# Stan Shmenge, please don't do this to your fellow conservatives. **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [January 6, 2009, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stan-shmenge-please-dont-do-this-to-your-fellow-conservatives/480098 "2009-01-06T16:32:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stan-shmenge-please-dont-do-this-to-your-fellow-conservatives/480098/61 "2009-01-07T03:05:20Z")
I never noticed this guy before today, but he appears to be everywhere all of the sudden. Has he recently come out of hibernation, or have I just been ignoring his idiotic postings? ---
**Author:** ![Sateryn76](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e4f/32.png) [@Sateryn76](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sateryn76)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stan-shmenge-please-dont-do-this-to-your-fellow-conservatives/480098/62 "2009-01-07T03:09:19Z")
> [@Jimmy\_Chitwood](#): > > Marxist sex is the 69. It sounds all exciting and you get all heated up to try it, and then you try it, and everything’s all out of place, and you realize that you’re looking at parts of people you don’t want to look at, and nobody’s ever going to successfully get a-head this way. > > And something smells funny. You get post of the year - and it’s only January 6! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stan-shmenge-please-dont-do-this-to-your-fellow-conservatives/480098/63 "2009-01-07T03:28:40Z")
> [@Fear\_Itself](#): > > And how do you construe from that quote your proposition that all rights must therefore acrue from property? You seem to have extended Von Mises to mean that those without property have no rights. That is surely false. **Lib** has gone on record as saying that in this paradigm, an individual’s body, with its capacity to work, earn and create wealth, is his property. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stan-shmenge-please-dont-do-this-to-your-fellow-conservatives/480098/64 "2009-01-07T03:30:07Z")
> [@Nancarrow](#): > > To beat this dead horse even further, I can’t see any reason why **Liberal** ’s cites must refer to American usage. He’s American, you’re American, a lot of the board is American. But most of the World is not American. And this is a message board on the World Wide Web. Please don’t get all Exceptional on us. :dubious: There is at least one very good reason: When you’re an American making claims about an American to an audience comprising a majority of Americans regarding American politics and history in order to claim that something is _ironic_, it makes no sense to use words in a way that aren’t reflected by American usage. It’d be like talking about contemporary British politics and pretending that “Tory” meant a person who believed in Queen Elizabeth II’s divine right to rule North America. > [@Liberal](#): > > I would also add that the terms have flipped twice in American history, once in the Wilson era and again in the Johnson era. Lyndon Johnson was a conservative in the classical sense, and Goldwater was a liberal. Likewise, Wilson was a liberal but would now be viewed as conservative. It has gotten to the point where it’s hard to pin down who is what, frankly, especially on the conservative side. There are social conservatives (which is what Wilson would be called today) and there are fiscal conservatives (like Giuliani and Rockefeller). > > Even weirder is the modern view of early Americans, like Jefferson and Burr. The old terms are still used, even thought they’re “wrong” today! Jefferson is called a liberal despite that he championed individualism, reason, and liberty. And Aaron Burr is called a conservative despite that he considered George Washington to be “a man of no talents and one who could not spell a sentence of common English”. If Jefferson were alive today, outside his historic context, he would be called a libertarian. And Burr would be called an effete liberal. This kind of analysis essentially renders language and analysis meaningless. We have no idea where people like Jefferson, Hamilton, Burr, and Wilson would fall on our modern political continuum. The social, political, environmental, scientific, educational, historical and other circumstances don’t translate from one era to another. Invent a time machine and bring bring Jefferson to the present, educate him about our modern society, and then ask him what he thinks. That’s the only way to reach any meaningful conclusion. Maybe he’d choose to be a liberal in the contemporary sense; maybe he’d choose to be a conservative; maybe a libertarian; maybe something else, like a socialist or communist. We have no way of knowing. ---
**Author:** ![Cazzle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cazzle/32/75_2.png) [@Cazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cazzle)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stan-shmenge-please-dont-do-this-to-your-fellow-conservatives/480098/65 "2009-01-07T03:30:32Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > I never noticed this guy before today, but he appears to be everywhere all of the sudden. Has he recently come out of hibernation, or have I just been ignoring his idiotic postings? I wondered exactly the same thing. A search reveals he used to be [Happy Wanderer](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=10483612). ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stan-shmenge-please-dont-do-this-to-your-fellow-conservatives/480098/66 "2009-01-07T03:31:44Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > I never noticed this guy before today, but he appears to be everywhere all of the sudden. Has he recently come out of hibernation, or have I just been ignoring his idiotic postings? Do you remember **Happy Wanderer**? He returned in November I think as **Stan Shmenge**. He’s been banging around a lot since December. I don’t recall him being too bad and I still don’t think he is but then I haven’t really been reading many of his recent posts. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 3:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stan-shmenge-please-dont-do-this-to-your-fellow-conservatives/480098/67 "2009-01-07T03:32:40Z")
I knew **Sarahfeena** is conservative (though I know that conservative women can have some tales to tell, and that we all want to hear, if you know what I mean 😉 ), I can understand why eBay sellers might like to make enough off a sale to pay for the gas to the post office (I buy crappy old computers, bid appropriately, but know shipping costs and typically pay more for shipping than I do for the old shit I buy), and recognize that **Schmenge** is an idiot who could tar all conservatives with the same brush, but does anybody here do that? ---
**Author:** ![cosmosdan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@cosmosdan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cosmosdan)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 4:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stan-shmenge-please-dont-do-this-to-your-fellow-conservatives/480098/68 "2009-01-07T04:20:07Z")
> [@What\_Exit](#): > > It’s interesting, before I even bid I look at the S&H the seller is charging and if he combines. I don’t think I have ever won a pair of bids from the same seller to take advantage of lowered shipping but if the S&H is high and the seller does not combined I tend to think a lot less of the seller and often won’t bother bidding on their items. I also always calculate the S&H into the bid I make so that if I think an item is worth $30 to me and S&H is $7.35 my top bid is $22.65. > > So while I think Stan is probably costing himself some bidders, he is at least correct that he doesn’t need to combine and reduce S&H. He just needs to understand that he will lose more potential customers. As he is no longer going to use Ebay, he might as well say no and get his last bit of profit. > > His rant on the housewives was silly and just shows he is not as savvy at estimating shipping costs as the housewives he is besmirching. A good seller knows his costs and where he actually makes enough profit to bother. On some items S&H can really vary. I always check if the seller combines and it is pretty common for smaller items. I noticed\*\* SS\*\* was bitching about losing money on shipping. I’ve had that happen but it’s my own fault. You can do the proper homework and find out how much shipping is. Guess a _little_ high if you must to prevent getting burned. If you guessed too low who’s fault is that. I agree with him that the fees add up. The ranting was just childish. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stan-shmenge-please-dont-do-this-to-your-fellow-conservatives/480098/69 "2009-01-07T04:23:03Z")
And DON’T bid if the shipping is left unsaid. It can fuck a rookie. ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stan-shmenge-please-dont-do-this-to-your-fellow-conservatives/480098/70 "2009-01-07T04:25:50Z")
> [@cosmosdan](#): > > On some items S&H can really vary. I always check if the seller combines and it is pretty common for smaller items. I noticed\*\* SS\*\* was bitching about losing money on shipping. I’ve had that happen but it’s my own fault. You can do the proper homework and find out how much shipping is. Guess a _little_ high if you must to prevent getting burned. If you guessed too low who’s fault is that. I agree with him that the fees add up. The ranting was just childish. I got the impression he was ranting about a winner bidder that demanded he combined shipping even though he never offered to in the listings. Later he appeared to have got mad and got childish. > [@dropzone](#): > > And DON’T bid if the shipping is left unsaid. It can fuck a rookie. Agreed. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 4:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stan-shmenge-please-dont-do-this-to-your-fellow-conservatives/480098/71 "2009-01-07T04:29:31Z")
> [@Nancarrow](#): > > To beat this dead horse even further, I can’t see any reason why **Liberal** ’s cites must refer to American usage. He’s American, you’re American, a lot of the board is American. But most of the World is not American. And this is a message board on the World Wide Web. Please don’t get all Exceptional on us. :dubious: Cite for the assertion that the world extends beyond the borders of the US? 😉 ---
**Author:** ![EddyTeddyFreddy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eddyteddyfreddy/32/18796_2.png) [@EddyTeddyFreddy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EddyTeddyFreddy)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 5:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stan-shmenge-please-dont-do-this-to-your-fellow-conservatives/480098/72 "2009-01-07T05:14:05Z")
> [@cosmosdan](#): > > You can do the proper homework and find out how much shipping is. Guess a _little_ high if you must to prevent getting burned. If you guessed too low who’s fault is that. When I sell on eBay I’ll set S&H on the high side of reasonable, but I put a note in the item description that I will refund (via PayPal) any amount in excess of the actual postage, and I do so. Since I’m only an occasional seller and reuse boxes that stuff I’ve bought comes in, it isn’t a big deal to do the right thing, and it sure makes my feedback shine. ---
**Author:** ![IAmNotSpartacus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/cc9497/32.png) [@IAmNotSpartacus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IAmNotSpartacus)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 9:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stan-shmenge-please-dont-do-this-to-your-fellow-conservatives/480098/73 "2009-01-07T09:23:52Z")
Dear OP, Your ideas intrigue me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter. ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 11:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stan-shmenge-please-dont-do-this-to-your-fellow-conservatives/480098/74 "2009-01-07T11:01:52Z")
> [@kaylasdad99](#): > > **Lib** has gone on record as saying that in this paradigm, an individual’s body, with its capacity to work, earn and create wealth, is his property. Thanks for listening. It’s nice to know that at least one person does. ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 11:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stan-shmenge-please-dont-do-this-to-your-fellow-conservatives/480098/75 "2009-01-07T11:07:06Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > That has nothing whatsoever to do with **rights** as such. I’m glad you posted that because it gives me an opportunity to vent about debating people like you. It’s like Poster A demanding a cite that says Obama advocates a middle class tax cut, and Poster B providing one from Obama himself in which he says, “I’m proposing a middle class tax cut.” “But wait!” your kind decries, “Proposing is not the same as advocating!” You can take your mobile goalposts and play with someone else. ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 11:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stan-shmenge-please-dont-do-this-to-your-fellow-conservatives/480098/76 "2009-01-07T11:11:22Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > If he’s talking about equality, if he’s talking about an inherent dignity of man, he’s not a classic conservative. He’s not talking about an inherent dignity, but a magisterial dignity. For heaven’s sake, just look at the Civil Rights Act. Could there be a more dispensative proscription of rights? The classical conservative believes that rights inhere to the chief magistrates who may then dispense them according to their pleasure. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 12:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stan-shmenge-please-dont-do-this-to-your-fellow-conservatives/480098/77 "2009-01-07T12:48:21Z")
> [@Liberal](#): > > It’s like Poster A demanding a cite that says Obama advocates a middle class tax cut… Not even remotely. You might as well have interpreted Von Mises to mean that private property is the source of gravity and magnetism. ---
**Author:** ![Cazzle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cazzle/32/75_2.png) [@Cazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cazzle)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 1:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stan-shmenge-please-dont-do-this-to-your-fellow-conservatives/480098/78 "2009-01-07T13:16:16Z")
> [@What\_Exit](#): > > I got the impression he was ranting about a winner bidder that demanded he combined shipping even though he never offered to in the listings. Later he appeared to have got mad and got childish. He never quoted the buyer, so perhaps the request was worded more strongly than I realise, but he did say > [@Stan Shmenge](#): > > Sounds fair. Cut the shipping in half. Maybe I will try that. He did ask me what I wanted. From that, I gathered the guy just asked if he would combine, and how much he wanted for combined postage. I see nothing in that thread to indicate that the buyer \*\*demanded \*\*shipping be combined, but perhaps I missed something? He went on to say that he was hoping to make extra profit from his shipping and handling fee, and to cover expenses such as gas to drive to the post office and his time standing in line and the time he spent creating and posting the auction despite these things being specifically prohibited by eBay’s own policy. He then insulted his buyer’s morals for asking if he’d combine shipping and called him a moron because of his purchases, threw around some gratuitous insults towards housewives, other eBay sellers and Beanie Baby collectors and closed by dismissing eBay as a ripoff and concluding that it’s simply not possible to make money selling there. All in all, it was a pretty distasteful reaction to a simple, reasonable question. 90% of sellers in my experience would have offered without being asked, and 9% would have agreed to do it when asked. He was under no obligation to combine shipping and only had to say no. If the buyer had continued to agitate after that then his reaction would have been easier to understand. ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 1:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stan-shmenge-please-dont-do-this-to-your-fellow-conservatives/480098/79 "2009-01-07T13:50:36Z")
> [@Fear\_Itself](#): > > Not even remotely. You might as well have interpreted Von Mises to mean that private property is the source of gravity and magnetism. Rights are a matter of political philosophy; gravity isn’t. (Specifically, rights are a matter of ethics.) The link I gave you is to the entire book, if you’d care to read it. If not, here’s the summary. Von Mises argues, basically, that a man is born with original property (his body and his mind) that cannot be taken from him without destroying him (and thus is unalienable). His living body entitles him to the right to life, and his mind entitles him to the right to give or withhold consent. Therefore, his rights are natural (imbued by nature). Using his original property, a man may acquire more property. As long as he does so peacefully and honestly (meaning, without usurping the rights of other men), he has just as much right to the property he has acquired as to the property with which he was born. His body and his mind are the tools of his labor and struggle, and therefore extend to acquisitions. These premises form the basis for the entire liberal ethic. You should not harm me because you have no right to my life. You should not deceive me because you have no right to my consent. You should not steal from me because you have no right to what my body and mind have produced for me. It is only when ownership of property is vague or in dispute that claims to rights conflict. If we have “public property”, then who can call the shots with respect to it? The chief magistrate? The majority? The strongest man? No one can build a house in a public park because who owns it is unclear. Therefore, every man has the same rights as every other man. It isn’t that a wealthy man has more rights than a poor man, just as it isn’t that a fat man has more humanity than a skinny man. If you disagree, fine. But don’t act like liberalism is your personal purview or that philosophers have not studied the ethic of liberalism for centuries. If you care to provide cites showing a deductive development of liberalism, feel free. If you just want to continue harping and stomping and snorting, feel free. But I’ve given you what you asked for. The least you can do is acknowledge it, and stop acting like a spoiled child who hasn’t been given what he’s screaming for. ---
**Author:** ![Sarahfeena](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sarahfeena/32/519_2.png) [@Sarahfeena](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sarahfeena)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stan-shmenge-please-dont-do-this-to-your-fellow-conservatives/480098/80 "2009-01-07T16:09:42Z")
> [@Enola\_Gay](#): > > Damn. It looks like the mods fixed it before I arrived on the scene…and now the curiousity is killing me. I can’t help but think you subconsciously misspelled it as Stan [Schmegma](http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=schmegma). I think it was just “Stan Schmenge.” Sorry it wasn’t a more interesting misspelling! 🙂 [QUOTE=Kalhoun] You’re a conservative? What the fuck is this world coming to? And where the fuck have I been? [/QUOTE] Oh, fuck off you bedwetting liberal! 😉 [QUOTE=dropzone] I knew Sarahfeena is conservative (though I know that conservative women can have some tales to tell, and that we all want to hear, if you know what I mean ), I can understand why eBay sellers might like to make enough off a sale to pay for the gas to the post office (I buy crappy old computers, bid appropriately, but know shipping costs and typically pay more for shipping than I do for the old shit I buy), and recognize that Schmenge is an idiot who could tar all conservatives with the same brush, but does anybody here do that? [/QUOTE] Well, sure, some people do (not naming any names here). But most of them I don’t worry about too much. And other folks might not be so black-and-white about it, but we all have our little prejudices and I hate to see them reinforced. Plus, I think the thing that irritates me more is dropping it into a thread where is is SO off-topic and irrelevant. As I said in the OP, this board is so polarized it’s ridiculous…comments like that just make it worse. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stan-shmenge-please-dont-do-this-to-your-fellow-conservatives/480098.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stan-shmenge-please-dont-do-this-to-your-fellow-conservatives/480098.md?page=5)