"Freedom" thread or something

Rob, I said this was going to happen.   It's not even worth arguing with you.   You're so set in your opinion that you can't even hear what I'm saying.
I said before I even used those links that I found them quickly, so obviously I had heard of things before I found them on those sites, so how is it a legitimate argument to question how trustworthy those sites are?   That's one of the biggest problems with conservatism today - you've tapped yourself into a view where you insist that anyone who disagrees with you is untrustworthy, therefore don't listen to anyone but us.   But I say you should listen to EVERYONE, and test out what they have to say. I gotinto a conversation with someone where I used a link from Media Matters in regards to the claim that Fox News lies, and my friend turned it around to say that you can't trust Media Matters.   But the guy who started that site used to work for Fox and used to be quite conservative, and then came to other conclusions later on - so to me that means he knows more about Fox than most and therefore we should pay attention to what he has to say and assume it's true, then test it out rather than assume it's false.   But the whole conservative mindset today protects itself by insisting that everyone that disagrees is a liar.
When I talk about Obama's numbers I am talking about the fact that EVERY minority (blacks, Asian, Hispanic, LGBTQ, women, and even young people) voted for him with very large minority.   So you've got to askyourself: why is it that the only group that is voting republican any more is old white dudes?

dtguitarfan wrote: Rob, I said this was going to happen.   It's not even worth arguing with you.   You're so set in your opinion that you can't even hear what I'm saying. I said before I even used those links that I found them quickly, so obviously I had heard of things before I found them on those sites, so how is it a legitimate argument to question how trustworthy those sites are?   That's one of the biggest problems with conservatism today - you've tapped yourself into a view where you insist that anyone who disagrees with you is untrustworthy, therefore don't listen to anyone but us.   But I say you should listen to EVERYONE, and test out what they have to say. I gotinto a conversation with someone where I used a link from Media Matters in regards to the claim that Fox News lies, and my friend turned it around to say that you can't trust Media Matters.   But the guy who started that site used to work for Fox and used to be quite conservative, and then came to other conclusions later on - so to me that means he knows more about Fox than most and therefore we should pay attention to what he has to say and assume it's true, then test it out rather than assume it's false.   But the whole conservative mindset today protects itself by insisting that everyone that disagrees is a liar. When I talk about Obama's numbers I am talking about the fact that EVERY minority (blacks, Asian, Hispanic, LGBTQ, women, and even young people) voted for him with very large minority.   So you've got to askyourself: why is it that the only group that is voting republican any more is old white dudes?

47% of the country is old white dudes? 

This is kind of hopeless and I knew it was before I even started - you're just going to twist everything I say to mean something I didn't intend. I specifically said I don't think everyone who voted republican is racist.   Nor did I specifically say that 47% of the country is old white men.
I'm saying that because in the past the party used racist fear and lies to woo certain groups to them, a lot of their policies (pretty much all of them, really) are based on fear.   In the immigration debate - listen to some of the reasoning behind people who don't want immigration reform. Why don't they want it?   Basically, because immigrants are scary.   They're going to come in and take over our country and we won't be safe.   Why can't equality in marriage become law?   Because it will threaten straight marriage and tear the fabric of society.   Of course I'm giving very brief summaries of the arguments, but the point is that they're all based on fear.   The welfare/foodstsmp point I'm making its that a "young buck" is specifically a racist term, and so when you pair that with the welfare queen stories and the fact that at the time they were told, the majority of foodstamp/welfare recipients were black, and now when similar stories are told about how lazy welfare recipients are, and there is a racism that is implied in the minds of a lot of people.   Plus its basically the same thing as racism to assume all poor people are lazy.

dtguitarfan wrote: This is kind of hopeless and I knew it was before I even started.

thellama73 wrote:   Why are private schools so expensive? The free public schools that don't have to worry about turning a profit make competing for low-income families impossible. If there were no public schools, prices would come down as private schools tried to reach that market. Before mandatory education, schools were operated by volunteers anyway, so there's no reason to assume they could not be again. Finally, education at home works very well.

Edited by Gerinski - June 21 2013 at 10:01

Gerinski wrote: thellama73 wrote:   Why are private schools so expensive? The free public schools that don't have to worry about turning a profit make competing for low-income families impossible. If there were no public schools, prices would come down as private schools tried to reach that market. Before mandatory education, schools were operated by volunteers anyway, so there's no reason to assume they could not be again. Finally, education at home works very well. The problem is that many children have parents which are unworthy and even at home they don't teach anything to their children (that is, anything useful). Children are not responsible for the misbehaving or problems of their parents. Public education is not so much returning a service for those parents who pay the taxes, it's a service to the children of the country, to make sure that all those children rising in problem families are not condemned to a life of misery and get a chance of being better than their parents, and that they will not become criminals which will cost the society even more trouble than the cost of giving them a decent education. People with enough money send their children to private school anyway, there are many private schools here which are not that expensive anyway because they receive some subsidizing from the government as well. This is convenient for a balanced system so that public schools are not flooded and the difference in education level between public and private is kept very reasonable. In a way you can think of it as 'retarded payment taxes'. For normal public services you may think that you pay taxes and then receive back services. I pay taxes and they collect my trash. With education it's the opposite. As a child the government made sure that you had a chance to get educated, regardless of how and where you were born. In return, as an adult you return that opportunity (regardless if you made us of it or not) by paying taxes which in turn guarantee the same opportunity to the children being born now. The same with public health care for people under working age. You might argue whether a working-age citizen should receive public health care, but a child with a health problem has no guilt of being poor or his parents being junkies and there's no reason why society should refuse to give him treatment. In the future as an adult he will hopefully become a productive citizen paying his taxes and contributing to the country so it's worth treating him (even besides moral considerations). Public services like education and health are an investment for the future of the society. The need to prevent people misusing the services is something altogether different from the principles behind.

Rob is a public school teacher, so I will let him respond to the question of how much children of unworthy parents in danger of becoming criminals are benefited by public schools.

thellama73 wrote: dtguitarfan wrote: I'm saying that because in the past the party used racist fear and lies to woo certain groups to them, a lot of their policies (pretty much all of them, really) are based on fear.   In the immigration debate - listen to some of the reasoning behind people who don't want immigration reform. Why don't they want it?   Basically, because immigrants are scary.   They're going to come in and take over our country and we won't be safe.   Why can't equality in marriage become law?   Because it will threaten straight marriage and tear the fabric of society. I think the link between racism and gay marriage is pretty tenuous, but nevermind.I agree that the immigration debate has an element of fear to it (libertarians tend to support immigration) as does the gay marriage one (libertarians support gay marriage) but I hardly think that's only a Republican tactic. That's politics in general.The global warming debate isn't based on fear? The liberal opposition to GMOs? To vaccinations? The push for organic food? The anti-flouridization of water people?Regulations on business aren't based on fear? (if we don't reign in these evil companies, people will die!) All the stuff Bloomberg has pushed for banning trans fats and big sodas isn't based on fear?Even the FDA, the EPA and other agencies like them exist because of fear, fear that if the government doesn't regulate, people will die! We can debate whether any of these fears are justified, just as we can debate whether the ones you mentioned are justified, but don't pretend only one party is guilty of using fear to sell their policies.

There's a difference between using fear to push your agenda, and using facts that happen to imply scary things to push your agenda.   For example, I read a story about a pile of dead bees underneath some trees that were flowering.   The story mentioned a certain type of pesticide that people have said has harmful effects on bees and has been used in the area where the bees were found.   That has scary implications and many would come to the conclusions that we should make this type of pesticide illegal if we don't want the bee population to go extinct (which would be quite harmful to the human population).   Now on the other side of the story is the purely fear based conservative notion that if the government makes this type of pesticide illegal, it means that the government has too much power and we're going to turn into Nazi Germany.   There's a difference between fear resulting from facts and fear used to incite imagination.

I honestly don't see a difference between racism and prejudice against gay people.   It's based on the same principle - fear of "other".

dtguitarfan wrote:   There's a difference between using fear to push your agenda, and using facts that happen to imply scary things to push your agenda.   For example, I read a story about a pile of dead bees underneath some trees that were flowering.   The story mentioned a certain type of pesticide that people have said has harmful effects on bees and has been used in the area where the bees were found.   That has scary implications and many would come to the conclusions that we should make this type of pesticide illegal if we don't want the bee population to go extinct (which would be quite harmful to the human population).   Now on the other side of the story is the purely fear based conservative notion that if the government makes this type of pesticide illegal, it means that the government has too much power and we're going to turn into Nazi Germany.   There's a difference between fear resulting from facts and fear used to incite imagination.

Gerinski wrote: dtguitarfan wrote:  There's a difference between using fear to push your agenda, and using facts that happen to imply scary things to push your agenda.   For example, I read a story about a pile of dead bees underneath some trees that were flowering.   The story mentioned a certain type of pesticide that people have said has harmful effects on bees and has been used in the area where the bees were found.   That has scary implications and many would come to the conclusions that we should make this type of pesticide illegal if we don't want the bee population to go extinct (which would be quite harmful to the human population).   Now on the other side of the story is the purely fear based conservative notion that if the government makes this type of pesticide illegal, it means that the government has too much power and we're going to turn into Nazi Germany.   There's a difference between fear resulting from facts and fear used to incite imagination. Europe has banned those pesticides (for a 2-year period for the time being) as big-scale death of the bees population could be a disaster, preventing plants from pollinating). http://rt.com/news/bee-eu-pesticides-ban-750/ http://rt.com/usa/new-pesticides-linked-bee-deaths-130/

I've heard.   Quite a number of European countries are fighting Monsanto as well - a fact I'm very glad of.   We're to stupid over here in America to do anything that might help anyone but the rich right now.

The T wrote: dtguitarfan wrote: Padraic wrote: dtguitarfan wrote: This is kind of hopeless and I knew it was before I even started. Then why did you start? Because it doesn't matter if you win or lose if you're fighting for truth.   Truth will win in the end. Finally, there is someone who claims he knows THE truth.

Did I claim to know THE truth?

Truth is infinite, therefore anyone who ever claims to know THE truth is stupid. I argue for what I perceive as true, as does everyone else.   The difference is that I used to believe one thing, saw evidence that challenged my views, allowed it to challenge my views, and now believe something else. The conservative mindset is "if it challenges my views, it must be false."