02-07-2022, 02:26 PM
(02-07-2022, 11:37 AM)David Horn Wrote:(02-06-2022, 04:34 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:(02-05-2022, 09:19 AM)David Horn Wrote: Your side forgot what every member of any community needs to know by instinct: no one's an island. If we move to the final solution being hyper-libertarianism it will be indistinguishable from anarchy, and anarchy is a prescription for chaos, decline and, ultimately, death. Why in God's name do you wish for this?
Hyper-libertarianism as in what we are seeing going on in the blue cities and along our southern border and within Democratic politics today. Haven't you been listening to me? You are right, it's stupid (mind boggling) and I don't know why you guys are continuing to ignore it, supporting it and going along with it the way you are these days. Do you currently live in an American State or an American region or Blue Acirema? I get the impression that you don't understand or realize or understand/realize that the majority of the country knows that people like you are on the side of lawlessness. I don't wish it, I see it and I've been telling you/warning you of the reckoning that's currently building and showing you that the rules of the game are going to substantially change and telling you what to expect to see happening as America shifts to 4T. In short, you are messing with an established Super Power that's about to bring the hammer down and declare open season on today's Left. I like you a little better than the rest which is why I've been suggesting that you retire from Left Wing politics before it's to late. Personally speaking, I don't think today's Left understands the difference between American law enforcement and Fascism or the difference between killing a criminal and Murder or the difference between Good and Evil or right and wrong these days.
I can only assume your reference to lawlessness is related to BLM and all that the movement did over several months of activity. OK. Just for sake of argument let's agree that a lot of what happened was illegal, though most was not.
(Unjustifiable) police brutality does not serve law enforcement in general. It makes people more likely to turn against law enforcement and become more confrontational -- and with people already hostile to the police because they are involved in illegal activities and see the police as the Blue Meanies set on destroying personal freedom, such is more likely to make confrontations more violent... and deadly.
Remember: BLM is intended to be a lawful protest. Riots are not peaceful protest, and riots are rightly suppressed. Note well that BLM is not the old and discreditable "Off the pigs!" rhetoric of the Black Panther Party. This isn't the 1960's.
How do we know that people in BLM did not transmit images of looting, assaults, and property damage to police and prosecutors? Criminal deeds have never had the protection of privacy, and people who brought video cameras (even the cell-phone type) to document any police brutality may have instead gotten video of violence and property destruction that has been relayed to police and prosecutors. Security cameras are everywhere, and the only way to avoid having trouble with them is to not do crimes such as looting. BLM stands for "Black Lives Matter" and not "Black Looters Make off" (not to say that looters were all black, of course, or that most blacks are looters).
Quote: Now, let's compare that to actual government policies intended to take sides and use the power of government to do it. Is there any justification for depriving citizens -- any citizens -- of the right to vote? I say no, but GOP policies are making it harder and harder for not-Republicans. This is one of many reasons BLM was in the streets. And for a group that screams FREEDOM, you're pretty selective about what qualifies: absolutely no to abortion, but guns should be OK everywhere.
Even I have suggested that more effective security has keener senses, great agility, and literal bite force behind it than does a surprised person who is searching around for a gun. 200 or more pounds of bite force can take a literal bite out of crime. "Woof! Woof!" suggests the risk of hospitalization if someone breaks into a house. Nobody pretends that abortion is an easy choice, and that when it is chosen it is usually a drastic choice. When maternal death, a traumatic birth resulting from rape, or grave harm to a woman (including to her future reproductive capacity -- possible for someone under the usual child-bearing age) make abortion mandatory it must be permitted.
Politicians do not have the right to choose the electorate, at least in a democracy. That is how Apartheid entrenched itself in South Africa. Any effective whites-only voting would terribly distort the relationship between citizen and government. If one has no choice in the voting or no vote then one will be stepped on by the existing politicians.
Quote:And let's not forget that the majority actually opposes most of the policies your side holds dear, but you cling to the idea that minority rights gives you the authority to block everything you hate regardless of how badly the majority wants them. Worse, your side is declining in numbers. What happens when your ability to block everything finally collapse? Will the guns come out?
Add to that: the right-wingers who want an America that endorses plutocracy and the cultural values of Christian fundamentalism are, as a whole, aging. Retailers and restaurants whose clientele is old tend to go under if they cannot replace their elderly customers who might have been a lucrative clientele in recent years.
In a town of 10,000 near me both the Ruby Tuesday and the Bob Evans restaurant closed. Both have "old" customer bases.
... Conservatism will not die once and for all, but Gingrich/Trump-era conservatism can. Gingrich-era conservatism offers much for too few people and privation for the rest of us. We're getting the message. Trump-style conservatism lacks the sorts of characteristics that one associates with what I considered a sustainable conservatism of the 1970's... a limited role for government in subsidies and give-aways, promotion of small business, respect for tradition (OK, we have multiple traditions in America, and all of them are just as valid if they apply to the most credible people in their groups), rule of law, protocol and precedent, and respect for domestic tranquility. Class privilege is sustainable only if the economic elites can enforce deference through either outright terror (He who has the guns makes the rules) or economic subjection (He who owns the gold makes the rules). It is impossible to connect Donald Trump to Edmund Burke. It is possible to imagine a new sort of conservatism emerging around 2030, one that rejects demagoguery and promotes individual responsibility.
Is the "Blue" world wonderful? No. Much of it is so overpriced that one cannot live there except to endure Third-World living conditions (twelve in one room in AH-MAY-REEK-CAW!) in housing. Maybe we will need to put up with Japanese-style or South Korean-style housing densities if we are to have the American population concentrated along the coasts as is so in Australia because the "Heartland" is an economic desert in the sense that the Outback is a climatic desert with far too little opportunity. Maybe we need to shore up the economy in places like Ohio and Upstate New York that used to have excellent opportunity for people with modest education and a good work ethic who did factory work so that people aren't obliged to take chances with homelessness to avoid sure hopelessness. Obviously space per capital in urban areas must be significantly less with a population of 350 million than with a population of 175 million. There are no more orange groves in southern California to transform into subdivisions; fifty years later, those subdivisions are often slums. (A hint to the wise: unless the adult female is a Tiger Mom who can successfully get her kids to buck the anti-intellectual trends in America so that they can matriculate and do well in the excellent University of California system, stay clear of California).
The priority of the economic elites of America is to ensure that everything works for their own sybaritic excess at great human cost to everyone else. If I had to think of a way to waste every blessing that America has ever had, I could hardly imagine worse except for thermonuclear war.
Oh, by the way, Classic X'er... what do you think of the epidemic of meth and opiates in the "Real America" that you so love?
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.