacked-to-bits and otherwise forgotten document's grievance rider which seems a poignantly appropriate reason enough to want to shove a vote up someone's ass and rotate it:

Of King George:

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Someone needs perhaps to revise the list and start hoarding ammunition and conscripting, because methinks the "vote" be fast-resembling, fuck-all. I don't vote and I am damn sure not going to be quiet any time soon...Average Joe and Jane voters have already effectively been "opted out."

i dont pay taxes.
i refused ten years ago and have stuck with that path.
and its been sunshine and rainbows ever since....
ok..not really.my income is severely crippled due to me not paying taxes BUT goddamn does it make me feel good!

i do not pay taxes not to be a cheap ass but rather to protest a system that is so obviously rigged against me.(and you).

as for american libertarianism.
i will say they have the civil rights down.
i totally agree with their philosophy of personal liberty and right to do whatever you want as long as you aint stepping on another blokes shoes.

but when they start with the "free market" sermons i start to look at them as wide-eyed and innocent children.
do they not SEE whats going on?
free market?
what is this free market you speak of?
america is NOT a free market.
it is corporate socialism.
or welfare if you want to troll a bit.

go ahead and de-regulate corporate america.
see what happens.
better yet,just look at some african nations,or former soviet states.
guilded estates with private armies for the uber-wealthy and elite while the majority of the population live in either indentured servitude or total squalor.

i am noticing a disturbing trend here in america.its like they are preparing.
we have a government bought and paid for by corporate america,which does the corporations bidding.
the co-opting of the tea party and the crushing of occupy.
a massive surveillance operation.
militarized police forces across the country.
civil liberties made into mere "suggestions" and no longer inalienable.
executions of american citizens with no due process (bye bye habeas corpus).
a standing army that has been in place for over 60 years and a war on terror that will never end.

it is madness.

so i cannot blame my libertarian friends for calling for smaller government.
because the government has become TOO big and no longer is "for the people,by the people".
it serves its corporate masters.
which is why the "de-regulate" argument truly baffles me.

just as my liberal friends who wish to use the system to correct these imbalances.
what?
the system is utterly BROKEN.
we no longer have a functioning democracy!
why would you even suggest to use a system that threw us all overboard to lick the boots of their masters 30 yrs ago?
the mind..it boggles.

every political philosophy has its flaws.none are perfect.
libertarianism has some very good points while others are a bit...naive in my opinion.

for me the end result is this:
i do not trust power nor authority because i find them to be illegitimate until they prove themselves otherwise.
so i am suspicious when someone tries to force their authority on me based on arbitrary and subjective parameters.(like a cop,or judge or some rich dude).

i am a humanist by nature so my political philosophy flows from that birthplace.
i will never step on you to further my career nor take food out of your mouth.
corporate america has spread a propaganda campaign that is insidious.

capitalism is good.
greed is good.
dog eat dog world out there.
here,buy this,it will make you feel better.
wear that and you will be sexy.
you are lone wolf,against the world,drive this car you lone wolf and be a rebel.

its all bullshit.
human beings feel better when they are co-operating.
when they feel their life has purpose and that they are needed.
not by living in a perpetual 7 yr olds wet dream.

oh
my
god.
you fuckers got me ranting!
i hate you both......
/drops mic

@VoodooV Like I've been saying all along, your posts are mostly attempts at intimidation. I enjoy answering some of your questions, because it helps me question my beliefs, something I think is constructive and that you seriously shouldn't be afraid of. We are all supposedly looking for the truth anyways. All this could be settled by answering my simple question, whether you'd agree or not, it wouldn't even necessarily be an argument against gun control. I was pointing out the apparent conflict between wanting people to be more responsible by taking their freedoms away, when taking their freedoms away might not contribute to making them responsible people in the long run. An unpresumptuous suggestion meant to be taken as food for thought.

Instead, you resort to being juvenile and making fun of me, while writing huge posts with my entire posts quoted afterwards as an attempt at making me turn away in horror at the sight of a huge wall of text. Sure, it takes me time to sift through all of it to see what really matters. You're trying to muscle your way through, and it's a waste of everyone's time. I actually take the time to make my posts short and to the point, did you notice that? I happen to think it's a good habit to have some consideration for the reader, why am I not surprised you have none for me?

So, instead of appreciating that I don't waste your time by making an effort at being succinct, you accuse me of avoiding some of your arguments. It's true, I avoid a few of them because I think they're irrelevant, it's called being selective. Now I know that was a bad idea. I'm terribly sorry. I won't do it anymore. I will take the time to answer the most points I can to the best of my ability, and if that my makes my posts tiresomely long and wastes my time, so be it.

I bet you're trying to flood me with words because this isn't about any truth, is it? It's about discouraging and distracting me from something. Ever heard of picking your fights? It's about being reasonable about yours and other people's times. After all, I do assume you have a life outside of this internet topic on videosift, don't you? Anyway, let's get to it:

- About emotional manipulation, you FAILED to prove it, and here's why:

When you obey traffic laws, you are being coerced if there is coercion as consequence for not obeying them. Will you get arrested? Will you get your car, which is your property, impounded if you disobey? Then yes, they are coercive laws.

When you decide not kill someone because the law will coerce you if you do, you're being coerced into not killing, even if you freely decide not to kill out of good morals and empathy for fellow human beings, the option of killing is always there in reality (you can always kill anyone if you really want to), but not legally. If you kill, you're under the threat of going to prison. The positive or negative language seems completely irrelevant, what matters is what happens when you disobey the law. If coercion ensues, the law is coercive, or, more accurately, its enforcement. I'm not actually making the distinction right now if it's a rule related to coercion itself (a rule that makes coercion more or less likely to happen), just pointing out the irrelevance of your distinction between negative and positive language.

Now, I have to admit that there is divergence when it comes to defining coercion, but there is no emotional content here as far as I can tell. I'm using it in the sense that people have a right to their life, property and freedoms, and when you take or threaten to take away any of those things (and have the power to do so), THAT is coercion. There is no emotion here, I am offended that you would think that I would resort to that, because I don't even have to. Coercion has a meaning to me, I'm just using the concept as it is. If there is an emotional content, SHOW ME what emotion that is. Up until now, you have FAILED to do so.

- About requiring things before freedoms are granted, I think you FAILED to make your point, here's why:

To type boring senseless posts on the internet, you require a keyboard. Maybe, if you could type with voice recognition, like I do, you wouldn't need a keyboard, but what matters is that you use something to type or produce characters that will be submitted to the videosift website and become a useless post. So, for the sake of argument, let's call this an "actual physical requirement".

Now, with a gun to your head, if I require that you, VoodooV, jump through actual flaming hula-hoops positioned vertically on an intricate obstacle course before typing in your videosift comments, the world would be a better place (at least videosift would). However, my requirements would be arbitrary in the sense that it imposes something not actually physically necessary to enjoy the hypothetical "freedom to post inane ramblings on videosift" (we are assuming it's a right), can you spot the difference?

So, requiring things that are not necessary to enjoy a freedom is not something that makes the freedom better or is in any way justifiable just because history is littered with the precedent of assholes like kings and despots requiring stupid things before we can enjoy freedoms that we supposedly already have. When it comes to guns, a law says we have a right to bear them. Any laws that restrict that supposed right are infringing on the freedom that comes from having that right.

- About the claim that people will be less responsible if they have less freedom:

"If I made decisions for you, I could make you act more responsibly, but that's not the same thing as making you a more responsible person."

"Over time, when we take people's freedoms away, they tend to be less responsible about the decisions we're not letting them make. There's no way they can learn about any different (good or bad) outcomes related to decisions they couldn't make, and they can't be held responsible for them either, so they can hardly become more responsible."

- About your reduction to absurdity claim that removing all the rules would make us "SUPER-Responsible":

"I don't think rules inevitably destroys our freedoms, let's make a more refined distinction:

- If a rule is meant to stop people from infringing on each other's freedoms, if it's a rule that makes people less likely to coerce each other, it's a good rule because we end up with less coercion happening (even counting the coercion necessary to enforce the rule), we end up with a more civilized society. There are not many of those kinds of rules around.

- If it's a rule that imposes some regulation because we don't trust that people will be responsible enough to do what's best for them regarding something unrelated to coercion, we not only restrict their freedom by coercion (in this case, coercion by the government), it doesn't make coercion less likely, so it's likely a bad rule."

The problem with removing all rules is that, without rules related to coercion, people would be too subjected to the threat or actual coercion from other people around them, society would be less civilized. Would that make them more responsible? That's a good question. On one side, they would have a lot more responsibilities if they had to worry about their own lives and safety every frickin' day, and all the terrible worries that comes with the unstable chaos of anarchy. However, given that they would enjoy less freedoms due to the constant coercion of others, they would likely end up being a lot less responsible, because they would have far less choices.

That's why I took the time to explain the difference between rules related to coercion and rules that just infringe on freedoms.

- About your examples of requirements before freedoms and rights are granted, here's a list of your "numerous examples" and my reply to each of them:

VoodooV: "You have the freedom to go to college..."
VoodooV: "You have the freedom to have a certain job..."

"Going to college or getting a job are not things people are entitled to (supposedly), there are no rights involved, so no freedom is being denied."

VoodooV: "You have the freedom to imbibe alcohol....IF you are a certain age and can demonstrate that you can use it safely"

I don't know about using it safely (what does that mean?), but regarding age restriction, I don't agree with those laws. I know, very "liberal" of me, but I think children are the responsibility of their parents, so it's a law that steps into parenting territory.

VoodooV: "And according to the right, you have the freedom to vote..."

About voting, I don't know, I guess being registered is a requirement for the voting process? Like the right to life requires... being alive?

"The voting process, on the other hand, seems to be something that requires registration (again, I'm not an expert on voting, so forgive me if I'm wrong), otherwise we end up just shouting to ourselves, "I vote for X"!"

VoodooV: "And having a gun, or a car, has a significant risk to infringe upon other's freedoms so it's not unreasonable to ask that you demonstrate proficiency and safety before using said items."

A driver's license is not about owning or using a car, but about driving in public venues. I could be wrong, but we don't need a license to drive a car in our own backyards, do we?

Simply owning a gun, on the other hand, not only isn't a violation of anything, it supposedly provides protection against these violations.

- About me supposedly contradicting myself, saying "there are no rules for us talking", then proposing a dare:

Did I shoot you in the face when you failed my dare? So I guess it's not the kind of rule in the sense that I didn't threaten to coerce you if you failed it. Do you understand what kind of rule I was talking about? Do you even understand what a contradiction means, or are you just taking advantage that not everyone that reads your posts knows exactly what you're referring to make yourself look smart even though you can't point out a contradiction if it rested flat in your deepest held political beliefs?

On the subject of contradictions, strictly speaking, there's no contradiction between calling you juvenile and being juvenile myself, even if I did so afterwards, and in retaliation, to give you a taste of it.

Ooooooooh... must be very embarrassing for you not to know what a contradiction stands for.

Here's your entire post quoted, because, why not?

@VoodooV don't be flattered when I call you a bully, it means your posts are mostly attempts at intimidation, you trying hard to come out on top of an internet argument no one cares about. Calling me names only convinces me you understand your own beliefs so poorly that you resort to personal attacks as substitute for critical thinking.

The way you counterargue is mostly by taking whatever I write out of context and poking fun at it, calling me names, or pointing out something completely irrelevant as reason to invalidate it.

Like, "if you steal a gun,...", you intently misinterpret me, then, of course, flip the tables (why not?), and accuse me of "changing the argument". Here's the argument: demanding registration for voting is not an impediment to voting if it's required for the actual process. It's unlike gun control, imposing arbitrary rules to own a gun are far removed from the basic requirements of owning an actual gun.

Now, do I need to define "requirements", "arbitrary", "gun" with some kind of measurable unit before we continue? Are you going to resort to shifting focus to the loaded words I use, as excuse not to deal with the arguments they form?

This all started with a simple question, "won't people be less inclined to be responsible if they have less freedom?", and you did everything from claiming not to understand it, to insist that I "prove" that assertion, only to incessantly bicker at my naive attempts to indulge you.

I don't know what's more disappointing, that no one ever showed you what a productive debate looks like, or that you're trying so hard to avoid one. It's pointless.

No one likes to watch this, I'm sure you and I are the only people reading this far into our own posts. So stop with the chest-thumping, everybody left by now, and I'm not the least bit impressed. Also, stop quoting my entire posts, it's annoying.

Technically, it was made by Disney, not pixar (although the distinction is largely arbitrary these days). Rich Moore, the director, is an old Simpsons, Futurama alumni too.

The post has been the same all the time.

Kids: Too stupid to understand why you're supposed to regularly piss away a lot of time and money employing professionals to style the worthless dead skin erupting out of your head.

Doesn't this girl realise we live in a society of arbitrary ritual to which she is expected to conform at all times?

I truly admire Richard Dawkins, but the question is philosophical, and the way he answered that question is nothing to look up to.

Most religious people believe in a "higher power" for pragmatic reasons as well, it's emotionally comforting for them, and gives them a sense of purpose. If pragmatism was enough, religion could justify its faith in god the same way.

For example, one of the twelve steps for recovering addicts is "recognizing a higher power". Whether or not that's factually true, the belief is therapeutically useful.

I think a better answer should go along the lines of establishing what "justify" means, then explaining that the alternative, NOT believing in the scientific method, allows knowledge to be arbitrary, or impossible.

At least that's how a philosopher of science would start to answer that question, but I guess "It works, bitches" makes for a better sound bite.

Honor system mostly especially in wider open area environments. Smaller fields and indoor fields may have a match coordinator also serve as an "acting" ref.

From experience, the orange tip is a massive grey zone, with enforcement very arbitrary. That's probably why the owner was able to get by before, but suddenly not able to now. I used to keep an orange ribbon around so that any time law enforcement of any type showed up, I would wrap around the end of my barrels so it would "technically" comply, just in case.

As for the internals, to give an idea of how different they are, theres usually two "barrels" to the gun, the outer cosmetic barrel and the inner proper barrel. To say that airsoft weapons can be easily chambered to fire real bullets is like saying you can get them to fire out of a metal pipe. The upper and lower receiver internals are, for electric, a mechanical gearbox that has more in common with an RC car than a firearm. Gas is even more "different" as all its doing is pressing a button on the magazine to release the gas and launch the BB.

All of this doesn't even touch upon the fact that ATF defines the firearm portion of a real weapon to be the lower receiver and not the upper receiver. Thats where generally the firearm bits that do most of the real work are. So to say that an airsoft gun could be converted from the shell of an airsoft rifle would conflict with that lower receiver policy.

By the way, in the airsoft community, "any kid, any parent, any adult going out of the house with this..." would usually get you kicked off the establishment for doing something that stupid. Gunbags, fucking gunbags.

Define 'bad for ya'. Whatever I've read has always had startlingly arbitrary ideas about what constitute negative outcomes.

Back when I was in High School (not all that long ago, mid 90s), I had a somewhat low opinion of some of my History/Government/Social Studies type classes. A lot of that was because they were *all* hired as teacher/coach combos. I felt like they had a tendency to phone in the teaching bit because what they were really there to do was the coaching. I still think there is a big mismatch between the amount of money and energy spent on sports programs versus academics in public schools.

However, as much as I scoffed at those teachers at the time, looking back they did some of the things this kid is suggesting quite well. They talked with us, discussed and debated issues that came up for whole class periods, trying to get opinions from everyone. They got me/us thinking about things. One of them gave us a project to watch a Hollywood movie about some historical event of our choice and then write and present a report about what facts they got right or wrong. Looking back, I'd have to say that it could have been a heck of a lot worse if they were just expected to teach to some arbitrary standardized test, and their jobs or at least salary depended on yearly improvement in test scores.

So, I think that @Yogi is right and that is probably more of an institutional failing than a bad teacher, although we don't really have any evidence one way or the other from the videos. In spite of thinking that his anger is perhaps directed a bit off of the most important target, he definitely comes across as more reasonable in this interview (which makes sense, he's had time to cool down and consider things more fully). Hope the school doesn't come down on him too hard, if at all.

You asked how bad ideas can be oppressive and I think I told you. We can consider these things intellectually; thinking and reasoning does produce evidence.

I don't know if I have to remind you, I shouldn't have to, but I'm not the guy from the video. Our opinions are not the same.

There's really no such thing as women. It's not a useful category, vast and arbitrary as it is. The characteristics of women are those of all humanity; no traits emerge to distinguish those groups. Biological sex is a trivial marker, not substantially different from hair color or whether you can curl your tongue, and gender is a personal construct. There's nothing to be said about women that doesn't apply to everyone - so what does feminism have to say? Nothing.

The phenomenon of men as the oppressor of women, so far as it exists, is just a silly little anthropological quirk of our social evolution. It's not something to be taken seriously. There are a hundred worse ways in which unregulated instinctual behaviours are damaging our society every day.

Feminism is oppressive to rational people in the same way that any stupid and pervasive idea that influences the explicit and implicit rules of society is oppressive.

Again, feminism is not the doctrine that women should be treated fairly; that's what everyone who's actually awake already believes. What feminism is, is a gloopy mess of paranoia, arbitrary rules, rape fantasies, political correctness, still-born philosophies, pointless taboos, obstructionism and pure seething insanity.

It causes real harm, including yes it could be argued, killing people. Look at all the resources, private and public, time and material, that are squandered on it instead of being spent on, say, science.

Hi Alcom. I agree with you that atheists are able to find value and meaning and beauty in life, but that is because we all intrinsically know that there is good and evil, and that life does have meaning, and things do have value, and there is such a thing as beauty and love. These values are ingrained into every single person who exists, because God put them there. The argument isn't that atheists don't appreciate these things, but that these values are inconsistent with their atheism. The argument is that atheists are living like theists but denying it with their atheism, thus the incoherence.

Utility isn't suitable for a foundation because the definitions are subject to change. What's good or useful today might be evil tomorrow depending on the majority opinion and conditions. Without God imposing a moral standard, there is no actual compelling reason why the morality of a pedophile is inferior to anyone elses idea of morality. If morality is just what we decide is true then any idea of right and wrong becomes meaningless because it is entirely arbitrary. Without any authority or true accountability behind it, what is moral and immoral blur into amorality.

Ahhh, good ol portrait view. Methinks I will enjoy this temporary, tertiary phase in media standards. However, gamers who awaken to this non-issue and cease to make it into an issue, should remember that early conversion of arcade games, which were in portrait view, had an uphill battle to recreate the same experience on home display sets oriented in landscape.

Modern mobile gamers should all position themselves to break this mental boundary. Dedicate a little bit of your brain's background processing to fight the power of arbitrary persuasion. We're still in a developmental stage before display monitors completely explode and offer full customization with morphing length, width and heights; not to mention geometric adaptation beyond the rectangle.

FIGHT THE POWER

I'd forgive it if I understood it.... too lazy to google.

Grading on a curve. I never had a teacher do that. So arbitrary.

I applaud these kids for pointing it out.