He's probably going to announce an attack on Venezuela
Militant liberal. Aspiring re-education camp counselor. Look down the game tree. What's at the end of all those off-equilibrium paths?
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He's probably going to announce an attack on Venezuela
Did they ever actually kill horses to make glue? I thought they just used the hooves, which get trimmed regularly anyway
A non-answer.
Remarkable self awareness for a Dem institutional figure. Let's hope it catches on
The best lack all conviction yadda yadda
We can disenfranchise them without disenfranchising ourselves
Generally, but there are exceptions. You're living in History buddy, time to accept it
Nobody ever likes to consider that they might be living in capital-H History
It would be no more totalitarian than reconstruction was
If the right wing of this country showed any indication whatsoever that they want the responsibility of self-government, I would likewise feel some responsibility to enfranchise them. But they have shown a clear preference to be ruled.
Perhaps being subjects, rather than citizens, of a government that does things they don't like will teach them that self-government is actually something worth valuing. I'm not optimistic because they are extremely stupid people, but it's possible
The thing about this country's right wing is that it no longer wants the responsibility of self-government. They would prefer to be ruled. I think we should oblige them!
"I can't believe that public health officials were biased against people who didn't believe COVID was real (and also that representative government should be abolished)!" Truly terrible, what monsters
If public health officials were biased against conservative gatherings, that's good. The entire government apparatus should be biased against racist conspiracy peddling morons
Probably bags of cash
Me: "Look at all those other people out there. They're not afraid of the water." My 3 year old: "But I am." Destroyed by facts and logic.
Cultivate within yourself the utmost possible contempt for the far right and only then will their behavior become comprehensible and predictable to you. They’re animals masquerading as people
It’s not that Klein doesn’t take the right seriously. It’s that people like him take the right TOO seriously. They examine right-wing beliefs as an extension of valid policy objections, rather than almost entirely arising from the right giving people permission to indulge in inchoate resentments
Political purges
The headline calls this unexpected consequences, but I would call this extremely expected consequences.
a bunch of you really believe that trump is the unstoppable god king who can do whatever he declares and it is dumb as hell
I also have an opinion set that makes most people mad for not following the accepted battle lines, so I respect it
Everyone block @dystopian-fashion.bsky.social, they just make viral shit up all day
Oh I'm an idiot, thank you
It seems like we've reached an equilibrium where there are only two types of drivers left: the complete lunatics and the infuriatingly overcautious. Rationally, I understand that the former are the real problem. But I admit that the latter are the ones that annoy me more.
lmfao republican converts are infinitely better soldiers than most congressional dems, it's insane.
unbelievable. we have a patient in cvicu who's gonna need another week because someone else applied bronzer to his bypass incision
This is like in Peter Pan where the audience tries to revive Tinkerbell with applause. Except, you know, the opposite.
RFK Jr. rushing to the White House with a wheelbarrow full of beef tallow to save the President
I'm glad we're all on the same page about Noah Smith now, but he was definitely one of the big ones on this front. People loved looking at "planned capacity", a Chinese government statistic that was basically meaningless in many cases, and claiming they were going to kill us all.
I'm very happy about this. I also sort of wish that all of the people 5 years ago telling me over and over that China was going to bake the world with all of the new coal plants they were going to build would apologize for being wrong
It's a cult
The reason you know Trump isn’t dead is that his underlings aren’t publicly shivving each other
Tonight Trump is going to stroke out and have a painful death 🙏🙏
May we not see him for the rest of our lives
Is there some news I missed over the last couple hours?
This is good: With Trump/RFK destroying CDC, JB Pritzker's officials are exploring the possibility of buying Covid vaccines from manufacturers and distributing them in-state themselves, source tells me. Dem govs must step up and fill the void. New piece from me: newrepublic.com/article/1998...
I felt compelled to look this up to make sure I wasn't misremembering it. This dude is not going to be on board with a car ban (or gun ban)
Anyway, it's pretty difficult to come up with an example of anything that does not have at least the potential to inflict harm, which means that a ban on (almost?) anything is consistent with liberalism. And that's just not a definition of liberalism that I recognize
I'm going to assume you haven't read mill in a while. The dude didn't even think you could ban poisons. Just that maybe you could require shopkeepers to keep a registry of who buys them
The freedom is to enjoy the things you enjoy as long as you can do it without harming anyone else. The car part is ancillary. I don't even like cars
"We shouldn't do it because it is unconstitutional" and "we shouldn't do it because it is illiberal" are entirely different claims. Some illiberal laws may be constitutional, no matter how hard you try to make sure your constitution disallows illiberal laws, because that's the nature of the game.
A full gun ban (or whatever law you care to consider) may be perfectly consistent or inconsistent with a specific constitution, and that has little-to-no bearing on whether or not it is liberal.
I feel bad replying in the middle of what I know will be a longer reply, but I want be abundantly clear that I do not consider the discussion we having to be about constitutional law. "Liberalism" is a theory. A constitution is an attempt to put that theory into practice.
To me, the key to liberalism is the recognition that private enjoyment of a thing, whatever it may be, is a deeply relevant concern. The fact that we cannot observe or quantify anyone's private enjoyment doesn't mean we can ignore it. Rather, it means we have to be extra careful.
I get the sense that you view them as genuinely fundamental. Like all deontology, it's a viewpoint that suffers massively from the act of enumeration. "This is not on the individual rights list, so there is no tension between liberalism and a full ban."
I think maybe one of the key differences between you and I is that you are a deontologist and I am a consequentialist. On a theoretical level, I don't think individual rights really exist. They're just a convenient shorthand, some of the rules of rule utilitarianism.
It is a salient difference. If effectively nobody cares, then you're not really doing any harm.
Yes, and I've known many gun owners in my life who hold their nose and vote Republican because they won't write any more dumb gun laws, even if they otherwise dislike them. I think this is a selfish and short-sighted thing to do, but it's very real.
The difference between guns and lawn darts is that almost nobody cares about owning lawn darts. It wouldn't be terribly illiberal to ban chewing on rocks either
I don't think this is going to blow your mind, but the sort of person who lobbies for the NRA is exactly the sort of "lunatic gun nut" who I suggested would never be satisfied
(FWIW, I don't think there's an individual right to gun ownership either). I'm also tiring of this conversation, so I'll leave it at that and refrain from responding to whatever you say next, if you want the last word.
Not obvious to me. Clearly we're not talking about an individual right to the pursuit of happiness (in the modern meaning), because that would cover both. And if we're enumerating a list of rights that includes non-procreational sex, seems like we're getting so specific as to be arbitrary.
The blind spot is not in relation to cars. It's in relation to guns.
Therefore, I am forced to conclude, thanks to my lesson on liberalism from Mr. Alit-- err... Mr. Black, that a ban on gay sex is perfectly in keeping with liberal society.
Ergo, we should ban gay sex. This is the point at which I would say "people enjoy it, that counts for something, and it would therefore be deeply illiberal to ban gay sex." But I have recently learned that liberalism is merely a reciprocal exercise of power under a democratic leviathan!
Sex can impose a social cost due to its spread of some very deadly diseases, HIV chief among them, and in particular among gay people. I see no obvious individual right to non-procreational sex acts, even if I think there should be one. Procreation? Sure. But casual sex? Not obvious to me.
Robert's claim here, taken to its logical conclusion, suggests that *no* ban on *anything* is fundamentally illiberal, because there is effectively nothing in this world that does not have at least the *potential* to impose high social costs.
Restricting liberty with arbitrary and capricious laws is illiberal. That remains true even if the law applies to something that is, broadly speaking, an appropriate target of legislation.
You might notice that the word "liberal" shares its root with the word "liberty". One of the principles is that you should leave people their liberty whenever possible.
And certainly the fact that *some* regulations are in keeping with liberalism does not mean that *all* regulations are. Knives impose a social cost, as people can be murdered with them. I therefore propose that knives with brown hilts be subject to a $3 million dollar tax if bought on a Thursday.
I never said there was an individual right to own cars. I feel strange having to remind you of posts that happened barely 10 minutes ago, but you specifically brought up the idea of a blanket ban as something that would be similarly in keeping with liberal ideology as a blanket ban on guns.
The disagreement is not over regulation. We all agree that both cars and guns should be subject to regulation. The disagreement is over whether a blanket ban would be illiberal.
You are claiming that a blanket ban on *cars* would not be illiberal. I don't like cars! But the idea that a *blanket ban on cars* does not meet the qualifications of illiberal legislation beggars belief.
I'll just say that I never cease to be amazed by the degree to which otherwise intelligent and thoughtful people can have serious cultural blind spots. I'm sure I do it too!
Lunacy
"A law that banned automobiles... would not be illiberal." 👍👌
Yeah, this is pure culture war nonsense. Gotta make the hicks miserable, no matter what carve-outs you have to make to your supposedly universal principles. "Even one death is too many, no need to balance anyone else's hobbies or interests." This is legitimately insane if applied universally.
The Colt 1911 is a 45 caliber handgun and was previously the standard issue sidearm of the US military. It has a 7 round capacity and a muzzle velocity with standard ammunition of ~800 feet per second. Nobody in their right mind would suggest the former is more dangerous than the latter.
Okay. The Ruger 10-22 shoots 22LR -- potentially deadly, but if you saw the bullet you'd think it's a pellet rifle. It generally has a 10 round magazine, and you could legislate that as a requirement. It also has a muzzle velocity of 1260 feet per second.
The facts of guns and gun ownership suggest that it is. But nobody left of center is remotely interested in even learning about this possibility, because even opening up the wikipedia page on the AR-15 makes them feel like they're betraying their families and principles.
It's well within your right to have no interest in owning a gun. But if it's possible to dramatically reduce gun deaths *without* a draconian ban, surely you should support that? I earnestly believe that it is. Non-Anglo gun laws across the globe suggest that it is.
I know you're a good small-L small-D liberal democrat, which is why I think this exchange is perfectly illustrative of what I describe here. Betraying your own principles over a cultural aversion bsky.app/profile/john...
Part of the issue is that nobody wants to write draconian gun laws. The second amendment prohibits it, and in any case it runs counter to one of the most basic premises of liberal governance, which is that you only write laws as stringent as necessary to achieve your goal.
It's fine, you're just some guy shooting from the hip on bluesky, I don't expect you to be able to write good legislation. The problem is that your typical Democratic legislator isn't doing much better.
No offense, but I struggle to think of a worse metric you could use to regulate guns. Bolt action hunting rifles tend to have the highest muzzle velocities, and small high-caliber handguns the lowest.
Muzzle velocity, lol
Nobody here is arguing that it's impossible to write good laws. We are arguing that it's impossible to write good laws if you have zero understanding of what you're legislating.
just on this point, this is the specific gun used in the deadliest mass shooting in world history (breivik, in norway). it is not considered an "assault weapon" (as far as I know) under any state's AWB (e.g. it's a "featureless" rifle under california law).
In order to know whether you are accidentally doing that, you have to know something about guns, which Dems refuse to do as a matter of principle. If you don't believe me, just 1) learn about guns, and then 2) come back and reread the replies here.
It's not that you can't write a legal definition and ban everything that falls into that legal definition. It's that the legal definition may not line up with the reality of what makes certain kinds of guns deadly, and therefore leave substantial loopholes.
You could craft a gun control bill with tiered licensure, mandatory background checks, waiting periods, and storage requirements that would satisfy all but the most lunatic gun nuts and dramatically reduce gun deaths. But then you'd have to understand guns on some level, which dems refuse to do.
Gun control is the only culture war issue on par with the sorts of things that make up 90% of Republican politicking. No real knowledge of the issue, just a strong cultural aversion bordering on disgust that becomes its own raison d'etre
The problem is that they create legal categories (e.g., assault weapon) that do not align with reality. Does the gun look like something from a video game? Must be an assault weapon. Is it wood and looks like you could hunt with it? Not an assault weapon.
The cycle of democratic gun control bills is as follows: 1. Ban a certain class of firearms based on cosmetics features (because they do not understand what they are legislating) 2. Watch as gun manufacturers make the same guns without those features 3. Get mad and call them names 4. Back to 1
Has anyone bothered to ask the Chinese? I don't imagine they would be big fans of this idea
Trump voter. Guaranteed
Laws can help and I support (effective) gun control, but our problem is primarily cultural.
People's minds are blown when I tell them that in Switzerland every able-bodied person is issued a legit assault rifle with ammo to keep at home from the age of 18 to 37. They are encouraged to buy it after their service is up! (Though it's converted to semi auto at that point.)
SBRs should be legal anyway. They are only NFA firearms to begin with because the law was originally going to cover handguns too and they were worried about obrez style loopholes. But then they stripped the handgun portion out.
people get really mad at me when I make this comparison but a lot of anti-gun liberals genuinely sound like conservatives talking about sex ed when it comes to any discussion about firearms
Okay, but have you considered that I feel very righteous?
look, i've said before that this site loves to talk about things it doesn't really know the basics on, which usually hits me whenever I say anything about AI, but man alive it's way worse when it comes to talking about firearms
WHAT'S GOING ON WITH THE MOON? ✨ a thread because everyone is confused.
This site could use more fun lunatics
I get the distinct feeling that within a lot of left communities the ones who are not insane are reluctant to earnestly try to do anything about the insane ones and somehow also believe this doesn't reflect poorly on them
OpenAI actually just hires guys off Fiver and Mechanical Turk to answer questions
Prayer works, and oh yeah sometimes praying kids will get shot in the head in a church, hmm they’ll explain that one to me after I’m dead
People can rationalize anything. Only way you can get from the new testament to "empathy is a sin"