The "regressive left" and other sundry items.

[Tree]

Well that was the major point of disagreement over what to do with the refugees. And you weren't taken out of context.

 

[Tree]

DeVos was on the advisery board for the Student Statesmanship Institute, which is pro-creationism and anti-gay. This is beside the whole "Kingdom of God" thing.

SSI is an organization for right-wing Christian students who want to be leaders and deals with a lot of different things, to reduce it all to "pro-creationism and anti-gay" is disingenuous and even more disingenuous to assume that everyone who supports SSI is a creationist just by association but oh well that's Daily Kos for you, a hysterical rag. It's also disingenuous to assume every creationist is a YEC.

I'd like to direct your attention to the website itself and how the staff presents itself:

https://ssionline.org/about-us/

Now I don't know if they're creationist or not, probably they are to some degree, but if creationist activism was such a core part of what they do, why haven't they listed it on the page where they present themselves?


Then you have a bit of alarmist stuff about "dominionism" sprinkled at the end. Well so far so good, it hasn't happened and never happened even when America was way more religious.

You honestly do not see how placing a YEC in charge of education can be a problem? What is next, you are going to argue that placing a climate change denier as head of the EPA is also not a problem?

You'd have to first establish that she's a YEC and then you'd have to compare options as well, being a YEC isn't the worst thing you can be, I argue it would be far more damaging to have an SJW in charge of education for example because that far left ideology infiltrates all aspects of education, including the hard sciences that aren't supposed to be political. How that manifests is very simple: It's enough if a science teacher who is a far leftist spends 5 minutes off-topic to promote his ideology. If students don't get a counter-point and they see him as an authority figure, they'll believe it and you get indoctrination.

Where do you think all these over-the-top SJW millennials come from if not a broken education system that's been facilitating this crap for years? They're not a fringe anymore nor limited to one university or one specific region. This isn't natural behavior, you have to be conditioned to be this level of stupid and have such bad character:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfqAkUXKT5Y

Correct, my only point would be that a they could not be a good lawyer and a creationist. Creationism is, from top to bottom, logical fallacies. If someone was a lawyer and a creationist, I would find myself a new lawyer, since they obviously have a problem with logic or are extremely biased.

Or they never cared about the subject in the first place, which isn't so hard to believe if you only study the law. By the way smart people have idiotic views outside of their field all the time. Would it be fair to dismiss everything Chomsky has done in linguistics because I think his "libertarian socialist" ideology is total nonsense on every level? It really is, if you think you can get rid of all governments and then workers will somehow get all the means of productions and you'll have worker controlled economies and everything will be great - you're on a level of delusion that is at least comparable to that of YEC. Sorry but the only thing anarchy produces is a pile of unpredictable chaos. Expecting humans to exist without some form of government is like expecting ants to exist without colonies.

The only thing that matters is that they are able to present a case. My case. If you got a good track record and can win my case, you're hired. If not, I don't care how rational or skeptical you claim to be and those aren't even the main qualities a lawyer needs. Charisma is way more important.

Even Fred Phelps was apparently an effective civil rights lawyer despite his craziness.

Speaking of 42% of the population being creationists, that's sad, but you don't do science with the bottom 42% of the population, you do it with a very small very elite group of thousands of people. Those are the people that actually need to know what they're doing.

 

[Gnug215]

Well that was the major point of disagreement over what to do with the refugees. And you weren't taken out of context.

And

I talked a little about this above.

I think there's something to be said for being the "bigger man", not just to take the moral highground and then gloat about it later, but maybe us taking them in could actually make them change their ways, and eventually they would welcome us if needed?

I think there are times when you should be the "bigger man". This isn't one of them. If wanted 100% eye for an eye, well let's just say it can get a lot worse than being denied entry into a country as a refugee, no need to be graphic about it. People should be treated fairly but at the same time they should not be allowed to take advantage of you. I don't believe in turning the other cheek, there has to be a better balance between full vengeance and pathological altruism. Both extremes will lead to your downfall.

Also giving people free stuff doesn't make them good, otherwise dictators who literally have everything would be the nicest people on Earth.

So was that the only major point of disagreement in my entire post?
I'm not demanding that you respond to all my babbling, I'm just surprised... and wondering.

And well, I kinda do feel as if I was taken out of context a bit, because the rest of paragraph that you quoted from was the important bit, in which I move away from it having to be a moral subject, into one of "economy" or good sense.
Also, throughout my post, I make it clear (I should hope?) that I'm not advocating fully open doors. And I also see that you don't seem to be advocating fully closed doors.

So are we both talking about "reasonable amounts" of fugitives?


Now for some other stuff you said that I would like to ask about and comment on, if you don't mind.

That's nice but I didn't support Trump for his Christian values, I supported him because he was strong leadership material and the only one who could have defeated the left. Actually if you forced me to place my money on it, I wouldn't be surprised if he's not religious at all.

[...]
Also regressive leftist propaganda on college campuses is far bigger threat than YEC in high school. Unless you're a biologist, and students passionate about it will generally figure out creationism is bullshit on their own anyway, it really doesn't matter if you believe nonsense about evolution. A lawyer can still be a good lawyer even if he doesn't have a clue at all about biology. But if you buy into far left "fuck America fuck white males I'm a victim wah wah wah" politics you're going to be a very negative influence in society no matter what your career path is.

Personally, between someone with no degree and gender studies, I'd choose the one with no degree. You're asking for a frivolous lawsuit or at the very least lots and lots of drama if you hire someone who's been taught how to be a perpetual victim.

First of all, I agree that he's probably not religious at all. All the pandering to the Religious Right that I've seen from him seems insincere at best.

Second, (and feel free to correct me if I'm asking this question "wrong") as someone who doesn't seem to be religious, which parts of the Right's ideological causes do you align with? And which one's don't you?
Also, if I may ask, are you a Republican? Would you call yourself one? Or... maybe I should just ask what your political/ideological "history" is?

I'm asking all this because - with, granted, the limited knowledge of you that I have so far - you strike me as someone who only recently became so vested in politics, and as someone who's mostly acting against something, and not for it.
If that is the case, that is no judgment on my part, since I've pretty much always voted "against" things rather than for something.

At any rate, you're railing a lot against the regressive left and the danger you think they will cause - or have caused. What exactly are these dangers, as you see them?
To me, rabid and insane as many of them seem to be (like the insanity and inanity of Anita Sarkeesian and... well, she's the only name I can put on anyone in that movement, really), they don't come off as being particularly dangerous. As in, I don't see what harmful long-term effects they will have. I really don't see it. Feel free to offer suggestions here, because there's plenty that I've not thought of here, I'm sure. What I do see is a movement that is loud, shrieking, really, really annoying and just about ready to die. That kind of crazy will surely run out of steam, soon, and they don't seem to be making any friends at all, just more enemies.

This is not to say that I'm just taking them entirely lightly, but I'm certainly taking them less lightly than anything the far Right manages to drum up.

Incidentally, am I to assume that you distance yourself as much from the far (or "Alt" I guess) Right as you seem to expect us here to distance us from the far (Regressive) Left?

Oh, and as for YECs, that goes well beyond biology. Their teachings would affect many other areas of science as well, like astronomy, geology, paleontology, all the sub-sciences of those areas, and heck, even physics. And yeah, YEC's also tend to deny climate change, for various reasons, and most certainly tend to deny doing anything about.
And sure, it may seem harmless to insert some YECism into schools, but it could have far reaching consequences, and it could be devastating to the US in the long run to have upcoming generations be downright scientifially incompetent.

Ok, I think I'm done for now.


EDIT:
I started making this post without having read your latest post.
I notice that you sort of respond to some of my questions and points raised in that post, so just ignore the stuff in my post that you feel you may already have answered.

 

[he_who_is_nobody]

DeVos was on the advisery board for the Student Statesmanship Institute, which is pro-creationism and anti-gay. This is beside the whole "Kingdom of God" thing.

SSI is an organization for right-wing Christian students who want to be leaders and deals with a lot of different things, to reduce it all to "pro-creationism and anti-gay" is disingenuous and even more disingenuous to assume that everyone who supports SSI is a creationist just by association but oh well that's Daily Kos for you, a hysterical rag. It's also disingenuous to assume every creationist is a YEC.

I never reduced it to just being pro-creationism and anti-gay, just pointing out things they cover. Beyond that, if I were on a board for an organisation that agree with most of their mission, you better believe I would release public statements about the parts I do not agree with. Her silence on that is telling. I maybe going to far to call her a YEC, but honestly, any form of creationism should not be given any place of power in education just based on the Establishment Clause. This administration seems to have a huge problem with the Establishment Clause. I see that you ignored the whole Kingdom of God thing though.

I'd like to direct your attention to the website itself and how the staff presents itself:

https://ssionline.org/about-us/

Now I don't know if they're creationist or not, probably they are to some degree, but if creationist activism was such a core part of what they do, why haven't they listed it on the page where they present themselves?

I do not know. You tell me.

Then you have a bit of alarmist stuff about "dominionism" sprinkled at the end. Well so far so good, it hasn't happened and never happened even when America was way more religious.

Thank to the Establishment Clause.

You honestly do not see how placing a YEC in charge of education can be a problem? What is next, you are going to argue that placing a climate change denier as head of the EPA is also not a problem?

You'd have to first establish that she's a YEC and then you'd have to compare options as well, being a YEC isn't the worst thing you can be, I argue it would be far more damaging to have an SJW in charge of education for example because that far left ideology infiltrates all aspects of education, including the hard sciences that aren't supposed to be political. How that manifests is very simple: It's enough if a science teacher who is a far leftist spends 5 minutes off-topic to promote his ideology. If students don't get a counter-point and they see him as an authority figure, they'll believe it and you get indoctrination.

Sitting on a creationism private school board is not enough, what is enough to show that she is a creationist? Beyond that, your tu quoque fallacy, which is also just based on a counterfactual will be ignored. The Secretary of Education should be someone that is knowledgeable about all subjects a student from K-12 receives. Her being a creationist is enough for her not to have that job, doubly because of the Establishment Clause.

I would also just like to point out the hilarity in that you want us to stand up against the Regressive Left, while being fine and excusing regressive policies that come from the right, because you do not believe them to be as bad.

Where do you think all these over-the-top SJW millennials come from if not a broken education system that's been facilitating this crap for years? They're not a fringe anymore nor limited to one university or one specific region. This isn't natural behavior, you have to be conditioned to be this level of stupid and have such bad character:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfqAkUXKT5Y

I think a lot of them come from edited videos like that. I remember being in college and yelling at people during protests. That is hardly the best place to find articulate nuanced discussion about anything. Again, have fun tilting at windmills.

Speaking of protests, I will be at my local March for Science speaking to people about evolution, climate change, and vaccines. Three things this administration seems to be against.

Correct, my only point would be that a they could not be a good lawyer and a creationist. Creationism is, from top to bottom, logical fallacies. If someone was a lawyer and a creationist, I would find myself a new lawyer, since they obviously have a problem with logic or are extremely biased.

Or they never cared about the subject in the first place, which isn't so hard to believe if you only study the law. By the way smart people have idiotic views outside of their field all the time. Would it be fair to dismiss everything Chomsky has done in linguistics because I think his "libertarian socialist" ideology is total nonsense on every level? It really is, if you think you can get rid of all governments and then workers will somehow get all the means of productions and you'll have worker controlled economies and everything will be great - you're on a level of delusion that is at least comparable to that of YEC. Sorry but the only thing anarchy produces is a pile of unpredictable chaos. Expecting humans to exist without some form of government is like expecting ants to exist without colonies.

You skipped right by the part that lawyers use logic when arguing and creationism is logical fallacies from top to bottom. As I already said, a lawyer could very well not accept evolution just out of ignorance, but for them to be a creationist is a different story. They should, even without knowing a thing about biology, seem all the logical fallacies that hold up creationism. Now, you are correct that smart people are idiots outside of their field, but one of the qualification for being a lawyer is having a mastery over logic. That was the point I was making.

The only thing that matters is that they are able to present a case. My case. If you got a good track record and can win my case, you're hired. If not, I don't care how rational or skeptical you claim to be and those aren't even the main qualities a lawyer needs. Charisma is way more important.

Do you honestly think someone that has not mastered logic can have a good track record as a lawyer? Charisma can only take you so far, especially when someone else can also have charisma and a mastery of logic.

Even Fred Phelps was apparently an effective civil rights lawyer despite his craziness.

He was a civil rights lawyer before he went crazy with Westboro. What is this supposed to prove?

Speaking of 42% of the population being creationists, that's sad, but you don't do science with the bottom 42% of the population, you do it with a very small very elite group of thousands of people. Those are the people that actually need to know what they're doing.

You realize that science does not happen in a vacuum, right? You realize that lots of science is funded by the public, right? That means if those people do not accept the science that the scientists are working on, there is a good chance that their funding could be cut. This is beyond the fact that in order to have a robust democracy, one first needs to have an educated populist. I mean, if people understood some basic physics and geology, do you think there would be this public debate about climate change? Without an educated public, it is far easier to sue the seeds of doubt.

Jason Colavito[/url]"]But there is a similarity between creationism, Nazism, Maoism, and all of the other totalizing ideologies that demand a purge of science, the humanities, and thought itself. They all fear the power of knowledge, and they all fear that even a hint of awareness that there are other ways to think, to act, and to live will collapse their simplistic and militant ideologies into rubble. Faith militant requires soldiers to fight for it, and no one fights to the death better than a fanatic.

 

[Tree]

So was that the only major point of disagreement in my entire post?
I'm not demanding that you respond to all my babbling, I'm just surprised... and wondering.

There were other disagreements, but I didn't feel they were really worth dragging on for too long. It's nothing personal or anything, I'm really limited with time these days.

And well, I kinda do feel as if I was taken out of context a bit, because the rest of paragraph that you quoted from was the important bit, in which I move away from it having to be a moral subject, into one of "economy" or good sense.
Also, throughout my post, I make it clear (I should hope?) that I'm not advocating fully open doors. And I also see that you don't seem to be advocating fully closed doors.

So are we both talking about "reasonable amounts" of fugitives?

I don't know why you keep saying "fugitives", we're talking about refugees here.

But to clarify, no, I don't want any refugees from Syria specifically, or any country that has bad relationships with the western world, because you don't know where their loyalties lie and there is no reliable way to distinguish between a moderate or an extremist. Even government officials have said there's no full proof vetting method. Literally the only way to tell would be to read minds.

I will say this, there are other solutions that could be considered such as resettling them in a more similar country or creating safe zones in Syria. Syrian safe zones cost far less, protect more people and don't risk the lives of any American citizen, except maybe the military assigned to guard those zones. But danger is part of the job description, you sign up for it. Regular civilians didn't sign up for it.

So don't say I was in favor of doing nothing.

First of all, I agree that he's probably not religious at all. All the pandering to the Religious Right that I've seen from him seems insincere at best.

Second, (and feel free to correct me if I'm asking this question "wrong") as someone who doesn't seem to be religious, which parts of the Right's ideological causes do you align with? And which one's don't you?

The right is wide spectrum of views, but I agree with the general principles of having a free market, individual liberty with individual responsibility, and being distrustful of too much government intervention in the lives of citizens as well as having a government that puts its citizens first, so I'm a bit of a nationalist too, not a fan of globalism.

Where I disagree:
1. Some on the right get a bit too religious and I wish they would articulate their arguments in secular terms if they want to be taken seriously. If you want to argue that abortion is wrong because an embryo has a soul - not interested in that argument. But if you want to argue that abortion should be illegal after 3 months because the baby can feel pain, at least that is backed up by science so I support it.
2. Not particularly a fan of free trade, I think the government should regulate trade between countries far more than it regulates trade within the same borders, particularly when you're dealing with a country like China. Honest workers in the US should not have to compete with near slave labor in the third world. Slavery has no place in a genuine free market, all transactions have to be voluntary. Since China doesn't even have free speech, that puts into question whether or not a Chinese worker even truly consents to work in these western multinationals who ship jobs overseas. After all, we can all agree that a trafficked prostitute can't consent to sex either because she's under coercion from a pimp who probably kidnapped and drugged her.
3. While I'm far more supportive of free markets than the average mainstream rightist, I'm not a libertarian either. I think they're naive on way too many issues. They're naive on trade with China, I have no idea how you can have a "free market" with China, when China one giant apparatus of GOVERNMENT COERCION, the very thing libertarians claim they hate. Libertarians are also naive on foreign policy, naive on borders and I've even seen some argue that the age of consent is coercive and unfair government intrusion into people's lives which proves to me that they have no grasp of individual responsibility and just want a consequence free world to do whatever they like.
4. The mainstream right and the libertarians in particular are too soft on Islam. I feel embarrassed when these people repeat the same lies the left does that "Islam is a religion of peace". When I hear that I immediately think of how absurd it would be if someone of the caliber of Reagan said "communism is an ideology of peace" during the Cold War. He would have been laughed off the stage, not given applause. These sorts of statements make America look weak and are totally uncalled for. You cannot build a coherent foreign and immigration policy on LIES.
5. As far as welfare (for adult people) goes, I'm not in favor of any form of wealth redistribution unless you're literally half dead so that might make me a little more right-wing than some mainstream right-wingers and less right-wing than hardcore libertarians. So if someone came up with a good plan to deal strictly with starving people or people with a medical emergency (and by emergency I mean you're bleeding out and will probably die within 24 hours if you don't get help) and it only cost the taxpayer 1-2% of their income or something like that or the cost was partially shifted to private charity, I might support that.

These grand wealth redistribution schemes where you have subsidies, failing banks being bailed out, (all supported even by mainstream Republicans) and single parents being given free money just because they exist - no I don't support any of that.

6. The attitudes on sex of the religious right are frankly ridiculous and unworkable. I mean I want to promote family values as much as they do, but I don't think abstinence programs and criminalizing prostitution does the job. Then again the regressive left is proving to be just as sexually repressed by trying to tell men they shouldn't like beautiful women or that prostitutes are always victims and can never consent.
7. Obviously I don't like creationism, I just don't see it a deal breaker.

Where I'm a little undecided:
1. Climate Change - I'm not denying it's a thing, I just don't see any viable policy to handle it unless you want to go back to a pre-industrial era with all the horrors of that era. There is no way you can sustain our civilization without fossil fuels. The end game of the left would make energy so insanely expensive that only the rich could afford it. Solar and wind are nowhere as efficient as fossil fuels. Nuclear is nowhere near as widespread and the more radical elements of the left oppose even that.
2. Drugs - I lean towards a full decriminalization but I also have to admit that might not solve the crime problem at all if these criminals simply start catering to more degenerate tastes to keep the cash flowing (we're talking about snuff films, child porn, cannibalism, sadism all that shit - so far that's better under control because all the gangs make enough profit from drugs and they don't touch that other shit, they don't need to kidnap people and torture them for the entertainment of the most depraved elements on society), so I dunno, maybe this war on drugs prevents a worse more degenerate societal outcome, maybe not and we're just wasting money trying to save the lives of deadbeats and failures.

Also, if I may ask, are you a Republican? Would you call yourself one? Or... maybe I should just ask what your political/ideological "history" is?

I definitely support the Republican party more than the Democrats. My history is that I started off as a wishy washy centrist with no clear political ideology and then became more right-wing over the years as I learned more about right-wing principles and also saw the damage that big intrusive governments do around the world. Take Venezuela for example, horrible system. They would have been better off with just a minarchy, that's how much the government failed them on every level.

I'm asking all this because - with, granted, the limited knowledge of you that I have so far - you strike me as someone who only recently became so vested in politics, and as someone who's mostly acting against something, and not for it.
If that is the case, that is no judgment on my part, since I've pretty much always voted "against" things rather than for something.

I don't have a long history vested in politics but then again I'm a relatively young adult so I never had time to get it.

At any rate, you're railing a lot against the regressive left and the danger you think they will cause - or have caused. What exactly are these dangers, as you see them?

There are many dangers posed by the regressive left for example:

1. Identity politics that divide people into men vs. women, black vs. white and so on that try to paint white males as an "oppressor" class, that's bound to lead to violence and in fact has, many blacks have been brainwashed by the regressive left's propaganda to hate all whites, so this is like a reverse KKK movement

Remember those four blacks who kidnapped a disabled white guy, tortured him while filming it and saying "fuck white people, fuck Donald Trump"? Where do you think they got those ideas from if not the regressive left?

2. The unproductive victim mentality that they promote among women and minorities

3. The normalization of violence against right-wingers, remember the whole "let's punch a Nazi" even though Richard Spencer isn't technically a Nazi and it wouldn't matter because assaulting people who disagree with you is barbaric

4. The obsession with group outcomes instead of actual individual merit, if Congress isn't 50% women they whine about it, no concern is given to the possibility that maybe women just aren't as interested in politics, besides mandating 50% women in Congress would be extremely undemocratic since it overrides the will of the people, whatever that might be

5. The normalization of mental illness that's part of the trans movement, if a bearded guy thinks he's a woman and you don't acknowledge him as such as you're now a "transphobe", I think it's very dangerous to dictate other people's perception of reality, what's next? Multiple IDs for people with multiple personality disorder?

6. The obsession with getting people fired for being what they consider to be "racist", "sexist" and "transphobic", as if that has anything to do with their job

They say they're for worker's rights, but they want you fired if you think wrong and they're going to harass your employer until he fires you. What a joke.

7. Their undue hatred for what they consider to be "fascism" (which isn't really fascism but center right policies but they don't like and mildly nationalist policies) contrasted with their undue love for Islam (which actually resembles fascism in many ways and is in any case against every progressive value these people claim to have), one time they even had Muslims screaming "Allahu Akbar" at a women's rally

8. Their desire to lower standards of evidence for proving rape because they don't believe enough rapists are being convicted, this is a danger to the legal system and already it's possible to be fully acquitted of rape in a criminal trial but still expelled from college for rape because they've lowered the standards for proving rape in a college setting.

9. Their language policing

10. Their general contempt for western culture as just a product of "rich white males who owned slaves" and their one-sided view of history where the western world is always the bad guy and non-western people can do no wrong and have no responsibility of their own

11. Their constant incitement of riots for trivial bullshit, their sympathy to criminals who resist arrest and get shot as a result and their constant excuses for bad behavior as long as it comes from women or minorities.

12. Many of these people are openly against capitalism and some are even openly communist. I don't see how you can have a free society with no private property. Oh sure you can have some welfare, but regular leftists still rely on capitalism to create this wealth. Far leftists completely hate the system. If they could, they would take everything you own and only give you what they think you will need. The far left is a danger to the American system founded on private property and free markets. You can't have liberty if you don't keep what you earn.

13. Pathological altruism. The fact that they're easily manipulated by globalist interests (such as multinationals wanting cheap labor from an oversupply of labor and landlords wanting higher rents from a larger population) with words like "xenophobe" and "intolerant" to act in ways that doesn't serve the interest of their country.

You don't think trade with China in its current form is good? Xenophobe. You hate the Chinese.
You don't want to be part of the EU? You want Brexit? Xenophobe.
You don't want refugee quotas? Xenophobe, racist, Islamophobe.

14. The regressive left have shown contempt for the family and seem to think parents don't really have a right but a privilege to raise their children.

See:
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-35752756

This is just one example of how the far left wants to intrude in your family life. I'm not saying genuinely abusive parenting should be tolerated, but this is going way too far.

Incidentally, am I to assume that you distance yourself as much from the far (or "Alt" I guess) Right as you seem to expect us here to distance us from the far (Regressive) Left?

I don't like the alt right either, not in its most common form run by the likes of Richard Spencer. They might make a point here and there, but they're a racist (in the true sense) movement at the core with an unworkable ideology and should be avoided. That said, I think the excesses of the regressive left has made them more popular than they deserve to be. You didn't hear about them years ago. They were nobodies, now they get interviews.

There are some people who called themselves alt right who aren't racist and I think they're being played and should distance themselves from this movement. If I recall correctly Milo once said he's alt right. He's not a mainstream conservative so in a way he is literally an "alternative right-winger" but he's no racist either and doesn't believe in all this white identity crap and should stop calling himself "alt right".

Others like Breitbart or Rebel Media have been falsely labelled "alt right" when they're not and never claimed to be.

Trump has also been falsely labeled alt right.

 

[MarsCydonia]

I definitely support the Republican party more than the Democrats. My history is that I started off as a wishy washy centrist with no clear political ideology and then became more right-wing over the years as I learned more about right-wing principles and also saw the damage that big intrusive governments do around the world. Take Venezuela for example, horrible system. They would have been better off with just a minarchy, that's how much the government failed them on every level.

So do you think of countries like Canada or Northern/Western European countries as more or less damaged than Venezuela? As more or less damaged than the U.S.?

 

[Tree]

I don't think Canada or western Europe is at a level anywhere near as bad as Venezuela, Venezuela is significantly more socialist as well as more corrupt, although let me point out, 6 million Jews died and they had no weapons to defend themselves because no European countries trusted regular civilians to have weapons as a right. The EU still hasn't corrected that 70+ years later. Had there been a "gun culture" in Europe during the 30's and 40's, it wouldn't have ended well for the people assigned to round up the Jews.

Eastern Europe was easily taken over and the population was equally defenseless to resist. Well maybe except Serbia, but the gun culture in Serbia is still nothing like the gun culture of the US.

Did Germany learn the right lessons? No. Not entirely anyway and seem to have shifted from genocidal fascism to pathological altruism where they accept a million refugees that they couldn't possibly vet or take care of. Find some balance guys. I would NOT want to be in Germany right now.

If they want to atone for killing 6 million Jews the best they can do is mind their own business, look after their own interests but stop trying to meddle in other countries (that includes pushing refugee quotas on countries that don't want them). Oh and legalize guns as a right not a privilege. They don't need to open the flood gates and endanger their own population.

 

[Visaki]

I think you overestimate the chances of singular civilians with guns going against a military force. If the US goverment wanted to take your guns and had the backing of the military a citizen would have no chance at all to succesfully resist, and being a part of a some sort of a militia would be little better. Sure there would be some casualties and maybe even something one could call a battle against some prepper militia but your AR-15 means, in the end, absolutely nothing against APCs and attack choppers.

Had there been a "gun culture" in Europe during the 30's and 40's the outcome would have been exactly the same, maybe even worse as trained military forces would have purged whole areas because of civilian warfare (just as was done in the East because of partizan activity). Not to mention all the antisemites, which were very, very common in the East, would have had guns too. Just imagine what would have happened if there was an armed jew rebellion in Germany in lets say 1937. You think that would have ended well for the jews? They would have been crushed, and in the aftermath the nazis would have had a good propaganda reason to start the exterminations before the war distracted them from it, or it distracted them from war.

 

[Tree]

The US army has around 1.3 million active personnel, and 800k reserve personnel.

In the highly unlikely but not completely impossible event that the US federal government turned into a dictatorship and started oppressing people, you have to keep in mind that first there would be many defectors within the army itself who would simply refuse to go along with the plan, second the governors of the states would likely resist too, third you're up against a mass of 300 million people, sure some are minors or very old and probably wouldn't fight very well, but no amount of training is going to help you when you're that outnumbered and your own forces are riddled with internal dissent. Better weaponry won't help either. All it takes is one dissident general and then the rebels have their own tanks and drones. Those things can be captured so I'm not really buying this whole "they have drones you lose" routine.

The only thing an aspiring tyrant could possibly do is nuke the whole place but the radiation would kill him too and he'd have no country to govern. So I don't think they would use nukes to crush a rebellion. A tyrant might nuke other countries though so that's another reason to keep the American population armed.

By the way, I'm not saying a singular civilian can do wonders, the whole point of the 2nd amendment is that they are able to band together as militias and so they have to be allowed to own guns, although let's face it, even a single guy barricaded inside his home or in some dark corner of the woods with an AR-15 is a little harder to catch or kill than someone armed with nothing but his bare hands. I know for a fact even the Democrats who are not so pro-guns know this too otherwise why did they want to arm rebels against Assad if it makes no difference whether you have guns or bare hands?

Had there been a "gun culture" in Europe during the 30's and 40's the outcome would have been exactly the same, maybe even worse as trained military forces would have purged whole areas because of civilian warfare (just as was done in the East because of partizan activity). Not to mention all the antisemites, which were very, very common in the East, would have had guns too. Just imagine what would have happened if there was an armed jew rebellion in Germany in lets say 1937. You think that would have ended well for the jews?

Well that's a bit of a speculation, I don't know which specific year they would have started a rebellion, however 1939+ wouldn't have caught them so off-guard.

I'm sure many would have still died, but so would have a lot of Nazis, possibly paving the way for an easier victory. It certainly would have been a more dignified death than starving in a gulag. Occupied territories would have also been much harder to govern so that would have blocked their path to rounding up more Jews. You're not going to have much success if every time you want to go around rounding up Jews or journalists who write naughty things about you or whatever it turns into a massive shootout with the whole neighborhood. That sort of territory is practically ungovernable if they just keep killing your men at a rate where you cannot replace them. In such a territory you can't do regular policing either. So that raises the costs on the tyrants part. He can't just send 2 crooked cops to arrest a dissident, he has to send in 10 soldiers just to be safe or maybe launch a full scale attack on the neighborhood which may seem trivial for you, but it's very costly if you have to do it every time you want to arrest someone or every time you found out some Jews are hiding in someone's house.

Just look at what a poor grasp Assad has these days on his own country. And that's not to say I support the rebels, far from it because they're worse than Assad, but the principle is the same.

Are you familiar with the term "zerging"? That's what I'd recommend when you have large numbers but poor training.

They would have been crushed, and in the aftermath the nazis would have had a good propaganda reason to start the exterminations before the war distracted them from it, or it distracted them from war.

Maybe, maybe not, and the 6 million Jews were not all located in Germany by the way, so if there had been a gun culture, they would have had to invade other countries, they would have had to subdue the populations (very difficult if they're armed, trivial if they're not) and maybe then they would have had access to rounding up Jews.

 

[he_who_is_nobody]

Others like Breitbart or Rebel Media have been falsely labelled "alt right" when they're not and never claimed to be.

Sarah Posner[/url]"]"We're [Breitbart] the platform for the alt-right," Bannon told me proudly when I interviewed him at the Republican National Convention (RNC) in July.

 

[Tree]

I'd like to hear him personally say that, I'm not just going to take Sarah Posner's word for it especially when I can't find the transcript of this interview that supposedly took place in 2016 anywhere. Who does interviews without recording them in some form, whether it's written or audio/video recorded? This doesn't seem credible even on the surface of it.

If I missed it, let me know, but I don't think you're going to find it.

So.... was this "interview" off the record then? Off the record doesn't count. If this was just a private conversation it's nothing but a he said she said.

Then there's Ben Shapiro. I respect Ben and agree with him on a lot of issues, but he's not on good terms with Breitbart to objectively comment on them. He used to work there and he didn't leave on good terms.

As I pointed out not everyone who says he's alt-right should be automatically assumed to be racist by the way. Plenty of people think it just means a rightist who's not mainstream, literally an "alternative right-winger" and nothing more. It's kind of how some people have a wrong notion of feminism and think "it's just equal rights for women". It's more than that.

If he did use it, I'd advise against it since that has negative implications and associates you with people like Richard Spencer and other white nationalists.

Bannon has admitted to being an economic nationalist, but has rejected the label of a white nationalist.

 

[he_who_is_nobody]

I'd like to hear him personally say that, I'm not just going to take Sarah Posner's word for it especially when I can't find the transcript of this interview that supposedly took place in 2016 anywhere. Who does interviews without recording them in some form, whether it's written or audio/video recorded? This doesn't seem credible even on the surface of it.

If I missed it, let me know, but I don't think you're going to find it.

So.... was this "interview" off the record then? Off the record doesn't count. If this was just a private conversation it's nothing but a he said she said.

Nice rationalisation there, especially after:

Remember those four blacks who kidnapped a disabled white guy, tortured him while filming it and saying "fuck white people, fuck Donald Trump"? Where do you think they got those ideas from if not the regressive left?

Thus, you can jump to one conclusion, yet not accept a reporter simply based on your bias. Got it.

As I pointed out not everyone who says he's alt-right should be automatically assumed to be racist by the way. Plenty of people think it just means a rightist who's not mainstream, literally an "alternative right-winger" and nothing more. It's kind of how some people have a wrong notion of feminism and think "it's just equal rights for women". It's more than that.

Beyond the fact that I cannot wait for a non-feminist to tell us what feminism is, this is the more appropriate rationalization.

If he did use it, I'd advise against it since that has negative implications and associates you with people like Richard Spencer and other white nationalists.

Exactly. This is what you should have said from the start and dropped all the rationalizations.

Bannon has admitted to being an economic nationalist, but has rejected the label of a white nationalist.

Because we can only use labels that people accept for themselves?

 

[Tree]

It's not a rationalization, interviews usually are recorded or at least there's some transcript of them available somewhere assuming they happened.

And if you merely talked with the person off the record then you shouldn't describe the encounter as a legit "interview".

Thus, you can jump to one conclusion, yet not accept a reporter simply based on your bias. Got it.

The reporter in question also has a bias. Nothing wrong with that provided you disclose it and back up your claims and yet this interview in nowhere to be found in its full form which is very odd. Actually I don't think I've ever seen a reporter not post the interview in some form, whether it's text, audio or video. Given the context too, the RNC, I'd expect audio at the very least too and yet we don't even have text so this immediately strikes me as fishy.

Not saying she's lying, it just seems fishy that this interview is nowhere to be found. Even if it was just aired once someone is always bound to record it and put it online. YouTube is full of that and yet you can't find it on YouTube, you can't find it by googling key words.

Regarding the kidnappers, I didn't just "jump to a conclusion", I followed the pattern and then made a conclusion. Just as you can reach a pretty good conclusion that if there's someone running over people with a vehicle screaming "Allahu Akbar" it's likely someone acting on ISIS propaganda (which has been reported to mention vehicles as potential weapons, so much for gun control) or if there's someone vandalizing animal shelters and freeing the animals it's probably ALF.

These youths are clearly very angry at white people and there's only one likely source that anger could have come from: all those years of regressive left propaganda that paint whites as an "oppressor class" and create a double standard when it comes to behavior.

Maybe they're just psychotic delinquents but I'm not buying it. "Fuck white people, fuck Donald Trump" is a very clear political statement and I've never heard it come from anywhere else other than the far left. You have to be brainwashed by ideologues to have this much hatred to the point where you're willing to kidnap a disabled guy and torture him because he's white.

And all these so-called "anti-racists" - none of them are condemning this as anti-white bigotry. They don't even believe you can be racist against whites because they say "whites have power". Irrelevant. They've redefined the word to suit their agenda.

Beyond the fact that I cannot wait for a non-feminist to tell us what feminism is, this is the more appropriate rationalization.

You're clearly not alt right and yet you talk about them so this isn't an argument. Only being allowed to criticize ideologies and movements you're a part of kinda defeats the whole purpose of criticism doesn't it? Feminism isn't just a dictionary definition, it's a whole ideology where you have to accept a host of propositions such "male privilege" being a thing, "rape culture" or the 30% wage gap caused by sexism and I don't. So I'm not a feminist.

Because we can only use labels that people accept for themselves?

Do you have any reason to believe that Bannon is a white nationalist considering he doesn't support it or act on it?

 

[he_who_is_nobody]

It's not a rationalization, interviews usually are recorded or at least there's some transcript of them available somewhere assuming they happened.

According to you? Here are a few news articles that have quotes from interviews. There are no transcripts of them available online.

And if you merely talked with the person off the record then you shouldn't describe the encounter as a legit "interview".

Is that what happened here? How do you know that? Or are you just rationalizing again?

Thus, you can jump to one conclusion, yet not accept a reporter simply based on your bias. Got it.

The reporter in question also has a bias. Nothing wrong with that provided you disclose it and back up your claims and yet this interview in nowhere to be found in its full form which is very odd. Actually I don't think I've ever seen a reporter not post the interview in some form, whether it's text, audio or video. Given the context too, the RNC, I'd expect audio at the very least too and yet we don't even have text so this immediately strikes me as fishy.

As I pointed out above, there are tons of reporters that use quotes from interviews that are never released online. Not sure why you think this is a problem in this case, besides you trying to spin this.

Not saying she's lying, it just seems fishy that this interview is nowhere to be found. Even if it was just aired once someone is always bound to record it and put it online. YouTube is full of that and yet you can't find it on YouTube, you can't find it by googling key words.

:facepalm:

You are not saying she is lying, you are just saying that this interview did not happen and the quote is fake. You can say you are not saying she is lying, yet it does seem like you are saying she is lying. What else could you be saying?

Beyond that, since she would be using a false quote, Bannon would have a great case for libel against her. Since he works for a man that wants to "open up" the libel laws, one wonders why he has not sued yet.

Regarding the kidnappers, I didn't just "jump to a conclusion", I followed the pattern and then made a conclusion. Just as you can reach a pretty good conclusion that if there's someone running over people with a vehicle screaming "Allahu Akbar" it's likely someone acting on ISIS propaganda (which has been reported to mention vehicles as potential weapons, so much for gun control) or if there's someone vandalizing animal shelters and freeing the animals it's probably ALF.

Yet reading a reporter quoting Bannon about Breitbart makes you jump to so many rationalizations. One wonders why.

These youths are clearly very angry at white people and there's only one likely source that anger could have come from: all those years of regressive left propaganda that paint whites as an "oppressor class" and create a double standard when it comes to behavior.

Maybe they're just psychotic delinquents but I'm not buying it. "Fuck white people, fuck Donald Trump" is a very clear political statement and I've never heard it come from anywhere else other than the far left. You have to be brainwashed by ideologues to have this much hatred to the point where you're willing to kidnap a disabled guy and torture him because he's white.

Again, yet you can read a reporter quote something from Bannon and rationalize it away. Oh, not sure what you think my leanings are yet, but fuck Trump. The man cannot control his own party, yet he thinks he can run a country. What a joke.

And all these so-called "anti-racists" - none of them are condemning this as anti-white bigotry. They don't even believe you can be racist against whites because they say "whites have power". Irrelevant. They've redefined the word to suit their agenda.

You are a fan of the tu quoque. One wonders if you will ever respond without making it. Oh, I am not sure what "anti-racists" that are not condemning this; but to the ones that are not, fuck you too.

Beyond the fact that I cannot wait for a non-feminist to tell us what feminism is, this is the more appropriate rationalization.

You're clearly not alt right and yet you talk about them so this isn't an argument. Only being allowed to criticize ideologies and movements you're a part of kinda defeats the whole purpose of criticism doesn't it?

I am criticizing it? Providing one quote from a reporter does not a criticism make. However, I never said what you are accusing me of. One can criticize anything they like. My point was, and you go on to demonstrate this brilliantly, non-X criticising X always turns into the non-X straw manning what X is in the first place. Just like how Christians love to tell me that I am not an atheist because, "atheist means active disbelief in God." And creationist love to tell me that I am not talking about evolution because, "evolution is a cat giving birth to a dog."

Feminism isn't just a dictionary definition, it's a whole ideology where you have to accept a host of propositions such "male privilege" being a thing, "rape culture" or the 30% wage gap caused by sexism and I don't. So I'm not a feminist.

As a feminist, I am here to tell you that you do not have to accept that those are currently the case. Do you recognize that there was a wage gap and male privilege? You already said you are pro-choice, thus you are closer to feminism than you are to being a True Republican[sup]TM[/sup].

Because we can only use labels that people accept for themselves?

Do you have any reason to believe that Bannon is a white nationalist considering he doesn't support it or act on it?

I never said he was. I am simply asking if we cannot label others on their actions simply because they say they are not.

 

[Gnug215]

There were other disagreements, but I didn't feel they were really worth dragging on for too long. It's nothing personal or anything, I'm really limited with time these days.

Fair enough. I understand. I'm limited myself.
I was truly just wondering, though.

And well, I kinda do feel as if I was taken out of context a bit, because the rest of paragraph that you quoted from was the important bit, in which I move away from it having to be a moral subject, into one of "economy" or good sense.
Also, throughout my post, I make it clear (I should hope?) that I'm not advocating fully open doors. And I also see that you don't seem to be advocating fully closed doors.

So are we both talking about "reasonable amounts" of fugitives?

I don't know why you keep saying "fugitives", we're talking about refugees here.

Ugh, it's because I'm a spaz. Mostly just a weird translation error in my head.
(I think it's because the movie "The Fugitive" has a Danish translation that is the same word as "refugee". That movie keeps popping up in my head when talking about this.)

But to clarify, no, I don't want any refugees from Syria specifically, or any country that has bad relationships with the western world, because you don't know where their loyalties lie and there is no reliable way to distinguish between a moderate or an extremist. Even government officials have said there's no full proof vetting method. Literally the only way to tell would be to read minds.

I think your reasoning here is internally sound, but disagree with this course of action. Not just for moral reasons, but for practial long term reasons, too. I've touched upon some of them I think, and getting into specifics would take us both into fairly speculative areas, so I'm not gonna belabor the
Suffice it to say, I think closing everything off would do more harm in the long run.

I will say this, there are other solutions that could be considered such as resettling them in a more similar country or creating safe zones in Syria. Syrian safe zones cost far less, protect more people and don't risk the lives of any American citizen, except maybe the military assigned to guard those zones. But danger is part of the job description, you sign up for it. Regular civilians didn't sign up for it.

So don't say I was in favor of doing nothing.

I hope I haven't implied that you were in favor of doing nothing.

I am in favor of a mix of solutions. But mostly with a focus on pragmatic solutions that don't just cater too bleeding-heart Liberals, or die-hard nationalist Conservatives.

First of all, I agree that he's probably not religious at all. All the pandering to the Religious Right that I've seen from him seems insincere at best.

Second, (and feel free to correct me if I'm asking this question "wrong") as someone who doesn't seem to be religious, which parts of the Right's ideological causes do you align with? And which one's don't you?

The right is wide spectrum of views, but I agree with the general principles of having a free market, individual liberty with individual responsibility, and being distrustful of too much government intervention in the lives of citizens as well as having a government that puts its citizens first, so I'm a bit of a nationalist too, not a fan of globalism.

Well yes, and so is the Left, as I'm sure you'll agree.

I can't really say much against your views there. Maybe apart from saying that I'm less a fan of nationalism than of globalism. I think globalism is a mess, but nationalism is just... weird and unsettling for me. I mean, where you're born is totally random, so to me there is no objective merit in it. I _can_ see the merits in tribalism, in the sense that it's good to care for the groups you're in, but to support your group even when it's wrong always bothered me.
I suppose an "us vs them" mentality is great for uniting a group, but it also divides what could be a larger group. It may sound like hippie bullshit, but the fact of the matter is that there is no reason that we couldn't actually all get along.
That said, I'm not so stupid to think that we ever will. But maybe at least SOME of our wars and conflicts could be avoided if more help was going around.
The inescapable fact of globalism, whether one likes it or not, is that we are more connected now, and that means that a problem in one region WILL spread to another region.
Going back to isolationism would be akin to trying to undoing the industrial revolution. There is no going back.

Where I disagree:
1. Some on the right get a bit too religious and I wish they would articulate their arguments in secular terms if they want to be taken seriously. If you want to argue that abortion is wrong because an embryo has a soul - not interested in that argument. But if you want to argue that abortion should be illegal after 3 months because the baby can feel pain, at least that is backed up by science so I support it.

I'd say that many of them get way too religious, and they practically never articulate their arguments in secular terms, nor in terms of practicalities. It's all about the morality of it. THEIR morality.
As far as abortion goes, I find it really weird and kinda wildly random that the Right latched on to that particular issue. (The same goes for some of their other "pet" issues.)

2. Not particularly a fan of free trade, I think the government should regulate trade between countries far more than it regulates trade within the same borders, particularly when you're dealing with a country like China. Honest workers in the US should not have to compete with near slave labor in the third world. Slavery has no place in a genuine free market, all transactions have to be voluntary. Since China doesn't even have free speech, that puts into question whether or not a Chinese worker even truly consents to work in these western multinationals who ship jobs overseas. After all, we can all agree that a trafficked prostitute can't consent to sex either because she's under coercion from a pimp who probably kidnapped and drugged her.

I wouldn't say I'm a fan of free trade, but I can't deny the progress and prosperity it has given us. Whether or not it has given us more good than bad is hard to say, but overall, I suspect it's the former.
But certainly, China is a big issue that should be dealt with properly, and not just with dollar signs in our eyes.

Incidentally, I'm not sure if you already know this, but I think you'd find many allies on this issue on the Left.

3. While I'm far more supportive of free markets than the average mainstream rightist, I'm not a libertarian either. I think they're naive on way too many issues. They're naive on trade with China, I have no idea how you can have a "free market" with China, when China one giant apparatus of GOVERNMENT COERCION, the very thing libertarians claim they hate. Libertarians are also naive on foreign policy, naive on borders and I've even seen some argue that the age of consent is coercive and unfair government intrusion into people's lives which proves to me that they have no grasp of individual responsibility and just want a consequence free world to do whatever they like.

Libertarianism, when taken to its extreme, is in my view absolutely insane, utterly unrealistic and totally impractical... just as most ideologies, really.

4. The mainstream right and the libertarians in particular are too soft on Islam. I feel embarrassed when these people repeat the same lies the left does that "Islam is a religion of peace". When I hear that I immediately think of how absurd it would be if someone of the caliber of Reagan said "communism is an ideology of peace" during the Cold War. He would have been laughed off the stage, not given applause. These sorts of statements make America look weak and are totally uncalled for. You cannot build a coherent foreign and immigration policy on LIES.

I have honestly never heard anyone other than apologetic muslims call Islam "the religion of peace".
The moniker is a morbid joke by now, having been literally bombed to pieces.

5. As far as welfare (for adult people) goes, I'm not in favor of any form of wealth redistribution unless you're literally half dead so that might make me a little more right-wing than some mainstream right-wingers and less right-wing than hardcore libertarians. So if someone came up with a good plan to deal strictly with starving people or people with a medical emergency (and by emergency I mean you're bleeding out and will probably die within 24 hours if you don't get help) and it only cost the taxpayer 1-2% of their income or something like that or the cost was partially shifted to private charity, I might support that.

These grand wealth redistribution schemes where you have subsidies, failing banks being bailed out, (all supported even by mainstream Republicans) and single parents being given free money just because they exist - no I don't support any of that.

This is probably where we disagree the most, which we could have a whole huge discussion about, but I'm not gonna go into it here. But I will just say that my main reason for being for welfare/wealth redistribution is not a moral one, but a pragmatic/practical one.

6. The attitudes on sex of the religious right are frankly ridiculous and unworkable. I mean I want to promote family values as much as they do, but I don't think abstinence programs and criminalizing prostitution does the job. Then again the regressive left is proving to be just as sexually repressed by trying to tell men they shouldn't like beautiful women or that prostitutes are always victims and can never consent.

I obviously agree with your first sentence here.
About family values, why exactly do you want to promote those?
Lastly, a minor point, but wouldn't you rather say the Reg. Left is being sexually repressive rather than "repressed"?

7. Obviously I don't like creationism, I just don't see it a deal breaker.

Creationism is a huge deal breaker for me. For many reasons.
1: It's insanely stupid. Like, Flat-Earth levels of stupid.
2: As I've said before, it doesn't just restrict itself to a small sub-section of the biological sciences. When taken to its conclusion, it pretty much affects all scientific areas.
3: It basically undermines science and the trust in science.
4: It's fucking religion, and whether you're into that crap or not, it has nothing to do with science.

Where I'm a little undecided:
1. Climate Change - I'm not denying it's a thing, I just don't see any viable policy to handle it unless you want to go back to a pre-industrial era with all the horrors of that era. There is no way you can sustain our civilization without fossil fuels. The end game of the left would make energy so insanely expensive that only the rich could afford it. Solar and wind are nowhere as efficient as fossil fuels. Nuclear is nowhere near as widespread and the more radical elements of the left oppose even that.

I'm glad you're not denying it.
However I'm not sure how you can say what you say next in all seriousness. There has been a huge move towards renewable energy in recent years, and that has in many cases been helped along by policy making.
We WILL be able to sustain civilization without fossil fuels, just not right now. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't move towards that.
Obviously the end game of the Left is not that energy would become more expensive. Why would it be? Many of them may be total ideologues, but they're not that frigging dense.

And saying that solar and wind are "nowhere near" as efficient as FF sounds like a massive exaggeration. We could probably get into a huge source war here, but all the sources I have seen have them relatively close. Solar is still the farthest off, at about twice the price of coal according to some studies, so sure, that's a lot, but I wouldn't call it "nowhere near".

However, there's two things you need to consider here.
First, all the info I've ever seen on this clearly show that wind and solar are gaining on coal, and have been doing so consistently for a long time. Coal seems to have had no development at all.
Second, the price of coal never seems to include the negative effects of it and the "zero-out-of-ground-cost" it has. The zero cost thing is complicated, but the fact is that it isn't renewed, so the fact that it is so cheap is pretty unrealistic in the grand scheme. The negatve effects includes the particles that make people sick, but also climate change.
If coal is "helping" to increase ocean levels, which in the future might, say, drown the entire country of Bangladesh and cause a refugee crisis with 200+ million muslims, and all the problems that will carry with it, then the cost of coal is drastically, drastically low.
I realize doing such a calculation is massively complicated and almost abstract, but I think it has to be done.

Oh, and I'm all for (safe) nuclear power. There should be more development there, with newer generation reactors, and that thorium salt stuff.

2. Drugs - I lean towards a full decriminalization but I also have to admit that might not solve the crime problem at all if these criminals simply start catering to more degenerate tastes to keep the cash flowing (we're talking about snuff films, child porn, cannibalism, sadism all that shit - so far that's better under control because all the gangs make enough profit from drugs and they don't touch that other shit, they don't need to kidnap people and torture them for the entertainment of the most depraved elements on society), so I dunno, maybe this war on drugs prevents a worse more degenerate societal outcome, maybe not and we're just wasting money trying to save the lives of deadbeats and failures.

I think decriminalization would probably be a good idea. At least to try something new, because what is done now is failing.

I'm not so sure that criminals would necessarily cater to more degenerate tastes, but yeah, they would probably move on to greener pastures, whatever those may be.

Also, if I may ask, are you a Republican? Would you call yourself one? Or... maybe I should just ask what your political/ideological "history" is?

I definitely support the Republican party more than the Democrats. My history is that I started off as a wishy washy centrist with no clear political ideology and then became more right-wing over the years as I learned more about right-wing principles and also saw the damage that big intrusive governments do around the world. Take Venezuela for example, horrible system. They would have been better off with just a minarchy, that's how much the government failed them on every level.

Venezuela is horrible indeed, but I like to think there are more examples of good governments around the world? I suppose one could always argue about what constituies "good" in this case, but I see a lot of well-functioning countries around the world.
And I don't think Venezuela can be used as an example of what happens when there's "too much government", but rather what happens when you have "bad government". It is clear that their government, and their leaders in particular are about as corrupt and incompetent as they come.

Now, in case you're wondering if I'm biased here, then, well, I probably am, seeing as I'm from a country with LOTS of government. Denmark, in case you'd missed it. But most people here agree that it's a good thing, and that they're generally doing a good job.

At any rate, you're railing a lot against the regressive left and the danger you think they will cause - or have caused. What exactly are these dangers, as you see them?

There are many dangers posed by the regressive left for example:

1. Identity politics that divide people into men vs. women, black vs. white and so on that try to paint white males as an "oppressor" class, that's bound to lead to violence and in fact has, many blacks have been brainwashed by the regressive left's propaganda to hate all whites, so this is like a reverse KKK movement

Remember those four blacks who kidnapped a disabled white guy, tortured him while filming it and saying "fuck white people, fuck Donald Trump"? Where do you think they got those ideas from if not the regressive left?

While I agree that identity politics play a part in dividing people, I would argue that they are first of all a part of a larger problem (particularly in the US, I'd say), and second they are a reaction to something that initially divided people. What that something is and how it arose is too complicated to get into, but the current division in the US is not just a "something" going on. It's a "something" reacting to "something" that was a reaction to "something" that came before, and so on.
Time passed, the pendulum swung, and here we are. The Regressive Left aren't the first or the worst, but I will say that they are mostly only helping make things worse.

And yes, I saw that case about the four blacks. I won't defend them or the Reg. Left for that, but nor will I say the two things are necessarily 100% connected. Those kids were clearly fucked up, and probably only needed some catalyst.
But by indicting those four for that incident, you'd have to indict a lot of people for shit they've done in the "name of" stuff coming from the Right. (That... pizzagate thing is a recent one that comes to mind.)
Again, I'm not trying to was something clean in other people's dirt, but you can hardly pick a side in this without sounding hypocritical.

2. The unproductive victim mentality that they promote among women and minorities

I don't know enough about this to say anything.

3. The normalization of violence against right-wingers, remember the whole "let's punch a Nazi" even though Richard Spencer isn't technically a Nazi and it wouldn't matter because assaulting people who disagree with you is barbaric

I have really only seen this occur once, and that's in the instance you cite. I don't see this is a general thing for the Left or even the Reg. Left. I may be wrong on the account of the Reg. Left. I don't have enough info there.
If they're doing it, they're incredibly stupid, because it doesn't take a lot of brains to figure out what will be coming their way, then.

Also, the Right has, in my eyes, worse problems there. And again... hands washed.

And for the record, punching people is wrong. What a time we live in for me to have to say that.

4. The obsession with group outcomes instead of actual individual merit, if Congress isn't 50% women they whine about it, no concern is given to the possibility that maybe women just aren't as interested in politics, besides mandating 50% women in Congress would be extremely undemocratic since it overrides the will of the people, whatever that might be

Quotas is a difficult and complicated subject. I don't know enough about it. Perhaps we should all see some studies on it. That said, I can only imagine that it takes time for a "classically male job" to become "normalized". History and traditions do play a part.
However, I will say that brute forcing a 50/50 split right away is not the way to go.

5. The normalization of mental illness that's part of the trans movement, if a bearded guy thinks he's a woman and you don't acknowledge him as such as you're now a "transphobe", I think it's very dangerous to dictate other people's perception of reality, what's next? Multiple IDs for people with multiple personality disorder?

Heh, I like the multiple ID's quip.

But calling transsexuality a mental illness? (You didn't do it totally directly, but that is what you're doing, right?)
I don't know enough about this subject, but I'm pretty sure the psychiatry experts don't consider it that. I mean, is homosexuality a mental illness as well in your eyes?

6. The obsession with getting people fired for being what they consider to be "racist", "sexist" and "transphobic", as if that has anything to do with their job.

They say they're for worker's rights, but they want you fired if you think wrong and they're going to harass your employer until he fires you. What a joke.

I agree that it's an obsession that has run wild, but sometimes it DOES have something to do with their job.

But again, they're not the only ones getting people fired for having "wrong" opinions. Certainly not historically.

7. Their undue hatred for what they consider to be "fascism" (which isn't really fascism but center right policies but they don't like and mildly nationalist policies) contrasted with their undue love for Islam (which actually resembles fascism in many ways and is in any case against every progressive value these people claim to have), one time they even had Muslims screaming "Allahu Akbar" at a women's rally

The term "fascism" gets thrown around too much, yes. And so does the term "communist". Again, more handwashing, but the fact is that it's just more examples of political polarization and people abusing terms and eventually making them meaningless.
I haven't actually seen much of all this love for Islam, but I have seen a tiny bit, and it always surprised me. Mostly because it came from primarily atheist circles.
I can understand a desire to defend certain groups from discrimination, but I cannot see why such groups should get special treatment that goes beyond what is reasonable.

As for that "Allauhu Akbar" scream While I'm not a fan, and I recognize that it has become a motto for many terrorists, the phrase still only means "God is great".

8. Their desire to lower standards of evidence for proving rape because they don't believe enough rapists are being convicted, this is a danger to the legal system and already it's possible to be fully acquitted of rape in a criminal trial but still expelled from college for rape because they've lowered the standards for proving rape in a college setting.

Acquittal should always mean acquittal, sure, but lowering the standards isn't neccessarily wrong. What if the standards are actually too high as is?
There are numerous stories about rape victims receiving poor treatment on the hands of police, and while there are cases of fake accusations, that shouldn't result in actual cases being unfairly treated just on the possibility of it being a fake.
I haven't seen concrete legislation proposals on this, but what I've heard throughout the years has only ever sounded reasonable. (Such as having the police stop asking victims what they were wearing.)

9. Their language policing

Again, both sides do this, but here I'd agree that the Left has generally been worse. I'm also not a fan, but I also don't see massive dangers in this. Mostly because it seems ineffectual.

10. Their general contempt for western culture as just a product of "rich white males who owned slaves" and their one-sided view of history where the western world is always the bad guy and non-western people can do no wrong and have no responsibility of their own

I haven't seen too much of this. And I've always been of the notion that I'm not to blame for what my forefathers did.
However, in the same vein, I'm not much for glorifying my forefathers. They probably pulled just as much shit as they did good deeds. They were just people, and now they're dead.

11. Their constant incitement of riots for trivial bullshit, their sympathy to criminals who resist arrest and get shot as a result and their constant excuses for bad behavior as long as it comes from women or minorities.

As I'm not in the US, I haven't seen much of this. However, it seems clear to me that it's not all incitement of riots, but calls to protests and demonstrations.
Having said that... whether it's riots or protests, both seem impotently ineffectual, so the fact that they want to do it so much smells more like a desire to let off steam rather than have an actual effect on things.
(That goes for both sides again...)

12. Many of these people are openly against capitalism and some are even openly communist. I don't see how you can have a free society with no private property. Oh sure you can have some welfare, but regular leftists still rely on capitalism to create this wealth. Far leftists completely hate the system. If they could, they would take everything you own and only give you what they think you will need. The far left is a danger to the American system founded on private property and free markets. You can't have liberty if you don't keep what you earn.

I haven't heard anyone advocate communism in many years. My experience is that most people on the left are "socialdemocratic capitalists". Whatever fraction of the Left that would do away with capitalism seems to me to be so small and insignificant to ever pose a threat.

13. Pathological altruism. The fact that they're easily manipulated by globalist interests (such as multinationals wanting cheap labor from an oversupply of labor and landlords wanting higher rents from a larger population) with words like "xenophobe" and "intolerant" to act in ways that doesn't serve the interest of their country.

You don't think trade with China in its current form is good? Xenophobe. You hate the Chinese.
You don't want to be part of the EU? You want Brexit? Xenophobe.
You don't want refugee quotas? Xenophobe, racist, Islamophobe.

Hmm, wouldn't that be more along the lines of "misguided altruism"?

But sure, many people are easily swayed by, shall we say, "the hip new ideologically driven pet peeve of the day". Again, both sides. Remembe the whole "Don't support the war? Well, you can geeeet out, traitor!"

14. The regressive left have shown contempt for the family and seem to think parents don't really have a right but a privilege to raise their children.

See:
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-35752756

This is just one example of how the far left wants to intrude in your family life. I'm not saying genuinely abusive parenting should be tolerated, but this is going way too far.

There is no shortage on shitty parents that have no frigging place raising a kid. That said, yes, this sounds like going too far. But that's what tends to happen in societies. Eventually we tend to go too far in trying to solve a problem. War on Drugs, anyone?
Yet again, both sides are highly guilty here, but they do tend to focus on different things.

Incidentally, am I to assume that you distance yourself as much from the far (or "Alt" I guess) Right as you seem to expect us here to distance us from the far (Regressive) Left?

I don't like the alt right either, not in its most common form run by the likes of Richard Spencer. They might make a point here and there, but they're a racist (in the true sense) movement at the core with an unworkable ideology and should be avoided. That said, I think the excesses of the regressive left has made them more popular than they deserve to be. You didn't hear about them years ago. They were nobodies, now they get interviews.

There are some people who called themselves alt right who aren't racist and I think they're being played and should distance themselves from this movement. If I recall correctly Milo once said he's alt right. He's not a mainstream conservative so in a way he is literally an "alternative right-winger" but he's no racist either and doesn't believe in all this white identity crap and should stop calling himself "alt right".

Others like Breitbart or Rebel Media have been falsely labelled "alt right" when they're not and never claimed to be.

Trump has also been falsely labeled alt right.

Good to hear that you don't like the Alt. Right. I hope I've also made it clear that I don't like the Reg. Left throughout my posts.

And yes, I think putting the Alt. Right label on Trump is wrong.

To me, he's just Alt.


So... this got long. Sorry, but I have a tendency to want to respond to everything. That doesn't mean I expect the same from you.

As a final comment... I find it kinda funny that both of us seem to be exaggerating the dangers that we see from our respective other sides, while downplaying the severity of our own sides.
I guess it just means we essentially have the same end goal (a better society), but slightly different priorities and perspectives.