Joe: You can’t just let someone wait at the airport without a ride home!
Ed: of course you can! As proof, I just did it to you. What’s your proposal to stop me?
Joe: True. I meant, of course, that you should not.
As opposed to these conversations:
Libby: You can’t pass laws that trample the rights of voters unless you have more evidence!
Bricker: I don’t agree any rights are trampled, and in fact the law clearly can be passed. What’s your alternate scheme for passing laws, if not the one we use now?
Libby: (incoherent sputtering, calling Bricker immoral)
See? Where is the simple rejoinder? Answer: no one (except Max) gave it, because no one meant merely “shouldn’t.” They all meant to say that these laws should be trashed with or without the legislature.
Yeah, about those conversations… could we see one?
I mean, I know we could if they existed, in the sense that it is physically possible for visible light to emerge from our monitors in a pattern our brains will interpret as comprehensible English text, but could you point one out?
And I know you could point one out in the sense that it is possible for you do so, but will you?
Alternate explanations for your theoretical conversation;
The impression that their meaning was clear, or the impugned motive dumb, rendering the question foolish.
A failure of communication on the part of either party the intended points.
Simple idiocy.
The inability to answer the question for an alternate scheme for passing of laws, on the basis that none can (presumably sadly) be thought of, rendering the sentiment wishful.
A disinterest in answering the question for non-overthrow-democracy purposes.
A lack of knowledge of the law meaning unableness/unwillingness to debate points upon it.
A suspicion that within the question lies a trap.
The thought that others in the thread may be better suited to respond to said question.
…or the thought that said question has already been answered.
Not seeing the question.
A rejection of the question as an inaccurate or irrelevant one based on the debate thus far.
An efficiency or measure of importance which renders the question less worthy of attention than other matters.
Some personal issue.
Some personal issue between you and the posters in question.
No, wait, I see it now! All along, we were trying to subvert the will of the American people with our dastardly schemes. And Bricker is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life…
Just imagine, if the Republicans were totally sincere on this…
Pubbie: Look this voter id thing is really, really important because voter confidence, so lets make a deal. You guys back us on this, and we will approve and fund a voter outreach and voter registration drive, with easy and convenient access to the photo id…
Dem: For free??
Pubbie: For sure! All we want is to be sure about the validity of votes, plus, we would just simply love to have a whole bunch of brand new black, hispanic and young voters, the more the better!
Dems: How about we change the name of all those Reagan airports and stuff after Eugene V. Debs?
Pubbie: We’ll talk…
Latino Dem: And if a cop asks you something about being a citizen, you just show him the ID and that’s it?
Pubbie: Como no?
Dems: DEAL! Lets go write it up!
So now this has gotten to the point of arguing about what the meaning of is is.[sup]*[/sup]
Is there some sort of law, similar to Godwin’s, but about semantics instead of Hitler?
[sup]*For Bricker, yes, yes… I realize that the discussion is about "can’t? versus “shouldn’t” and not literally about the definition of “is”. It’s called a figure of speech.[/sup]
Either Clinton’s Law or Bricker’s Law. Maybe the Clinton-Bricker Law.
And I just realized that Hitler has now been mentioned in this thread. Although it was in the context of Godwin so I’m not sure if it counts. I suppose there should be corollary to Godwin’s Law regarding the mentioning of Godwin’s Law.
(Note that I’m talking about the original and real meaning of Godwin’s Law; that says that as the length of a discussion thread approaches infinity, the likelihood of Hitler being mentioned approaches certainty. I’m NOT talking about who wins or loses the debate. That’s a bastardization of Godwin.)
You guys may have fucked up sending him on this task,kinda like the Myth of Syphilis, ya know? I mean, there are thousands of posts, and at least sixty percent are from Dopers more liberal than “Fat Tony” Scalia, hence “lefties”, and the rest are Bricker. So, he’s gonna be gathering a metric buttload of posts and dumping them on the hamsters. Do we still have the amphetamine based hamster food?
Since he’s the only one arguing his side here and we are all clueless in the presence of his supremely adroit skill, I just wish I could figure out who is keeping coup score and for whom.
No offense, Bricker, but that exchange exactly serves to debunk your point. Nothing in Kimstu’s post could possibly be construed as saying “our method of passing laws should be circumvented.” He’s saying, just like most people in this thread are saying, that the methods we have for passing laws can be used, or even manipulated, to pass bad laws, but that the problem isn’t the method for passing legislation, it’s the immorality of those seeking to pass the laws. That’s the entire point of this thread, really. No one is advocating that we literally bypass legislatures and pass laws by fiat or something. Seriously. We object rather to the bad faith in which one political party is using the system to pass bad laws. And like others before me, I find it hard to countenance how someone of your scholarly bent could not realize that “You can’t…” is a standard English stand-in expression for “You shouldn’t…”
That’s how it’s being used in this thread. You do yourself and your arguments a disservice by clinging to the notion that your opponents are using the expression literally.
Amusingly, in the quoted passage, I don’t even see where Kimstu used the word “can’t”, so it doesn’t even satisfy the claim that people in this thread are using “can’t” when they mean “shouldn’t”.