The Glade 4.0

If you'd actually read and understood my postings on both those topics, you'd realize that the source of the difference is that one has a high level of economic and health cost to society and the other doesn't. That however, might actually require you to both think and be able to apply logic.

You can try to rationalize all you want, but your little circle dance leads to the same place it starts: "Government intrusion is good when I think it's good, and bad when I think it's bad!"

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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

Vind, that's kind of like saying that the distinction between murder and self-defense is just a rationalization because it boils down to "Killing is good when I think it's good, and bad when I think it's bad!" If the underlying justifications are different, then the distinction isn't mere rationalization.

Well no **** sherlock.

Government has it's uses, and is required for some things. In those situations it's use is "good". When it does things outside of that then it's "bad".

My bad for assuming that everyone understood that I guess. lol.

Wow, if I get time later I'm exporting that data to Excel and running a regression analysis...

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

The problem with that is that the underlying justification behind prohibiting drugs and taxing cigarettes isn't different. They're both based ont he ahrmful effects of the substance.

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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."

No offense intended, but: I do believe law shool has made you the king of false analogies.

Then again (hasty generalization), I think law school does that to all lawyers.

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

*chuckle* None taken. I, in turn, just think people who haven't gone to law school rarely have the ability/training necessary to appreciate the brilliance of my analogies.

In all seriousness, though, law schools drill into your head from day one that their primary function is to "teach you to think like a lawyer", which in part means finding parallels in seemingly unrelated situations and finding distinctions in seemingly identical ones. So yeah, sometimes lawyers tend to overreach in the connections they make (hence the "distinction without a difference" critique you sometimes see in judicial opinions), but I think the profession does train you to see more nuance than non-lawyers usually do.

That's exactly what I mean by it does it to all lawyers.

The problem is that in actual logical situations, as opposed to the courtroom, false analogies don't have a leg to stand on.



As to regression analysis; If I'm remembering my stats right in setting up the regression, tax rates have a "not statistically significant" impact on smoking rates. In fact, their significance level is 0.64. The threshold for "statistically significant," for those who don't know, is 0.05.

Funding for tobacco control programs is "almost" significant, with a P of 0.10. This indicates that a statistician could lower their confidence level from 0.05 to 0.10 and call it significant if they so chose, as 0.10 is a "common" threshold, though not the "default."

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

My point, though, is that they're not false; they're just less obvious.

I believe the position that RD is taking is that they are not false analogies, but are nuanced.

Those who believe things to be more black and white regularly have difficulty with that train of thought.

Those who are arrogant **** with no capacity for logic have difficulty understanding logic too, so what's your point?

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

Except they are false. That's the key problem with analogy, it's hard to create good ones that hold any merit whatsoever except inside the courtroom where the average juror isn't going to know any better, and is going to buy into the whole "nuanced" thing, because we don't train people to be critical thinkers in our society.

Illustrative examples and anecdotes serve more purpose than attempting to use analogy, and I've just been noticing you try to create analogies a lot lately. Hence, I'm point it out to try to show you that while it's perfect for court, it's bad for reasoned debate.

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

I disagree, DFK. You seem to take a very black-and-white approach to debate, and I think as a result, you see analogies as false when they're really just imperfect (as any analogy will necessarily be). Take the analogy I used in this thread, for instance. Why do you think it's false?

First of all, because individual action (murder or killing) is not the same as government intrusion. Government intrusion requires group action.

As such, by trying to create an analogy between the two, you're saying that the actions of an individual are the same as the actions of a group. Therefore, the analogy fails for comparing like action with like action.


Second, because beliefs about murder (or killing) or made an a moral basis regarding the value of human life. Beliefs about government intrusion regulating behavior are made on a philosophical basis about the just nature of government.

As such, by trying to create an analogy between the two, you're saying that moral imperatives for existence are equivalent to philosophical beliefs about society. Therefore, the analogy fails again for comparing like cause with like cause.

Third and finally, because the outcome of murder (or killing) is the death of an individual. The outcome of government intrusion is typically loss of liberty, albeit often "marginal" or "incremental".

As such, by trying to create an analogy between the two, you're saying the taking of life and the taking of liberty are equivalent. Therefore, the analogy fails a final time for comparing like outcome to like outcome.


Your analogy, in summation, compares neither like cause, like action, or like outcome with same. You need to use at least one in order for your analogy to be considered "valid", in my opinion.

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

I guess you understanding that advocating government regulation of access to one substance that is societally harmful while denigrating government regulation of access to another substance that is equally, if not more, societally harmful is
short-sighted and illogical.

I thought it was obvious, but then again, seeing your own hypocrisy is always difficult for the self-righteous.



RD, if one were to take that statement out of context, not realizing the conversation revolved around social engineering by the government of cigarettes vs. cigars (with the correlation of crack vs. powder cocaine) vs. alcohol, that analogy would be worth discussing; as it stands, nah, it doesn't fit.

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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

You need to work on your comprehension skills then. The only comments that I've made regarding crack is that the punishment for it's use is out of balance when compared to powder cocaine. I never indicated that there shouldn't be regulation on it, or that it wasn't an impact on society.

Lol! You'd make a good lawyer, yourself, DFK. That's some nice distinction-drawing.

However, like I said, you're confusing imperfect with false, as evidenced by the fact you keep using phrases like "the same as" and "equivalent to". An analogy isn't based on equivalence, it's based on similarity in some relevant respect. In this case, the relevant similarity is that both the murder/self-defense and Blue Laws/cigarette tax dichotomies can appear inconsistent if rephrased in general terms but can alternately bee seen as quite consistent when you look closer at the underlying rationales for each position.

If I even had you in mind regarding crack vs. powder you'd have a leg to stand on. I guess since you brought up your righteous stand against different treatment regarding crack and powder cocaine, we could discuss your rationale for different treatment regarding cigarettes vs. cigars, but that might cause you to sprain something trying to contort your logic to make your thought process seem rational.
Since you made the case of cigarettes vs. cigars and had previously been outspoken about social engineering regarding alcohol and seeing as I have presented all of this as evidence of your blatant hypocrisy and inept reasoning, it should be obvious to you that your ability to see past your mental myopia is glaringly obvious to everyone else.

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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

So you're busting my balls about being inconsistent in my position on cigs/cigars vs crack/powder, but didn't actually have my comments in mind when you brought up that parallel? Seriously dude. I'm not the one with a logic/rationality problem here.

The only thing obvious here is your complete lack of ability to understand subtlety and nuance of a position.

Nope, didn't have you specifically in mind until you brought up your wholly inconsistent position.

There is no need for subtlety or nuance in this. Keep your desires to have the government regulate what I do the **** out of my life.
The whole "this creates a societal burden so we must involve ourselves" is a result of the short-sighted desire to have the government bosom to snuggle you when the big bad world scares you. The "societal burden" rationality springs from the minds of those who think as you do. It is the result of misbegotten desires to show empathy to "the poor unfortunates" shackled to the need to prove to yourself and the rest of your kind that you know what's best for others and can impose it upon them.

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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

And moral ones.

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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

RD, Law School teaches you that:

Appeal to traditionis a valid arguments, facts are not as important as imagery and presentation, lawyers are better than other people, manipulating law is a societal and moral positive, and other assorted garbage.

Lawyers should be prohibited from holding legsilative or exexcutive offices - in fact in many states they were by the constitution of that state - which is usually removed in the first revisions to those documents done by...oh look...lawyers.

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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

You are correct. I did mean pre-20th Century. I don't have a romanticized view. Things were tough. I personally like life when it's a challenge, though. I don't mind having to live a tougher life in exchange for more freedom, though. I believe people are responsible as a whole. More importantly, I trust many individuals to be more responsible as a whole than one government entity to be responsible for all of us. We'll have to agree to disagree.


You are entitled to your opinion. Stop trying to force it on everyone else through taxes and such. If you like cigars, smoke cigars. Some people enjoy cigarettes as much as others like cigars or pipes. I personally hate all tobacco. Want me to ban it all?

Ignoring how anyone could find any tobacco product worth "savoring", the lesser "health burdern" is bunk according to the National Cancer Institute, which says cigars are just as dangerous as cigarettes to the smoker (even taking into account the differences in how they are smoked), and more so to those that breath the second hand smoke.

Again, according to the NCI, the biggest determination of health risk is in frequency... so, it would make sense to tax them both at the same rate, despite any elitist claims of function, since that use less pose less risk as well as pay less taxes.