The real question is “Do you want non-whites to be persecuted and killed?” Because nobody really cares about immigration, it’s just an excuse for racism and ethnic cleansing.
Nobody cares if the brown people in question immigrated at all, much less how; they are perfectly happy for American citizens to be persecuted and deported for having the wrong skin color.
Okay, thanks for the explanation. I find your lack of remorse troubling. This isn’t a huge deal – everyone makes mistakes, and saying something hateful about someone a single time is a pretty minor thing in the scheme of things.
But this is how I see it – “slut” has been used to dehumanize women for decades and decades. It’s as bad as calling a black person “fucking savage” for something mundane like taking part in a peaceful protest march. It’s using hateful and dehumanizing language deliberately – and very targeted language… “slut” isn’t a regular insult like, say, “asshole”. It’s specifically been used to relegate women to a lesser status – and to show girls that they must behave in a certain limited way – far more limited than boys with regards to sexuality. I doubt Fluke will ever read that thread, but some girls and women might have – and that’s just another example of the really shitty and misogynistic way our society often refers to women that gets to stay in their brains forever. It’s adding a tiny little turd to a massive heaping pile of shit that girls and women have to deal with.
So IMO it’s not okay to just use a flippant dehumanizing insult for a woman, any more than it would be to use a flippant racial slur for a black person. Not the end of the world, but if you don’t regret that little thing, then IMO you don’t really understand the extent and harm of sexism and misogyny in our society.
I hope I answered this in my previous post.
I think I completely understand what you are saying. I just really deeply disagree with it.
Marcus Aurelius said:
“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”
While this quote is literally true, the fact is that sometimes people say things that make me really upset, so 1. I’m a hypocrite. 2. Marcus ain’t easy to live up to.
I think a lot of people play games with offensability, and there is a legitimate attack on free speech, and that this should be aggressively fought, but i don’t enjoy really hurting people.
So, the happy test works for this. I would rather be happy and nice than aggressively fight for my principles on a message board.
For example, I had a mean joke that I thought was funny but I wasn’t sure how you’d take it. Because of this it didn’t make me happy, so I didn’t post it.
I’m glad saying such hurtful things about women doesn’t make you happy – but IMO we have a duty to others that’s just as important, if not more so, which ought to require we avoid saying such things. But at least you’ve stopped. I just have trouble understanding why you’re not just saying “yeah, that was a dumb thing and I wish I hadn’t said it”.
I don’t think this has anything to do with free speech. You have the right to call people brazen sluts, and I have the right to criticize you for it. I’m literally answering your speech with more speech.
As far as Marcus Aurelius, I don’t have any problem with that quote – but most folks aren’t going to live up to it, because they’re only human. I don’t want to hurt these humans, and thus even when they are flawed and could overcome hurtful words through willpower and discipline, I would still prefer not to make them do so for no reason at all.
If by “without screwing something else” you mean “without putting any restrictions on anything else”, that’s absurd. Every legal measure to facilitate Thing A, whatever A is, necessarily involves placing some restrictions on Thing Anti-A. If that’s what you call “screwing” Thing Anti-A, then it’s delusional to think that it would be possible to avoid it.
But that doesn’t mean that a law to facilitate Thing A is automatically a bad idea. In this case you have simply decided, arbitrarily, that the screwing some people are getting due to the absence of a law is less important than the screwing some other people would get due to the addition of a law.
But you don’t actually think the injustice “unacceptable” enough to warrant doing anything about it that would be legally effective. It’s not even “unacceptable” enough to keep you from jeeringly dismissing the situation in which the injustice is occurring as “ridiculously” minor and trivial.
No, Scylla, it is not in fact “quite clear” that you’re taking seriously the concerns of the people opposed to this discrimination. It’s not very clear at all, as a matter of fact.
I think this is exactly correct.
Ok. So, write a law (that the Supreme Court won’t overturn). That solves problem without doing more damage than the wrong that already exists. Post it here. I would applaud you for doing so.
A new law isn’t even required: all it would take would be adding sexual orientation as a protected class along with race, sex, and so on under existing law. Problem solved. Resulting damage less than the wrong currently caused by discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
I post when I’m in a slightly perky mood, and suddenly I’m intellectually dishonest and baiting people. Fine, I’ll be totally serious for the duration of this post.
I mocked asahi for saying, “Shut up.” I didn’t discuss, debate, or logically analyze the post, because it defies logic; it’s content-free gibberish, like “Yo mama!” or “Lock her up!”
I don’t always post. My post count is pretty low compared to other people who’ve been here a long time: I’m quiet IRL, sometimes I’m busy doing other things, sometimes I don’t feel like dealing with people, and sometimes I’ll post, someone else will disagree, and I won’t answer, because what they’re saying isn’t interesting enough to rebut, or maybe I’m just not in the mood. I’m not paid to be here.
But, contrary to what you said, I’ve been part of this discussion.
The O.P. asked me to point out any good conservatives anywhere, and I answered with the only lead I had. I was here again in post #117. Then Czarcasm asked me to point out good conservatives in this very thread. I thought about it, and, what do you know, some started posting and saved me the trouble.
I defended StarvingArtist because I’m sick of the echo chamber, because I think wisdom comes from trying to learn from different, partly true points of view, so I didn’t want to lose him. Then someone reminded me that he had invalidated rape victims, and I realized that invalidating rape victims, to their face, (there must have been been some posting in the thread or reading it, just by the length of #WhyIDidntReport and the laws of probability) even after it had been explained to him why he was mistaken, made him at least a jerk, so I conceded. Strange behavior for an intellectually dishonest shit stirrer, or even a human being, since it’s really rare to convince anyone to change their mind.
I was going to discuss your next post, too, but it’s 2:58 in the morning, and I feel like I’ve been tapping on my phone for hours, and maybe I have. I’m going to bed.
You think it’s ok to call someone a brazen slut because she uses birth control, and because other people have said mean things about republican conservative figures?
That’s pretty poor.
Okay, so how about just saying “it was a mistake to call Fluke a brazen slut”?
When are we playing poker?
Does she live in 1994?
My answer: If the Border Patrol sees someone trying to cross without going through a proper point of entry, the Border Patrol should facilitate the person’s access to the proper point of entry, where they will be processed based on their claim.
For instance, if someone is trying to seek asylum, and for some reason is blocked from being able to reach a proper port of entry, whether by elements of the country that they are leaving, or by elements of the country that they are trying to reach the safety of, then the Border Patrol should be facilitating their ability to seek asylum, not hampering it.
If you found out that someone jaywalked on their way to work, do you make them go back home and forfeit their days wages, make them quit their job? Would you have the same speech about timing of enforcement and a desire that enforcement were better if we were talking about illegally crossing a road?
In either case, it is a non-violent civil infraction. In either case, slap them with a fine and tell them not to do it again.
We have plenty of native born citizens here who make America less wealthy, less productive, and weaker, and as a general percentage of the population, the immigrants have a smaller proportion of those people. We also have the advantage that of the immigrant population, when we do find someone who is harmful to our society, we have a much easier time dealing with them than a native born, in that, if we choose to*, we can just send them back. With a native born person burdening society, we just have to deal with that burden.
*I don’t think that we should send them back fro being criminal, as that just makes the country that they came from worse. Especially when they come here, get into trouble, get into gangs, learn violence and criminal behavior from our society and culture, and then we send them back to a country very poorly equipped to deal with them. I say that we should be reforming our criminal justice system anyway, removing the vast majority of non-violent offenders from incarceration, and that should free up more than enough space to incarcerate and rehabilitate immigrants with criminal tendencies. We can then send the country that they came from the bill, and if they refuse to pay[sup]1[/sup], offer to instead return their citizens and let them deal with them.
[sup]1[/sup]Pro-rated on the country’s actual ability to pay.
You throw armed robbery and overdue library book in the same sentence. Do you feel that the sanctions against someone who commits armed robbery should be the same as that for overdue library books?
Xenophobia, mostly. The republican party isn’t just concerned about illegal immigration, they are also trying to cut legal immigration as well. It has nothing to do with respect for the law or for having secure borders, but rather, it is trying to keep the other people out, people that may not look like or act like “us”.
Do we ask parents if their children will be of any particular use before we let them pop out babies and make them citizens? Hell, do we even ask that parents with genetic flaws to not breed and knowingly pass those flaws onto their children to be burdens to our country? How much of a burden is Type I diabetes alone, should we ask diabetics what they can do for the country before we tell them how much insulin they are worth?
You know what immigrants have to offer us? Gratitude and loyalty for taking them in from a bad situation and giving them a chance to seize opportunities that they wouldn’t have even known existed had they stayed home. We offer asylum for those whose lives are in danger from state persecution, but we would deny someone who seeks medical treatment that he doesn’t have access to in his home country?
We are having a labor crunch in this country right now. Unemployment being at historical lows is not a good thing. 4% is really the floor of a healthy economy, that’s how many people are generally in transition at any time. A lower unemployment means that jobs are not being filled, work is not being done, goods and services are not being produced. I need to hire about 3 more people right now, and having worked with hispanics of different origins and probably different legal statuses, I would be happy to hire any of them over the current crop of millenials who seem to have an entitlement complex, taking for granted the things that others have risked their lives to attain.
We have shit to get done, and we need people to do that. That’s what immigrants have to offer us. And if we have to take the occasional dud in order to get the workers we need, then that is a small price to pay.
I don’t disagree that we should look for those that we have use for, but I disagree that it is only physicians that we need. (Not that there are not tons of very qualified physicians that are being turned away by our country when we deny refugees.) We need people willing to work hard, to make a better life for themself, and in the process, make their community and country a better place.
That physician you want to poach from Norway needs a landscaper, for instance.
Because most of them are not well versed in legal jargon and bureaucracy. It should not be on the individual to make a case for immigration, but for the country to recognize the net positive it brings. Right now, we expect literal toddlers with no legal representation to make the case for how they would be a net positive and should be allowed to stay.
We want people to be here that want to be here, and no one wants to be here more than someone who has crossed a desert, risking death, assault, even rape in order to find an opportunity for a better life here. I will take someone who has done that over someone who finds it so very hard to show up for work for a whole 35 hours a week.
I’m not sure I follow you: what happens if you see him doing it again the next day? And then you see him doing it again, after the “tell them not to do it again”?
(Oh, and to answer your question: I agree with you about slapping the guy with a jaywalking fine if you catch him doing that; I just hasten to add that, if he’s still in the street, he should, y’know, be escorted out of the street.)
Uh, no; merely that the sanction for one should presumably be applied if we catch a guy doing one, and that the sanction for the other should presumably be applied if we catch a guy doing the other. You know, without asking how well-behaved the guy has been since, and while taking back the proceeds of his robbery, and so on.)
To mention a third example: if we catch a guy trying to nonviolently pick my pocket, I’d figure a sanction in between those two should presumably be applied; and if we catch a guy right after he’s picked my pocket, I’m figuring that (a) roughly the same sanction should be applied, and (b) he shouldn’t get to keep what he got out of my pocket, because, hey, we would’ve stopped him if only we’d caught him sooner, and he shouldn’t benefit from eluding detection a bit longer.
That’s your call. And my call is, I want to vet them more thoroughly, as I have other criteria. And there are, I’m guessing, rather a lot of folks hereabouts who agree with you; and, likewise, rather a lot who instead agree with me. And so we vote, and our elected officials vote, and — well, look, I get what’s to be done if the folks who agree with you score legislative victories over those who agree with me. But what do you figure should be done so long as folks who agree with me keep scoring such victories when it comes to saying, “er, no; that right there is illegal, see?”
Pro tip: he doesn’t think it was a mistake. He would do it again and again without hesitation. I don’t know how many different ways he can make this clear to you.
I would ask them why they keep leaving the country and then crossing the border through an inappropriate point of entry.
Or is your “doing it again the next day” that they are still here?
If you caught them right after they made it to the north side of the street, would you escort them back to the south side?
If you would do so, would you escort them to the south side when you can see a gang waiting to rob and beat, maybe even kill them, would you send them back if they were having a medical crisis, and trying to get to the hospital on the other side of the street?
If they ran again from the gang trying to kill them, crossing the road, would you increase their penalty because they are still doing it?
So, different infractions against civil obedience are treated different ways. I agree with that. And I think that the penalties for crossing the border inappropriately should be more in line with crossing a road inappropriately, rather than something involving violence.
If someone has an overdue library book, do they have to give back the knowledge that they attained from it?
And what if, in the process of this person breaking a regulation, no one is harmed. Your pocket is still full, your self is unassaulted, even your library books are all returned on time. Who is the aggrieved party to whom restitution is owed, when there is no party that is harmed, and in fact, all parties have benefited?
I keep fighting for what I believe is right. What do you do when the legislation doesn’t go your way?
There have been times and places where there was legislation that made it illegal to be certain ethnicities existing in certain areas. And they would come and take you away and put you in a camp where you would likely die. If the people that agreed with these principles of ethnic cleansing kept scoring “victoires”, what do you figure should be done with these undesirables that just keep existing, and they say to their very existence “er, no; that right there is illegal, see?”
Well, yeah.
Say we spot a jaywalker and promptly warn him and fine him, like you said. And then, a week later, we spot that same guy jaywalking in the same street; what are we to do then? And then, a week after that, we again spot him jaywalking in that same street; what are we to do then?
Likewise: say a guy is illegally on private property one day, and gets caught at it, and receives a warning — and then, the week after that, he’s again illegally on that same property and he again gets caught? And then, the week after that, he’s again illegally on that same property and again gets caught? What’s to be done?
Or if some guy is illegally in this country: if we catch him at it, and we maybe give him a warning — and then, a week later, we catch him at it again? And then, a week later, we catch him at it again? What’s to be done, I ask you?
The knowledge? No, I don’t believe that’s the law. As I understand it, if a guy has an overdue book, he gets asked to pay the fine he’s incurred; and as he hands over that quarter or whatever we of course also ask him to hand the book back in. And if he says he’ll pay the quarter, but he refuses to return the book, then as I understand it he’ll later get asked to again pay a fine — and, again, to turn in the book. And if he pays the fine again but still has the book, then, uh, you tell me.
Well, so far, I’ve worked within the law to change the law — while of course granting that anyone who actually gets caught breaking a law I want changed is still subject to penalties under the law as it exists.
Well, I’ve heard a great many tales about heroes who worked hard to get people out of places like that, and I’d like to think that I’d do likewise in such a situation. Oh, and that I’d also work to change the law, like I was just saying.
Incidentally, though: what’s the flip side to that? Open-border legislation, where I’d talk about wanting to stop a parade of horribles from getting ushered in until what’s left of my country is, as per the phrase du jour, a ‘shithole’ — at which point I’m to be told “er, no; stopping their entry would be illegal, see?”
I want very much to work within the law to prevent any such legislation. You?
Right, but in your example, any time you see that jaywalker on the north side of the road, you punish him again for having crossed it, even if that crossing was when he was a baby being carried by his parents.
I get that you are talking about the laws as they pertain, but that is irrelevant when we are talking about the potential of changing the laws.
It was also illegal to hunt the King’s deer in England, no matter how staving you were, no matter how over populated they were. You can certainly enforce that law, as it is on the books, but the decision of enforcement of that law is not in any way relevant to whether that law and its enforcement should be changed.
I have no idea where you are going with this. Are you asking if he is still here, or if he has reentered through inappropriate ports of entry again?
If he is still here, and you catch him still being here, then, okay, just as the jaywalker is still on the north side of the street.
If it is that he has crossed several times, then maybe we should see why it is that he, and many, many others, are finding it better to walk through deserts and mountains, risk death, kidnapping, assault and rape, than to stay in the place that they are.
The only way we are going to eliminate immigration, both legal and illegal, is to turn the country into a shithole that no one wants to come to. No matter how draconian we make measures, it is still better than facing certain poverty and likely violent death if they stay at home.
If someone is in a burning house, and the only way to get out of their house is to cross through your yard, no matter how many times will you catch them and send them back into their burning house, they are still going to be trying to escape from the burning house.
The only other way I can see is to build the wall, and man it with snipers, and shoot anyone who gets near it, from either side. Of course, that only deals with the majority of immigrants who cross through that avenue, so we’d have to then start executing any and all immigration violators that we catch.
That’s the only thing that will work. Are you willing to do it?
What book does he have? What resource is he using? If he is working and being productive, then he is putting books into the library, and deporting him is what is removing them.
As do I. I am not sure what your point is here.
That I advocate that those penalties for a non-violent civil infraction be changed, as they do harm to not only those who would like to come here and improve not only their own lives, but improve our country while they are at it doesn’t mean that I advocate for anarchy, as it seems you are trying to imply here.
If you are trying to imply anything else with that statement, I’d love to hear it.
Wait, I thought you just said that you would want people to be punished according to the laws as they exist, but then, you say that you would like to think that you would be a hero that would break the law in helping others to break the law.
Which is it?
The only flip side to closing our borders is open-border legislation? Talk about an excluded middle.
I already talked about several examples of improved border control that would benefit both “us and them”, so it’s not as if you were unaware that there were options between the two extremes.
That fantasy legislation that you made up, that no one is advocating for, sure, I’d be against that. How about instead of absurd hypotheticals and fantasies, we talk about the legislation as it stands, and actual reasonable reforms that can be made that would benefit both potential immigrants and our country and communities?
I am not sure that we are communicating here. You keep talking about the law as it stands, as if that is the only thing that can be enforced, and if we are not enforcing that law, then we just have open borders that will turn our country into a shithole. This has nothing at all to do with what I have said.
I am advocating changing the law, so that enforcement of the law involves fining people who for some reason crossed incorrectly, and making them fill out their entry paperwork, and changing the immigration policy so that we are able to take in the people that our country needs to continue to grow and compete on the world stage, while also being humane and demonstrating humanitarian principles to the world. Our current immigration policy is set up to do pretty much the opposite of all of those goals, and should be reformed.
To keep harping on enforcement , when the conversation is about reform, completely misses the entirety of the everything about the conversation.