Christians celebrate Christmas by setting a two alarm fire in downtown Houston

[Maddy]

I mostly avoid the off-topic section of the forum because much of what goes on here simply makes me ill.

What I most enjoy about this forum is the intellectual honesty and thoughtful analysis that characterizes most of the debate here.  I can see how that could be a problem if the agenda is more important than the truth.

[rickb]

The whole point of this thread is that we should not demonize Muslims.  Islamophobic hysteria is being whipped up by the conservative blogosphere, news outlets like Fox, and even the Republican presidential candidates - creating an environment ripe for attacks against entirely innocent people.  It even spills over into this forum.  I'm sick of it.

No one is saying these attacks on Muslims are anywhere near as serious or deadly as the terrorist attacks.  However, creating an environment where all Muslims are viewed as the enemy is very, very bad.

Perhaps in another thread we should compare the number of innocent civilians killed by drone strikes to the number of civilians killed by terrorist actions.  I think the "terror" is not quite as one-sided as it might seem.

[moda0306]

I already stumbled upon that article in my earlier web search; weaksauce. Would you care to respond to any of the points I've made rather than introducing new third-party sources of information that in no way refute anything I wrote?

I'm doing this from a tiny iPhone, so please excuse my inability to do this efficiently, which I already suck at as evidenced by any post where I try to quote more than two seperate chunks of data or add a picture.

I didn't argue that there were massive numbers of murders going on. I'm pointing out that there have been attacks, they get next to zero media coverage, and they don't get prosecuted like acts of war. It's probably only fair to mention that neither do plenty of other forms of "terror" that don't get similar treatment.

But this is where the rubber meets the road. We can all talk about media bias and which show got cancelled because its star went on a homophobic rant until we are blue in the face, but when legal definitions start getting used and bombs start getting dropped and groups start getting spied on, right now, there is a huge pro-Western bias. I think we get a lot more out of fixing our own ship before trying to fix others, so I comment on that. I have no love lost for Muslim culture or religion, but I realize a scapegoat when I see one, and that's what is happening to a solid portion of the electorate right now. Whether liberals suffer from the same delusions will be more relevant when they are calling for dropping of bombs to change minds (I mean real liberals, not opportunists like Hillary).

[Pointedstick]

I didn't argue that there were massive numbers of murders going on. I'm pointing out that there have been attacks,

… in extremely small numbers, like maybe a maximum of 10 in the past year, unless you want to define vandalism as "attack," which seems inappropriate to me (The U-Haul facility near my house has been attacked!).

they get next to zero media coverage

…because vandalism, threats, and assault are minor crimes that generally merit little coverage because they are so common and inconsequential in the scheme of things. When people kill Muslims in the USA, it gets coverage, just like when Muslims kill non-Muslims in the USA. The media doesn't really care about vandalism, threats, and assault--except the parts of it that are out to push a particular narrative about Muslim victimization. I'm sure I could find plenty of anti-Jew crimes if I cared to feel like a member of a victimized group.

and they don't get prosecuted like acts of war.

…Because they're committed on U.S. soil largely by U.S. citizens, not in a war zone by foreign fighters.

It's probably only fair to mention that neither do plenty of other forms of "terror" that don't get similar treatment.

What? Can you elaborate?

But this is where the rubber meets the road. We can all talk about media bias and which show got cancelled because its star went on a homophobic rant until we are blue in the face, but when legal definitions start getting used and bombs start getting dropped and groups start getting spied on, right now, there is a huge pro-Western bias. I think we get a lot more out of fixing our own ship before trying to fix others, so I comment on that. I have no love lost for Muslim culture or religion, but I realize a scapegoat when I see one, and that's what is happening to a solid portion of the electorate right now. Whether liberals suffer from the same delusions will be more relevant when they are calling for dropping of bombs to change minds

There's a lot to respond to here but the part I bolded struck me especially hard. Muslims are not a solid portion of the electorate. Muslims of all ages comprise slightly less than 1% of the U.S. population. Most American Muslims are south asian or African-American. Electorally, the kind of "brown people" Arab Muslims who I imagine you're picturing are a rounding error and nobody cares about them. The fact that you can erroneously quip that muslims are "a solid portion of the electorate" shows me that you spend a lot of time in a culture where Muslims are portrayed and discussed a lot, and in positive or neutral contexts. This leads you unconsciously believe that they're a lot more common in America than they really are. A similar thing happens when you ask average people what percentage of the population is black. A large fraction of people answer numbers like 30, 40, or 50% when the real figure is about 12% and has been for decades. The only part of the USA that is half black is Washington D.C. If you see people in a minority group portrayed or discussed in the media enough, especially way out of proportion to their actual numbers, your brain starts to see the media portrayal as reality.

(I mean real liberals, not opportunists like Hillary).

Yeah, she's not a true scotsman!

[moda0306]

I'll have to get back to that tomorrow, but real quick to clarify, "a solid portion of the electorate" would be the whites who are scapegoating Muslims. Not the Muslims themselves. I do realize that Muslims are a tiny minority.

[Libertarian666]

Please, define "terrorism."

I'm not Reub, but I'll have a go:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_terrorism

There is neither an academic nor an accurate legal consensus regarding the definition of terrorism. Various legal systems and government agencies use different definitions. Moreover, governments have been reluctant to formulate an agreed upon, legally binding definition. These difficulties arise from the fact that the term is politically and emotionally charged.

Let's face it, "terrorism" means "violence with a socio-political goal committed by people I don't like who realize they couldn't win a conventional war." American revolutionaries were terrorists from the perspective of the British.

FIFY.

[dualstow]

Muslims are not a solid portion of the electorate. Muslims of all ages comprise slightly less than 1% of the U.S. population.
...
This leads you unconsciously believe that they're a lot more common in America than they really are. A similar thing happens when you ask average people what percentage of the population is black. A large fraction of people answer numbers like 30, 40, or 50% when the real figure is about 12% and has been for decades. The only part of the USA that is half black is Washington D.C.

And Philadelphia (40+%)
Ok, back to the Xmas fire...

[Reub]

My "profile" was largely meant to turn the bigotry around.  If one assumes Muslims are terrorists, then

Wait hold the presses--who exactly is claiming that all Muslims are terrorists? I don't believe I've ever heard or read anyone make such a patently ridiculous claim.

Oh just go ahead and raise your hand, Reub. Don't be shy! 

Certainly not me. This is just leftists attributing false arguments because they can't win on the facts.

[lazyboy]

Have you seen the recent polls of Muslims that show that a rather large minority of them feel that violence against civilians is justified?

"The situation is not much different among Muslims in Western countries. In Britain and Spain, one in four Muslims believes suicide bombings are sometimes justified. One in three believes it in France. Slightly more than one in ten believes it in the United States (per a Pew poll from 2011). According to a poll conducted by a Georgetown Islamic Studies professor and a Gallup pollster, more than one in three Muslims worldwide believe that the 9/11 attacks were “somewhat,” “largely,” or “completely” justified (23.1 percent say “somewhat”; 13.5 percent say “largely” or “completely”).  According to CBS, polling shows that “almost one in four British Muslims believe that the [2005] 7/7 attacks on London were justified.” According to the Financial Times, polling shows that more than one in three British Muslims see Britain’s Jewish community as a “legitimate target as part of the struggle for justice in the Middle East.” Not Israelis but British Jews. Their Jewish neighbors. One in three. According to the BBC, more than one in four British Muslims agree with the statement: “I have some sympathy for the motives behind the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris.” According to a major Turkish newspaper — the Hürriyet Daily News — one in five Turks believes Charlie Hebdo’s murdered cartoonists “got what they deserved.”

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/4 ... dent-obama

That's a lot of supporters for cold, filthy murderous terrorists! That would be somewhere around 200,000 of them in this country who believe that suicide bombings are justified. And that's if you believe that they're being honest about it, which is highly doubtful.

Also, of note is the tone at the end of the article, which is not inflammatory. The point being that rather than throwing fire on the gasoline of hatred and bitterness, we might start to just tell the truth, understand the causes and conditions are that led to this hatred, owning our own part and work with the majority of Muslims to make a safer world. Idealistic sounding, I know. But really, what else have can we do  besides perpetuating more hatred and war?:

"I whole-heartedly believe that Muslim pro-terrorists are in the minority — but it’s a large and powerful minority; not a tenth of 1 percent. Pretending otherwise, for the sake of being sanctimonious, accomplishes nothing. Imagine if Muslims did shun terrorists the way Christians shun the KKK. At the risk of sounding sanctimonious myself, a little healthy shunning would make the world a much safer and much better place. It’s certainly not outside the realm of possibility — but wishing won’t make it so."

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/4 ... -gelernter

[dualstow]

Good point, lazyboy. You made me want to read the article, so I will. I don't normally read the National Review.

Separately from the level-headedness above:
When I "demonize" Muslims -- which I do from time to time, despite having an amicable relationship with plenty of them ("Some of my best friends are...") it has nothing to do with terrorists in the sense of bombs and stabbings. It has more to do with terrorizing and taunting on the streets of Paris. I might be ok in Detroit or Hamtramck. I don't think I would be comfortable in Paris or Copenhagen or Malm�.  I don't think Christian Americans feel that way, and they have no reason to.

Maybe that makes me a terrible person, but that's the way it is. I don't want to round them up or make them wear yellow stars. I would simply rather have an influx of Vietnamese or Australians.

[Pointedstick]

I don't want to round them up or make them wear yellow stars. I would simply rather have an influx of Vietnamese or Australians.

Even though the above statement would be highly frowned upon in many circles, I think most Americans agree with you--including among many members of those circles! It's the fact that until recently we couldn't have an honest public conversation about this that drives people crazy. The right of any non-American to enter America was simply deemed to be of far greater importance than the right of Americans to exercise some discretion over who can enter their country. This is not an absurd or outrageous position. It's eminently reasonable. You can disagree with it, but the left had all but shut down this position entirely with their public shaming until recently, largely thanks to Donald Trump. You were some kind of evil racist xenophobe if you wanted some kind of discretion or cost-benefit analysis about who should be able to enter the USA until Trump made it OK to express those sentiments by publicly doing so and not giving a shit when people howled about it. This is good for the country, I think. We need more opportunities for discussion and debate, not fewer.

I am fine with skilled, highly-educated Muslims entering the country. Let's poach the middle east's intellectual elite as they flee from the oppressive, stultifying, anti-intellectual conditions in that region. But for heaven's sake, don't let in the dullards, the uneducated, the unskilled. How's that gonna help America? And really, a system that was highly selective based on skill, intellectual ability, knowledge of English, and American history wouldn't even need to discriminate based on national origin at all. We would keep out the world's riffraff by default, and the result would be a happier, healthier, more productive, more socially harmonious America, which is really what everyone wants in the first place.

[dualstow]

I am fine with skilled, highly-educated Muslims entering the country. Let's poach the middle east's intellectual elite as they flee from the oppressive, stultifying, anti-intellectual conditions in that region.

Sounds good to me, as well as letting in those seeking asylum from homophobia.

But for heaven's sake, don't let in the dullards, the uneducated, the unskilled. How's that gonna help America?

I suppose the argument could be made that their children would be more like us than like their parents. It's a question of degree of integration.

[Reub]

Jerry Lewis:

“Refugees should stay where the hell they are,” said Lewis bluntly. “Hey, no one has worked harder for the human condition than I have, but they’re not part of the human condition. If 11 guys in the group of 10,000 are ISIS—how can I take that chance?”

Lewis is not alone in this feeling; as of last month at least 31 governors rejected President Obama’s push to accept Syrian refugees into their states. Reports of ISIS now having access to a machine that makes American passports and recent revelations of the holes in our vetting system, borne out in the horrific San Bernardino terror attack, are just a couple of the factors legitimizing such pushback from the American people.

Lewis then said that President Obama was “never prepared” for ISIS and suggested that he was not a real leader…

…The clip concludes with Lewis praising Trump for his “showmanship.”

“I think he’s great,” said Lewis of Trump. “He’s a showman and we’ve never had a showman in the president’s chair.”

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2015/12 ... ump-video/

[moda0306]

I don't want to round them up or make them wear yellow stars. I would simply rather have an influx of Vietnamese or Australians.

Even though the above statement would be highly frowned upon in many circles, I think most Americans agree with you--including among many members of those circles! It's the fact that until recently we couldn't have an honest public conversation about this that drives people crazy. The right of any non-American to enter America was simply deemed to be of far greater importance than the right of Americans to exercise some discretion over who can enter their country. This is not an absurd or outrageous position. It's eminently reasonable. You can disagree with it, but the left had all but shut down this position entirely with their public shaming until recently, largely thanks to Donald Trump. You were some kind of evil racist xenophobe if you wanted some kind of discretion or cost-benefit analysis about who should be able to enter the USA until Trump made it OK to express those sentiments by publicly doing so and not giving a shit when people howled about it. This is good for the country, I think. We need more opportunities for discussion and debate, not fewer.

I am fine with skilled, highly-educated Muslims entering the country. Let's poach the middle east's intellectual elite as they flee from the oppressive, stultifying, anti-intellectual conditions in that region. But for heaven's sake, don't let in the dullards, the uneducated, the unskilled. How's that gonna help America? And really, a system that was highly selective based on skill, intellectual ability, knowledge of English, and American history wouldn't even need to discriminate based on national origin at all. We would keep out the world's riffraff by default, and the result would be a happier, healthier, more productive, more socially harmonious America, which is really what everyone wants in the first place.

Woah what?  We haven't had an "honest public discussion?"  Perhaps the media doesn't broadcast it richly, but I've heard people speaking very freely around their thoughts of who should and shouldn't be able to enter the country.

Further, your statements pre-suppose without further analysis the potential validity of a "freedom to travel" the world as one wishes.  One of the most natural, intuitive rights one would have is to go where one pleases on this earth without someone pointing a gun at them saying they can't go there.  It's far more natural than, say, claiming a plot of land is your property because you have enough cattle (also your property?) on it to arbitrarily justify it as your own.  Or other arbitrary property claims.

Now I'm not saying this analysis doesn't have flaws, but almost NOBODY is willing to even pose that argument outside extreme libertarian and/or liberal circles.  Everyone else just accepts the "it's OUR country so we get to decide who comes in" line.  I actually am more inclined to agree with that latter line, but I'll be damned if I EVER hear friends/colleagues/acquaintances argue for a "common law freedom to travel" or something like that.

So you are partially right that there are conversations to be had here.  The problem is we're not really having them.  We're just bringing the xenophobic ones from the dinner table to the television set.  Perhaps that has some value, but only so much, as those discussions are hardly filled with profound, well-thought-out ideas about policy.

I didn't argue that there were massive numbers of murders going on. I'm pointing out that there have been attacks,

… in extremely small numbers, like maybe a maximum of 10 in the past year, unless you want to define vandalism as "attack," which seems inappropriate to me (The U-Haul facility near my house has been attacked!).

they get next to zero media coverage

…because vandalism, threats, and assault are minor crimes that generally merit little coverage because they are so common and inconsequential in the scheme of things. When people kill Muslims in the USA, it gets coverage, just like when Muslims kill non-Muslims in the USA. The media doesn't really care about vandalism, threats, and assault--except the parts of it that are out to push a particular narrative about Muslim victimization. I'm sure I could find plenty of anti-Jew crimes if I cared to feel like a member of a victimized group.

and they don't get prosecuted like acts of war.

…Because they're committed on U.S. soil largely by U.S. citizens, not in a war zone by foreign fighters.

It's probably only fair to mention that neither do plenty of other forms of "terror" that don't get similar treatment.

What? Can you elaborate?

But this is where the rubber meets the road. We can all talk about media bias and which show got cancelled because its star went on a homophobic rant until we are blue in the face, but when legal definitions start getting used and bombs start getting dropped and groups start getting spied on, right now, there is a huge pro-Western bias. I think we get a lot more out of fixing our own ship before trying to fix others, so I comment on that. I have no love lost for Muslim culture or religion, but I realize a scapegoat when I see one, and that's what is happening to a solid portion of the electorate right now. Whether liberals suffer from the same delusions will be more relevant when they are calling for dropping of bombs to change minds

There's a lot to respond to here but the part I bolded struck me especially hard. Muslims are not a solid portion of the electorate. Muslims of all ages comprise slightly less than 1% of the U.S. population. Most American Muslims are south asian or African-American. Electorally, the kind of "brown people" Arab Muslims who I imagine you're picturing are a rounding error and nobody cares about them. The fact that you can erroneously quip that muslims are "a solid portion of the electorate" shows me that you spend a lot of time in a culture where Muslims are portrayed and discussed a lot, and in positive or neutral contexts. This leads you unconsciously believe that they're a lot more common in America than they really are. A similar thing happens when you ask average people what percentage of the population is black. A large fraction of people answer numbers like 30, 40, or 50% when the real figure is about 12% and has been for decades. The only part of the USA that is half black is Washington D.C. If you see people in a minority group portrayed or discussed in the media enough, especially way out of proportion to their actual numbers, your brain starts to see the media portrayal as reality.

(I mean real liberals, not opportunists like Hillary).

Yeah, she's not a true scotsman!

Regarding Hillary, I was trying to quickly dispense with a premise that I thought we could both agree with... that Hillary is a principled liberal, the likes of which your analysis of liberals would qualify.  I really don't think the "bleeding heart" traits of liberals apply to her anymore. 

Regarding other events that get treated differently than Islamic Terror, I would include any form of right-wing terror, atheist Terror, Christian terror, "weird kid at school" terror, or even ye olde anarchist terror of the early 20th century (though much of that was eventually used as a premise for wartime-like powers around Commies, so perhaps that's an exception).


Personally, I don't think hate crimes and acts of vandalism, etc towards Muslims comes anywhere close to the legal and national security decisions our government makes surrounding  these groups.  I'd probably show more disgust for the individualized racism, but overall it's legal and you can't legislate it, so I don't concern myself as much with it as I do the illegal actions our government takes as a result of that tribalist bias.  If people are going to advocate dropping bombs and usurping the constitution, I'm going to call out their motivations for what they obviously are.

[Reub]

I laugh at the term "real liberals". Liberals almost always hide their true agendas so that they can gain and retain power while looking unthreatening. Once in power they implement their hidden social engineering plans.

[Pointedstick]

Further, your statements pre-suppose without further analysis the potential validity of a "freedom to travel" the world as one wishes.  One of the most natural, intuitive rights one would have is to go where one pleases on this earth without someone pointing a gun at them saying they can't go there.  It's far more natural than, say, claiming a plot of land is your property because you have enough cattle (also your property?) on it to arbitrarily justify it as your own.  Or other arbitrary property claims.

Now I'm not saying this analysis doesn't have flaws, but almost NOBODY is willing to even pose that argument outside extreme libertarian and/or liberal circles.  Everyone else just accepts the "it's OUR country so we get to decide who comes in" line.  I actually am more inclined to agree with that latter line, but I'll be damned if I EVER hear friends/colleagues/acquaintances argue for a "common law freedom to travel" or something like that.

So you are partially right that there are conversations to be had here.  The problem is we're not really having them.  We're just bringing the xenophobic ones from the dinner table to the television set.  Perhaps that has some value, but only so much, as those discussions are hardly filled with profound, well-thought-out ideas about policy.

Let's have that conversation! Right here, right now. I'm officially threadjacking this thread into a "right to travel" discussion.

A "right to travel the world as one wishes" is a right that only makes sense in a world without geographical private property. None at all. There can't be any of it. No geographical private property. As soon as anyone declares any patch of ground to be his own and off-limits to others without his permission, then boom, the "right to travel the world as one wishes" of every single other human being in existence has been slightly abridged. And once the whole world is owned, the right has been destroyed.

The right to geographical property and the right to travel are fundamentally incompatible. You need to choose one. And guess what? The world chose property. This was, like, tens of thousands of years ago, and since then, the parts of the world that chose property became extremely powerful and set about exterminating the parts of the world that didn't, and those that remained quickly adopted property because they saw that it could make them strong enough to resist and preserve some slice of their cultures.

We simply don't live in a world where the "right to travel the world as one wishes" exists. It doesn't exist. It's gone. Kaput. Exterminated by civilizations a thousand generations before you and I were born. It is no more. So when we discuss this hypothetical, pre-historical "right to travel the world as one wishes," we must be mindful that we are not discussing an applicable concept that is competing with other extant rights for modern expression in the constellation of human jurisprudence, but rather we are are dredging up a part of ancient history that was destroyed by more successful human memetic creations, and examining the world as it once was millennia ago. We would be discussing mythology, not jurisprudence.

In the world both inhabit today, travel is not a right, it is a privilege. This privilege is granted by property owners who own the land you wish to travel to or through. When you get in your car and drive somewhere, the government is granting you the privilege of traveling on the roads that it owns, controls, and maintains. When you enter a foreign country, the government of that country is granting you the privilege of entering the geographical domain that it owns and controls. When you go to work, your employer is granting you the privilege of entering a building that they built or pay for. And so on. It's actually so "intuitive" that we all unconsciously understand and accept it without a second thought a thousand times a day. We get that a building that someone else has built isn't ours, and that we have no right to enter it without their permission. If the door is locked and we force our way inside, we feel like we have committed an inappropriate act. If we are in someone else's house and we are asked to leave, we realize that the owners have every right to make their request and that if we do not obey, we are the bad guy. If we are driving on a road and we encounter a "road closed" sign, we understand that this sign represents the authority of the road owner expressing their wishes that we not go down that road, and we obey, or else we feel naughty and rebellious.

This is the world we live in. A world where travel is predicated on pleasing or paying the owners of the places you wish to travel to or through. Simply put, a right to travel does not work in this world; it does not support permission-less travel. If we want to talk about solutions for problems that affect the world we actually live in--as opposed to the fantasy world we imagine might be nicer--then there is simply no purpose in discussing the "right to travel." There is no such right. And there never will be as long as the basis for human civilization is geographical private property. I don't have the right to travel. You don't. Foreign Muslims don't. Domestic Christians don't. Nobody does.

The real question concerns who gets to determine which people are allowed onto any given geographical piece of property and which people are required to stay off. But of course, that is an irritating political question, not an intellectually-satisfying yet completely inapplicable question of theoretical rights.

[Libertarian666]

Regarding Hillary, I was trying to quickly dispense with a premise that I thought we could both agree with... that Hillary is a principled liberal, the likes of which your analysis of liberals would qualify.  I really don't think the "bleeding heart" traits of liberals apply to her anymore. 

Excuse me if I'm misreading you, but are you saying that Hillary is a principled liberal? I don't know anyone other than possibly the most diehard Democrat loyalists imaginable who would agree with that characterization.

[Libertarian666]

Let's have that conversation! Right here, right now. I'm officially threadjacking this thread into a "right to travel" discussion.

A "right to travel the world as one wishes" is a right that only makes sense in a world without geographical private property. None at all. There can't be any of it. No geographical private property.

My understanding of "a right to travel the world as one wishes" is very different from yours. To me, what that means is that governments have no right to tell people where they can and cannot travel. It has nothing to do with private property ownership, since obviously private property owners, by definition of "private property", have the right to decide who may enter upon their property.

[dualstow]

Let's have that conversation! Right here, right now. I'm officially threadjacking this thread into a "right to travel" discussion.

A "right to travel the world as one wishes" is a right that only makes sense in a world without geographical private property. None at all. There can't be any of it. No geographical private property.

My understanding of "a right to travel the world as one wishes" is very different from yours. To me, what that means is that governments have no right to tell people where they can and cannot travel. It has nothing to do with private property ownership, since obviously private property owners, by definition of "private property", have the right to decide who may enter upon their property.

On what planet? We can travel from state to state without papers unlike in, say, the Soviet Union in the 50s, and that's nice. But governments can be even more restrictive than owners of private property. In fact, when it comes to non-citizens, they have to be.

When moda wrote:

One of the most natural, intuitive rights one would have is to go where one pleases on this earth without someone pointing a gun at them saying they can't go there.

the use of "one would have" suggested to me that moda knows it doesn't exist, but feels that it should.
The closest thing I can think of in reality is that thing in Sweden that translates to "every man's right", letting people pass through an owner's private forest, or something.

Edit:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_to_roam

[Mountaineer]

Let's have that conversation! Right here, right now. I'm officially threadjacking this thread into a "right to travel" discussion.

A "right to travel the world as one wishes" is a right that only makes sense in a world without geographical private property. None at all. There can't be any of it. No geographical private property.

My understanding of "a right to travel the world as one wishes" is very different from yours. To me, what that means is that governments have no right to tell people where they can and cannot travel. It has nothing to do with private property ownership, since obviously private property owners, by definition of "private property", have the right to decide who may enter upon their property.

Well, that did not work out too well for those homophobe cake bakers, did it? 

... M

[Mark Leavy]

Over the last few years I've really come to embrace the notion that whatever rights you or I or the next person believes in really don't mean a thing.

This quote from "Rule Your World" has really been growing on me.


[img width=600]http://a64.tinypic.com/317forn.[/img]

[Pointedstick]

I agree 100%, Mark. Rights are just made up and turn really bizarre and nonsensical when we start to talk about governments--at least if one wishes the conversation to have anything to do with reality and not an intellectually-satisfying fantasy world.

[Libertarian666]

Let's have that conversation! Right here, right now. I'm officially threadjacking this thread into a "right to travel" discussion.

A "right to travel the world as one wishes" is a right that only makes sense in a world without geographical private property. None at all. There can't be any of it. No geographical private property.

My understanding of "a right to travel the world as one wishes" is very different from yours. To me, what that means is that governments have no right to tell people where they can and cannot travel. It has nothing to do with private property ownership, since obviously private property owners, by definition of "private property", have the right to decide who may enter upon their property.

Well, that did not work out too well for those homophobe cake bakers, did it? 

... M

Of course not, because the government violates our rights.

That doesn't mean we don't have them... or does it? Some would say rights don't exist, but then obviously those same people would not be discussing them at all.

[Libertarian666]

Let's have that conversation! Right here, right now. I'm officially threadjacking this thread into a "right to travel" discussion.

A "right to travel the world as one wishes" is a right that only makes sense in a world without geographical private property. None at all. There can't be any of it. No geographical private property.

My understanding of "a right to travel the world as one wishes" is very different from yours. To me, what that means is that governments have no right to tell people where they can and cannot travel. It has nothing to do with private property ownership, since obviously private property owners, by definition of "private property", have the right to decide who may enter upon their property.

On what planet? We can travel from state to state without papers unlike in, say, the Soviet Union in the 50s, and that's nice. But governments can be even more restrictive than owners of private property. In fact, when it comes to non-citizens, they have to be.

When moda wrote:

One of the most natural, intuitive rights one would have is to go where one pleases on this earth without someone pointing a gun at them saying they can't go there.

the use of "one would have" suggested to me that moda knows it doesn't exist, but feels that it should.
The closest thing I can think of in reality is that thing in Sweden that translates to "every man's right", letting people pass through an owner's private forest, or something.

Edit:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_to_roam

Governments don't have to violate our rights... well, actually, they do have to violate some of our rights by their very nature. But they don't have to violate this particular right; they just find it convenient to do so.

[Libertarian666]

I agree 100%, Mark. Rights are just made up and turn really bizarre and nonsensical when we start to talk about governments--at least if one wishes the conversation to have anything to do with reality and not an intellectually-satisfying fantasy world.

Ok, so then the Bill of Rights is meaningless nonsense.

Have you ever thought of running for President?