The Glade 4.0

Funny, because you're always telling people they don't know more than you and that they are uninformed. And then, when pressed to converse on the subject, you just shout at us and sling insults, Diamondeye. In fact, I asked you to clarify some things, you just dropped the subject and waited until you felt you could sling more insults on a different subject.

So, how about a pop quiz ...

Why did I vote for Michael Badnarik in 2004? What about his involvement in that election was important to me? Certainly, it could not possibly have been any chance of seeing him in the White House, I know too much about our election laws and FEC regulations to believe that would happen. Not to mention, our media has done a fantastic job of keeping third-parties in the fringe category since Perot.

So, why did I vote for Michael Badnarik in 2004?

More importantly, why do I opposed the 16th and 17th Amendments? You should get at least 50% of that one right. The other was also posted on the Glade.

Beyond that, you seem to think my supposed (since it's your supposition) political stance would result in a libertarian shit-hole. To that end, I have several questions:

What is a libertarian shit-hole? How does it come about? What's different from the status quo in the United States? How do you qualify and quantify your conclusion?

Quite honestly, I think you have a woefully insufficient understanding of our government. I think that is largely a factor of your career field. But, you know, never once have you heard me slam our soldiers or those who serve. Never once have you heard me denigrate our civil servants. You've heard me bash our law enforcement agencies, but that's not so much because they are the FBI or Random PD or the DEA or the ATF (well, in the case of the ATF it's because they're the ATF) ...

But, no, I don't think you have any idea what the country I want would look like; what I think you fear, though, is that the country I want would handcuff our law enforcement officials; that it would, in point of fact, diminish the amount of force your occupation allows you to exert on other people. At least, were I to play pop-psychologist like you, that's what I'd say.

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The government had its thumb on the scale, shifting the burden to the blacks. So then it starts pushing down on the other side of the scale and you call that reform...

Taking the thumb off the scale is reform. A reformed theif doesn't just steal less or steal from other folks, a reformed theif stops thieving.

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In time, this too shall pass.

Even if that were the case (and I don't believe it is), the violent response of the Southern law enforcement and government bodies would belie the idea that the reform came through non-violence. If the violent response was so influential, then the idea that non-violence caused the change is false - violence caused the change in your hypothesis.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

I think Americans still have a woefully insufficient understanding of violence, which is ironic considering our media industry.

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What do you base your own understanding on?

Experience and first-hand exposure to violence in other parts of the world.

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And what aspects of violence do you feel most Americans fail to understand

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/201305 ... book.shtml

Mmmm more Tyranny. Delicious!

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Holy shitsnacks!

I think you're pretty badly mischaracterizing the nature of the civil rights movement, DFK. Yes, during the civil rights era there was the Watts riot in 65, the Detroit riot in 67 and the various riots across the country in the days immediately after King was murdered in 68, but that's about it. Those were isolated events, not characteristic of the civil rights era as a whole. Moreover, they were spontaneous events, not part of the civil rights movement, by which I mean the organized efforts at protest, civil disobedience, court challenges, voter registration drives, political campaigns, etc. that were aimed at changing the system. Violence was simply not a part of those organized efforts.

That said, I concede that there is a strong argument to be made that part of the reason that the peaceful efforts of King and the NAACP were successful is that white leaders realized that anger and frustration in the black community was reaching a tipping point, creating an implied threat that failure to accede to peaceful demands now would lead to violence later. In other words, MLK needed Malcolm X as a bogeyman waiting in the wings. However, the counter to that is the timeline - most of the key civil rights victories had already been won by the time things were starting to boil over in the mid- to late-60s.


We're talking about violence committed by the would-be reformers themselves as a means of forcing change. Violence by the establishment against reformers may indeed be important in swaying public opinion (in fact, I think it was crucial in the case of the Civil Rights movement), but that's not what I (and I presume DE) have been getting at.

Any of it, to be honest. There are segments of our population who really grok violence; the majority of Americans? Not one bit.

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Wikipedia
alone (without further research) lists 31 separate Riots between 1958 and 1978, or over 1 per year.

Besides riotous events, we could look into the various factors of the time, such as the rise of the Nation of Islam and their pro-violence advocacy; or the rise of the Black Panthers, also a relatively violent entity.

Additionally, we could examine isolated acts of violence at the time, but that would probably require the most research and effort.



And my contention is that the violence (primarily riot-based violence but the other factors I just mentioned as well) made people pay attention to all of this stuff. Without the violence, nobody would have given a ****. Fear of violence does amazing things to a society.



Per my comments above, the violence happened well before the mid-late 60's, as well as afterward.


All I'm saying is that you claimed this [emphasis added]:



As being changed without qualifying under this:




My counterpoint was simply that it required violence or "bring[ing] out the guns" in order to enact meaningful and lasting change. Further, that that violence was significant enough to negate your assertion that it was "mostly achieved through peaceful means."

Now, perhaps we disagree on what "mostly" means in this context, which would be a meaningful discussion. But my contention is that nothing would have ultimately changed had not the violence (and therefore the subsequent threat of further violence) been present. The two are irrevocably linked and wholly interdependent.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

This is nice to say, but what level of violence are you talking about? Committed it? Exposed to it? Helped someone deal with after effects? Been the victim of it?

I haven't qualified violence, at all, in this thread or any time I've made that statement. We're talking about all levels of violence, primarily because Americans are mostly oblivious to violence around them and the violence they commit.

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We're not talking about violence in general, we're talking about the populace using violence against the government. That was what Khross mentioned as supposedly the only "check" there is on the government, and it's what all the Mal Reynolds wannabes around here talk about so casually, but don't do. The citizens of this country are not going to come together and start using guns to restrict the government. They don't want to. The government is simply not doing anything that would actually warrant it.

Notably, in countries where the government actually is, there actually has been recent violent revolution. Libya, Egypt, and Syria to name a few. It doesn't matter how much people scream "POLICE STATE!" and "TYRANNY!"; those things exist when the populace as a whole feels they exist. They do not fall into the purview of libertarians to tell everyone else when they're happening.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

A couple of those listed appear to be only tangentially related to black civil rights issues (some were about Native American rights, Puerto Rican rights, anti-Vietnam protests, etc.) and a couple were actually riots by white people opposed to civil rights, but regardless, I concede that my memory failed me here. Riots were actually much more prevalent than I recalled. However, I do note that the majority were in the mid- to late-60s, which, as I indicated, is after most of the key legal and political victories had already been won.


Fair enough. I don't disagree with that.


Actually, I don't think that's true (or at least isn't supported by the link you provided). According to your link, one riot occurred in 1958 and six occurred in the 1970s, while the rest all occurred between 1963 and 1969. Moreover, the one from 1958 was apparently a confrontation between Native Americans and the KKK, and of the six that occurred in the 1970s, only two were over black/white race issues (of the remaining four, one was an anti-Vietnam War protest, two were centered in the hispanic community, and one I couldn't find any info on). So basically, all but two of the events happened between 63 and 69.



I think my main disagreements are that (i) I don't think the violence can be attributed to the civil rights "movement", as in the individuals and groups working in an organized fashion to change the system, and (ii) I think most of the key legal and political victories had already been won by the time the violence started boiling over. I am open, though, to the idea that the violence and/or the likelihood of future violence provided an important backdrop for driving attention to the issues and motivating those in power to deal with the peaceful leaders of the movement.

??

Yes

http://www.cnn.com/2012/02/14/living/flowers-lose-scent

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In time, this too shall pass.

I understand that you are talking about a much narrower scope than I (I will let Khross clarify his statement if he so desires). I think it is much more realistic to follow the logic that the reforms needed in the US government will not plausibly take place without violence on either side.
The Gov't will continue accreting power, it's what gov'ts do, and it will be aided by the complacency and ignorance of the general populace. The Gov't will use force (its underlying base for holding power) if its power base is in danger of being swept away in furtherance of bringing it more in line with what the Constitution delineates. On the other hand, the people, seeing that such massive reforms will not occur without the Gov't attempting to stop such, will attempt to bring change through violence.

DE, I can't speak for Khross, and will not attempt to do so.
Of course the populace as a whole does not see anything worth violence . The frog doesn't attempt to jump out of the pot of water until it's too late.

I'll just leave your usual anti-libertarian statements to speak for themselves. We all know that violence against the government is always perpetrated by the population "as a whole". There are never substantial loyalist factions to go with the revolutionary factions. You'd never find violence being perpetrated against OUR Gov't, Today...

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

Xeq I can tell you that ballot access laws in many states ensures that all 3rd parties spend all their money and energy just trying to get on the ballot.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

The idea that the government is concerned with a power base is pure fantasy. Our government is made up of competing elements, none of which are explicitly concerned with power but ALL of which think they are honestly doing what is right for the country. "The government" does not exist as a coherent entity that will be concerned with protecting a power base in the first place.

Furthermore, the government is not fundamentally out of line with the Constitution in the first place, for the most part. The Supreme Court decides when it is. You (and me, and everyone else here and in the country) doesn't decide that.

As a result, your underlying premises are inaccurate. There is no government desire for power, because the government has no coherent existence; it is an aggregate of competing blocks that oppose each other, and the assumption that the government is "not in line with the Constitution" is purely personal opinion, and one of the major things the Constitution does is remove law from the opinion of the people.

As for not speaking for Khross, his remarks are what I was speaking to, so if you're demanding I reply to some other aspect of what violence does in terms of political reform, you're out of luck. That was the topic under discussion, and if you want to alter it to violence in general you can, but what you cannot do is claim I was wrong for responding to what I was originally addressing.

As for the populace being the frog, sorry, but the populace decides. You are not a special snowflake. You don't see what is needed over everyone else. The populace in general is not stupid, brainwashed, ignorant, or otherwise uninformed relative to you. If they don't see the need for it, they're right, you're wrong, and that's all there is to it. The populace ultimately decides if the Constitution even applies. It's "we the people". The people can revolt and remove the Constitution entirely just as easily as they can decide the government isn't following it. You want to roll the dice? Get out there and pick up a rifle. Quit coming on the internet talking about how violence is the way people check the government then making the excuse that the populace is like a **** frog.

One of the stupidest things on his forum is people talking about how stupid and worthless humanity in general is. They aren't. If you think they are however, that makes you an arrogant pile of **** that needs their face slammed into the concrete until you get that you are not smarter, more special, or otherwise better than the average. I don't give a flying **** what your IQ or level of education is. No one is nearly as smart as people want to believe they are.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Yeah, I guess it's a fantasy that the Gov't has only grown larger and more powerful while intruding further and further into the everyday lives of the citizens.

My underlying premise (not my land holdings) is not what you decide it is. You calling something "pure fantasy" does not make it so.

I demand nothing from you.

Insisting that your point of view is the correct one and everyone else is either crazy or narcissistic if they disagree is weak. Your continual building of strawmen so you can knock them down coupled with your rabid confrontational attitude making everything about the other poster is tired.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

I man imposing force on others doing so under "good intentions" is the worst kind of beast there is because there will be no remorse or pause in the oppression of those they are helping.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Yes, as a matter of fact it is. The government barely touches the everyday lives of citizens, and in any case, the advance of technology and improved understanding of the human condition has made this both necessary and inevitable.



Meaningless statement. Aside from your pointless correction of my pluarlizing (nice attempt at point-scoring, by the way)


If you demand nothing from me, then don't demand anything from me.



This is the habitual behavior of almost everyone on this board, libertarians, and you whether you identify as one or not. Trying to claim I do so is hypocritical at best. Everyone isn't crazy or narcissistic; the fact however is that the pool of posters on this board has shrunk continuously and now consists mainly of people that just have fundamental authority problems and engage in pseudo-intellectual justifications of their dispute with all authority in general rather than addressing actual instances of government excess, of which there are plenty. The title of this thread is evidence as to the degree to which question-begging has become the norm.



This is nothing more than attempts at point-scoring. You are habitually confrontational, and can't accept correction in areas you don't understand very well, relying on appeals to friendship with unspecifiec law enforcement officers to try o appeal o your own authority.

This entire lines evidence of how terrible the discourse in general has become here. You're in a lengthening list of posters that has gone from reasonable and agreeable to irrational, and unwilling to engage in discussion without simply relying on ad hom and appeal to motive to dismiss anything you disagree with. All you're doing is depserately bleating about me personally because you just can't accept how good you have it, and then when it comes down to it...

you aren't going to pick up a rifle. You're not Mal Reynolds. You like your life how it is, and you're going to be able to scream about government for the rest of your life. Your own ability to whine and scream show how wrong you are.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

We can't blame the President, the Gov't is too big...

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

"I posted a video! Therefore I'm right!"

Have a beer.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."