Moon Bases Not Moon Lassos: New LOLConservatives Thread

[coldforge]

Can we reiterate that if we are arguing in the dimension of civil liberties, the spread is: Has kept Guantanamo Bay open when he said he'd close it vs. Doesn't believe they should exist at all? A liberty is only a liberty if it's guaranteed by an authority. Paul believes in the right to property and actively believes that there should be no other liberties save what the market will bear, ie, no other liberties.

No, I get it now, concern trolling. Never mind!

[Greg Nog]

I believe in states' rights. 50 laboratories of best practice which in my opinion, since we're so competitive, would actually produce better education. We'd emulate the success and we would do anything we could do to avoid the failure and there would be failure, but as opposed to Washington top down knows best? That's why we're bankrupt. That's why we're borrowing 43 cents out of every dollar that we're spending

Gary Johnson's opinion is stupid and wrong, though, because the whole point of experiment-versus-control is that many will fail while one succeeds.  So while we're cheerfully creating 50 different "laboratories" (a pretty cold way to describe groups of children), we could easily be making 49 of them awful.  Even if, somehow, 49 turn out spectacularly well, and, say, Minnesota's "experiment" fails, I still find it kinda heartless to be like, "Ha ha, whoops, sorry Minnesota, them's the breaks, guess no one from Minnesota's going to have an education this generation, thanks for playing."

One of the really terrible things about public education in the US is that education is funded largely on the local level, rather than having a nationwide funding system that allocates X dollars per child.  If one lives in a neighborhood with a shitty school, the obvious "solution" is to move to a better neighborhood.  But if all the neighborhoods with good schools are too expensive for one to afford, one's kids end up in the shit school, get a worse education, either drop out or get poor grades, and generally end up with lower incomes.  In this way, income inequality keeps getting perpetuated throughout generations, and it's a slow slide into feudalism.

Besides the funding issues, there's also the question of curricula; the more local control you give, the more likely it is that some school system will be in favor of really insane curricula, like banning all books that talk about sexuality, or introducing textbooks that favor the teaching of creationism.  Again, even if ninety percent of schools teach evolution, I feel real fucking bad for the one out of ten kids that are being given short shrift.

Public schooling is like the clearest possible example of how capitalist ideals of competition don't work at all in certain spheres.  I'm willing to accept that federal guidelines for funding and curricula aren't the best way to ensure each student gets a fair shake, but making fifty different Experiments is absolutely not the solution.

[jm]

Sounds like *somebody's* defending the cold-blooded murder of foreign civilians!

[Greg Nog]

Look it's hardly cold-blooded if I'm hella mad at them

[dieblucasdie]

Yeah, his views on abortion is backwards

Isolationism > Imperialism

Like I said, it's his views on liberty and peace that I like. There is no one else talking about repealing the Patriot act and stopping all the pointless wars America engages in and I'm fairly flabbergasted by that fact. He's definitely not perfect but there's not a lot of other realistic and viable options to me.

But all ya'll must understand that I'm an outsider and that's how I follow American politics. Some issues are more important to me than others and if I actually lived in America I would revaluate my position on these matters. Perhaps I would come to the same conclusion, perhaps not. But I like Ron Paul because he proposes individual liberty and peace, which no one else seems to be proposing. There are plenty of matters that don't really concern me like health and education and I haven't researched them like some of the others.

like hannah said, I guess it is a choice between two evils (thanks to the two-party system) and who you vote for comes down to what you value.

(you were writing directly to me w/ this one).

Greenwald's argument looks to me like it's pretty solid and people should be aware of what they are voting for when they vote for Obama regarding individual liberty and foreign policy (pretty much the first half of the paragraph). If, to them, the social security system and Obama's economic policy outweighs it, then they should vote Obama. But like I've said before, I'm an outsider when it comes to American politics so understandably I focus more on foreign policy and also the fact that whatever the USA does it influences the rest of the Western world immensely so the Ron Paul candidacy is somewhat of a real-life low-risk high-reward political experiment to me, not that I don't believe in it. If the USA were to become a pacifist nation and a stout defender of the liberty of the civilian, I think it would have amazing effects all over the world and this is my main reason for liking Paul over all the other candidates. But then there's the economic side and even though I believe in the free market I would be a fool to say that there's not a slightest possibility that it might not work out.

Then there are a bunch where we bring up crazy RP positions and you're just like "Thank you, I'll look into it," then two days later you're back to trolling.  STFU.

xposts

[Babar]

at the beginning you were agreeing that Ron Paul's non-foreign-policy positions were batshit

Where exactly do I say that in all those quotes you emphatically put together? Yeah, awesome, being disingenuous again.

[dieblucasdie]

Did you miss the part where you say his views on abortion are "backwards" like a week before adopting his views on abortion wholesale? Or the part where you agree that he's an isolationist, but you just think that's better than imperialism?  Or the part where, when confronted with his economic policies, you said repeatedly (I quoted one out of about 4 times you said this) that it was only his views on "liberty and peace" that you cared about.  And again, there were many other times where you just said "I'll look into it," then never mentioned it again. Seriously, STFU.

[Thermofusion]

Yeah I understood Babar's line of reasoning more when it was this:

But all ya'll must understand that I'm an outsider and that's how I follow American politics. Some issues are more important to me than others and if I actually lived in America I would revaluate my position on these matters. Perhaps I would come to the same conclusion, perhaps not. But I like Ron Paul because he proposes individual liberty and peace, which no one else seems to be proposing. There are plenty of matters that don't really concern me like health and education and I haven't researched them like some of the others.

I mean that's kind of a crass stance to take but, as it's from the perspective of an outsider tired of the U.S. toddling around the globe with its pants around its ankles, I get it. The libertarian free market state's rights thing that's emerged, though, makes no sense to me coming from The Babs. You'd be right at home in Texas, dogg, should you ever emigrate from the elven homeworld.

[Babar]

Yeah, he's pro-life and I'm pro-choice and that hasn't changed. I still think it should be left to the states and I never said I thought otherwise. I never agreed that he's an isolationist, it was somebody else that brought up that word and I was pointing out the absurdity of that claim by saying isolationism > imperialism (no, I don't think USA's current foreign policy is literally imperialism either). And yeah, it's still his views on liberty and peace that appeal to me the most and should appeal to everybody regardless of where you stand politically, by saying that I am in no way implying that his other policies are batshit, plus I said I believe in the free market from the get-go. Why you care about this or why you're making claims that aren't true is beyond me.

x-post: nah mo-mo bro, I'd be basking in the sun at Honolulu.

[dieblucasdie]

Yeah, he's pro-life and I'm pro-choice and that hasn't changed. I still think it should be left to the states and I never said I thought otherwise.

*headdesk*

[Babar]

Yeah, he's pro-life and I'm pro-choice and that hasn't changed. I still think it should be left to the states and I never said I thought otherwise.

*headdesk* STFU

fix'd

[DCDave]

"I'm pro-choice but believe that states should have the right to tell women what is permissible to do with their bodies."

[Ignatius]

LOL Hawaii is like the feather in the cap of corporate imperialism.

[elpollodiablo]

"I'm pro-choice but believe that states should have the right to tell women what is permissible to do with their bodies."

That's the states' choice! LIBERTY

[Greg Nog]

I like Hawaii

[Babar]

"I'm pro-choice but believe that states should have the right to tell women what is permissible to do with their bodies."

Allow my man Gary Johnson to explain, who is pro-choice like me.

Any court decision that does not follow this original meaning of the Constitution should be revisited. That is particularly true of decisions such as Roe vs. Wade, which have expanded the reach of the Federal government into areas of society never envisioned in the Constitution.

I've also said that this is not a hot subject for me. You guys just keep bringing it up and I at least defend it every time. My main emphasis when it comes to American politics, or any politics really, is liberty, peace and a free market. I'd like to see any of you try to defend drone-bombing.

[Thermofusion]

Re: redistributing federal authority back to the states: I ain't even gonna lie I'm probably down with any scenario in which North Carolina could conceivably establish Cold War-style border controls to keep South Carolinians out

[dieblucasdie]

Liberty = State legislators get to decide whether or not women get reproductive rights.
Authoritarianism = The federal government says all women get reproductive rights.

[jebreject]

Paul versus Television's Marquee Moon.

Now that is a debate we need to have

Pretty damn one-sided though innit?

[DCDave]

"I'm pro-choice but believe that states should have the right to tell women what is permissible to do with their bodies."

Allow my man Gary Johnson to explain, who is pro-choice like me.

Any court decision that does not follow this original meaning of the Constitution should be revisited. That is particularly true of decisions such as Roe vs. Wade, which have expanded the reach of the Federal government into areas of society never envisioned in the Constitution.

I've also said that this is not a hot subject for me. You guys just keep bringing it up and I at least defend it every time. My main emphasis when it comes to American politics, or any politics really, is liberty, peace and a free market. I'd like to see any of you try to defend drone-bombing.

Personal sovereignty is actually a principle in the Constitution and not something added by the court.

[DCDave]

What do you mean by "defend drone bombing?" Do you mean "defend war?"

[YojimboMonkey]

Look he's pro-choice, he just doesn't believe the Federal government should have the authority to guarantee the right to that choice, and oh I'm sorry my head just exploded I'll get back to you on this

[Babar]

What do you mean by "defend drone bombing?" Do you mean "defend war?"

Both, I guess. For example, the drone war that's going on in Pakistan.

[jebreject]

Allow my man Gary Johnson to explain, who is pro-choice like me.

Any court decision that does not follow this original meaning of the Constitution should be revisited. That is particularly true of decisions such as Roe vs. Wade, which have expanded the reach of the Federal government into areas of society never envisioned in the Constitution.

So we should never update or reinterpret a document that was written 300 years ago? There are lots of things the Constitution never envisioned, like airplanes, and automatic weapons, and fifty states spanning an entire continent.

edit: xpost

[jm]

Just go ahead and defend all the non-sequiturs, Dave. We got time.