I don’t much like Bricker’s opinions, but he has yet to totally gross me out. Which ain’t easy.
Bricker, why do you support raping coma patients? Since you haven’t devoted pages to it, you must love it.
Bricker, why do you love jerking it to pictures of dead animals? You haven’t devoted pages to it, so you must love it.
Bricker, why do you support children fighting in to-the-death bloodsports? You haven’t devoted pages to it, so you obviously love it intensely.
Bricker, why do you support an organization that thinks the rape of children isn’t that big a deal? Wait, I think this one is actually pretty accurate…
Personally, I still respect him. Just not on this issue, where his position, to me, seems at odds with his basic values.
You, on the other hand, I’ve never had any respect for at all, and that seems unlikely to change any time real soon.
Jesus. Not only do you, apparently, not understand my position on abortion, but you’re willing to declare that I’m amoral (at best!) while knowing nothing more about me.
And I guess you’ve totally written me off as so far beyond anything moral to even try and make the slightest effort to convince me that I’m wrong.
Wow.
The funny thing is, I used to think conservatives must be immoral. Then I served in the Navy, and some conservatives (and liberals) risked their lives to save mine. I take it you’ve never been in any similar circumstance.
He doesn’t have any basic values, he’s pretty much a sociopath. He’s civil, I’ll grant.
Why? Because I’m vulgar?
That’s a personal preference. But I am actually right on this issue, and you’ll notice, unlike Bricker, I’m not lying about someone’s stance. Bricker is literally lying about my position on the Massachusetts legislature flipping who assigns temporary Senators.
That doesn’t chafe at your respect node? The fact that he says I must love it, because I didn’t spend pages decrying it? That’s not about voter suppression, that’s just a random dickhead maneuver.
I’m sorry you’re not happy with my performance, but I’ll take being right and honest over being loved for performance particulars most days.
Bricker, do you believe all your political opponents are amoral at best, or just me (and a few others here)?
I try to generally cut you slack, knowing that you’re outnumbered and have lots of shit flung at you. I rarely if ever use words such as “dishonest” to describe you. But this is just a sack of crap you’re posting here.
(1) “and you loved it”? Bullshit. The MOST you could ever even HOPE to actually demonstrate is “you weren’t bothered by it”, and even that would require a leap of logic in which not condemning something demonstrates not being bothered by it
(2) I have gone to incredibly great lengths on multiple occasions to demonstrate why these two issues are not comparable. But I will do so one more time in the hope, however dim, that you might man up and grow an intellectual pair and stop bringing this shit up. The MA situation, however sleazy, never actually risked adding a feedback loop which would potentially interfere with the pendulum of democracy itself. That is, if the MA voters who elected the body that engaged in that chicanery were upset about the chicanery, nothing in the chicanery would make it harder for those MA voters to throw the bastards out. Which is DIFFERENT from gerrymandering, poll taxes, or (if our concerns are justified), voter ID laws. If a state is super-evenly-balanced, with just a few percentage points separating each party’s support, then what “should” happen is that one party gets into power, does stuff, but if they do bad things they will piss off enough voters, and the other party will get into power, etc. But as long as that body is regulating its own elections, a sufficiently cynical party can get into power and then rig the pendulum so that it can’t swing back, or at least can’t swing back when it normally would. THAT is a fundamental risk to the Democratic process itself. Now, it’s entirely possible that our concerns are overblown, that in 8 years we’ll be looking back and saying “whew, I’m glad that we were wrong about voter ID”. BUT, however right or wrong our concerns might be, they ARE NOT IN ANY WAY SIMILAR TO THAT MASS SITUATION. And after this many times going around about this, you really ought to know better.
Or, alternatively, I’m wrong, and they ARE similar situations, but if so, it’s clearly incumbent on you to actually MAKE that point, rather than just bringing up this ridiculous comparison every 2 months or so.
Furthermore, it’s worth pointing out that many of your arguments rest on “well, the voters of the state elected the guys who decided this, so the machinery of democracy has spoken”. Which is all well and good, unless what we’re discussing is something that will screw up the machinery of democracy itself… something like poll taxes, or gerrymandering, or voter suppression.
If a state is so ridiculously gerrymandered (by either party) that 60% of votes are cast by party A, but party B holds a slim majority in the legislature, and the legislature passes a law that upholds the gerrymandering, it’s ridiculous to say “well, we have a method for deciding how the districts should be designed, and that method is elections, and they just happened, so… the will of the people was upheld, why do you hate democracy?”.
I believe I’ve been called immoral. You know, because I don’t support oppressing poor people.
I suspect that this is why Bricker is uncomfortable talking about his own perceptions, feelings or opinions: they are usually positions that are difficult to defend because they are so fraught with contradictions and, yes, hypocrisy. I think Bricker likes the law for several reasons, among them that there are rules that are already agreed upon, definitions already agreed upon, etc. and yet there’s plenty of room to argue to try and define things in a way that others will agree with him. IMO, he is less able to do that when talking about the rest of the real world, because his logic often finds itself at odds with things like basic human decency, sometimes even his own.
You’re right; he’s fiction.
No, because you’re a dishonest moron who regularly discredits positions I support simply by agreeing with them.
Absolutely. And I think most people in this thread would agree that if there were a way to be absolutely sure that everyone who voted was who they said they were, and that they were all legitimate voters, but that made it MARGINALLY more difficult to vote, AND if that additional MARGINAL burden was shared demographically between voters supporting all parties; that that would probably be a change worth making.
What gets our goat (well, my goat) is that you not only assign vastly different weights to just about every part of the above equation in this case than I do, you also seem to GLEEFULLY ignore the fact that the additional burden is almost certain to fall heaviest on supporters of your political opponents. It’s vaguely possible that you are actually supporting a principled and honest position here. But you don’t even seem to feel the slightest bit of shame or worry that your principled and honest position coincidentally resembles a naked partisan power grab.
I have at no point done that. I have REPEATEDLY in this thread described the ethical framework and arguments behind the positions I’m endorsing, and attempted to engage you in debate about just about every single facet of them. You’re the one who has suddenly adopted the view that when someone says something on a message board they are somehow stating it as true by fiat, as opposed to tossing it out into cyberspace with an implied open invitation for others to question and debate it.
Are you citing the supposed absence of protest as evidence of supposed support? Srsly?
How am I dishonest? I know it can be hard to find a cite for something like that, because thousands of posts across a myriad of subjects, but I’d like to know in your own words what gives you that impression?
As I say, I’m vulgar and combative, I try honestly not to lie. I will grant that I’m as likely as anyone else to wrap up an opponent’s position in an unflattering paraphrase, is that what you mean?
Seriously. He’s done it before.
Bricker’s so funny when he gets all het up. His rapidfire ridiculous claims give us such great opportunities.
I’m trying to pick a fight with you, and I honestly have no idea why. I apologize for starting this. I think I’m going to get away from the internet for a little bit.
I know I act like an ass. And I’m sorry if I was such a cunt that I pissed you off.
Again an obvious distinction to the majority of readers: no one is advocating in FAVOR of those repulsive actions. Plenty of people have supported the Massachusetts legislature.
Including you.
The claim that you are amoral is a short-hand dismissal of your argument that Voter ID laws are immoral. I don’t agree, and I don’t share the moral positions you hold that compel that conclusion.