So no one should ever get out of prison early for good behavior, is what you’re saying. You could have just said that instead of this wacky idea.
Anybody who wants to impose any censorship beyond rudimentary time and place restrictions shouldn’t be able to make laws or important legal decisions (i.e. enforcing or reviewing the law). If there were two people running for office and one wanted to ban “dangerous” books and one wanted to kill all <nationality>, I’d probably end up voting for the genocidal maniac. I’d grit my teeth the whole way and hope there was somebody better than both of them, but I feel like as long as information is free, people can keep making decisions and fix the mess.
When you find another way to prevent STD transmission that DOESN’T involve a thin latex or polyurethane film between your genitals and those of your partner, do let me know.
Do you get a lot of play with that line?
OK, I should be able to come up with a Top Ten list, or damn close… AFTER: yep! From most extreme down, I think…
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Authority as we know it — including law enforcement, leadership from the top of organizations, coercion as an organizational mechanism, formalized punishment, the rule by some over the all — is not necessary in order to have viable social order. Decision-making structures and communication patterns can exist that can yield predictability, dependability, the capacity to plan and distribute, manufacture, and other positive features of a functioning society without anyone having a position of authority over anyone else within those structures, and the closer we approach such an arrangement the more efficient in human terms (range of choices, personal freedom, wiser decisions from more knowledge, better communication, fuller culture and more integration of full life into public shared understandings) the society becomes.
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Childhood is an oppressive institution and children an oppressed group, although “oppression” is probably too simplistic a term for it. The liberaton of children is simultaneously more radical and more complicated than the liberation of any other disenfranchised group, and for that reason will probably be the last and final fixing of a social injustice. It is different because childhood is a stage everyone passes through rather than a permanent status or class, and different because the perceived limitations and shortages of judgment and skill are genuine — just not genuinely binary as enshrined in law, wherein one is either a child or one is not. Law itself as we know it cannot survive the liberation of children.
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Sexual exclusivity is neither an inevitably desirable goal nor an intrinsically admirable accomplishment. There’s nothing loving about asking someone to forego sexual experiences with other people. Relationships can be serious, heartfelt, loving, and/or committed without exclusivity. A polyamorous approach to loving is probably emotionally healthier all around for all involved.
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The viewpoints, opinions, beliefs, patterns of thoughts, the very terms in which people frame their thoughts, are, even among the most iconoclastic introspective free-thinking of us, about 99% echo chamber, with the individual serving as a local repository for the surrounding culture to embed and proliferate its perspectives, and 1% individual deviation and elaboration on those. I should specifically note that it is my assertion of the 1% that is the controversial portion of this statement in some circles.
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Free will is not an illlusion. While a deterministic explanation for behaviors has its uses and represents some truths, volition does exist in this world.
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Causation is an illusion. It is a useful illusion we could not readily dispense with, but there have never been two events one of which caused the second, except as a product of our own minds dividing things up that way; there is no intrinsic reason to see the universe as other than a single event, 12+ billion years in duration, which has no prior cause.
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The psychiatric profession, which allegedly diagnoses people with highly specific ailments in the larger family called the “mental illnesses”, actually only relies heavily on three diagnoses, which are all defined in such a fuzzy unclear fashion that any person could be seen under at least some circumstances as being described by any of the three: clinical depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia.
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What we calll “thinking” is an ongoing practice of pattern-recognition, of fitting observations into a larger context of what we consider to be real; and that process of pattern-recognition is dependent upon emotional processes. Without emotions there is no thought.
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To whatever extent there are important Truths within a theology, those Truths must not be and cannot be hardwired to any single expression of them in words. And therefore any and all such insight and wisdom can be expressed without using terms conventionally associated with the existing body of theistic thought.
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Of the political thinking that has emerged in the last 50 years, the one vibrantly new perspective of the era was radical feminism. It’s the hottest new thing since Marxism back in the 1800s, and no one who espouses to be a political theorist or social theorist of any sort should be taken seriously who has not studied it.
Condoms are indeed sucky for guys. But there are options other than “penis inside vagina” that feel quite nice. I once went through a phase where I’d just say “OK let’s not have that kind of sex at all” and just do those other things rather than use a condom, but I got over it.
But yeah I usually can’t come, often can’t tell if I’m IN, don’t notice if I fall out, and it’s as emotionally unsatisfying as trying to pet your kitty cat while wearing latex gloves.
More women should get good at doing things with their fingertips. It’s so nice 
I agree with that one.
Abortion should be available on demand up to term.
Men have no say on a woman’s right to this procedure.
Minors should not be permitted on premises where religion is sold. Religious books and other paraphernalia should be subject to the same restriction as Hustler, Playboy/Playgirl and other soft porn publications and should not be sold to minors.
No.
If someone does get out early for good behaviour and does not to repeat the crime they first went to prison for, that’s A-OK. The person who signed their early release papers has done their job properly, in evaluating this good behaviour.
If the early release prisoner re-offends, the person who deemed them fit for release was obviously not up to the job. That’s the issue.
If that results in no one ever getting released for good behaviour, then obviously, the concept of early release is flawed. If you’re not prepared to risk your own freedom in granting someone else’s, then you patently do not believe in your own judgement. Seems to me that such a person is not up to the job of deciding on who gets early release.
The inevitable result would be that no one would ever get out early, since even the best person in the entire world at predicting recidivism is not going to be right every single time. So like I said, you may as well have just said that.
[wins thread]
[/wins thread]
Vaccinations should be mandatory. If you won’t vaccinate your kid, the state should do it and then punish you with either a fine, prison, or both. If that involves forcibly taking your kid into care for as long as it takes to give him the shot, so be it. Whatever. Those claiming any sort of religious exemption, or attempting to weasel their way out with pseudo-scientific drivel, should be cordially advised to put their concerns in writing, print them out, roll them into tight cylinders, and insert them forcibly into their rectums to break the vacuum keeping their fucking heads up there. There’s no good reason not to vaccinate, and parents don’t have the right to harm other people’s kids by letting their own reduce the herd’s immunity.
I like this one. ::adds to list::
We almost have that. You need to show evidence that your kid was vaccinated or they don’t get to go to school. Since 99% of kids here go to public schools, probably 98% are vaccinated.
(There is some sort of religious objection form you can fill out but it is pretty complicated and no one ever does.)
Of course, we have public health care and it’s not like you have to pay for shots (it is prepaid with your tax dollars).
While we are talking about parents, you should require a license before you become one and have a set of required education (with tests) before you get to take the kid home.
Included in the curriculum:
- Kids should be allowed to roam. (Seriously, the crime rate is down people.)
- Let them learn from their mistakes.
- Basic child development.
- Children have their own personalities.
- Basic discipline (different methods for different kids).
- Don’t overprogram your kids.
- Things are not love.
There should also be a toll free helpline for when you are stuck about what to do (we have this for when little Timmy has a fever or other illness). I use my mom but not everyone has a close bond with family these days or a parent they trust.
A-fucking-men to this. My little girl had what I know now is typical first-week spotting from the breastfeeding hormones. I ended up going into a 15-minute tirade on the idiot pediatrician on the after-hours line my family doc provided, went something like this:
“Yes, that’s normal. You should be talking to your mom about little things like this.”
“Blood in the diaper is not a little thing, you heinous wench, and my mom had two formula-fed boys how the hell would she know what’s normal …”
This is brilliant.
Race and gender are not just “social constructs,” and the notion that they are borders on psychosis.
Political leftwingers are no less irrational than religious fundamentalists when it comes to evolution. Whenever their political and social doctrines conflict with evolution, they ignore evolution.
Whites should organize politically to protect their own rights and interests and should stop allowing themselves to be intimidated by accusations of “racism.” There is no moral reason whatsoever that whites should not work to preserve their status as the dominant cultural, political and demographic majorities in the United States, Canada, Europe and Australia. Forbidding them to do so is the moral equivalent of demanding that they commit racial suicide.
No public support of any kind should be given to women who bear children out of wedlock. Their only choices should be supporting the kid themselves, giving the kid up for adoption or getting an abortion. If she has not legally married the child’s father, the father should have no responsibilities whatsoever to her or the child. The social stigma against bearing a child out of wedlock should be restored.
Oh, is that all? Because an extra 10-20% of your time with blood and chunks oozing out of your crotch, headaches, bloating, and the feeling that someone is using a Garden Weasel on your abdomen is totally not a big deal. :dubious:
See, it’s stuff like that makes it harder for women to take objections about how awful and detrimental condoms and male chastity belts (even I could tell she was initially being snarky in response to the double standard proposed and defended it because people defended said double standard) very seriously. It’s like having a compound fracture and listening to someone carry on about twisting their ankle. Yes twisting your ankle sucks, but the situations aren’t anywhere near comparable, and treating them as though they were is going to go over like a fart in church.
Wow, this thread has really taken off.
I finally came out in this post … I may very well be the only doper who is pro-life. So maybe it’s not too extreme in certain places, but in the DC area (where I live), it’s pretty extreme, and on these boards it definitely is.