No recantation. And for the roughly seven zillionth time: I don’t give a fuck about what some idiots’ motivation might have been. Is there a valid, neutral justification for the law? Yes. Then it’s fine. The mere fact that someone wanted the law because he felt it would advantage him is absolutely irrelevant.
Beg pardon? No, they didn’t. They opposed Clinton’s plan and proposed (essentially) ACA in response to it.
Then Obama proposed ACA and suddenly it was the Source of All Evil™.
0 for 3.
Beg your own pardon.
The facts are as I stated them. Your modification is a lame attempt to bring up the similarities between the alternate plans proposed in the 1990s by the GOP in response to the Clinton plan with the current ACA (“Obamacare”).
And no question: they are strikingly similar.
But let’s read again what I wrote, shall we?
The GOP opposed national health care during Clinton’s years and Clinton is pasty white.
True, or not true?
They did oppose national health care – the plan that was offered up by the Clinton administration.
The goal, both then and now, was no national health care plan. In the 1990s, they offered up a more palatable alternative: not because they thought it was good, but merely because it was better than the alternative. If you change a tire in the rain, I cannot point to this act and start calling you to change other flat tires in other rainstorms. You changed that tire because, as unpleasant a task as it was, it was better than the alternative of being stuck where you were. That does not mean that you desire to change tires in the rain.
By the way, all you stalwart defenders of morality…I guess, in your systems of morality, this constant twisting of words and pretending to forget arguments already made – all that shit is moral, right?
I leave you to your own judgment, but that seems a little rash to me.
The only meaningful moral question or the only meaningful legal question?
Assuming you mean the former, I think the exact opposite is true.
To speak of a law being moral or immoral (as opposed to the act of supporting or voting for a law) presupposes that we are concerned primarily with the effects of the law, since a given law may be supported for both noble and nefarious purposes. So if your moral calculus only examines intent and not results, then no law can be said to be moral or immoral–only lawmakers could be moral or immoral. But supposing that your calculus does consider results, then I think your “only meaningful question” would actually be a completely irrelevant question.
The relevant question would involve the actual practical effects of the law. Supposing that we stipulate that no one would be wholly disenfranchised (which I think is false) but that a small minority of people (mostly but not exclusively Democrats) would have a more difficult time voting, and that we stipulate that the law causes many voters to feel more confident in the process (which, again, I doubt), the question would be how we weigh the morality of these outcomes. I imagine we could agree that the bad results are bad and that the good results are good, and the moral calculus would mostly come down to how to compare them. I further imagine that you would discount the bad results because they can be avoided by further effort on the part of those affected, while the good results cannot be obtained by further effort–a sort of individual responsibility maximizing principle.
I think what considering it this way reveals is that most of the disagreement is over facts (how much voter fraud there is, how much is solved by this, how much disenfranchisement is caused if any, how much harder does it make it to vote, what is the actual motivation of the average supporter, or every supporter), and quite a bit less about the ultimate moral question (how do we go about weighing two quite qualitatively different outcomes against each other).
I suppose an 80+ page discussion of the morality would have delved quite deeply into the question of weighing individual harm versus group benefit. Ironically, I would guess that the political intuitions might get a little scrambled there, since it is often liberals arguing for actions that are good for the whole while harming the rights of a few.
Projecting, much?
A joke from that era:
So this (black person) goes to vote in Mississippi, and is presented with a literacy test. He is handed a copy of the Preamble to the Constitution and asked “Can you read this and tell us what it says”
And the (black person) answers “Well, this is the Preamble to the Constitution, and it lays out the various reasons why such a framework is necessary and needful: for instance, to ‘form a more perfect union’, and…”
“Oh, we got us a smart (black person)! Well, how about this, can you tell us what this says?”
“This is a rather clumsy representation of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, clearly intended for a non-mathematical audience, as it misrepresents…”
“All right, all right”
He is then handed a copy of a Chinese newspaper. “Can you tell us what this says?”
"Yes. It says ‘(Black person), you ain’t voting in Mississippi today!’ "
I thought it was funny when I was ten. I got over it.
A literacy test does offer a valid neutral justification, that voters be required to be literate, and hence, can be expected to vote sensibly on the issues of the day. That is perfectly justifiable. It just isn’t justifiable enough, standing on its own. Close, but no cigar, from an egalitarian democracy standpoint, which is mine.
It is in the application of the law that it goes from marginally justifiable to repugnant and repulsive.
I further insist that the voter id law must be seen in context, as part of a broad sweep of laws whose intent is equally clear, and entirely malicious. The restrictions on early voting, voter registration, Sunday voting, etc. are clearly designed to create an underserved electoral advantage.
Friend Bricker would like to separate that out, to insist that we only consider voter id laws outside of the context of other laws that are part of array of such crimes. He would like us to pretend, for the sake of this argument, that they do not exist, and do not clarify the motives of their supporters.
Which might be valid enough, I suppose, if it were not for the fact that voter id laws are part and parcel of the same broad effort. They make the motivation for these efforts stark and nakedly disgusting. If we stretch the boundaries of reason to the breaking point, and offer every possible semantic variation the most generous possible interpretation…it might just be possible to find voter id laws acceptable, when viewed in pristine isolation. Like literacy tests. Shorn of its practical applications, it might pass muster, if only just.
But to pretend that it can be separated out from its context, a context that is repulsive and malignant, and can therefore be argued for as if no other such efforts were afoot is consummate weaselthink. Feh! as they say in Lubbock.
There is no evidence that Republicans wanted no national healthcare. Therefore, they did want national healthcare.
But it’s almost never liberals arguing to let the consequences of one’s individual actions – or inactions – rest with the individual. In other words, when you hearkened above to personal responsibility, you highlighted the real reason this is a liberal vs. conservative divide: conservatives discount the bad effects because they arise from an individual’s failure to exercise personal responsibility, and are avoidable by the individual exercising reasonable actions. Thus my frequent invocation of the ‘voodoo’ thought experiment: if I announced I were placing a voodoo curse on any who dared vote Democratic, and someone could prove that this had a real, measurable effect of lowering the number of Democratic votes cast, my answer would be: tough shit. It’s objectively entirely unreasonable to be swayed by fear of a voodoo curse. If you are, the responsibility for fixing the issue does not lie with the government and a voodoo education initiative, or a voodoo prohibition law near election times. It lies with you learning that there’s no such thing as voodoo.
So, too, here – the real calculus is not, as you suggest, measuring the actual harms suffered. That’s kowtowing to the voodoo. The real calculus is asking if the measures are objectively reasonable. They are. If they result in lost votes from people too lazy to get their asses photographed for free, too damn bad. If the Democrats feel that their primary constituency is voters too lazy to get free ID cards, then in my view the Republic is strengthened by the lack of such persons’ participation in the body politic.
There’s plenty of evidence you’re a dishonest fucktard. Therefore, you’re a dishonest fucktard.
The evidence, by induction, is clear: at every stage, they opposed a plan that could actually result in national healthcare.
I see. I must have missed that part of the Constitution, wherein people can be adjudged to be “lazy”, and can therefore be legitimately barred from the rights others enjoy. Perhaps you will point that out to me?
Wanna bet? 'Cause it ain’t so unless somebody loses money on it.
Sure. I’ll be the judge.
Or we can mutually select a third person, and ask him to judge the honesty of the post you just made: “There is no evidence that Republicans wanted no national healthcare. Therefore, they did want national healthcare.” If our mutually-agreed judge says that’s untrue, I win.
How about it?
Who you have in mind?
Perhaps Fear is lazy? He did type a contraction ('cause) in place of the full word (because), hence, he could be adjudged lazy and has no civil rights we need respect.
In his honor, I propose we name that the “Bricker Doctrine”. Can I get a second, or an “Amen!”
The IDs being free are a fig leaf. To get the ID, you must:
Take time off work. Can’t make the rent if you take off a day to get the ID? No vote for you. The fact that people who can’t afford to do this are Democratic-leaning voters, often minorities? Coincidence.
Have a copy of your birth certificate. Don’t have one? Can’t spare the cash to get a copy of it? You were born in a different state and can’t find out how to get a copy? No vote for you. The fact that people who can’t afford to do this are Democratic-leaning voters, often minorities? Coincidence.
Or maybe a driver’s license will do. Don’t have one? Maybe you live in an urban area where you don’t need to drive. Maybe you can’t afford a car. The fact that people who don’t have drivers licenses this are Democratic-leaning voters, often minorities? Coincidence.
Get to the city or state office to present the forms and get your photo taken. Oh, it’s 10 miles away and you don’t drive and there’s no public transit, and even if there was, you work during those hours? No vote for you.The fact that people who don’t have the time and transportation to do this are Democratic-leaning voters, often minorities? Coincidence.
In short, these “free” IDs are just as noxious a deterrent to voting as literacy tests and poll taxes. The only way to be for voter ID laws is to either be willfully ignorant, a racist, or a flaming asshole. More likely, all three.
I think you’re saying that the moral question is twofold: First, on results, your view is that you can discount the bad effects because they can be avoided by sufficient action by those affected. And second, you framed the other thing I phrased as a result (voter confidence) as an objective–so long as the “objective” of the law is not malicious, then these discounted bad effect do not outweigh the benefits.
On that reasoning, I assume, a law that said “All Republicans must register to vote in the state capital and nowhere else” would not be moral. Even though it would pass the first test (i.e., fuck those lazy Republicans who can’t be bothered to go to the capital), it would fail the second test (i.e., it has a malicious purpose).
So I see two main axes for dispute there. There is a factual dispute about what you term the “objective.” Probably not resolvable through discussion since it is an empirical question about what is in the hearts of the majority of lawmakers who supported the law. And there is a moral dispute about whether the discounting of bad effects that can be ameliorated by individual action is complete or partial. I think you’ll have a tough time defending it as a complete negating of the bad effects, and instead will have to defend the position that the beneficial results outweigh the discounted bad ones.
Here’s how I propose we do it. Each of us create a list of candidates. If the same candidate appears on both lists, we’ve both agreed to him (or her).
If not, we can bat the issue around more, or assume that no person will be acceptable to both of us.
Correct. And since the law is supported by many legislators, there’s no objective method for determining how many evil-intentioned delegates it would take to poison the pool.
Why will I have a tough time defending it as a complete negation?