Liberal:What despicable hubris you demonstrate by representing such a system either providing a context of peace and honesty or having free men that live in it.
Oh, bullshit back atcha, Lib. There is nothing in the system of representative-democracy-plus-civil-rights per se that necessitates having laws against prostitution, asset forfeiture, gay marriage prohibition, or any of that other stuff. That just happens to be the place we’re currently at in the evolution of our particular instance of RD+CR.
Nor is there anything in the system of libertarianism per se that would prevent exactly the same sort of restrictions being enforced by the propertied on any less propertied whom they could subject to economic coercion. The hypothetical legal freedom not to do something that in reality you cannot possibly afford not to do is merely what you libertarians like to call “scribbles on paper”.
I’ve never disputed that there are some good principles in libertarianism and that it makes some valuable contributions to political discourse. But the sterile haughtiness of your rhetoric about it does get really tedious sometimes. All these witnessing episodes of yours seem to go essentially the same way:
With the amount of time you spend in GD, you should know better than to throw around such blatant false dichotomies. Not everything that isn’t libertarianism is “majoritarianism.” Sloppy logic does nothing to further your cause.
Sometimes it isn’t a group of people who seek to be arbiters of taste to the populace. Sometimes it’s ONE GUY with nothing better to do than get into other peoples’ business. I work at a station whose license renewal has been contested six times in a row, by the same guy. Every time, the station has to hire lawyers and provide documentation and all kinds of stuff, and the FCC has to convene hearings, etc. Every time, the lawsuit is dismissed as frivolous. After the last one, I guess he figured it wasn’t any fun to sue us anymore. He was on the news again a few weeks ago, suing somebody else for something he perceived as wrong. I can’t imagine having the gall.
Okay, that was the leeway I was talking about, but you’re assuming they have more than they do. There are two problems with what you’re suggesting:
[ol]
[li]If you contact the FCC and say, “‘Shit’ isn’t a dirty word. I want to hear more of it on radio and television,” you’re not going to get very far. There aren’t too many big lobbying groups calling for more obscenities, and they’ll drown out your voice.[/li][li]If the FCC decided that one of George Carlin’s “seven words you can’t say on television” wasn’t obscene any more, Congress would come down on them.[/li][/ol]
Right, you, by yourself, won’t convince the FCC to let people say “shit” on the radio. You need to form a lobbying group stronger than the anti-obscenity people. And, while it didn’t happen with “shit”, it almost happened with “fuck”.
Last year, Bono said something was “fucking brilliant” at the Golden Globes, and the Commission ruled that it was ok for him to say that, because he wasn’t referring to the sexual act…he was only doing it for “emphasis”. However, not so long after that, the Superbowl happened, everybody got offended, and the Commission fell over itself to reverse its decision. If it wasn’t for the stunt at the Superbowl, though, in all likelyhood, you’d be able to use “fucking” as an adjective on TV.
The FCC actually has quite a bit of regulatory authority on its own. Congress can make law that supersedes the FCC (and has moved to do so WRT the ownership flap a while back), but generally speaking, the FCC has ultimate jurisdiction over the television and radio airwaves, and Congress does not poach on their turf lightly.
What blather. I never established any dichotomy. The system is majoritarian simply because it is majoritarian irrespective what any other system might be. I never said a system must be either libertarian or majoritarian. In fact, I’ve said many times that a majoritarian system CAN be libertarian, so long as all are volunteers. Try not to talk about logic. Your comments on logic are like Bush’s comments on Iraq.