"Values" Voters Summit

[SenorBeef]

I screwed up. This is the thread I meant to link - I had both open and copied the url for the wrong one. It’s not just the OP, or those threads - the clear tone of all your posts on the subject have always been more or less as I hyperbolically paraphased.

I could dig up some more specific examples, I’d imagine, but that sort of homework assignment tires me. It’s not that I’m unwilling to do the work - it’s just that it’s not likely to change anything. I think almost everyone on the board will already concede that you’re an asshole, and it’s not as if I’m going to ever make you see it, so it seems like a pointless excercise.

[Rand_Rover]

@SenorBeef

I screwed up. This is the thread I meant to link - I had both open and copied the url for the wrong one. It’s not just the OP, or those threads - the clear tone of all your posts on the subject have always been more or less as I hyperbolically paraphased.

Ah, OK, that makes sense

But you’re still a fucking retard. I did not gloat about people not having access to health care or not being able to see a doctor, as you are asserting. By saying “no free health insurance for you,” I guess I “gloated” about people not getting free health insurance, but that is of course a completely different thing than “access to health care” or “ability to see a doctor.”

I could dig up some more specific examples, I’d imagine, but that sort of homework assignment tires me. It’s not that I’m unwilling to do the work - it’s just that it’s not likely to change anything. I think almost everyone on the board will already concede that you’re an asshole, and it’s not as if I’m going to ever make you see it, so it seems like a pointless excercise.

We aren’t talking about whether I’m an asshole or not, I’m willing to concede that. We are talking about whether I want to hurt others for my own gain. So far you’ve chosen the path of no integrity by refusing to take back that assertion or support it somehow.

[Zeriel]

@Rand_Rover

By saying “no free health insurance for you,” I guess I “gloated” about people not getting free health insurance, but that is of course a completely different thing than “access to health care” or “ability to see a doctor.”

For many people, there is literally no difference, unless you count fraud.

But for the record, you’re not an asshole because of your policy positions. You’re an asshole because you’re an asshole.

[Rand_Rover]

@Zeriel

For many people, there is literally no difference, unless you count fraud.

Well, my post was about a government program, so really the better paraphrase for present purposes is “no free health insurance from the government for you.”

Not that anyone here besides a couple of people actually have the ability to distinguish between “health insurance” and “access to health care” and “ability to see a doctor,” but I keep trying to educate people nonetheless.

[Zeriel]

@Rand_Rover

Well, my post was about a government program, so really the better paraphrase for present purposes is “no free health insurance from the government for you.”

Not that anyone here besides a couple of people actually have the ability to distinguish between “health insurance” and “access to health care” and “ability to see a doctor,” but I keep trying to educate people nonetheless.

Or, for those people who aren’t callous fucknuts, they know that with the state of assistance in this country, being without health insurance often DOES mean no (legal, non-fraudulent) access to a doctor (as opposed to crisis care in an emergency room).

[elucidator]

Maybe its “air quotes”, maybe he means the sort of “health insurance” that lets you think you are insured, until the lady at the computer in the doctor’s office tells you you’re boned.

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

That’s not “health insurance”, that’s health “insurance”. As opposed to “health” insurance, which is totally different.

[Lobohan]

@Really_Not_All_That_Bright

That’s not “health insurance”, that’s health “insurance”. As opposed to “health” insurance, which is totally different.

As long as it’s not totally “different”.

[elucidator]

Well, which ever one it is, I always seem to have the other one.

[Budget_Player_Cadet]

@John_Mace

Not that I agree with these guys, but “small government” doesn’t mean “no government”. The government was much smaller in the 1920s (pre New Deal), and yet there was plenty of room to outlaw homosexual acts. There seems to be this meme on this board that if someone advocates “small government” they must advocate any position that makes the government smaller.

They don’t have to. But advocating a position that doesn’t only make it bigger, but puts it into peoples fucking bedrooms wrong?

@SenorBeef

“Not necesarily mutually exclusive” in that you can come up with a logically consistent position to marry fiscal “conservatism” with just about anything. You could say “I want lower taxes, and I want the government to round up anyone with green eyes and shoot them” while claiming that because as long as you’re cutting the net amount of money the government uses, you’re still dedicated to the cause of reducing government interference in your life.

No, the problem here is that you’re trying to hide being haughty principles to disguise mere self interest. You don’t want to (overtly) say “I got mine, fuck everyone else”, you want to dress it up in noble ideas about how you’re taking a principled stance about how much government interferes with people’s lives.

Which is why it doesn’t ring true when people who defend themselves with philosophical claims about how the government should be smaller and interfere with people’s lives less turn around and say “I want the government to lower my taxes and legislate people’s sexuality” - you’re admitting that you’re not standing for some sacred libertarian principle of government not interfering in people’s lives, you’re saying you’re fine with the government doing some invasive shit, so long as it’s what’s you approve of. But then you disguise it in attempts to appear to be about philosophy and ideas, when it’s really just being a dick.

I think we can all agree that SB won the thread.

[Rand_Rover]

Maybe people who didn’t read past that post will agree with that. Subsequent posts have shown SB to be very much full of shit–he has no support for his assertions.

[Zeriel]

@Rand_Rover

Maybe people who didn’t read past that post will agree with that. Subsequent posts have shown SB to be very much full of shit–he has no support for his assertions.

Declaring yourself the winner just makes you look like Charlie Sheen.

[Steve_MB]

@Rand_Rover

Maybe people who didn’t read past that post will agree with that.

It is unclear whether or not people who didn’t read SB’s posts will agree with it.

It’s pretty much a given that people who read and understand SB’s posts will.

[MOIDALIZE]

Today’s “small government conservatives” are mainly glibertarians, whose patron saint is Augusto Pinochet. Civil liberties, personal freedom, and democracy are of little importance to this crowd, because in their eyes, unfettered capitalism and the elimination of taxes is their highest ideal. If it takes an autocratic government to get there, so be it.

This is why “civil libertarians” are held out as distinct from “libertarians,” because your average libertarian cares little for any issue outside of taxes and government spending.

[SenorBeef]

@Rand_Rover

We aren’t talking about whether I’m an asshole or not, I’m willing to concede that. We are talking about whether I want to hurt others for my own gain. So far you’ve chosen the path of no integrity by refusing to take back that assertion or support it somehow.

Let me try from a different direction.

Do you think that everyone who’s a fiscal conservative, or generally advocates a limited government scope, does so for noble reasons of grand philosophy, who ultimately wants what’s the best outcome on average for everyone? That none of them are motivated purely by self interest, or even with antipathy towards people they consider to be unworthy?

Or do you acknowledge that not everyone is in it for noble reasons, but you’re claiming that you, personally, are among the group that is, and not the group that does it for the abovementioned reasons?

[Rand_Rover]

The latter.