@bcglorf
this video is from larken rose,a seriously devout libertarian.
he views statism as a form a religion,and that if a state is given too much power it will always lead to a form of tyranny.

i didn't post this as some kind of statement,or that the content reflects my own philosophy or ideals,but i try to understand all points of view to the best of my ability,even if i disagree.

so i am not making the case for when it is ok to shoot a cop,but i find larken's arguments compelling on a philosophical level.

because he does have a point in regards to america's hyper-militarized policing over the past decade.that is something that should concern us all.

anyways,for me it is just hearing a viewpoint from a different camp other than my own,and i thought his argument interesting.

I am constantly flummoxed by folks' lack of understanding as to the 'why' of the electoral college. Its meant to prevent what's called the 'tyranny of the majority'. Has to become so lop sided that it should be recalibrated? Certainly. Population count increases and decreases should be reflected in the number of electoral college votes, while preserving the initial intent; making sure smaller states have at least some influence and power.

Okay, so when men dominate women unfairly, you're happy for women to curtsy and live by men's leave..? Because men might threaten violence against women? Because that was the way it was? There was never a point where you stood up even though you feared it might result in harm to yourself?

There comes a point in time when it's no longer okay, when people are driven so far and they can't take it anymore. Surely you can understand that? How many women, or gays, or blacks, or "insert whatever you want here" have suffered because they were willing to stand up and fight against the tyranny?

For starters, I have to oppose the implied thought that Saddam's reign of terror was preventing this sectarian violence. His rule through the Suni minority to wage genocides against the Kurdish and Shia majority and decades of brutal repression of same all served to make the sectarian hatred and violence worse. Tally up the hundreds of thousands he killed through genocide, the million plus he killed in the Iran-Iraq war and everyone that died by direct execution or deliberate starvation level poverty and compare it doesn't stand out as starkly and objectively a desirable alternative to today.

Now if you ask what would I do differently it depends on what level of power I've got to act with. Ideally, we can go back to first Iraq war and have Bush senior march on Baghdad. This would've aborted one of Saddam's genocides. Equally importantly, this would have kept the Shia Iraqi population's view of America as a liberating force. The standing in the desert and watching Saddam slaughter them thing still carried their mistrust of American forces after Saddam's actual removal later. That singularly stupid move of leaving Saddam in power, at the urging of most of the planet, drove the Shia population of Iraq back to Iran as their sole sympathetic ally.

Next step, after the removal of Saddam, whether we can do it back then, or only a few years ago as it really happened is to truly setup an occupation government. You don't bring stability to a region by immediately trying to transition to a democracy before the shooting has even stopped. The occupation government would be run by somebody with actual knowledge and experience with Iraq, rather than as Bush senior did by sending in a guy with zero experience and a two week lead to brief himself. The task you should place on this leader, is to setup a federated Iraq, with distinct and autonomous Shia, Sunni and Kurdish states. The occupation government would dictate things after taking input from Iraqi's rather than holding them to the tyranny of the majority as Bush and co allowed. The occupation would setup an initial constitution defining what laws and agreements spanned all three Iraqi provinces/states and what extent of autonomy they had to define their own systems of government. The American military's job would be to enforce this very basic constitutional framework. Each Iraqi state/province would be aided in setting up their own governments with a transition plan again dictated not voted upon. The transition plan would define the point in time when each state transitioned from occupation rule to a self determined future and rule of law.

The above plan on the whole would work, but Bush and co couldn't have managed post Saddam Iraq more poorly if they had actively tried to.

If zero time travel is allowed and we are to 'fix' things today, you need a lot MORE power. You need an army the size of America or Russia's and the political will to spend several years doing things the public will hate you for. The end game is still the same as above, a federated Iraq kicked off under a dictatorial occupation. To get there from today though you need to create stability. You need to take an army and march it across the entire country. As each city is cleared of militants you take a census of everybody and keep it because you need it to track down future militants. In entirely hostile locations like were ISIS has full rule, you bomb them into the stone ages before marching the army in. The surviving population is given full medical treatment. Now, as for sorting militants from civilians though, you do NOT use American style innocent until proven guilty justice. Instead, any fighting age males are considered guilty until proven innocent. This level of rule of law needs to remain in place until stability can be restored. You of course guarantee lots of innocent arrests, but your trying to prevent massive numbers of innocent deaths so it's required. As you stabilize the nation you can relax back to innocent until proven guilty and work on re-integrating the convicted.

You'll note that although the methods I'd declare necessary above are by any count 'brutal', they do not extend into Saddam's usage of genocide, torture and rape as the weapons of choice.

That, or they simply wanted to be clear about why the rule is of utmost importance - to preserve a public capacity.

In any case, in the end it made it into the constitution - most supreme law we have. "[Because reasons ...] right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

They could have put in the bi-yearly training requirements right there. But they decided not to. They just left it at that. That description given by Hamilton is close to what eventually got to paper. Whether he was for or against it, ok (I searched for a quote that was along those lines, I could be thinking of a different guy). My understanding was that he didn't like any ideas. Military can be abused to impose tyranny, militia can be unmotivated and misbehaved (unless hyperbole).


I thought it was that paper, but I can't find it as I scan through, I thought he (or someone else?) wanted a subset of individuals trained in military arts, that could organize and direct militias should conflict arise, to take the burden of military-level training off of citizens.

-scheherazade

There's no such thing as a peaceful muslim. You're talking about followers of an ideology explicitly founded on a policy of tyranny and murder.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Scott Adams is a smart guy. Lots of bright people are trying to warn us about the rise of Trump. Andrew Sullivan is calling a Trump presidency an "extinction level event". http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/04/america-tyranny-donald-trump.html#

Sons of New York, I am Bernie Sanders!

'Bernie Sanders is 7 feet tall'

Yes, I’ve heard, kills Republicans by the hundreds, and if he were here he would consume Hillary with fireballs from his eyes and bolts of lightning from his arse. I am Bernie Sanders, and I see a whole army of my countrymen, here in defiance of tyranny. You’ve come to vote as free men, and free men you are. What will you do without freedom? Will you vote?

'…against that? No, we will run, and we will live…'

Aye, vote and you may die, run and you’ll live. At least a while. And dying in your beds, many years from now, would you be willing to trade all the days from this day to that for one chance, just one chance to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they’ll never take our FREEDOM!

Didn't watch the video, but did skim the comments... Christ...

First off, moving to Canada and any other decent first world nation be it New Zealand, Australia, the UK, Iceland, Netherlands, Canada etc... not as easy as just packing up and moving. You need a very narrow set of skills to move to those countries. We looked into all this countries, and all of their entry requirements exceeded what we had to offer them. People always say if you don't like it leave, but that ignores several facts. It isn't we don't like it, we just think it can be improved, change isn't bad. Humanity isn't bad. Caring for those less fortunate isn't bad. Guaranteeing everyone a minimum level of affordable health care isn't bad. Working to insure that all workers get a living wage (the way we used to have before the employers/owners started getting greedy and redistributing more wealth to themselves), isn't a bad goal, in fact it's a very good thing. The famed clip from the Newsroom's first episode when he goes on about how America isn't great anymore but it used to be...

Of course the whole concept of American exceptionalism, or any nation exceptionalism is flawed. We are all humans on this planet. Being American doesn't make you superior to somebody born in China or Mexico, Ethiopia, Syria or anywhere else. Location of birth is an accident of timing... and if it is divine intervention by God that placed you here instead of Ethiopia where you may have starved to death with an inflated malnourished belly despite all your prayers, then God is an ass and not worth serving. So if he's not an ass, then it is pure accident that you are here and not there. To think oneself superior and better than somebody in another nation because of their location of birth, and the religion that comes with that location, is insanity. And I draw that all ways. The Muslims who despise Christianity for not being the true faith, and Christians who despise Islam for not being the true faith. You are your faith by accident of birth, be it location and/or parentage etc... all of which is getting away from the point. Which is simply that to say that Chinese worker doesn't deserve a job manufacturing something that you think you should be building is asinine and not respectful of their humanity and a complete lack of any sort of empathy. Christ, I have Aspergers and I have more empathy in my farts than the entire Tea Party Christian Right.

Yes we need to respect the individual, but "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one"... and that quote is in context and not just a cherry pick sample. If it benefits just one and damages the many, then it is not a good thing. Most every faith in the world has some variation of the Golden Rule, to treat others the way you want others (not that specific person, but people as a general whole) to treat you. Christianity's Christ went further and said the greatest commandment was love, to show love to one another. Greed and selfishness is not love. Collectivism has many faults as well, but it isn't tyranny, and is certainly better for society as a whole in the long run than unrestrained greed motivated individualism. Like Pink Floyd's song, On the Turning Away, says, we are all "just a world we all must share". We can't turn away from the coldness inside towards others. We need to lift all of humanity up. Perhaps showing the Muslims love instead of hate and bigotry would convince them that perhaps Christianity isn't the enemy, that perhaps it is the answer, but showing them hate, and bigotry... and denying refugees trying to flee a horrible civil war is bigotry and hatred, and the fact that a rather disturbingly large percentage of the right can't see that isn't bigotry and hatred is scary beyond measure. I again find it amazing that people could lack that much empathy without a neurological disorder.

To invade others, tell them how to live their lives, to force democracy on them if they aren't ready, to insult them and belittle their faith, and all that isn't world building. It isn't reaching out with empathy. It's hate. It's bigotry and as noted by artician, it's what helps drive people to fly into buildings. They know that they know that their faith is the right one, and the lack of empathy to see that people of the Muslim faith have just as much faith in their religion as Christians have in theirs, that they have the same amount of knowledge and comfort from god that they are the correct faith, is what drives extremism.

And oh my god the guns. Guns would have saved the Jews. American mainland can't be invaded because too many people own guns... ask the Branch Davidians how well having not only military grade weapons but also training on how to use them worked for them against a slightly militarized police force, let alone an actual military. Yes, it would be incredibly hard, and resistance would probably eventually wear any invading force down the way the Taliban wore the Soviets down, or the Viet Cong did against the US Military might. So perhaps that can be counted as a victory, but would be long fought. Look, I support gun ownership. All I really call for is 1) allowing the CDC get back to it's job of collecting the data and finding out what's really going on with gun violence, and 2) closing the gun show loophole unless the CDC's investigation shows that it has zero effect, 3) you have to have a legal ID to own a gun and can't be on the no fly list, 4) the existing background checks kept the same, but also add a drug test, the right wants drug tests for welfare, then we should be testing for gun owenrship too. (I see little reason for "assault weapons" but aside from perhaps having perhaps a slightly better background check, I don't know if a ban yet needs to be called for, but I'm in the middle here.) Once we have have better data points from the CDC then we can really tackle the issue of gun violence. Yes, it will take years to get those answers, but I find it insane that the Republicans refuse to allow the investigation to go on, which says to me that they are afraid of what the data will show.

Unless you are nearly a pure Native American, then you are a refugee to the US.

The primary problem here and around the world is poverty and lack of proper education. This drives people to crime and extremism in religion which makes them susceptible to acting out terrorist acts, be it in the name of Allah (as is the public perceived norm) or Christ (ala the Planed Parenthood terrorist attack, the 2011 Norway attacks, etc). We need to address the growing income and wealth gaps. The way to doing that isn't by giving those at the top even more tax breaks and losing regulations (which is funny thing to complain about, too many regulations here in the US, meanwhile the same people complain about the low quality Chinese goods that aren't safe due to low regulations and poor labor conditions etc). We need to push education, and proper STEM programs, not deflated science trying to force Creationism in via so called "Intelligent Design" or "teaching the controversy" stick to the actual science. Don't object to the "new math" if it's teaching better fundamentals of understanding what the numbers are actually doing even if it doesn't teach the shortcuts we were taught... and lots of the stuff people complain about is just the fact we don't skip right to the shortcut that works. Yes, it works, but it helps if they better understand the underlying fundamentals of the numbers and the actual math. Again, change isn't a bad thing, to object just because you don't understand or don't like it compared to the simplified shortcut we all learned doesn't make it bad. Reading also needs pushed, and understanding of logical fallacies and logical and faulty thinking.

I believe that a post scarcity world is impossible due to the nature of humanity. There are far too many greedy people that will never want the world to get to that point. However, that should be the noble goal. Post scarcity society has many issues, but perhaps by the time we actually got there we'd be able to solve them.

TLDR: Basically it all comes down to empathy. To view everything as the others view it. I get the fear and panic and all that the right has, and not just because I once upon a time was a right wing evangelical Christian who called those who received food stamps lazy bums, who said that Democrats and the liberals just wanted to keep the poor trapped so they would always need help. Yes, I was there and that helps, but I can still empathize with them without that past. I've never been a Muslim raised in a nation dominated by Islam, but I can still empathize with the way they see what the US is doing to them, the way they have to see people like Donald Trump and the scary amount of Americans that support him. It's easy to see why some are driven to extremism. I can empathize with that Mexican who just wants a better life and knows that Mexico can't give it to him so he has to risk it all to try and immigrate to the US. I can empathize with the Chinese worker who has been given an opportunity to build something, to escape the poverty... for while perhaps still poverty, less poverty than before, and I'm thankful that I got that opportunity, and I'm sorry that somebody in the US doesn't get to do it, but I'm a human too. Empathy. Learn it. It can be learned, neurological disorder or not.

Quite true, and it's a risk you take when you do that and suffer the consequences if it bombs, comedians push these boundaries all the time (the good ones at least, IMHO). When he joked with that disabled person about the sign language was that person genuinely offended or did they connect over the joke which might have occurred to them as well?

And I honestly can't see how hidden racism/sexism/ or any other isms I can think of is an improvement. You can't fight an enemy you can't see, you have movements like Black Lives Matter and others having to first convince everyone that there is actually a problem before they can even begin to address the problem itself. So, no, not fantastic, pretending you don't have cancer doesn't make the cancer go away, it just festers and eventually spreads throughout the whole system.

I'm glad we both agree it was a stupid decision and while it may be their stupid decision to make it doesn't mean that Zizek and others can't criticize that decision and explain why they think it's stupid.

And censorship comes in many forms, Governmental is only one of the easiest to recognize. The tyranny of the majority is a very real thing, maybe they can't throw you in jail, but they can make your life very difficult and that can be enough to silence many. And that can make it into a totalitarianism of it's own kind, I find a lot of Left Wing extremism to be equally as dangerous and crazy as the Right Wing brand.
It's been shown time and time again that even without the law behind you you can pretty much destroy someone's life just because they said something you didn't like, all I'm saying is "maybe you SHOULDN'T".

I listen to the Intelligence Squared debates sometimes and I thought this seemed relevant, interesting debate.
http://intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/past-debates/item/1310-liberals-are-stifling-intellectual-diversity-on-campus

@Zawash
PC Master Race, checking in!

The last bit of faith I had in the ways of old is now gone. All that steel hammering and for what? Stamp out a sword from cold steel.

That's my cyberpunk samurai. A disillusioned samurai in a not too distant future 3D prints a sword out of plastic and kills robots made out of martian alloy.

His faith is restored when he realizes it is not the sword that makes the samurai, but the way of Bushido which allows man to overcome the tyranny of martian robots. That and a moderate amount of armor blessed by the spirits of earth and infused with the wielder's chi, such that to break earth's samurai defender's armor would be to shatter his very soul. Split a bullet with a glance.

Imagine wasting my time quoting Virginia Woolf at someone who is, to all appearances, functionally illiterate.

It's a shame, because it's an interesting topic. But here I stand with two successive interlocutors fleeing the field in a hysterical panic merely at having been contradicted.

Dear me, if they're going to slay the beast of male tyranny together then they'll have to toughen up a bit first.

That's it, I'm leading a march to the sea to make salt. We can't let the cute little Morton girl with the umbrella's tyranny go unchallenged.

We, the People, do NOT agree with your methodologies. They represent tyranny. You want the American people to be little obedient sheep? SCREW YOU.

"Might makes right" is the language of tyranny and the morally infirm.