481–490 of 564 posts
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with all due respect there is almost no evidence that republican voters ever "switch sides". it's not a thing. these people aren't voting against their own in any useful numbers no matter what.
This is completely false. I personally know lifelong Republican voters who abandoned the party in 2016. They didn’t just leave the party, they voted D.
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Thank you for your service. The other giant thread here made it more directly partisan, this just sounds crazy though. On what rational grounds do you attempt to prosecute or make such things illegal? Is it simply trying to save immediate expenditure of money in a myopic fashion? Or is it more akin to they don't believe it's the state's responsibility to put that data online in the first place so f-it-all-to-hell and…
I'll take your biggest question first. > In your opinion, is there a way to fix this sort of thing? Yes, it requires patient, reasonable, intelligent people operating in good faith to sacrifice personal comfort, etc. and get involved in politics. Politics is literally a zero-sum game when it comes to voting as it is currently structured in most of the United States.* But when people with the above characteristics get…
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with all due respect there is almost no evidence that republican voters ever "switch sides". it's not a thing. these people aren't voting against their own in any useful numbers no matter what.
I think I'd have to see numbers on that (and those numbers are hard to build out without falling prey to a "No True Scotsman" fallacy). Virginia currently has a Democrat legislature for the first time in two decades, and it's paired with a Democrat governor for the first time I can remember. Either there was a massive demographic churn or someone switched sides. (Anecdotally: I have family in Virginia, and a lot of l…
put another way, I have a lot of republicans in my family. There is zero chance of any of them ever changing. It's absurd that we all would need to be concerned about speaking the truth of the GOP party for fear of "alienating" these people. This is a silencing tactic, plain and simple. The GOP takes no such steps to avoid losing potential D switchers.
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> particularly out of more conservative law schools such as those in Tennessee. This sounds contradictory to my understanding, related to the Black Panthers in California back in the 60s.
Separate things. Black Panther activity in California led to Reagan passing some restrictions in that state. I'm referring to jurisprudence at the higher court levels, which generally did not support the very strong individual rights to gun ownership that you see stated as "basic" rights now. The popular (and largely in practice) understanding of what 2A means for an individual is pretty different today, and very exp…
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Obviously America has problems that should be addressed, but I tend to think these "blame the US for everything cuz it's irredeemable" are doing a pretty big disservice all around. If we could singularly find these problems to be a uniquely American thing, that would be great! That means we've identified the problems and conceivably we could change the US to suddenly fix it. I think the reality is that it's not that…
It all depends. If one side believes the election was stolen and proceeds to rig elections in their favor in retaliation. America is done. We're at a point where fact don't matter. This is story illustrates that. Fact that SSN were sent out publicly doesn't matter. Fact that any security expert would say this wasn't hacking doesn't matter. Experts no longer matter. Whether they are doctors, scientists, etc.
I will agree that the acceptance of conspiratorial thinking in conservative circles is especially harmful (I wrote more detail about that in a sister thread), but you don't have to look very far in European history to find them electing demagogues too.
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> Do you expect people to pretend the trend isn't happening in order to comfort you? There are plenty of trends happening on the "other side" which are also veritably nuts, so I don't find this to be a very compelling argument. The ad hominem doesn't help, either.
This is called “whataboutism”.
No one can have any nuanced opinion without all of their individuality being discarded and all weight being given to the party they vote for. It seems to me that the party they vote for is just an ephemeral label and really doesn't suffice in extrapolating much. We should stop contextualizing all conversations on the political affiliation of people.
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The problem is that the true moral values held don't appear often enough in political speech. I and almost all of my friends and family hold that "humans are created in the image of God, and thus their inalienable rights begin at conception. Therefore abortion at any stage is committing murder against the baby." Not exactly context-dependent, unless I'm missing something. Perhaps you could elaborate?
I would construe your belief to be summarized by "all life has value and should be protected/valued". The missing context is that your argument seek to protect the baby's life BEFORE birth , but after ... generally speaking the (R)/pro-life stance is pretty weak on social safety net, should the child have adequate (free!) health care, nutrition, etc. Does that life "deserve" these things when they are only an infant?…
I don't know if I can generalize across Republicans, but as I understand it:
- humans naturally have both rights and responsibilities. Being human by itself grants inalienable rights, and as someone matures or is given positions of membership or authority they also incur further rights and responsibilities.
- Inalienable rights are to be protected by government. If it's not something that's naturally there and needs protecting, it's not an inalienable right. (Founding fathers summarized inalienable rights as "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" - those can't be given by a government but they must be protected by all governments).
- By making a woman pregnant, a man has incurred the responsibility to protect and provide for that woman and her baby. If he fails to do so, she has every right to seek redress -- and doing so ought to be easy for her, since she and her baby have a right to his protection and provision.
This is the ideal. I know it's not the reality, but protecting inalienable rights and holding people to their responsibilities when redress is sought ought to be the first priorities of government. While they are important, social safety nets don't even appear in my belief system. If they exist, they ought to be a last resort, only to be relied upon if the father, the mother, their family, their community (church or another organization), or local non-profits are not able to provide. But the government would do even better to be holding the responsible people accountable instead of giving them a way out.
Nothing in my belief system assigns responsibility to the government for taking care of people. That should be the people's job via healthy non-government institutions (especially marriage, family, and community organizations). If people aren't getting taken care of, that's not the government's job to fix. It's the people's. It's literally MY job, and yours too. If the government is ever involved, it ought to be holding people responsible for taking care of one another, especially within families -- instead of giving them an easy way out of their duty.
So when I vote against your Democratic party policy, I'm not voting against the heart behind it. I'm saying "great ideas, but that is not the government's job. Go form an NGO to do that (that doesn't also promote abortion) and I will donate!" In the mean time, stop taxing me so you can give people an easy way out of their responsibilities! I take care of my responsibilities (myself, my wife, my kids). No one else has to do that - it's my job and I do it. God forbid the government should do that for me. I also give to my parents, my wife's parents, my church, including those in my church who are poor, several non-profits that take care of the poor and spread the good news of God's love, and poor people I run into -- I give away more than 20% of my net income. Please don't hear me saying "look how good I am" (far from it, there are many people who make less and give far more) but to hopefully to share how much I believe taking care of people is my job and yours, not the government's.
People should take care of their own responsibilities to the extent they are able. When they don't, the government should hold them accountable. When they can't, it should make it easy for other institutions to do their job and help the poor. People love one another better through giving voluntarily, not paying taxes so the government can "love" people.
Finally, institutions are the engines through which human visions are carried out and sustained across generations. Different institutions have different responsibilities. The government should be one among many institutions. When the government is the only institution (or has control over the other institutions) we are in a totalitarian state -- and that is a horrible place to be for human well-being.
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I have a strong feeling this will backfire spectacularly. To any technical or even semi-technical person, the facts of this case are laughable. The Governor thinks that he can steamroll this case through, and is betting that most will not understand the underlying technical details and give into the fear mongering "hacking" narrative. But the thing is, as soon as this goes to court, there is a 100% chance the EFF or…
losing in court will just feed the GOP victim narrative. from a political standpoint, the Governor's ignorant aggression is a win-win. he can say he stood up to the liberal courts and the tech elite. but then again, Trump often lies about his losses in courts, claims they were wins, and gets applause from his audience. the GOP is a counter-majoritarian party, which makes counterfactual statements inevitable.
It's not useful to use a ridiculous situation like this as confirmation of your political beliefs.
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It also has a chilling effect on journalism (and free speech generally). Even the threat of prosecution for a non-crime serves to discourage others from publicly discussing his administration’s errors. This situation is arguably the reason we have the first amendment: so the government can’t bully you into silence and submission when you’ve embarrassed them. When they’ve embarrassed themselves, really.
I hear what you're saying, but since there is such a zero chance this results in the journalist going to prison - I'm not entirely sure it has any effect - honestly if I was trying to become well-known as a journalist, I'd very much want to be in this spotlight - I'd be trying to find another mess up on Missouri's part to become part of this story. It very possibly has the opposite effect (the "Streisand effect"). Th…