No, that's the problem - it's not good advocacy. The destructionist movement is more appropriately seen as arbitraging away existing concern about the issues they claim to take up. Their politicians' main use for reformist political causes are as cudgels for threatening businesses with, after which they back off once their own pockets get lined. As a libertarian who cares about many of the causes of individual freedom they dishonestly champion, I'm well acquainted with their abuse of ideals.
I was shooting heroin and reading “The Fountainhead” in the front seat of my privately owned police cruiser when a call came in. I put a quarter in the radio to activate it. It was the chief.
“Bad news, detective. We got a situation.”
“What? Is the mayor trying to ban trans fats again?”
“Worse. Somebody just stole four hundred and forty-seven million dollars’ worth of bitcoins.”
The heroin needle practically fell out of my arm. “What kind of monster would do something like that? Bitcoins are the ultimate currency: virtual, anonymous, stateless. They represent true economic freedom, not subject to arbitrary manipulation by any government. Do we have any leads?”
“Not yet. But mark my words: we’re going to figure out who did this and we’re going to take them down … provided someone pays us a fair market rate to do so.”
“Easy, chief,” I said. “Any rate the market offers is, by definition, fair.”
He laughed. “That’s why you’re the best I got, Lisowski. Now you get out there and find those bitcoins.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m on it.”
I put a quarter in the siren. Ten minutes later, I was on the scene. It was a normal office building, strangled on all sides by public sidewalks. I hopped over them and went inside.
“Home Depot™ Presents the Police!®” I said, flashing my badge and my gun and a small picture of Ron Paul. “Nobody move unless you want to!” They didn’t.
“Now, which one of you punks is going to pay me to investigate this crime?” No one spoke up.
“Come on,” I said. “Don’t you all understand that the protection of private property is the foundation of all personal liberty?”
It didn’t seem like they did.
“Seriously, guys. Without a strong economic motivator, I’m just going to stand here and not solve this case. Cash is fine, but I prefer being paid in gold bullion or autographed Penn Jillette posters.”
Nothing. These people were stonewalling me. It almost seemed like they didn’t care that a fortune in computer money invented to buy drugs was missing.
I figured I could wait them out. I lit several cigarettes indoors. A pregnant lady coughed, and I told her that secondhand smoke is a myth. Just then, a man in glasses made a break for it.
“Subway™ Eat Fresh and Freeze, Scumbag!®” I yelled.
Too late. He was already out the front door. I went after him.
“Stop right there!” I yelled as I ran. He was faster than me because I always try to avoid stepping on public sidewalks. Our country needs a private-sidewalk voucher system, but, thanks to the incestuous interplay between our corrupt federal government and the public-sidewalk lobby, it will never happen.
I was losing him. “Listen, I’ll pay you to stop!” I yelled. “What would you consider an appropriate price point for stopping? I’ll offer you a thirteenth of an ounce of gold and a gently worn ‘Bob Barr ‘08’ extra-large long-sleeved men’s T-shirt!”
He turned. In his hand was a revolver that the Constitution said he had every right to own. He fired at me and missed. I pulled my own gun, put a quarter in it, and fired back. The bullet lodged in a U.S.P.S. mailbox less than a foot from his head. I shot the mailbox again, on purpose.
“All right, all right!” the man yelled, throwing down his weapon. “I give up, cop! I confess: I took the bitcoins.”
“Why’d you do it?” I asked, as I slapped a pair of Oikos™ Greek Yogurt Presents Handcuffs® on the guy.
“Because I was afraid.”
“Afraid?”
“Afraid of an economic future free from the pernicious meddling of central bankers,” he said. “I’m a central banker.”
I wanted to coldcock the guy. Years ago, a central banker killed my partner. Instead, I shook my head.
“Let this be a message to all your central-banker friends out on the street,” I said. “No matter how many bitcoins you steal, you’ll never take away the dream of an open society based on the principles of personal and economic freedom.”
He nodded, because he knew I was right. Then he swiped his credit card to pay me.
The lack of a capital L is because I'm not whole hog on the "Libertarian" party's kool-aid. In fact, I often argue against much of it as it runs contrary to individual liberty.
On this topic specifically, privacy is an integral part of individual liberty. So claiming to care about privacy, only to simplistically dunk on the more general subject is just odd.
Furthermore, elsewhere in this thread you've espoused the idea of examining arguments on their merits and not who is making them. So it's directly hypocritical to be dismissing my argument based on a quick self-description that I only threw out to mitigate the dynamic of destructionist/fascist cheerleaders writing off all dissent like it's only coming from progressive democrats with blue hair.
Also do you have anything to say about my other points? Your other comments were seemingly substantive, but now you're just being combative for combativeness's sake.
>The destructionist movement is more appropriately seen as arbitraging away existing concern about the issues they claim to take up. Their politicians' main use for reformist political causes are as cudgels for threatening businesses with, after which they back off once their own pockets get lined. As a libertarian who cares about many of the causes of individual freedom they dishonestly champion, I'm well acquainted with their abuse of ideals.
You are making points about their "movement" and generalities about what those politicians do. I don't care about their movement or their general behavior, because I will take this win for privacy to the extent that it is successful at getting devices like this more regulated or (unlikely) eliminated.
Do you think that Trump's coalition is internally values-consistent? I sure don't; but they effectively made abortion illegal in a lot of places, and it seemed to make them happy like it had been a long term goal of theirs or something.
The thing is that I do not see this ending up as a win for privacy. At best it's political grandstanding that will end up in a quid-pro-quo settlement and get dropped by the following news cycle. But there are worse possibilities like it's used as a cudgel to force the manufacturers to add "age verification" (eg sign into an account on the TV to be able to use it at all), or other creeping digital authoritarian dynamic which will then be sold as a "win".
A fundamental difficulty is that there is very little legal basis for a right to privacy. An AG is incapable of changing that, especially after commercial surveillance practices have been around for decades (precluding common-law approaches to novel behavior). Legislatures are where we need constructive action on this topic.
Which is why the generally performative behavior of the destructionists on the vast majority of causes they claim to champion is highly relevant. I'd say the few "successful goals" of the destructionist movement (criminalizing abortion, jackboots attacking minorities, appointing destructionist judges) are exceptions that prove the rule on how generally non-constructive their pushes are.
While I agree (and I agree with the upstream comments, too), there's often deeper reasons why we can short circuit fully evaluating an argument made on its merits: often the "merits", or lack thereof, are derived from the party's values and beliefs, and if we know those values to be corrupt, it's likely that subsequent arguments are going to be similarly corrupt.
There's only so much time in the day, only so much life to live. Could a blog post written by the worst person you know have a good point, even though it's titled something like "An argument in favor of kicking puppies" by Satan himself? I mean, true, I haven't read it, yet. There could be a sound, logical argument buried within.
This is also what "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" teaches, essentially. Trust is hard-won, and easily squandered.
"A lie is around the world before the truth has finished tying its shoes."
"Flood the Zone" is why some of us are so exhausted, though.
In these instances, the argument has to come from someone who is self-aware enough of the short-circuit to say "okay, look, I am going to address that elephant" — but mostly, that's not what happens.
Thankfully in this case, all we need get through is the title.
I don't care about people's values, unless I am evaluating them; that's their own business, and I am not the value police or thought police. Goodness knows there are people (hi, mom!) who are appalled by some of my values.
Roman Polanski and Woody Allen: terrible humans, but they have still made some of the best films that exist.
Everyone is the value police, though, at some level. It is either cowardice or willful ignorance to pretend you don't have judgements about how other people behave, some of which might compel you to act in some way.
It's always important to read the fine print. That would be part of evaluating an argument on its merits. His lawsuit over Tylenol + autism is easily rejected on its merits. That means nothing about this issue.
Yes, it seems as though a politically-aligned congress is ceding lots of its authority to the executive, while the SCOTUS is restraining the rest of the judiciary from checking the executive.
The shame of this is, it is in defiance of the design of the Founders, and will take a LONG time to correct, if we don't descent into authoritarianism before it is corrected.
>Racism is discrimination according to race, not innocently making fun of our differences, as here.
This is racial discrimination.
In fact, racism is the assignment of a non-defining attribute to an entire "race". This is true for even potentially a positive attribute, for example it is still racist to say: "black people are good at basketball" or the trope of the "latin lover" or "asians are good at math"
"Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to inherited attributes and can be divided based on the superiority of one race or ethnicity over another. It may also mean prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against other people because they are of a different ethnic background." [1]
Innocently making fun of people's physical differences does not touch on "behavioral traits", does not "divide based on the superiority of one race or ethnicity over another" and does not involve "prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against other people because they are of a different ethnic background".
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