Reconciliation

[Mistwell]

No dumbass moderates are as principled as anyone else they just don't fit in the perfect little model you fit yourself in. They can be pro-choice and pro-gun-control but against higher taxes and business regulations, etc.. Saying you have to line up exactly with all the conservative issues or else you're unprincipled is nonsense. Your principles are no more or less valuable and consistent as a moderates, you just have a unified label for yours that you're satisfied-enough with.

Thank you for proving my point.  Those are policy positions, not principles

There are consistent principals behind every one of those policy positions. Obviously.

A principle is an overarching belief that informs all of your policy positions. 

No you extremist twat, it's not ONE principal which is overarching all your beliefs. Most humans have multiple principals which guide their beliefs.

Please elucidate the overarching principle that manifests as "pro-choice and pro-gun-control but against higher taxes and business regulations."  You don't even recognize how badly you played yourself.

That's not how principals work. You don't have just one and that's it, and if stuff doesn't fit in that one principal then it's an ignored issue or you try and force it into that principal even when it doesn't fit. Traditionally, the chief principles are accountability, justice, nonmaleficence, autonomy, beneficence, fidelity, and veracity., though even that list has expanded over time.

Every time you type, you make it worse.  Nowhere did i say that people have only one principle.   What I stated was that a principle affects every policy you have.  So, if you believe in freedom,  every policy should maximize freedom,  along with any other principles that you have being maximized in that policy as well.  Only a squishy principle-less moderate could assert that people should have dozens of principles which only affect certain policies where  convenient.   I'm still waiting for the overarching principle that fits with your stealth liberal examples...

What does "overarching" mean in your "overarching principle that fits with your..." sentence if you're not trying to force all policies into one principal? And where is YOUR list of principals for each of those policy issues?

[Trond]

No dumbass moderates are as principled as anyone else they just don't fit in the perfect little model you fit yourself in. They can be pro-choice and pro-gun-control but against higher taxes and business regulations, etc.. Saying you have to line up exactly with all the conservative issues or else you're unprincipled is nonsense. Your principles are no more or less valuable and consistent as a moderates, you just have a unified label for yours that you're satisfied-enough with.

Thank you for proving my point.  Those are policy positions, not principles

There are consistent principals behind every one of those policy positions. Obviously.

A principle is an overarching belief that informs all of your policy positions. 

No you extremist twat, it's not ONE principal which is overarching all your beliefs. Most humans have multiple principals which guide their beliefs.

Please elucidate the overarching principle that manifests as "pro-choice and pro-gun-control but against higher taxes and business regulations."  You don't even recognize how badly you played yourself.

That's not how principals work. You don't have just one and that's it, and if stuff doesn't fit in that one principal then it's an ignored issue or you try and force it into that principal even when it doesn't fit. Traditionally, the chief principles are accountability, justice, nonmaleficence, autonomy, beneficence, fidelity, and veracity., though even that list has expanded over time.

Every time you type, you make it worse.  Nowhere did i say that people have only one principle.   What I stated was that a principle affects every policy you have.  So, if you believe in freedom,  every policy should maximize freedom,  along with any other principles that you have being maximized in that policy as well.  Only a squishy principle-less moderate could assert that people should have dozens of principles which only affect certain policies where  convenient.   I'm still waiting for the overarching principle that fits with your stealth liberal examples...

I would suggest their overarching principle is either "doesn't want to be harassed by the radical woke" or "wants to be liked by a social circle that is already partially woke."

More like "when you grow up you'll learn that life is complex."

[Brad]

"The 19th Amendment [giving women the right to vote] was a mistake." -Brad

That's not what the 19th Amendment actually says, though. Here is the text:

"The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex."

Doesn't say women at all. It can be interpreted that way, and usually is, but it means you cannot be discriminatory based purely on sex. Contrast this with the provision that you must be a citizen to vote. People who do not pay taxes or fight in the military are not citizens in the sense the word was used when the Constitution was written. There has to be some skin in the game to be involved in the decision making process. Hence, by misinterpreting the 19th to basically say "women can vote now!" the concept of citizenship is watered down to such a degree that mouthbreathing morons who leech off the government teat and contribute nothing have just as big a voice as productive members of society.

This logic can be applied to the 15th as well. A citizen is a net boon on society, and limiting voting rights for arbitrary reasons is illogical when the definition of "citizen" is considered fully. While the US is not Roman, the concept of citizen has classical roots and ignoring those roots is why dumbasses jump to fucktard conclusions when statements are made they assume they understand.

[Mistwell]

No dumbass moderates are as principled as anyone else they just don't fit in the perfect little model you fit yourself in. They can be pro-choice and pro-gun-control but against higher taxes and business regulations, etc.. Saying you have to line up exactly with all the conservative issues or else you're unprincipled is nonsense. Your principles are no more or less valuable and consistent as a moderates, you just have a unified label for yours that you're satisfied-enough with.

Thank you for proving my point.  Those are policy positions, not principles

There are consistent principals behind every one of those policy positions. Obviously.

A principle is an overarching belief that informs all of your policy positions. 

No you extremist twat, it's not ONE principal which is overarching all your beliefs. Most humans have multiple principals which guide their beliefs.

Please elucidate the overarching principle that manifests as "pro-choice and pro-gun-control but against higher taxes and business regulations."  You don't even recognize how badly you played yourself.

That's not how principals work. You don't have just one and that's it, and if stuff doesn't fit in that one principal then it's an ignored issue or you try and force it into that principal even when it doesn't fit. Traditionally, the chief principles are accountability, justice, nonmaleficence, autonomy, beneficence, fidelity, and veracity., though even that list has expanded over time.

Every time you type, you make it worse.  Nowhere did i say that people have only one principle.   What I stated was that a principle affects every policy you have.  So, if you believe in freedom,  every policy should maximize freedom,  along with any other principles that you have being maximized in that policy as well.  Only a squishy principle-less moderate could assert that people should have dozens of principles which only affect certain policies where  convenient.   I'm still waiting for the overarching principle that fits with your stealth liberal examples...

I would suggest their overarching principle is either "doesn't want to be harassed by the radical woke" or "wants to be liked by a social circle that is already partially woke."

More like "when you grow up you'll learn that life is complex."

Ain't that the truth.

I think it's what most extremists suffer from - a failure to become a mature adult and acknowledge nuance and complexity, clinging to the child-like comfort of fitting everything neatly into black and white boxes with labels and that never vary or need face any challenge from facts.

[Mistwell]

"The 19th Amendment [giving women the right to vote] was a mistake." -Brad

That's not what the 19th Amendment actually says, though. Here is the text:

"The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex."

Doesn't say women at all. It can be interpreted that way, and usually is, but it means you cannot be discriminatory based purely on sex. Contrast this with the provision that you must be a citizen to vote. People who do not pay taxes or fight in the military are not citizens in the sense the word was used when the Constitution was written. There has to be some skin in the game to be involved in the decision making process. Hence, by misinterpreting the 19th to basically say "women can vote now!" the concept of citizenship is watered down to such a degree that mouthbreathing morons who leech off the government teat and contribute nothing have just as big a voice as productive members of society.

This logic can be applied to the 15th as well. A citizen is a net boon on society, and limiting voting rights for arbitrary reasons is illogical when the definition of "citizen" is considered fully. While the US is not Roman, the concept of citizen has classical roots and ignoring those roots is why dumbasses jump to fucktard conclusions when statements are made they assume they understand.

There is simply no question at all that the context of crafting and passing the 19th amendment was in fact "women can vote now!" It's not misinterpreting anything, that is what it meant, and a shallow or deep look at history proves that's exactly what it meant. Now it includes "citizen" of course and doesn't water down the concept or requirement that you be a citizen to vote, but it absolute added "women!" to those citizens who could vote.

The 19th amendment was not a mistake. Sexist assholes however will pretend it was for bullshit reasons. And lets none of us pretend you're somehow not a sexist these days - remember you're the douchenozzle who had a pedo-looking girl porn avatar right here until Pundit asked you to knock it off. Pundit - who runs this place as close to free speech absolutist as they come, it took him saying "Dude, WTF with that sexist avatar?" for you to replace it. You're the most prominent, maybe the only, blatant sexist around here and you trying to pretend "Oh I was talking about watering down the meaning of citizenship when I said the 19th amendment was a mistake" is a heaping mound of bullshit any of us can spot from a mile off given your reputation and history here.

[Brad]

There is simply no question at all that the context of crafting and passing the 19th amendment was in fact "women can vote now!" It's not misinterpreting anything, that is what it meant, and a shallow or deep look at history proves that's exactly what it meant. Now it includes "citizen" of course and doesn't water down the concept or requirement that you be a citizen to vote, but it absolute added "women!" to those citizens who could vote.

The 19th amendment was not a mistake. Sexist assholes however will pretend it was for bullshit reasons. And lets none of us pretend you're somehow not a sexist these days - remember you're the douchenozzle who had a pedo-looking girl porn avatar right here until Pundit asked you to knock it off. Pundit - who runs this place as close to free speech absolutist as they come, it took him saying "Dude, WTF with that sexist avatar?" for you to replace it. You're the most prominent, maybe the only, blatant sexist around here and you trying to pretend "Oh I was talking about watering down the meaning of citizenship when I said the 19th amendment was a mistake" is a heaping mound of bullshit any of us can spot from a mile off given your reputation and history here.

Nahh.

[I]

And here we are today with one of the world's shittiest public school systems, with many public school students routinely graduated not knowing how to read above an eighth-grade level and not really being equipped to get any sort of decent-paying job...

While I'd echo most of what you said, one thing to be cautious of here is the misleading nature of aggregated data. The Program for International Student Assessment, for example, shows that American students perform roughly equivalently to European students in their standardized testing. Broader USA school underperformance is easily understood because it's a more heterogenous group. Places like Texas that have regions that are majority-hispanic perform roughly equivalently to countries like Mexico on standardized testing.

As should be apparent to even the veriest idiot, a better way to handle all of this would have been to either equalize school resources or fully integrate and then end it there.

I'll disagree with this point here. There is no value-neutral way to allocate resources. The value-neutral thing is important, because that's the whole reason why we theoretically favor "equality." But "equality" is a fraud. It's a cop-out for a real argument.

When I was in school, we had a special program for the students that were more intelligent. The school allocated additional resources for us to give us an advantage, and in turn we represented the school in competitions and events that helped us (theoretically) bring prestige and accolades. We sent our best musicians to play in concerts, and we send our best athletes in competitions.

These days I don't think most (USA) schools have this kind of program anymore. These resources are now allocated towards diversity programs and special education. While I think there can be some value in these things, on a case-by-case basis, they're largely a waste.

More important is the broader principle: should you cultivate the talents of the most promising, or strive endlessly to bring up the least talented? The former strategy works, the latter strategy does not work. Yet "equality" is predicated on the latter strategy. That's not a way to make a functional society.

I agree with everything you said.  I think that European schools are getting crappier though and have been for a long time, so it doesn't much surprise me that American students generally do about as well as European ones today.  They are both dumbing down to the lowest common denominator.

By "equality," I simply meant providing equal access to resources as nearly as possible.  Heated, insulated school buildings vs. wooden shacks heated by potbelly stove, for example.  Teachers paid the same but held to the same educational standards, not paid less just because they're black (and certainly not hired just because they're black).  I didn't mean equality of outcome  -- that's a utopian pipe dream and always will be.  I think you have mistaken my usage of the word "equality" for "equity."  I am for equality of opportunity, NOT this "equity" bullshit that liberals are pushing.

[jhkim]

I'd agree that there are businesses and government run by crooks and cheats - but I don't think that 1950s school integration caused any increase in this. From my reading of history, there was rampant corruption in businesses and government in the 1920s, 1930s, and other decades well before the 1950s school integration.

There's this dude named Thomas Sowell who directly addresses these problems in many of his books. Considering he lived in Harlem pre-desegregation and considers his education superior to that after the segregationists "improved" schooling, I'd tend to take his direct experience and research more seriously than some race grifters who've been pushing a bunch of complete bullshit since the 1960s. YMMV.

I think you mean "desegregationists" in the bolded reference. As for the race grifters and desegregationists who have been pushing bullshit since the 1960s, those are people like Martin Luther King Jr, Rosa Parks, John Lewis, etc.

So yes, my mileage does vary. These leaders had just as much experience with segregation as Thomas Sowell, having grown up in segregated society. The push for desegregation in the 1960s was not a bunch of bullshit, nor were the leaders who pushed for it "race grifters".

[I]

By the phrase "give an inch and they'll take a mile" -- you're implying that the 1950s racial integration was a mistake, and there should have been even greater resistance. That equalizing resources without integration would have been a reasonable route. I think this is spurious. After school integration, there was a marked improvement in black student scores. It's just that it did not bring score all the way to parity, which is not surprising given that there remain many disparities outside of school. Here's a graph from NAEP data. You'll see that black scores have gone up more rapidly than white score since 1971 when NAEP was started.

I'm implying no such thing -- as I went to pains to point out, the allocation of resources wasn't equal.  The resources should have been equalized as nearly as possible and that was all, though.  The other stuff -- discriminating against qualified white teachers, holding black students to different educational and disciplinary standards -- is equity bullshit and I am definitely against it.  It's your side that discriminates against whites and Asians these days, not mine.  No wonder you liberals see an orc and immediately think "black person"  -- liberals REALLY DO think blacks are inherently stupid and violent like orcs and should therefore be held to lesser standards, the same way society (correctly, btw) treats juveniles and mental defectives.

I also don't buy the "disparity of resources" argument, since the kids of poor Latin American peasants, poor Southeast Asians, etc. routinely do as well or even outperform kids of my own WASP ethnicity.  There certainly seems to be a disparity of how much the parents of various ethnic groups value education, though.  Which is on them, not me, and discriminating against one to artificially boost graduation rates and test scores of the other is not helpful.

Thank you for providing all of that data.  I enjoy debating with you because you never lose your temper and always try to support your arguments with hard facts.  However, in this case I don't think you've proven anything.  Of course graduation rates and educational attainment have improved -- the school have been dumbed down to achieve just such a thing.  Look, I worked in a public library for nearly ten years and one of my main jobs was to help connect students to resources they needed in order to complete assignments.  And it wasn't at all uncommon for me to encounter high school and even college students who had no frigging idea how to even begin writing a paper.  They couldn't even find a book on a shelf.  How the hell did they get that far into school?  Students like that make up those positive-seeming statistics of yours.  "Look at how many more black kids graduate high school today than in the past!"  Yeah, they graduate not knowing how to read or write, herded like cattle through a chute into an adulthood they are not educationally fit for yet.  And white liberals pat themselves on the back for this while black liberals think they've won some sort of victory.  Pathetic.

As for educational standards being lowered and lax discipline in public schools -- if you think those things aren't true, then I'm not going to bother trying to convince you otherwise.  I just don't have the energy.  They are so well-established at this point, so much a part of common knowledge, so much a part of the personal experience of most of us, that it would be a waste of time.  If you don't believe these things by now, I'll just say you're in a state of denial and leave it at that.

That said, I do appreciate your taking the effort to provide such a detailed response to me.

[Brad]

I think you mean "desegregationists" in the bolded reference. As for the race grifters and desegregationists who have been pushing bullshit since the 1960s, those are people like Martin Luther King Jr, Rosa Parks, John Lewis, etc.

So yes, my mileage does vary. These leaders had just as much experience with segregation as Thomas Sowell, having grown up in segregated society. The push for desegregation in the 1960s was not a bunch of bullshit, nor were the leaders who pushed for it "race grifters".

You totally missed the point, but that is to be expected. MLK and Rosa Parks have nothing to do with what I said and you know it. But go ahead, continue to be a disingenuous CCP shill.

[3catcircus]

"A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution," -Trump

"The 19th Amendment [giving women the right to vote] was a mistake." -Brad

"support for segregation and one poster wanting to kill half of the population of the US" - Daztur quoting two other posters here.

Look, guys, it's gonna be harder and harder to deny fascism when it's "terminate the rules of the Constitution for my cause" and "women shouldn't be able to vote" and "re-segregate the population based on race" and "kill the half of the population I disagree with."  And I've NEVER been one of those guys claiming the right is fascist in America. But this shit is crossing that line rapidly.

This is the problem with the "we're more nuanced" leftists.  At no point did he state we should suspend the constitution as a whole. What he said was that the rules governing elections - even those in the constitution - should be disregarded if there is no other way to obtain relief in the face of demonstrable criminal election activity that resulted in the fraudulent installation of Biden into the white house.

This is common sense - if the rules dictate that you can't reliably remove a fraudulent electee after the fact if it had been proven to be fraudulent, then you *should* ignore those rules.

Hell - the process of proposing, running, and electing candidates is done by *private* political parties. Who the hell thinks that private clubs should be allowed to dictate who gets to run for political office to begin with?!?!?!

[3catcircus]

I don't see any problem with trans people being teachers or whatnot

Your attitude is exactly why the public school system is failing. No "sane person" with small children wants demonspawn teaching their kids. Oh look, more "extreme rhetoric," right? If I don't like pedophiles teaching my kids, just means I'm a bigot.

So here's the conundrum.  Are there transgendered people who you'd never know are transgendered unless you're bumping uglies with them?  Yes - there are - and they're quietly passable and monogamous . I have no issues with them living their lives. I have no problems with them teaching. They've clearly decided they're going all the way to become the other - including cutting off body parts, adding body parts, etc. Which is clearly a form of mental instability - but they're not pushing their crazy on anyone else and claiming that it's both normal and desirous for anyone else to do so.

The problem is that the transgendered that are teaching children are pretty much men in dresses or manly wimmenists with blue hair and nose rings and they're activist crusaders who have a compulsion to try and tell everyone around them about their private lives and convert others to their cause - and that's a problem when dealing with highly impressionable children. It's even more of a problem when the statistics show that the reason that many of them *are* trans is *because* they were molested as kids and *will* go on to molest kids themselves.

And it isn't even the "standard M2F" trans that this manifests as - it's stuff like the "can't tell what it is because it's purposely chosen to be confusing by growing a mustache and wear a dress and then demanding redress when someone can't figure out whether it's a man or a woman" like the DoE secretary currently in the news for stealing luggage and who is currently rumored to be under investigation for having sex with *actual* dogs.  We don't need someone who is clearly mentally ill in any position of authority of any kind - whether nuclear waste or teaching kids.

[Mistwell]

"A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution," -Trump

"The 19th Amendment [giving women the right to vote] was a mistake." -Brad

"support for segregation and one poster wanting to kill half of the population of the US" - Daztur quoting two other posters here.

Look, guys, it's gonna be harder and harder to deny fascism when it's "terminate the rules of the Constitution for my cause" and "women shouldn't be able to vote" and "re-segregate the population based on race" and "kill the half of the population I disagree with."  And I've NEVER been one of those guys claiming the right is fascist in America. But this shit is crossing that line rapidly.

This is the problem with the "we're more nuanced" leftists.  At no point did he state we should suspend the constitution as a whole. What he said was that the rules governing elections - even those in the constitution - should be disregarded if there is no other way to obtain relief in the face of demonstrable criminal election activity that resulted in the fraudulent installation of Biden into the white house.

And that should be horrifying to you. That you think that distinction makes this "OK" is fucking horrifying. WTF could conceivably be wrong with your brain that you think the rules in the US Constitution regarding elections should be "disregarded" concerning a matter of elections? You understand THAT'S THE ENTIRE UNDERPINNING OF A CONSTITUTION-BASED DEMOCRACY, right? That if the rules regarding how to elect the leader of the nation for which that Constitutional applies should be disregarded because some fucker claims fraud but cannot prove it using the very court system set up for that issue, THAT IS FASCISM. There is no two ways about it - that is exactly how a Democracy dies and Fascism begins, where you override the very governing Constitution to put a leader in place.

This is common sense

No, this is insanity! In no way is it "common sense" that a nation should disregard the Constitutional rules for elections to change an election result.

- if the rules dictate that you can't reliably remove a fraudulent electee after the fact if it had been proven to be fraudulent, then you *should* ignore those rules.

But nobody "proved" a fraudulent electee! The courts have not held it was fraud at all, the legislatures have not held it was fraud at all, no Constitutional body or Constitutional procedure has found it was fraud! You're advocating for a dictatorship where the rules of elections should be disregarded because you don't like the result and some fucking YouTube clickbait dickwads claim it was fraud and you're angry and stupid. Might as well put your fucking brown coat on already.

Hell - the process of proposing, running, and electing candidates is done by *private* political parties. Who the hell thinks that private clubs should be allowed to dictate who gets to run for political office to begin with?!?!?!

You are free, in a democracy like ours, to advocate to change the laws. But we're a nation of laws, not of your personal pouty feels, and in our nation of laws you have to obey the Constitution and not disregard it when it doesn't agree with you, you fucking child.

[jeff37923]

Folks, earlier in this thread  I said that for reconciliation to happen, you have to be talking to rational people. Just by reading the weasel-worded responses of jhkim and Mistwell, you can tell that the "opposition" is not rational and unwilling to discuss the issue in good faith.

[Zelen]

Folks, earlier in this thread  I said that for reconciliation to happen, you have to be talking to rational people. Just by reading the weasel-worded responses of jhkim and Mistwell, you can tell that the "opposition" is not rational and unwilling to discuss the issue in good faith.

Yup.