Category: Ethics

2nd Amendment and Related Links

If you’re looking for hard data as opposed to ethics, logic, politics, and philosophy, read this instead or as well: http://rense.com/general76/mths.htm

“In laboratory settings, there’s no evident difference between liberals and conservatives in their propensity to believe what they want, evidence be damned. In one experiment, Yale law professor Dan Kahan showed you could get liberals to start doubting global warming (and conservatives to begin accepting it) by making clear that any solution would require geoengineering. In another he showed that both liberals and conservatives were more likely to rate someone an expert on climate change if they agreed with their conclusions. In a third, he showed liberals were about as resistant to evidence showing concealed carry laws are safe as conservatives were to evidence showing climate change is dangerous.” ~Ezra Klein

The left, whom I side with on 95% of issues, needs to quit playing into the right’s hands and leave guns alone regardless of their personal opinion unless they wish to admit they are obsessed with them to a self destructive degree. Why?

Setting aside all the logical and ethical reasons to do so, of which there are many, there is the strategic reason that when ignored leads to party impotence. By simply vowing to stay out of gun policy, either for or against, the left could secure enough one issue voters to secure a permanent majority in every nationally relevant context.

Now really, if the price of declawing gun owners (and be honest, that’s the objective) is the failure of all your other policy objectives, and you knowingly pay it, who is really the more gun obsessed?

Hypocrisy

Update: A message to progressive individuals and organizations from which I have been forced to unsubscribe.

Why did I unsubscribe from your progressive email list suddenly? Because you forced me to. I am steadily being forced to the right by this one issue which you refuse to process rationally, instead relying on a partisan checklist of prefabricated opinions designed to keep the system deadlocked for all eternity.

Any progressive that jumps on the anti-gun band wagon has proven their disinterest in logic and the constitution and has therefor become a mindless part of the system and problem.

Gun prohibition is as insane as Alcohol prohibition and Drug prohibition. Yes we regulate alcohol, but not remotely to the degree we regulate guns, and there is no good reason for it because a rag and a lighter turn booze into a horrifying weapon.

Incrementalist efforts to achieve gun prohibition under the guise of regulation, because they can’t be bothered to attack the 2nd amendment openly cannot be tolerated. Opposition to the 2nd pursued in this way is as is as underhanded as anything the right wing does to achieve its goals. It’s easily as bad as voter disenfranchisement under the guise of fraud protection for example. It’s simply another attempt to undermine any potential opposition to our continued enslavement to billionaires and their millionaire congressional minions.

The 2nd Amendment

“In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.”

~James Madison

The right to bear arms is not for defense or hunting, it’s to equip a revolt if needed, that’s why we’re allowed to field a militia as well. A militia with muskets was the equivalent of a battalion complete with strike craft, rocket artillery, and stinger missiles, in those days.

The whole point was to allow the existence of a force which could rival the army, not be the army.

It’s shockingly absurd to assert that the 2nd was somehow intended to protect the rights of the military, and that somehow the needs of the 2nd are met now by the military. To believe that is to believe that the framers of the Constitution didn’t have command of the English language or logic.

Arms escalation is an issue, and we were overtly warned on national television by the president of the United States of the dangers of the military industrial complex. This is one of them.

“My great objection to this government is, that it does not leave us the means of defending our rights or of waging war against tyrants.”

~Patrick Henry

The founding fathers did however make one critical error. They should have simply made, and explicitly stated that, it is our right to prepare for an armed revolt, as that was clearly the intent. Context makes it obvious if you take the time to look.

The whole point of the document was to establish a government that could be modified as the people saw fit, and tossed out entirely if that failed. But how could the people toss out a corrupt government if it was tactically powerless? It can’t, which is why we have the 2nd amendment. It was to create a government that was the slave of the people.

Both sides of the popular gun “debate” simply refuse to read the relevant documents. Perhaps that’s because both parties are owned by the same handful of people. (http://www.ted.com/talks/lawrence_lessig_we_the_people_and_the_republic_we_must_reclaim.html)

The purpose of the second amendment is to ensure that the government be barred from annihilating the population’s ability to prepare for and execute an armed rebellion.

The ‘well regulated militia’ line is the framers being specific about how they expected such a rebellion to come about if required. I.E. The government goes bad, the populace wants a new one, and forms an armed militia (or in today’s popular parlance a “terrorist organization”) to depose it. The concept of diffuse, headless, guerrilla warfare simply didn’t occur to them. They expected us to be able to organize. They did not anticipate the power of mass media manipulation and consent manufacturing. In short, wise as they were they couldn’t entirely envision the deep future.

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. (emphasis mine)

It does not say the right of “the army”, (which it does mention explicitly elsewhere), it says the people. Gun control advocates when forced to comment at all seem to think the purpose of regulated militia in the context of the second is meant to fulfill a need now filled by the standing army. This is obviously false.

Firstly, as mentioned, the document makes overt reference to the army and the navy elsewhere in the document. The framers didn’t need a metaphor for the army, they knew the word and used it.

Secondly, think how absurd it would be to list a right of the army among a list of rights obviously meant for the people.

“There is no fettering of authority.” ~William Shakespeare

Think about what that implies. As if the ‘true/modern’ wording of the second should be something like this: “A well regulated army being necessary to the security of the state, the right of the soldiers to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” Obviously that was not the intent of the amendment. The Constitution is not an elaboration of government rights, it is a limitation of them. It is an elaboration of the people’s rights.

The whole assumption of the document is that left alone, government will seize all rights, which is what tyranny is. It doesn’t need a constitution for protection, the people do. If the point was to safeguard the army the question becomes safeguard it from what?

What government has ever fielded an army without weapons? Is an army even an army if it is disarmed? The whole notion that the military fulfills the intent of the militia wording is mind numbing ignorance and cognitive dissonance, at best. Normally I like to expose insanity of that sort with an exaggeration of some kind but I can’t think of one. The claim that “well regulated militia” == “military” is the very apex of nonsense.

But getting back to reality, it does not say security of the state but security of a free state. That taken with the fact that a militia with muskets was the state of the art in military technology of the day, the equivalent of tank divisions and gunships, it becomes crystal clear that the intent of the second is to safeguard the people, as separate from the government and the military, against a possibly corrupt future government and military, more so than any external foreign threat. Though enabling the people to defend themselves in the event of invasion, should the military be logistically barred, or too incompetent to do so at the time, was also a consideration.

This was all fresh in the minds of the framers given that they had just recently been a citizen militia perpetrating an armed rebellion against a corrupt government’s army. Note also that the wording says keep and bear arms. This means that simply allowing us to have them is insufficient, we must also be allowed to carry them. 90% of gun law (along with 99.999% of proposed additional gun law) is absolutely unconstitutional given these facts.

Now, an argument can be made that muskets aren’t readily concealed so the intent may not cover concealed carry, but it absolutely does cover open personal carry, or concealed carry within a vehicle, considering hiding a musket in a carriage or cart is absolutely possible and yet they didn’t feel the need to stipulate visibility.  Think about it, when one bears their teeth, the point is to make them visible.

This is further defended by the word “infringe” as opposed to something like “prohibit.” Clearly the spirit of the statement is meant to prohibit regulation generally as well as an outright ban, being perfectly aware as they were of the incrementalist approach. This is supported by the context of the time, since the rebellion itself was begun not by overt decree but by stealthy stacking of oppressive regulation and taxation. Incrementalism caused the American revolution.

“[W]hen the resolution of enslaving America was formed in Great Britain, the British Parliament was advised by an artful man, who was governor of Pennsylvania, to disarm the people; that it was the best and most effectual way to enslave them; but that they should not do it openly, but weaken them, and let them sink gradually. . .“

~George Mason

Regulation is often used to produce the effect of a given sort of law without the actual intent being declared. Indeed one could argue that this is regulation’s primary use. Waiting periods and background checks and application fees add up to prohibitions and infringements without coming out and saying what they are. There is clearly an element in American politics that, openly or not seeks to slowly regulate firearms into effective illegality because the legitimate course of action with this intent would be politically impossible, a repeal of the second amendment.

Again, the framers were absolutely speaking about, and aware of, the potential to tax and regulate firearms to the point of an effective ban, which is why they used the word infringe. All gun regulation is unconstitutional.

The argument that regulation is needed to prevent crime is absurd. Crime is crime, regardless of the tools. Regulate the act, not the tool. (Which I why murder by hammer is illegal and yet hammers are legal.)

Attempting to deny criminals the tools to commit crime is a fool’s errand since fire, rocks, and fists can get the job done. Let alone the awesome power of biology, chemistry, and basic physics. The need to make a law that you can’t sell a gun to a crazy person is proof that there is a problem with health care, not gun law. A person crazy enough to be dangerous with a firearm shouldn’t be in a position to get hold of rocks or matches either. The sane solution is not rock and match law, yet that’s what we’ve allowed to occur.

Hitting someone with a rock should be illegal, not carrying a rock. Setting fire to someone’s house should be illegal, not owning matches and gasoline. Shooting people or robbing them with guns should be illegal, not owning them or carrying them.

Debates about crime reduction or hunting are completely beside the point.

Sidenote:

It occurred to me the other day why it is that gun control was chosen (by the 1%, those who own and orchestrate partisanship as a tool of statecraft) as the one and only issue the “progressive” side is to decide on dogmatically or ideologically as opposed to rationally.

The real reason democrats are to mouth foam in the face of facts when it comes to gun control and no other issue, is because while the 2nd serves the 99% as a last resort, opposition to it serves the 1% as a last resort as well.

Many people talk about what would happen if the tables tipped in their favor to the point of crushing tyranny resulting in armed revolt. (http://underlore.com/if-not-now-when/) But it occurred to me that no one really thinks about the other side of that coin. Further, no one thinks about the 1% thinking about that, and so on. Well, rest assured they have, and this seemingly irrational position on gun control taken by the “progressive” party strongly implies it.

You see I always assumed this mixing and matching of smart positions was entirely about making sure no party is ever allowed to really win, a tool to keep us bickering over trivialities while they train our children to endure and internalize the ethics of slavery, and it is that, but there is another bonus.

Opposition to gun ownership is their last resort just as ownership of guns is ours. Think about a total progressive victory. Banks regulated, healthcare offered, the playing field leveled, etc. For them, that is the equivalent of tyranny, that is the worst case endgame scenario. But, having tricked the progressives into adopting gun control as an immutable tenet, the resulting society would be a disarmed one, ripe for recapture or counter revolution.

A true critical thinker doesn’t just examine his enemies, but himself as well. If you oppose gun ownership and the 1%, ask yourself why the facts don’t matter to you, and be sure you know who gave you your opinion and why.

Ok, so lets say I agree, but we couldn’t ever beat the army right?

(From here: https://plus.google.com/+BrandonSergent/posts/UgnM1cvMZ8b)

“The notion of taking on a military that is unchallenged in the world is utterly absurd.”

Someone has been watching too much TV.

The statement made however radically misunderstands both the nature of American warfare and the kind of war the 2nd amendment anticipates.

A war of the military vs its citizenry would not be the same class of conflict as a war against foreign powers. Most clearly because that citizenry provides the material support that military needs to run.

Beans, bullets, and bandages. Who do you think supplies those for our military?

It would instantly be a guerrilla war also, and half of the military may well switch sides, many waiting to do so at critical moments.

Basically, defeating the US military for the US citizens would be an inside job and we could simply outlast them.

A general strike is implied in such a scenario and given the amount of funding, which translates obviously to the amount of domestic labor the American military relies on, that alone would be devastating.

Make no mistake the 2nd is doing its job.

I’ll be generous and say every last person in uniform is unified, that’s 2,927,754 military personnel.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_military_and_paramilitary_personnel

According to http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/08/28/us-world-firearms-idUSL2834893820070828

The American civilian populace is armed to the tune of 9 out of 10.

And that’s completely ignoring what we make and hold for government use, and what’s sitting on pawn shop and gun shop shelves all over the country. Every walmart in the south is an armory.

Population: 311,591,917 (2011) United States Census Bureau

That’s 280,432,725 people with a gun each 2,927,754.

That’s just about 99 to 1.

Frankly, we could take them even it they fuel air bombed the major cities, in advance. And they know it.

Update: 2016-06-13 0430 PM Orlando

Here we go again.

After months of the DNC/MSM (and MIC) positioning for a corporate coup via election fraud, we get one disturbingly well timed terrorist attack that checks all the hot button social boxes, LGBT, Muslim, guns, terrorism… and we predictably start begging to be disarmed like the trusting emotional irrational sheep we apparently are on the whole.
AGAIN. Do you people not recall how the war on terror started? Where the patriot act came from? Why it’s a bad thing in the first place?

Democracy is a sham, not just because stolen elections, but because you people are so easily manipulated into begging for totalitarianism.

Look at what you’re screaming.

“Please declaw us! Please child proof our lives! Please make us totally powerless to rebel! Please take away our rights in the name of security! Please distract us! Please rule us with fear! Please put us totally at the mercy of people who we know for a fact are corrupt sadistic murders with no mental limits on how far they’ll go for power and wealth!”

Do you people really want your front door to be like a TSA checkpoint? Do you really want to turn the whole country into an airport? Because that’s what it takes to make everyone “safe” this way. That’s where a gun-war executed like the drug war will take us.

Do you honestly think making a gun or a bomb is more complicated than making meth? By definition no since you can accidentally make a bomb while making meth. A gun is an order of magnitude simpler, even before 3d printers and CNC machines.

Begging for a new drug war over guns is suicidally stupid.

Freedom comes with risk.

Are all the other issues you rant about so trivial that you can forget them because of a single emotional shock?

Banning real effective guns would put us totally at the mercy of cops that kill blacks at will, a military that bombs hospitals by “accident,” a government that imprisons us in world-record numbers, and a string of presidents and elected officials that assassinate us by drone and trample all our constitutional rights. (Not just the one you are begging to have trampled.)

Are you insane?

Did you people just suddenly forget about the drug war? Did you not notice that murder is already illegal? Do you scream for the banning of cars or booze to cure drunk driving?

Do you really say we should ban anything that makes killing possible? Do you have any idea how surrounded by weapons you are?

Have you ever heard of an ied? What do you think will come after guns even if you could magic them away? The most lethal school killing was not a shooting, it was a bombing and it happened in 1927.

Mass murder isn’t new. And it isn’t caused by anything recent.

When did you stop caring about the constitution? When did you start cherry picking which of our rights really matter like the republicans?

Any liberal that’s against guns needs to shut up about:

  • Cops: Because they are now your only line of defense.
  • Prison: Because a new ban war means more prisons.
  • Militarized police: Because taking the guns away means civil war.
  • Police brutality: They’ll need lethal force to declaw America, and a lot of it.
  • Constitutional rights: Because you’ve made it clear you don’t care about the constitution.
  • The drug war: Because you want a new one that’s even worse.

Wake up. Gun law only protects the rich from us. They own the cops and the military. They don’t need guns, they have soldiers. This isn’t about crime and hunting. This is about future and present tyranny.

Think like a grown up from the real world for once.

The Filibuster 2016-06-16

And so in the wake of the tragedy that was preventable, in a thousand ways other than stripping us of a constitutional right and tyranny backstop, we now have the so called “progressives” in congress banding together to do just that. Seemingly fighting the good fight that they are unwilling to fight on any other front that matters.

Leftists are so stupid for cheering for this. Do they not ask themselves why this issue? Why now? They are neoliberals! HRC is under investigation and her actual hacked emails are being leaked!

You idiots. What they are doing serves their 1% masters. The rich don’t need the 2nd amendment! The rich are always served by tyranny.

Indeed the rich are the source of tyranny! Remember income inequality? Campaign finance reform? Climate change fueled by fossil? Who is at the root of those issues you’ve forgotten in your mad egotistical dash to virtue signal by way of stripping the rights from others?

So this is all it takes. Allow or create a problem, and then pitch once again trading freedom for the illusion of security. Gun prohibitionists are now falling into the same emotional trap as those itching to get “tough on crime.” And just like that debate, the real issue isn’t solved by more oppression, and more laws.

You can’t fix crime with prisons, prohibition, and police. Have you fools forgotten the drug war? Is stricter drug law the solution? Do you really want your entire life to be like a TSA checkpoint?

It seems you do. And via the arbitrary and corrupt terrorist watch list no less. Idiots. Cowards. Infants. Hypocrites.

Related links:

Is it a “Lie” That More People Carrying Guns Can Lead to Less Crime?

In summation, even to Lott’s critics, the best conclusion is not that he’s a clownish fraud and liar, but that the matter of gun carrying and crime is incredibly complicated and the best evidence regarding the effect of more people carrying guns on crime is still ambiguous, not that Lott’s conclusion is the opposite of the truth.

The overarching fact remains: many more guns in the country and more states with the legal right to carry them with fewer regulation coinciding with an enormous decrease in gun crime.

Why I abandoned Avaaz, Moveon, and Change.org

An open letter to Tammy Baldwin.

Open response to The White House on gun control.

Gun Facts

http://occupywallst.org/forum/second-amendment-came-from-articles-of-confederati/

http://www.gunpolicy.org/

http://anoncentral.tumblr.com/post/41055625177/america-is-now-flirting-with-the-dark-side-of-history

http://www.cracked.com/article_20396_5-mind-blowing-facts-nobody-told-you-about-guns.html

Open response to The White House on gun control.

Recently in email I got a mass mailing from The White House entitled “If not now, when?” as I’m sure tens of millions of us did and here is my section by section response. Setting aside the rich irony of using that phrase in regard to both this website and political history. I have the following to say in response.

Hello —

Today President Obama announced a plan to help protect our kids and communities from gun violence.

Right away we have a problem. Why only gun violence?

Because it’s topical and politically expedient, that’s why. There is no other objective criteria which makes gun violence special. Would a bombing have been less painful for us? Gun violence is not the most lethal in terms of number of fatalities. Feel free to prove me wrong on this but I’m pretty sure accidents are still the primary causes of death for children at school especially if you count the trip there and the trip back and school related efforts at home. There are also many non-gun school related deaths if you count incidental exposures which lead to death like drugs and gangs that would not have occurred but for school, or activities which are managed by school resulting in death like sports fatalities.

So let’s admit something uncomfortable before we proceed. Something you won’t see/hear any politician admit. We as a society are ok with kids dying because of school. No one (but me) is suggesting closing all brick and mortar schools because of the risk they face on the commute alone, if not the hundred other excellent reasons. No one (but me apparently) looks at school and seriously says one death is too many. So before you play the emotional or moral card on me, face up to the fact that unless you are against school entirely you are ok with someone else’s children if not your own dying for school.

This is a numbers game. The goal for you and for culture obviously isn’t zero deaths. You must admit you are willing to sacrifice some kids to ensure that all of them are ferried to class, or you admit ignorance or deceptive agenda by failing to make the previous admission.

So when you read the rest of my responses, keep them in that context because by having this debate I’m assuming you are not with me on the school issue. If you are, then the point from the perspective of playing the political kid card is moot because at that point gun law becomes a universal debate, as opposed to one obviously triggered by political motives designed expressly to cynically exploit flaring emotions for more power and more money.

Further, it bears stating that I am not attacking emotion or disregarding the truly unimaginable suffering of parents who have lost children or anyone else obliterated by gun violence, I am simply saying that when discussing policy, I think even those who are suffering to the point of insanity would have at one point agreed, if they still don’t, that such discussion and planning should be done dispassionately.

If you approach this debate from a position of rage and suffering, in my opinion you aren’t qualified for it. It is undemocratic and unwise to let any special interest group, even if that group is one we all care for deeply, dictate policy which harms everyone else. All security policy is a trade-off. And this is obviously a problem America is already vulnerable to. We’re already ruled by a single special interest group. The 1%. And they hired the men and women who wrote this letter. And we already grossly over react to threats generally, especially politically divisive and politically useful ones. Please keep that in mind as well.

You’re going to hear a lot about it, but I wanted to make sure you got a chance to get the facts, straight from me.

Bull. This came from a speech writing team. I’m sure you had input Joe, (Do you mind if I call you Joe? You can call me Mr. Sergent.) but don’t act for a moment like this was anything but an administration and group effort. The vice presidency itself arose from the bureaucratic needs of the electoral college anyway, an institution most of us agree is completely antiquated. (This is also telling.) Maybe that’s why this email is not from the President who has a clear duty to uphold the constitution, including the second amendment, despite it being of zero importance to much of the democratic party. (I’m a registered democrat by the way and voted Obama both times. Yet I’m also a concealed carry permit holder. Yes we exist.)

After hearing from Americans from across the political spectrum, we decided to focus on some key priorities: closing background check loopholes, banning military-style assault weapons, making our schools safer, and increasing access to mental health services.

The first, second, and third suggestions intrinsically violate the 2nd amendment. Without getting to heavy into that debate (feel free to grab a copy of my book and read the 2nd amendment chapter) I’ll address them extremely concisely. (For me anyway, I tend to be long winded.)

1. Background checks shouldn’t be required at all because anyone walking around should be a fully trusted citizen. A check for warrants alone makes sense because people do escape custody from time to time, but arbitrarily denying some Americans their rights is clearly an infringement of an amendment which explicitly says “shall not be infringed.”

2. The phrase “military-style assault weapons” has no objective meaning on any level. All weapons are assault weapons and “military style” is an aesthetic issue. Besides which the entire purpose of the 2nd is to counter any military or government forces should they grow tyrannical. That many argue such a fight would be absurdly short due to the power of the United States military (I do not) is not reason for dispensing with the 2nd amendment, but rather to pare down the military. Indeed at least one person warned us about the danger the mushrooming (pun intended) of our military represents.

3. Notice the language of preemptive surrender. Safer not safe. This is an old song for the democratic party, and the responses are clear. Again, see also my book.

The ideas we sent to President Obama are straightforward. Each of them honors the rights of law-abiding, responsible Americans to bear arms.

As annoying as it may be for some, the constitution doesn’t merely protect “responsible” (however you choose to define that subjective place holder) Americans.

Some of them will require action from Congress; the President is acting on others immediately.

Which and how? This phrase renders the whole rest of the message vague and noncommittal. Surprise surprise.

But they’re all commonsense and will help make us a little safer.

Common sense is merely intuition and this issue is grossly more complicated than that. The claim of making us safer is both unproven, and beside the point. This goes back to a well known principal of evaluating the cost of security measures. I’ll dispense with the obligatory Ben Franklin quote and instead offer up this link to a much more useful exploration of that topic.

Now is the time for all of us to act.

It is never the time to act without wisdom.

Read about the events that brought us to this point, learn about the plan we’ve proposed to help protect our kids, and then add your name in support to help build momentum for this plan.

This link leads to a whole other smorgasbord of deception, equivocation, rhetoric, and glad handing. Which I do not have the stamina to address, right now at least.

Here’s what we’ve put together:

We’re calling for requiring background checks for all gun sales and closing the loopholes that allow dangerous individuals to make their purchase without going through one of these checks.

We’ve seen how you define “dangerous individuals.” Would that by chance include whistle blowers, journalists, and activists? If someone is truly dangerous then they shouldn’t be walking around alone at all. This is a classic shifting and evasion of responsibility. Are you going to ban chemistry text books as well? Because even if you genie wished your way into a society without gun powder and metal an educated/dedicated human can still kill an entire building, let alone the fragile apes inside it.

We’re asking for a new, stronger ban on military-style assault weapons and high-capacity magazines that allow a shooter to fire dozens of bullets as quickly as he can pull a trigger.

The arguments against that are old and nearly flawless.

And we’re asking Congress to help protect law enforcement by make it illegal for members of the public to possess armor-piercing bullets.

No one really expects a criminal who is willing to open fire on a police officer to respect a prohibition on what kind of bullets to use, do they? If the criminal world can build submarines, under ground farms, and chemical synthesis laboratories in their efforts to meet the demands of a black market, do you honestly think you’ll be able to stop anyone with access to hardened steel, Teflon, or lathes? Besides armor piercing ammo is already absurdly rare at crime scenes. Any ammo is armor piercing if it’s high enough velocity thus this tactic is at most just a way to jam the thin end of the wedge between us and our 2nd amendment protections, if it isn’t entirely superfluous and meaningless already in the context of reality and existing legislation.

We’re going to give law enforcement more tools and resources to prevent and prosecute gun crimes,

And we know exactly how they’ll use these new “tools” which any student of civil rights abuses in the last 10 years can accurately speculate on.

and we’re going to end the freeze on gun violence research that prevents the Center from Disease Control from looking at the causes of gun violence.

That is the only sensible thing suggested in this email, and I am willing to bet all my hair and teeth that it’s the first to go when the administration starts “compromising” with the republican congress. But I am 100% not afraid of legitimate objective scientific research into this issue. But studies can be poorly designed, executed, presented, and reported, all of which has happened to both sides of the gun issue many times, so keep in mind no single study is going to be sufficient to form real consensus. But still, more study is always welcome. More funding for science generally would be great while you’re at it.

We’re calling on Congress to help make schools safer by putting up to 1,000 school resource officers and mental health professionals in schools and ensuring they have comprehensive emergency management plans in place.

There are over 95,000 public schools in the United States. Now I’m well aware of the nirvana fallacy here, and sure any help is welcome, but given the resources and authority available to the sender of this message that number is laughably insulting if not completely insane.

And we’re going to increase coverage so that students and young adults can get access to the mental health treatment they may need.

Like you did when you torpedoed the public option? Under your watch funding for mental health care in the United States has plummeted. The state of healthcare in the United States is laughable. And the state of mental health care is an absolute shambles.

We know that no policy we enact or law we enforce can prevent every senseless act of violence in our country. But if we can save the life of even one child, we have a deep responsibility to act.

Again, there is a word for action without wisdom, and it is folly. Yes, something needs obviously be done, but starting a new and pointless prohibition war, while further trampling civil rights obviously isn’t it.

Now is the time to come together to protect our kids.

It’s always been that time, but protecting our kids was never the point, see above about ending school itself. Indeed our failure to end brick and mortar schooling is proof that no one ever really thought terrorism was a real threat. I mean seriously if we thought there were bomb wearing lunatics around every corner looking to strike fear into our hearts with a well placed suicide can you imagine a more sensitive and vulnerable set of targets than unguarded and disarmed buildings  full of our children roughly sorted by age and income? The fact that our schools don’t suffer car bomb attacks yearly is proof that the threat of terror is grossly magnified if not an outright fabrication. And if you think this is because our war on terror is super effective, I have some unicorn repellent to sell you, guaranteed 100% effective.

Learn about the plan, then add your name alongside mine:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/now-is-the-time

Thanks,

Vice President Joe Biden

I already know the plan and no I will not.

Valve/Steam Locks Chat Log Thread

Valve/Steam forum bans users, and closes thread after moderator suggests covert chat records are probably kept.

 

While the screen cap above my not be from the linked thread, the behavior is similarly blatant and hilarious in a dystopian kind of way.

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2744877

See for yourself.

These companies clearly don’t care about anything but money. This is why it’s the rest of society’s job to put a muzzle and leash on them.

This is the future of “free” expression if we don’t regulate the crap out of corporations.

I have a gift for getting these people to lock threads. Eventually they’ll just ban me with no excuse given like the Ubuntu asshats.

Nothing more annoying than a dissident that follows the rules right guys?

One Possible Solution

What if the solution, the real meaningful qualitative and quantitative solution to poverty is as easy as cutting them a check drawn from the wealthiest people and companies?

Well, it is. Read on.

Update: 2017-01-24 1017 AM (I really need to restructure and rewrite this, but it’s a mammoth task.)

Probably the best UBI link I’ve ever seen.

See also: Bait and Switch

“The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty.” ~Martin Luther King, Jr

“I never intend to adjust myself to economic conditions that will take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few.” ~Martin Luther King, Jr

“…hunger is not only a peaceable, silent, unremitted pressure, but as the most natural motive to industry, it calls forth the most powerful exertions. . . . Hunger will tame the fiercest animals, it will teach decency and civility, obedience and subjugation to the most brutish, the most obstinate, and the most perverse.” ~Joseph Townsend

“Poverty is that state and condition in society where the individual has no surplus labour in store, or, in other words, no property or means of subsistence but what is derived from the constant exercise of industry in the various occupations of life. Poverty is therefore a most necessary and indispensable ingredient in society, without which nations and communities could not exist in a state of civilization. It is the lot of man. It is the source of wealth, since without poverty, there could be no labour; there could be no riches, no refinement, no comfort, and no benefit to those who may be possessed of wealth.” ~Patrick Colquhoun

It seems obvious when you think about it from a  problem solving perspective. If poverty means a lack of money, what’s the obvious way to correct for a lack of money? What’s the one thing that you can give to a person that is by definition 100% effective at improving their fiscal status? Money, duh.

Now what is the one thing rich people and companies equally by definition have that poor people do not? Again, money. What if the solution were that simple? What if thanks to economy of scale and diminishing returns and other facts of reality, taking money from areas of high concentration and putting it in areas of low concentration profited everyone?

What if the solution, the real meaningful qualitative and quantitative solution to poverty is as easy as cutting them a check drawn from the wealthiest people and companies?

Well, it is. Read on.

Update: Finally people are starting to catch on.

Update: See? I told you.

Update: More recent goodness.

Update: www.dailykos.com/story/2014/01/20/1271174/-What-Happens-when-Poor-People-get-Cash-An-Empirical-Study

Once we realize the issue is at its core a wealth inequality issue, the next question, as we slowly wake up, will be the best way to fix it. This post contains a few of my thoughts on how to accomplish that. I’ve made the same proposal in various places, but I can’t recall where right off.

What I expect to occur if this were implemented is something like the following, explained by a YouTube commenter…

“Progressive taxation was put in place by Roosevelt DURING the Depression in 1934, he taxed all income $25K+ 90% it would be like 250K+ today. The result is that the wealthy started hiring people to avoid PAYING NINETY % That caused unemployment to decline from 25% to NINE % by 1936 still a RECORD DROP to this day. The taxes were FLATTENED by Coolidge in the 20’s and that HELPED cause the mess.”

My solution is partly a kind of progressive tax. It makes sense because your 50th (or your 1,000th) million doesn’t change your life a fraction as much as your first million. Or put more obviously, the rich can afford to pay more both quantitatively, and qualitatively due to diminishing returns.

My idea is that, plus a general payment. That makes sense because we intrinsically realize we have an unconditional responsibility to each other by default, but we don’t express it behaviorally in any fundamental pro-active way. Though we do express it reactively, for instance we agree on making it illegal to kill anyone who isn’t directly about to kill you. This is obviously supporting the assumption that regardless of who you are, you deserve a certain measure of respect from all living humans.

Every social safety net and charitable act contains some element of that. But these nets and acts are stopgaps, and ad-hoc. What is needed is a systemic solution, and I think I have it. It’s not new, but it’s never really been tried, and I think the time is rapidly approaching.

This video goes into a bit of detail on the problem and ends by suggesting discussion but offers no opinion on a possible solution. This is my proposal for said solution.

In my opinion, the problem with capitalism is that it is incomplete. It cannot by definition answer large scale tragedy of the commons issues. Any system composed entirely of agents acting in their own interest (which is all willful human action) will self sabotage at some point because of the nature of reality.

What we need to do is add an element of general service. (Which I often compare to a water cycle, as in evaporation and precipitation.) I propose a wealth cap plus a general payment to all to be funded by overage of the cap (say 100-1000X the average).

In this way we can tolerate the tragedy and contradictions intrinsic to capitalism because the brackets at the bottom and top prevent total failure and they scale to the size of the problem. (Like a perfect bilge pump.)

Then all we’d have to do really is guard against intentional sabotage of the system, or corruption of that system. And this could easily be accomplished I believe with the existing set of checks and balances.

Edit: And by “the nature of reality” I mean: Any system which seeks diversity (as capitalism is designed to do by allowing in theory any kind of commerce) in a context where tragedy of the commons are possible, will eventually experience that possibility.

Previous solutions fail because they become manifestations of self interest and thus become items in the same set, merely additional capitalists. The solution has to be everyone, and it has to be irreverent of any individual unit’s self interest.

Edit: I recently had cause to restate this idea elsewhere, and I think I did a better job that time. So I’m pasting it here as well in case what I wrote above is insufficient.

The problem with capitalism is that it does not take into account the tragedy of the commons, of which wealth gap expansion and corruption are merely symptoms.

Capitalism as it stands is like a water cycle without evaporation or rain. Add those two things and the ecosystem will thrive sufficient to address the remaining problems in an ethically acceptable way.

See also: http://www.ted.com/talks/lawrence_lessig_we_the_people_and_the_republic_we_must_reclaim.html

Addition: a lot of the rhetoric aimed at people in American culture assumes a strictly voluntary aspect. As if poverty is a consequence of laziness and the like, but I’ve always found it amazing that people accept that work is a “choice” when the punishment for not working is homelessness and the horror that entails.

To me that’s no more a choice that handing over your wallet when being mugged or perhaps a bit more accurately, picking cotton or risking the whip.

I mean even slavery was a choice if you want to get THAT technical about it. Plenty of people simply refused to be slaves and were killed or tortured to death. As with a mugging, you can always attempt to fight them off.

But it’s understood in all other walks of American life, as demonstrated by the ubiquity of the phrase “I had no choice” that for a choice to be real it must permit at least a passingly endurable alternative.

Which is what would ensue if there were a basic level of income provided for all law abiding citizens sufficient to live in reasonable comfort and safety.

Ironically, while many 1% puppets argue that this state of affairs would lead to mass laziness and degeneracy I believe the opposite would occur as suddenly every bit of work ethic and class mobility rhetoric would suddenly have radically improved moral authority since “getting off your ass” would become a real choice as opposed to a passive distributed mugging.

Further, patriotism would likely mushroom because suddenly people would be in it together, like working for a company with generous profit sharing policies. As opposed to working for a boss who treats you little better than office equipment.

It would be hard to whine about dead beats sapping the system when you receive the exact same benefits. This would also open the door for safely scaling back if not eliminating some social safety nets. Not to mention the dividends paid system wide as people would suddenly have a tolerable fall back point from which to invest.

Everyone could start a small business or play the stock market and if they bomb totally they know they’ll always have the baseline income to survive on. The only thing you’d have to watch out for is debt. But with everyone getting a baseline income how credit ratings are determined could also safely be reformed. Predatory lending and the student loan bubble could be addressed.

And on and on.

And to those who would say or imply this is somehow unamerican…

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

Addition:

1. Scientific research proves over and over again that simply giving people money, unconditionally, (a) is highly effective at ending poverty and (b) is significantly cheaper than any other form of welfare.

2. A universal basic income would make for significantly “smaller government” in terms of budget, paperwork, regulation, and government-paid employees.

3. If there has been any failure on the part of supporters of these ideas, it has been a lack of confidence; it is frequently the case that these programs are far more successful than even their supporters had expected. This has led to successful programs being killed on at least two occasions, rather than being expanded as they should have been.

4. Example experiments:
– a. London, UK, 2009: 13 long-term homeless men are each given 3000 pounds cash, unconditionally.
– b. Uganda, 2008: the government gave about $400 to almost 12,000 youths between the ages of 16 and 35.
– c. northern Uganda: the government gives $150 to 1,800 poor women.
– d: Dauphin, Canada, 1973 – the “Mincome” project: families below the poverty line — about 1000 families, or 30% of the population — received a monthly paycheck equivalent to about $18k/year (adjusted for inflation). After 4 years, a newly-elected conservative government nixed the project (citing cost, of course) and wouldn’t even pay to have the data analyzed. Supporters of the project were afraid that the data might confirm conservative claims of its failure, so they didn’t press for analysis either. In 2009, a researcher was finally (after 5 years of requests) to gain access to the data — and found that it had been a huge success.
– e. US: PA/IN/NC/Seattle/Denver, 1964 In a major social experiment (with controls), 10,000 families receive basic income (amount unspecified), unconditionally. By 1970, there was widespread support (popular and political) for using the program as a nationwide model and mostly eliminating other existing social support programs, but then it emerged that divorce rates in Seattle had gone up among the income recipients, and the Senate axed the idea. This later turned out to be a calculation error: divorce rates had not changed.

5. Outcomes from these experiments:

* Recipients spent the money wisely, effectively, and frugally.
* Recipients did not use the money for drink, drugs, gambling, or other vices.
* Direct income was more cost-effective than other aid programs, often by a large factor.  It was also more effective than aid-worker salaries.
* Homelessness was reduced.
* Other income increased.
* Employment either increased (Uganda) or only decreased slightly (9% – US).
* Birth rate declined.
* Birth weights improved.
* Hospital visits declined 8.5%
* School performance and attendance improved for children; some adults returned to school to acquire further skills.

6. Conservative claims contradicted by the results of these experiments:

* Investment in poverty does not work.
* “Utopian” social experiments don’t work.
* People won’t work if you give them money unconditionally.
* People will waste their money if it isn’t “earned”.
* Providing a universal basic income is unaffordable.
* A universal income will have the opposite of its intended effect.

—–

The life of a person with one billion dollars is qualitatively identical to a person with two billion dollars. Explore the argument against a flat tax to understand how wealth behaves in this way. Economy of scale and diminishing returns prevents this from being a zero sum game. This is actually good news because it explains why every non-biased empirical examination supports a UBI.

It means that a UBI is not only possible, but ultimately profitable qualitatively for all parties. A rising tide lifts all ships. This isn’t more slices of the same pizza, or even proportionally more pizza per person, but better pizza all around. The wealthy would do well to study these concepts. The principal of diminishing returns applies not just quantitatively but qualitatively. Basic economics class typically makes this clear with a beer enjoyment analogy.

Also money has critical mass. Reasonably handled, income at a certain point becomes effectively self renewing. Charging a billionaire half is neither qualitatively nor quantitatively equivalent to charging a homeless man half. Giving a million to a billionaire as opposed to a homeless person is equivalently dissimilar.

The opportunity cost of allowing the rich (be they corporate or human) to hoard wealth without limit will eventually be more than humanity can afford to pay and a choice will have to be made. If the obscenely wealthy think that we as a species will choose to cull ourselves in order to allow them to keep surplus money they by definition can’t even enjoy, they aren’t just wrong, they are suicidally delusional.

The currently wealthy would be wise to unilaterally support a UBI system that leaves them with little to no qualitative impact relative to what they enjoy now prior to the point where everyone else is forced to force it on them. Because make no mistake. That time will arrive, either as the resources at the bottom of the economic food chain dry up faster than we can innovate functional replacements, or as the psychopathic obsessive corruption process currently utilized by the wealth grows sufficiently successful that it captures wealth faster than it can be created.

Put simply, any market based economic system without a UBI and a progressive tax to fund it is in the long term intrinsically unsustainable for the same reason a water cycle in which there is no evaporation or precipitation ceases to be a cycle.

More over, any argument against a UBI unethically and directly condones horror and dismisses the suffering of others based on arbitrary criteria of what constitutes “deserving” it.

It is ethically self evident to any rational being that no one “deserves” the sorts of tortures and losses of life that are directly relevant to economic starvation and lives of de facto slavery.

Addition:

From “Charles Murray’s In Our Hands – Left or Right?”

“There is no discussion of the possibility that the value of the grant will be eroded because of the effects of the grant on the price of various goods that lower-income people buy.”

Firstly, a UBI without a wealth cap, preferably manifested as a progressive tax up to 100%, like the energy cost of trying to reach the speed of light, is nothing but a right wing straw man argument at best. It is designed to fail.

A UBI implemented in a vacuum as Charles apparently suggests, could and therefor would be completely countered by corporate greed and de facto price fixing the likes of which has already destroyed class mobility in my culture.

The margins on all trade accessible to the common citizen are effectively closed by the market function coupled with psychopathic wealth obsession.

2014-01-28_030330

This is in my view the chief reason class mobility in a free market economy tends towards annihilation and has in the time since our founding almost completely died.

Also I’d like to just quickly say that education isn’t the answer either, any more than loans and simply working longer hours is, because education has a limit as well and the easy way to see that is how many billionaires had a PhD before their first billion. Education doesn’t produce wealth any more than a loan does. It simply allows a person to extract a slightly larger portion of wealth allocated by the rest of the system for compensation of labor. And even with no upper limit on mental capacity and ability, and infinite capacity of all participants in education, (which is obviously not the case anyway) you’d still have pressure from the rest of the system to reduce that labor cost. This is part of why the value of a degree falls every year.

Focusing on this or that to fix the middle class is temporary, at best. To solve the problem you must either A. Create an infinite amount of natural resources, which isn’t going to happen, or to B. Directly link wealth acquisition to wealth provision. The economic cycle must be a cycle. It cannot be a spiral and be sustainable at the same time. It cannot be a virtuous or a vicious cycle.This is proven even at the partial scale. When you link provision with acquisition, you get flow, and flow is how economic health is defined. It’s not even dirt simple folks, it’s water simple.

2014-01-28_034506

Even post singularity there will be a limit. The hard limits of physical reality. Entropy will still win in the ultra long run unless the rules permit highly exotic meta options beyond the realm of even Sci-Fi such as exiting the universe for greener pastures, or custom making a new one from a shopping list of traits, or editing the fundamental laws themselves somehow.

In anycase in the present, no longer can anyone honestly call America the land of opportunity with a straight face and an informed mind and a UBI without a wealth cap to fund it merely delays the inevitable.

EBay for example makes it virtually impossible to resell anything you acquire from a corporate distributor because they are a de facto monopoly. You have to add a 20% markup right up front just to cover their fees. Selling locally is impossible because you’re always a bike ride away from one of their outlets. Either that or you’re paying a 50% consignment store cut, or you’re paying for space in a mall or whatever. The best you could do temporarily is a yard sale, but for that you must own or at least rent/lease land or space, and if you continue the practice you’ll face opposition from the government which likes to control everything and take a piece of all action, in this case via taxes and licenses. And don’t even think about liability and all the lawyers just waiting for blood in the water.

If you could afford to compete in that context, you’re either not poor or you’re on the down hill run into debt slavery. Thus bootstrapping becomes the myth that it has. The margins being crushed by these and other forces make being a small businessman impossible for anyone who doesn’t already have money.

Entry level jobs require participation in aid programs to break even. (Ask walmart employees.) Shifting aid to a UBI would change nothing for the working poor. It would still be impossible for them to have savings. The Walmarts of the world would adjust pay to compensate, especially since they’d now have increased political capitol to do so. (See below.)

This is because all these corporate middle men, cannot be removed through competitive action because they are actually organs of trademark and patent monopolies and contractual tyranny which might as well be feudal title land grants and the like. (E.G. Walmart crushing every mom and pop retail niche in the country to the same degree as a soviet state store.) So long as walmart exists it is not possible to piece meal an alternative. They have completely filled the niche. They can afford to take a loss for decades if need be to crush any locally viable competitor. And if that doesn’t work they can just influence local officials or engage in any other manner of quasi-legal competition squashing.

Thus if a UBI were implemented, barring other reform, the economic climate at the UBI/poverty level would be structured in such a Machiavellian way as to preserve the wage slave state in which we now live.

At best it would be possible to withdraw and save up for a gap jump, knowing that at the very least a fall would not lead to permanent homelessness. Like buying an established business outright for a premium or loading up on life insurance so that at least your progeny could maybe class jump when you die, though of course now you’ll be absent to teach them how to handle said money, which is why we have the notion of shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations. Though instead of insurance perhaps you could build a trust.

For the middle class the UBI check would be consumed by regular interest payments leading to the kind of solvent paycheck to paycheck wage slavery where you are technically with income, but you never see it because of variable interest and automatic withholding/bill pay.

Sure the bottom rung of society would be perhaps better off, which is no small accomplishment, but they would have no where to go since the middle class would still be vanishing or treading water as the margins close to consume the UBI check like the businesses that sprang up to consume stimulus checks.

Also, every dime of income they get would even more pitilessly ripped from them using the argument that it’s ok to fleece them completely, since they have the UBI to fall back on, making middle class wage slavery a “choice” in the same sense that handing over your wallet during a mugging is a choice.

That is why the wealth cap via progressive tax is an essential component of my version of the UBI. Simply diverting funds from other aid programs in some kind of grand bargain will only change the particulars of the one way flow of money from dirt to 1%. It is not redistribution any more than streetlights are when redistribution is exactly what is needed.

A UBI would much needed rain in a parched land of hydraulic despotism no question, but you can’t supply that rain by simply rerouting water already going to these areas via irrigation. It would help no doubt, but on the whole even if there are gains to be made from increased efficiency it would still only be a temporary boon and rapidly the margins would close and any gains would again flow upward before the poor even had a chance to see them.

In order for UBI to work in the long term, in order for a culture to work in the long term, with any real degree of market freedom, you’d need precipitation to insure that no matter how efficient the top got at squeezing the margins you’d always have more money to put into the UBI or other areas to compensate.

Also, for the record, I do not support any kind of forced allocation of the UBI. Telling people what they must spend the UBI on isn’t a UBI, it’s foodstamps by proxy. Just another aid program. That’s not a real solution.

If you want everyone to have health insurance/retirement/whatever then provide it separately. It’s cheaper that way anyway.

Put simply, the idea is to obviate aid programs, not replace them.

Addition:

http://digital.vpr.net/post/bernie-sanders-wants-you-watch-documentary

“Reich says raising the minimum wage and expanding the earned income tax credit will deliver immediate financial relief to citizens on the bottom rungs of the economic ladder. He says increasing taxes on the wealthy will underwrite the public investments needed to lift the underclass.”

“But Reich says getting money out of politics, and overturning Citizens United, is also a necessary step in the reformation of the American economy.”

I agree. These are immediate, morally urgent, and realistic steps in the correct direction, though I believe that they too are temporary unless something like a wealth cap/ubi (ops?) is hidden in the fine print. I strongly oppose this implication that universal employment is a good thing. Forcing people to earn their right to live is fundamentally opposed to the entire concept of human rights.

In a sense, the rise of the 1% is just the logical result of both sides subconsciously agreeing to this fact and making or allowing policy accordingly. Once you admit a couple key concepts, among which is this universal conscription tripe, the end result is the slow motion genocide we find ourselves in.

If this passes, I suspect I’ll for one look back on this era and see the word “lazy” to mean the same thing as “commie” and “terrorist” and that I lived through a true dark age of humanity.

Videos:

Links:

Why Land Value Tax and Universal Basic Income need each other

This funding is more reliable than general taxation as it is based on resources that are unlikely to disappear. The land and these other resources might reduce in value but that would suggest a wider fall in economic activity and a fall in Basic Income would reflect that. However, with an increase in the value of our collective resources would see an automatic increase in the level of Basic Income paid out.

Basic Income | GiveDirectly

A basic income guarantee is a public policy that would provide all people a basic floor—an income that is enough to live on and that is provided irrespective of work simply because the recipient is a member of that community. It is provided to everyone, regardless of need, forever.

Since the time of Thomas More, people from across the political spectrum have expressed interest in the idea, from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., to theconservative economists Milton Friedman and F. A. Hayek. Some argue this is the moral thing to do; others argue replacing a patchwork of existing government programs with a basic income is more efficient; technologists argue the coming robotization of the workforce makes it necessary. And it’s not just words; in countries where basic income is up for debate, trillions of dollars of social services are at stake.

Islanders


http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/04/22/1293820/-Moyers-Gov-t-Is-Now-a-Protection-Racket-for-the-1-Krugman-Why-We-re-In-A-New-Gilded-Age?detail=email
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/12/09/1261454/-Five-charts-of-income-inequality?detail=email
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Negative_income_tax
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Social_credit
http://www.alternet.org/20-things-poor-do-everyday-rich-never-have-worry-about?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark
http://org.credoaction.com/petitions/congress-cap-ceo-pay-at-50x-salary-of-the-average-worker
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/21/us-reutersmagazine-davos-swiss-rich-idUSBRE90K0F420130121

http://demonocracy.info/infographics/usa/us_debt/us_debt.html
http://demonocracy.info/infographics/usa/fiscal_cliff/fiscal_cliff.html
https://decorrespondent.nl/541/why-we-should-give-free-money-to-everyone/31639050894-e44e2c00

Bait and Switch

An open letter to Tammy Baldwin.

Thank you for not shoehorning in a gun control band wagon plea in your most recent mass mailing.

It seems the whole democratic party has selective amnesia when it comes to gun control. Like all of the sudden respect for the constitution and the actual effect of prohibition are completely blanked out. Like it completely slipped all their minds why NDAA and the drug war are bad policies. Seriously, you want to see some disturbing mental gymnastics ask a die hard left partisan about this discrepancy.

I can’t stand hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance in people who would presume to make policy for the rest of us so I’ve been unsubscribing to left leaning news sources and activism organizations for days now. I’m pleased to not have to add you to this list. (Yet?)

I hope you’ll consider being perhaps the first among the current crop to, especially now, admit somewhere the logic of opposing knee jerk gun laws as they are unconstitutional and completely unworkable, as criminals and psychotics don’t care, and they are the last to be disarmed. Further to remind everyone that the biggest school massacre in history was not a shooting, but a bombing, in 1927.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/crime/2012/12/18/bath_school_bombing_remembering_the_deadliest_school_massacre_in_american.html

Now if the left wants to organize to repeal the second, that’s at least legitimate and honest, if stupid. The debate would then become about tyranny and social impact in other nations and other states. But asking for gun laws clearly designed to circumvent the 2nd to varying degrees without openly calling for its repeal is for lack of a better word, cheating. It is the exact kind of shenanigans the left has (rightfully) opposed throughout the drug and terror wars.

Their cheating has gotten so substantial that it has, and I quote…

“…led to what’s essentially a separate justice system for Muslims. In this system, the principle of due process is twisted and selectively applied, if it is applied at all.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/16/court-terrorism-morales-gangs-meaningless

The left’s position on gun control is a gargantuan policy mistake and really the only solid point republicans have.

I am a one issue voter on this because among other things it’s the clearest way to spot hypocrisy and thoughtless allegiance in a left leaning representative.

If the left were to base its position on facts, reason, and history, or even if the left abandoned the position entirely at the federal level, leaving entirely up to the states, the right wing would hemorrhage left libertarians and other one issue gun voter to the point of permanent advantage and real social change.

Interestingly, with the country so closely divided and the access to nearly unlimited funds, the right has this opportunity as well with regard to the drug war.

As I said on G+ months ago…

On the right we have gun law: http://gunfacts.info/
Everyone in favor of gun control, which is basically the whole democratic party, ignores this set of facts because PR is exceptionally skilled at loading questions and misrepresenting data.

And on the left we have drug law: http://www.leap.cc/
Everyone in favor of the drug war, which is basically the whole republican party, ignores this set of facts because PR is exceptionally skilled at loading questions and misrepresenting data.

If either party switched sides on their issue based on the facts they would quickly dominate the opposing party.

That neither side does this, despite the opportunity to truly win and accomplish all their other goals, shows how adept the PR industry is.

It’s not just about laziness, that’s another PR myth. Critical thinking is a skill like any other and we as a culture are a culture of specialists, while it would be nice if everyone could become expert data analysts to demand that of everyone is unrealistic to put it mildly.

Indeed a huge portion of Ron Paul’s supporters are in this “left libertarian” category if you examine their positions issue by issue, and more importantly their conviction on those issues. (There are very few one issue medicare or military spending voters.)

It would behoove you and any other forward thinking democrat in congress to consider a leadership role in reforming the democratic party on this issue, or at the very least, deferring the issue to the state level.

Harsh truths and the real solution.

http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-harsh-truths-that-will-make-you-better-person/

6 Harsh Truths That Will Make You a Better Person Man

There. Fixed that for you. Because if you were born with ovaries your usefulness is automatic as far as 200,000 years of evolutionary training are concerned.

That’s why every culture on the planet spent its formative years controlling the shit out of women like property because they were and are a valuable resource while men are experimental models who’s usefulness must be ascertained after production, their freedom, to a degree, is critical for the system’s evolution.

Sure women can sharpen this value, or they can demonstrate that they have and additional more critical value that eclipses it, but basically all this shit on the list only applies to men.

Take all the women in your life whom you’ve ever known. How many of them ended up with kids or at least a mate? I assure you you know more single men than single women and the above coupled with the things in this article are why. Women get a silver medal by default. Because even if they get the gold, so what? How is the wife of a billionaire different from a billionaire? Flip that around though and things get radically different, especially in a society that doesn’t enforce monogamy.

For women, as far as the gene game goes, there is no brass ring. Sure their offspring might have the best possible chance, but there are going to be like 20 of them at most. While a man can have thousands.

Women have ascribed value by default. Men have to achieve their value. That’s why we have manhood rituals, the harder the better (for the culture.)

But the question not asked by this article or sentiments like it, are we ants or minds? Is it genes or memes? And what would it take to falsify this position?

Tyler Durden was totally his job yes but he also kills himself at the end of the film. The point is to transcend this way of life. He wasn’t arguing about the way things were he was aiming at the way things should be. Thing is chuck (the author) didn’t have an answer. All his works scream that he lacks an answer. Best he could come up with is debt cancellation and a engineered social collapse. He wants to erase the board but has no idea what to put in its place.

This is the core mistake of backwards movements and lines of thought. Like the Unabomber.

I should not be my productivity.

Can I create a world where that doesn’t matter? Yes.

http://www.hedweb.com/huxley/

“Your effort to remain what you are is what limits you.” ~Puppet Master, Ghost in the Shell

And that includes your efforts to perfect what you are. This also applies to the culture. A mob of us looking for better ways to placate a culture built on torture and selfishness is clearly not the answer.

Sure, Alec’s rant is adaptive. But then again so is rape in a world that only cares about results. The trick isn’t making yourself a better fit for that world, the trick is getting out of it and making a better one.