It's just nice to see someone who has the power to ruin lives - over an issue that should involve personal morality, not a rights violation with actual victims - get caught with his pants down (so to speak).
Cheez whiz on a cracker, there's a "half-naked man cavorting with an aroused farm animal" in Jackass 2. I'm pretty sure that if the MPAA didn't have a problem with it...
Surely the finest legal minds in the country can distinguish between that, bestiality, and actual violence?
"the hours of fetish videos included violence against women"
- doesn't mean anything, unless you think it's acceptable to lock up millions of people for liking rough sex.
What is or is not acceptable behavior, in the end, must first be decided between the people engaged with it, not in a courtroom. The human right to consent overrules.
>It's just nice to see someone who
>has the power to ruin lives - over
>an issue that should involve
>personal morality, not a rights
>violation with actual victims - get
>caught with his pants down (so to
>speak).
Kozinski didn't chose to prosecute this case. And from what I've read, he's pretty libertarian-leaning. Exactly the sort of judge we should want hearing this sort of case.
What is or is not acceptable behavior, in the end, must first be decided between the people engaged with it, not in a courtroom. The human right to consent overrules.
Where do you draw the line? If a man consents to have his penis cut off, cooked, and eaten by someone else, does that fall under the province of "consent overrules"?
Yes, it does. You've chosen an interestingly graphic example; I'd have chosen the German cannibal case, which after all resulted in a death, rather than the graphic image you chose. But the principle remains the same, precisely the same as it extends to the right to do drugs, the right to die, the right to sell your own organs, the right, in short, to dispose of your body precisely how you wish to.
And it'd be my right not to associate with such people.
Yes, one shouldn't "cling" too strongly to the freedom of exercising free will and engaging in consensual actions with others who use their free will. Because if you let people engage in acts you wouldn't personally do and/or find disgusting, then one day restaurants will offer penis appetizers.
Such slippery-slope thinking doesn't fly on this site when the subject is guns. Wonder why.
I don't know what a "Ronulan" is. But I certainly wouldn't waste time voting for the GOP-approved schlub just because the other side is offering a slightly worse socialist. Principles mean something to some people.
"Reality" is certainly a complex thing; you can spend your whole life looking it over, dissecting it, and not see 1/100000th of the angles. It's also very fluid - beyond the hard things that objectively exist whether you see them or not, there are people's attitudes and perceptions, which are ever-changing and might make a 180 degree turn from a couple generations earlier. For instance, just compare George Washington's farewell address with the current attitude of our federal government. Night and day. To some people the current "reality" with regard to that situation is not something that should be encouraged (even in a lesser-evil kind of way), and perhaps should be actively discouraged.
That doesn't make one side evil or kooky, they are just looking at "reality" from a different angle, with a different attitude and judgment on what's important. That's why I come to this site for stories on guns and reasoned tirades over the never-ending battle to convince folk of the essential right to self-defense (some things are worth clinging to). Sometimes our perceptions and judgments coincide, and sometimes what we value has a different internal ranking.
That doesn't make one side evil or kooky, they are just looking at "reality" from a different angle...
But when "one side" has the 1% (or less) view as opposed to the "other side" that has the 90+% perspective, one must wonder about the accuracy of the 1% view.
As the saying goes, when one person calls you an asshole, it's just an opinion. When 50 people call you an asshole, it's time to start examining yourself for the exposed sphincter. (Nothing personal intended!)
Societies are groups of people living in the same geographic area and sharing a certain worldview. People who live in the same geographic area who have a worldview radically different from their neighbors traditionally don't do well.
I'd have chosen the German cannibal case, which after all resulted in a death, rather than the graphic image you chose...
The graphic image I chose is based on a German case in which exactly what I described happened. Are we thinking of the same case? Because after the cooking, the guy with the severed penis was killed and eaten by the other guy.
And it further explains why big "L" Libertarianism has so few adherents.
I have a vision of a nearly-perfect Libertarian society, and it's every bit as dysfunctional as a communist one.
Oddly, I think the two view points are perfectly reconcilable.
Yes, you own your body, no one else on this earth has a higher claim to it than yourself. As a matter of general principle, you can do whatever you want with it.
That claim isn't absolute: it can be negated by insanity, or other compromises in capacity for understanding and all the other antecedents to fully informed consent.
While not conclusive evidence, the desire to perform gratuitous, destructive acts upon one's body casts one's sanity into question.
Furthermore, you can't really draw a bright line: not all acts that would lead to the destruction of your body are inherently insane, for example, throwing yourself into the path of a car to fling a child out of the way.
As always, the marginal cases make the worst policy.
I believe we're talking about the same case, then, yes. (I didn't examine the details of the case. I'm not that interested in what order pieces of the man were consumed in.)
And geek, I disagree. "Insanity" is no justification for taking away somebody's right to decide for themselves - I'd classify every communist and socialist in existence as insane, after all, and they'd classify me the same way. Religious people would likely consider a prostitute to be insane, as they'd regard him or her as mutilitating his or her soul.
We can either regard people as rational humans or as cattle. It's A or B; there is no middle ground, as we are seeing now. Rights are either fundamental or contingent - any "compromise" is to make them contingent, to treat human as cattle, to eliminate the rational from our interactions.
To perpetuate a victim culture whereby a human is merely a helpless creature at the whim of a mind which is his or her enemy, to be conquered by the world, as a favour to the unfortunate soul, or the unfortunate body, which is tyrannized by it.
We can either regard people as rational humans or as cattle.
No, Adirian. There is a point at which people are not rational, and there can be a public consensus on that question. Sarah's example is one such.
You may not care if someone injures or kills himself "of his own free will," but you are in the tiny minority, wrapping yourself in the mantle of "principle," but the majority of humanity does not and will not follow you there.
Thus your connection to the reality that the majority of humanity perceives appears... thin.
It is not the public's right to decide whether or not I am rational - there is no public, there is only a collection of persons. Insofar as I exist, as a human, I am my mind - I am not a body, my body should and can not be protected from my mind, without the mind it is nothing but a collection of chemicals. I am not a soul, my soul does not need protection from either body or mind, insofar as my morality exists, it is determined by my mind - no restraints upon my body can restrain my thoughts. There is only one me - my mind - and that is the thing which must be approached if men think that I am wrong; they have no right to either my body or my soul, to heal or to hurt, save by my mind's permission, save by my permission.
I care not that many people have no principles, have no reason to their whim - the whims of the majority come to matter only if they direct their guns and their fists towards me, and should they try that, they shall find themselves sharply rebuked by weapons guided by rational principles and a rational mind.
I can justify my position, I can give reasons for it - they cannot. A man without principles is a man without reason, guided by the whim of the moment, guided by feelings and intuition - a man who thinks his instincts trump his reason.
Are you suggesting, then, that I should bow, that principle should bow, before such a lowly and pathetic creature, before a mindless animal?
That the individualist should bow before the socialist because the socialist cannot be reasoned with?
I care not what the majority of humanity perceives - I am willing to say that I am right. And if the best argument you can offer in opposition to principle is that the majority of people wish it were not so, you've already admitted that you've lost your case.
And, well, if you think that that WAS a valid argument - then what happens to your opinion of gun rights when public opinion swings against you yet again, sometime in the distant future?
You cannot claim to be a defender of minorities if you think that what majority rules goes, after all.
As a thought experiment, let us add words - we need not even take them away...
You may not care if someone injures or kills himself or someone else with his handguns "of his own free will," but you are in the tiny minority, wrapping yourself in the mantle of "principle," but the majority of humanity does not and will not follow you there.
Ah, yes. The argument of the Ideal over the Pragmatic.
I repeat:
Thus your connection to the reality that the majority of humanity perceives appears... thin.
My only recommendation to you:
Choose your battles carefully.
It's good advice to everyone, but to those like you particularly. Ideological purity has its place, and purpose, but it is seldom successful in achieving its stated ends.
The concrete wall of reality has a nasty way of intersecting the faces of those who insist they can see it from a different angle.
You're saying something about your ideals, not mine, when you say that the ideal and the pragmatic are different things. I have never found my ideals to be anything but practical - because I have never sought the irrational.
You want to see the practical results of my philosophy, of my ideal? I can state without fear exactly what my principles are. I can place them in the flames of any reason. And if I find that one of them is scorched - I replace it. Until only those which can survive any heat of reason survive intact.
What are the practical results of my ideal? What are the practical results of yours? Where have two centuries of compromise upon a political ideal gotten you? Choose my battles carefully? What of the culture of self reliance you claim to want in its entirety? Has the philosophy of pragmatic compromise proven itself to be pragmatic at achieving its ends?
I'm looking at the results of two centuries of choosing battles carefully. History doesn't bode well for this pragmatism.
If pragmatism is going with what works - then I think compromise can be ruled out at this stage in the game. If pragmatism is about achieving your ends - I think the libertarian who still believes that the luxury of fighting only easy battles and the luxury of final victory together are possible is as thoroughly mistaken as it is possible to be.
As for that wall of reality - well, perception is the luxury of having chosen an ideal which doesn't press our face against it while it picks our pockets of whatever virtues we once could claim.
As for the old man - it doesn't matter whether he was crazy or rational. If the matter was important to him, the State left him no choice in the matter, as its position was backed by a threat of force which could only be reacted to with force.
Live free or die. He proves that some of us still mean it.
As for the police officer - I have no sympathy. I have no sympathy for any police officer who dies in the lines of extortion, as an agent of force and tyranny - however small or petty - rather than an agent of liberty.
I have never found my ideals to be anything but practical - because I have never sought the irrational.
You just spent several hundred words defending a human right to be irrational.
Your logic is plain to see, yet you apparently deny it. This leads to one of two conclusions: either you yourself are irrational, or you are being duplicitous.
Either way, we can't have a productive discussion.
Yup. Because if you really take the "live free or die" philosophy to its final, logical conclusion, you might as well eat a bullet and get it over with now.
"You just spent several hundred words defending a human right to be irrational.
Your logic is plain to see, yet you apparently deny it. This leads to one of two conclusions: either you yourself are irrational, or you are being duplicitous.
Either way, we can't have a productive discussion."
- The rational is -not- arriving at the "correct" decision. The rational is arriving where you are going - on your own.
I defend the human right TO BE WRONG. The human right to find out for ourselves. If this man believed that such a small little freedom was so important - then no man who claims that his guns will be only be pried from his dead fingers can say he was wrong. It's the same position, precisely - over different freedoms. Personally, I think he took an ineffective path to arrive at his goal. But at least he was intellectually courageous enough to choose a position and defend it, right or wrong.
Sarah - that doesn't even begin to be relevant.
And Kevin - no. If you take it seriously, you take your guns, and you start fighting. There are plenty of villains to be fought. You're unwilling to do that - you would rather "live" a slave in all but name. You think it is important to preserve the trappings, but not the heart, of liberty. Preserving liberty by protected its effects is no more effective than treating symptoms to cure a disease.
That man's rights to decide for himself whether or not to wear a seatbelt were taken away from him for precisely the same reason they want to take your guns away from you. Did he die - because prison is a death sentence on a seventy year old man - a pointless death? I don't know. You'd have to ask him. Hey, at least he's willing to act. Are you going to be willing to do the same when they come again for your guns, five, ten, fifteen years from now?
Somehow, I doubt it. You think rights are what society - a nameless, faceless nothing - has granted us. That we are in a permanent debt to people that can never be paid off, never free to be ourselves, to hold our own thoughts, to hold or act upon principles.
Principles, to you, are an expensive extravagance that only the selfish pursue. That nobody has the right to be right - that we should acknowledge the majority's mind as superior, regardless of our evidence.
Your position on guns is in direct contradiction to your position on principles right now. So - will you give your guns up when they ask for them, as you are happy to give everything else up? Are they merely a trapping of liberty, to you, and not its line of defense?
If you think guns are there to protect liberty - you're standing guard over a city which is being looted behind you, staring resolutely forward, refusing to believe or to acknowledge what is going on behind you.
And calling those who turn and fire at the looters of the city you claim to be protecting - irrational?
Exactly what freedom are you going to take up your guns to defend? Can you name one you wouldn't sacrifice?
The most libertarian judge in the US appellate system gets his chances of getting into the SCOTUS bleamed, and a bunch of Anarcho-Capitalist retards start celebrating.
It is this crap that drove me OUT of the LP. Heck, the LP is probably too statist for these kooks.
I would suggest at least reading the information provided ... it was the PROSECUTOR that called for the mistrial ... he was afraid that Kozinski would find for the defendant and tell him to pound sand.
Again, I repeat: We can't have a productive discussion. Chris Byrne put it well, "No useful discussion or debate can occur between individuals who have differing first principles on a subject; except as relates to those first principles themselves."
You state: "You think rights are what society - a nameless, faceless nothing - has granted us." If you've read the eight-part "What is a 'Right'" series on the left sidebar and come to that conclusion, then I am correct and no useful discussion or debate can occur between us. Our first principles are too divergent.
But Joe, we know that right-wingers are all sexually repressed! What was it that Lileks wrote (let me look...) Ah, yes, here it is:
"The idea that his (Hitler's) regime was a Christian outfit is another odd belief trundled out by those who think Ashcroft likes to close the door, put on his hip-high black leather boots and strut around to Wagner arias. There's a difference between a President who regards himself as a humble servant of a Merciful God, and a runty sociopath who prongs a chubster over warby songs about leather-clad thundergods."
Insert your rightwinger of choice in place of the President.
No, I want to know just how kinky the Left side of the Bench gets.
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Ah well, so much for getting Kozinski onto the USSC
Draven,
My thoughts exactly. Just… stupid, Stupid, STUPID!
It's just nice to see someone who has the power to ruin lives - over an issue that should involve personal morality, not a rights violation with actual victims - get caught with his pants down (so to speak).
Frank: not a rights violation with actual victims
Did you read the description of what was in the material?
"the hours of fetish videos included violence against women"
Cheez whiz on a cracker, there's a "half-naked man cavorting with an aroused farm animal" in Jackass 2. I'm pretty sure that if the MPAA didn't have a problem with it...
Surely the finest legal minds in the country can distinguish between that, bestiality, and actual violence?
"Cheez whiz on a cracker, there's a 'half-naked man cavorting with an aroused farm animal' in Jackass 2."
I wouldn't be surprised to find that the clip on Kozinski's computer is precisely that bit.
Ed -
"the hours of fetish videos included violence against women"
- doesn't mean anything, unless you think it's acceptable to lock up millions of people for liking rough sex.
What is or is not acceptable behavior, in the end, must first be decided between the people engaged with it, not in a courtroom. The human right to consent overrules.
>It's just nice to see someone who
>has the power to ruin lives - over
>an issue that should involve
>personal morality, not a rights
>violation with actual victims - get
>caught with his pants down (so to
>speak).
Kozinski didn't chose to prosecute this case. And from what I've read, he's pretty libertarian-leaning. Exactly the sort of judge we should want hearing this sort of case.
What is or is not acceptable behavior, in the end, must first be decided between the people engaged with it, not in a courtroom. The human right to consent overrules.
Where do you draw the line? If a man consents to have his penis cut off, cooked, and eaten by someone else, does that fall under the province of "consent overrules"?
That depends on how much you cling to Libertarianism.
Sarah -
Yes, it does. You've chosen an interestingly graphic example; I'd have chosen the German cannibal case, which after all resulted in a death, rather than the graphic image you chose. But the principle remains the same, precisely the same as it extends to the right to do drugs, the right to die, the right to sell your own organs, the right, in short, to dispose of your body precisely how you wish to.
And it'd be my right not to associate with such people.
I rest my case.
There is a line, Adirian, between "right to consent" and "insanity."
For 99% of the population, Sarah's example is WAY over the "rabid weasel" line.
And it further explains why big "L" Libertarianism has so few adherents.
Yes, one shouldn't "cling" too strongly to the freedom of exercising free will and engaging in consensual actions with others who use their free will. Because if you let people engage in acts you wouldn't personally do and/or find disgusting, then one day restaurants will offer penis appetizers.
Such slippery-slope thinking doesn't fly on this site when the subject is guns. Wonder why.
Let me guess: You're a Ronulan, too.
I don't know what a "Ronulan" is. But I certainly wouldn't waste time voting for the GOP-approved schlub just because the other side is offering a slightly worse socialist. Principles mean something to some people.
And, unfortunately too often, a dedication to "principles" leads to a disconnect from "reality."
I assume you're aware of the case of Steven and Arthur Bixby? They stood up for their principles, too.
"Reality" is certainly a complex thing; you can spend your whole life looking it over, dissecting it, and not see 1/100000th of the angles. It's also very fluid - beyond the hard things that objectively exist whether you see them or not, there are people's attitudes and perceptions, which are ever-changing and might make a 180 degree turn from a couple generations earlier. For instance, just compare George Washington's farewell address with the current attitude of our federal government. Night and day. To some people the current "reality" with regard to that situation is not something that should be encouraged (even in a lesser-evil kind of way), and perhaps should be actively discouraged.
That doesn't make one side evil or kooky, they are just looking at "reality" from a different angle, with a different attitude and judgment on what's important. That's why I come to this site for stories on guns and reasoned tirades over the never-ending battle to convince folk of the essential right to self-defense (some things are worth clinging to). Sometimes our perceptions and judgments coincide, and sometimes what we value has a different internal ranking.
Guys,
"Consent" is not nearly as ironclad of a principle as you make it out to be. Two words:
Con Jobs
That doesn't make one side evil or kooky, they are just looking at "reality" from a different angle...
But when "one side" has the 1% (or less) view as opposed to the "other side" that has the 90+% perspective, one must wonder about the accuracy of the 1% view.
As the saying goes, when one person calls you an asshole, it's just an opinion. When 50 people call you an asshole, it's time to start examining yourself for the exposed sphincter. (Nothing personal intended!)
Societies are groups of people living in the same geographic area and sharing a certain worldview. People who live in the same geographic area who have a worldview radically different from their neighbors traditionally don't do well.
THAT is reality, regardless of perspective.
Adirian,
I'd have chosen the German cannibal case, which after all resulted in a death, rather than the graphic image you chose...
The graphic image I chose is based on a German case in which exactly what I described happened. Are we thinking of the same case? Because after the cooking, the guy with the severed penis was killed and eaten by the other guy.
And it further explains why big "L" Libertarianism has so few adherents.
I have a vision of a nearly-perfect Libertarian society, and it's every bit as dysfunctional as a communist one.
I was gonna make a funny comment here regarding the farm animal clip, but y'all steered everything off the "Serious Cliff".
so now I don't want to anymore.
Well, thanks for contributing, anyway! 8)
I was gonna make a funny comment here regarding the farm animal clip, but y'all steered everything off the "Serious Cliff".
Go ahead. And while we're at it, someone lighten things up with a bratwurst joke.
Oddly, I think the two view points are perfectly reconcilable.
Yes, you own your body, no one else on this earth has a higher claim to it than yourself. As a matter of general principle, you can do whatever you want with it.
That claim isn't absolute: it can be negated by insanity, or other compromises in capacity for understanding and all the other antecedents to fully informed consent.
While not conclusive evidence, the desire to perform gratuitous, destructive acts upon one's body casts one's sanity into question.
Furthermore, you can't really draw a bright line: not all acts that would lead to the destruction of your body are inherently insane, for example, throwing yourself into the path of a car to fling a child out of the way.
As always, the marginal cases make the worst policy.
Sarah -
I believe we're talking about the same case, then, yes. (I didn't examine the details of the case. I'm not that interested in what order pieces of the man were consumed in.)
And geek, I disagree. "Insanity" is no justification for taking away somebody's right to decide for themselves - I'd classify every communist and socialist in existence as insane, after all, and they'd classify me the same way. Religious people would likely consider a prostitute to be insane, as they'd regard him or her as mutilitating his or her soul.
We can either regard people as rational humans or as cattle. It's A or B; there is no middle ground, as we are seeing now. Rights are either fundamental or contingent - any "compromise" is to make them contingent, to treat human as cattle, to eliminate the rational from our interactions.
To perpetuate a victim culture whereby a human is merely a helpless creature at the whim of a mind which is his or her enemy, to be conquered by the world, as a favour to the unfortunate soul, or the unfortunate body, which is tyrannized by it.
We can either regard people as rational humans or as cattle.
No, Adirian. There is a point at which people are not rational, and there can be a public consensus on that question. Sarah's example is one such.
You may not care if someone injures or kills himself "of his own free will," but you are in the tiny minority, wrapping yourself in the mantle of "principle," but the majority of humanity does not and will not follow you there.
Thus your connection to the reality that the majority of humanity perceives appears... thin.
Kevin -
It is not the public's right to decide whether or not I am rational - there is no public, there is only a collection of persons. Insofar as I exist, as a human, I am my mind - I am not a body, my body should and can not be protected from my mind, without the mind it is nothing but a collection of chemicals. I am not a soul, my soul does not need protection from either body or mind, insofar as my morality exists, it is determined by my mind - no restraints upon my body can restrain my thoughts. There is only one me - my mind - and that is the thing which must be approached if men think that I am wrong; they have no right to either my body or my soul, to heal or to hurt, save by my mind's permission, save by my permission.
I care not that many people have no principles, have no reason to their whim - the whims of the majority come to matter only if they direct their guns and their fists towards me, and should they try that, they shall find themselves sharply rebuked by weapons guided by rational principles and a rational mind.
I can justify my position, I can give reasons for it - they cannot. A man without principles is a man without reason, guided by the whim of the moment, guided by feelings and intuition - a man who thinks his instincts trump his reason.
Are you suggesting, then, that I should bow, that principle should bow, before such a lowly and pathetic creature, before a mindless animal?
That the individualist should bow before the socialist because the socialist cannot be reasoned with?
I care not what the majority of humanity perceives - I am willing to say that I am right. And if the best argument you can offer in opposition to principle is that the majority of people wish it were not so, you've already admitted that you've lost your case.
And, well, if you think that that WAS a valid argument - then what happens to your opinion of gun rights when public opinion swings against you yet again, sometime in the distant future?
You cannot claim to be a defender of minorities if you think that what majority rules goes, after all.
As a thought experiment, let us add words - we need not even take them away...
You may not care if someone injures or kills himself or someone else with his handguns "of his own free will," but you are in the tiny minority, wrapping yourself in the mantle of "principle," but the majority of humanity does not and will not follow you there.
Ah, yes. The argument of the Ideal over the Pragmatic.
I repeat:
Thus your connection to the reality that the majority of humanity perceives appears... thin.
My only recommendation to you:
Choose your battles carefully.
It's good advice to everyone, but to those like you particularly. Ideological purity has its place, and purpose, but it is seldom successful in achieving its stated ends.
The concrete wall of reality has a nasty way of intersecting the faces of those who insist they can see it from a different angle.
Here's an example of someone who stood up for his principles.
Is he crazy?
You're saying something about your ideals, not mine, when you say that the ideal and the pragmatic are different things. I have never found my ideals to be anything but practical - because I have never sought the irrational.
You want to see the practical results of my philosophy, of my ideal? I can state without fear exactly what my principles are. I can place them in the flames of any reason. And if I find that one of them is scorched - I replace it. Until only those which can survive any heat of reason survive intact.
What are the practical results of my ideal? What are the practical results of yours? Where have two centuries of compromise upon a political ideal gotten you? Choose my battles carefully? What of the culture of self reliance you claim to want in its entirety? Has the philosophy of pragmatic compromise proven itself to be pragmatic at achieving its ends?
I'm looking at the results of two centuries of choosing battles carefully. History doesn't bode well for this pragmatism.
If pragmatism is going with what works - then I think compromise can be ruled out at this stage in the game. If pragmatism is about achieving your ends - I think the libertarian who still believes that the luxury of fighting only easy battles and the luxury of final victory together are possible is as thoroughly mistaken as it is possible to be.
As for that wall of reality - well, perception is the luxury of having chosen an ideal which doesn't press our face against it while it picks our pockets of whatever virtues we once could claim.
As for the old man - it doesn't matter whether he was crazy or rational. If the matter was important to him, the State left him no choice in the matter, as its position was backed by a threat of force which could only be reacted to with force.
Live free or die. He proves that some of us still mean it.
As for the police officer - I have no sympathy. I have no sympathy for any police officer who dies in the lines of extortion, as an agent of force and tyranny - however small or petty - rather than an agent of liberty.
I have never found my ideals to be anything but practical - because I have never sought the irrational.
You just spent several hundred words defending a human right to be irrational.
Your logic is plain to see, yet you apparently deny it. This leads to one of two conclusions: either you yourself are irrational, or you are being duplicitous.
Either way, we can't have a productive discussion.
Live free or die. He proves that some of us still mean it.
Apparently not. He was arrested and charged with the murder of the officer who apparently violated his principles.
Live free or die. He proves that some of us still mean it.
Live free or spend the rest of your life in a prison cell -- over a seatbelt.
Like I said, the Libertarian Utopia isn't looking any more appealing to me than the communist one.
Yup. Because if you really take the "live free or die" philosophy to its final, logical conclusion, you might as well eat a bullet and get it over with now.
Because reality sucks.
"You just spent several hundred words defending a human right to be irrational.
Your logic is plain to see, yet you apparently deny it. This leads to one of two conclusions: either you yourself are irrational, or you are being duplicitous.
Either way, we can't have a productive discussion."
- The rational is -not- arriving at the "correct" decision. The rational is arriving where you are going - on your own.
I defend the human right TO BE WRONG. The human right to find out for ourselves. If this man believed that such a small little freedom was so important - then no man who claims that his guns will be only be pried from his dead fingers can say he was wrong. It's the same position, precisely - over different freedoms. Personally, I think he took an ineffective path to arrive at his goal. But at least he was intellectually courageous enough to choose a position and defend it, right or wrong.
Sarah - that doesn't even begin to be relevant.
And Kevin - no. If you take it seriously, you take your guns, and you start fighting. There are plenty of villains to be fought. You're unwilling to do that - you would rather "live" a slave in all but name. You think it is important to preserve the trappings, but not the heart, of liberty. Preserving liberty by protected its effects is no more effective than treating symptoms to cure a disease.
That man's rights to decide for himself whether or not to wear a seatbelt were taken away from him for precisely the same reason they want to take your guns away from you. Did he die - because prison is a death sentence on a seventy year old man - a pointless death? I don't know. You'd have to ask him. Hey, at least he's willing to act. Are you going to be willing to do the same when they come again for your guns, five, ten, fifteen years from now?
Somehow, I doubt it. You think rights are what society - a nameless, faceless nothing - has granted us. That we are in a permanent debt to people that can never be paid off, never free to be ourselves, to hold our own thoughts, to hold or act upon principles.
Principles, to you, are an expensive extravagance that only the selfish pursue. That nobody has the right to be right - that we should acknowledge the majority's mind as superior, regardless of our evidence.
Your position on guns is in direct contradiction to your position on principles right now. So - will you give your guns up when they ask for them, as you are happy to give everything else up? Are they merely a trapping of liberty, to you, and not its line of defense?
If you think guns are there to protect liberty - you're standing guard over a city which is being looted behind you, staring resolutely forward, refusing to believe or to acknowledge what is going on behind you.
And calling those who turn and fire at the looters of the city you claim to be protecting - irrational?
Exactly what freedom are you going to take up your guns to defend? Can you name one you wouldn't sacrifice?
Unbelievable.
The most libertarian judge in the US appellate system gets his chances of getting into the SCOTUS bleamed, and a bunch of Anarcho-Capitalist retards start celebrating.
It is this crap that drove me OUT of the LP. Heck, the LP is probably too statist for these kooks.
I would suggest at least reading the information provided ... it was the PROSECUTOR that called for the mistrial ... he was afraid that Kozinski would find for the defendant and tell him to pound sand.
Adirian:
Again, I repeat: We can't have a productive discussion. Chris Byrne put it well, "No useful discussion or debate can occur between individuals who have differing first principles on a subject; except as relates to those first principles themselves."
You state: "You think rights are what society - a nameless, faceless nothing - has granted us." If you've read the eight-part "What is a 'Right'" series on the left sidebar and come to that conclusion, then I am correct and no useful discussion or debate can occur between us. Our first principles are too divergent.
Kevin said:
Me? I wonder what is on Scalia's computer:
But Joe, we know that right-wingers are all sexually repressed! What was it that Lileks wrote (let me look...) Ah, yes, here it is:
"The idea that his (Hitler's) regime was a Christian outfit is another odd belief trundled out by those who think Ashcroft likes to close the door, put on his hip-high black leather boots and strut around to Wagner arias. There's a difference between a President who regards himself as a humble servant of a Merciful God, and a runty sociopath who prongs a chubster over warby songs about leather-clad thundergods."
Insert your rightwinger of choice in place of the President.
No, I want to know just how kinky the Left side of the Bench gets.
Sarah - that doesn't even begin to be relevant.
What doesn't even begin to be relevant?
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