Celestial-body-NOS
🟦 All human beings are equal, **even when they aren't.**
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User ID: 290
Society has to pick and choose whose safety to prioritize in this instance
Prioritise the safety of who whoever is in more danger.
it should come down hard on the side that's doing what its supposed to do.
And where will you stand when the leopards eat your face? When someone bigger and stronger than you decides that something about your life, that contravenes no legal code in the jurisdiction, is 'not doing what you are supposed to do', and that he is entitled to suppress it by force?
Consider Thomas More:
And, when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you – where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country’s planted thick with laws from coast to coast – Man’s laws, not God’s – and, if you cut them down – and you’re just the man to do it – do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake.
A transwoman, in existing publicly while appearing as the gender opposite that associated with her genitals at birth, has broken no law of Man (at least in North America or Western Europe); do not cut down Man's laws against assault, lest you call up that which you cannot put down.
Why are they usually in those?
Probably because they cover New York City, which is the primary financial centre for the United States. ('Wall Street', home of the New York Stock Exchange, is often used as a metonym for U. S. investment activity.)
You're welcome. Again, We Apologise For The InconvenienceÂą; I usually connect to the Internet using a desktop browser with a mouse-and-keyboard interface, in which I can open a new tab by pressing the scroll wheel, and forgot that some people are using systems in which opening a link is less convenient.
(That was what the phrase 'check your privilege' started out as meaning [e. g. a dog forgetting that a gecko is less able to withstand cold] before it got twisted into "I am a member of the oppressed class, you are a member of the oppressor class, therefore ipso fatso I am right and you are wrong.")
I will try to explain things in footnotes in the future, so that you and anyone on a smartphone, non-tabbed browser, or otherwise unable to open links conveniently can still be part of today's lucky 10,000².
ÂąSpoiler for a 1980's sci-fi novel:
²From an xkcd comic making the point that if 'everyone' knows something, 10,000 people (in the U. S.) are first hearing about it today; therefore, one should not judge people for not knowing something.
...there are a million 'bad decisions' a guy can make in a bar that will 100% get him beat up....
...society ... mostly treats barfights over dumb shit as plus-or-minus [consensual]....
Yes, I am aware that there are many ways in which our society fall short of perfection.
If Adam and Bob get into a bar fight, with Adam being the first to escalate to physical attack, then Adam not being charged with assault does not mean that Bob was not wronged, any more than a lack of response to Charles stealing David's bicycle means that the bicycle in question was Charles' property all along.
(Although I could see the case for dismissing charges against Adam if Bob had referred to Adam's ethnic group as 'cockroaches', or called Adam's disabled relative a 'useless eater' or a 'life unworthy of living', or accused Adam of some grave act of moral turpitude such as sexual assault against an infant; but anything short of that....)
if the aggressor is too hard to ignore
...which includes any instance in which the aggressor is substantially stronger, or arranges to have a half-dozen friends when the victim is alone. (If it is two people of approximately equal strength inflicting approximately equal damage on each other, one could make the case for limiting the societal response to a sternly-worded "Don't. Do. It. Again.".)
maybe you meant to say 'protecting women from extralegal violence?'
No, when I said 'people' I meant 'human beings.' The principleÂą that Alex should not be obligated to follow the demands of Bob the Random Nobody merely because Bob happens to be stronger than Alex does not depend on Alex's gender.
ÂąA principle originally dating back to at least the Bronze Age, even if inconsistently applied.
To bring about the rule of righteousness in the land, so that the strong shall not harm the weak."
-- Code of Hammurabi.
I mean, the solution for this poor unfortunate is to work through whatever issues drive interest in transgenderism rather than transitioning. Make your bed and now lie it, I suppose- using the men’s locker room is a risk for some biologically male transgenders, but society oughtn’t to be in the business of protecting individuals from the consequences of their own bad decisions at the expense of people who haven’t made such bad decisions.
This proves too muchÂą; your argument could be adapted to defend either cancel culture or Jim Crow laws!
I mean, the solution for this poor unfortunate is to work through whatever issues drive interest in
transgenderism[wrongthink] rather thantransitioning[expressing their opinions]. Make your bed and now lie [in] it, I suppose-using the men’s locker room[disagreeing with grievance studies departments] is a risk for somebiologically male transgenders[white males], but society oughtn’t to be in the business of protecting individuals from the consequences of their own bad decisions at the expense of people who haven’t made such bad decisions.
or
I mean, the solution for this poor unfortunate is to work through whatever issues drive interest in
transgenderism[race-mixing] rather thantransitioning[integrating]. Make your bed and now lie [in] it, I suppose-using the men’s locker room[using the whites' water fountain] is a risk for somebiologically male transgenders[[racial epithet redacted]s], but society oughtn’t to be in the business of protecting individuals from the consequences of their own bad decisions at the expense of people who haven’t made such bad decisions.
Your argument also begs the question² of whether transitioning is a bad decision; furthermore, even if it were, if the 'consequences of a bad decision' include extralegal violence, protecting people from it is one of the most fundamental functions of society, and protects you from somebody else deciding that some aspect of your life-style is a 'bad decision' that they are entitled to assault people over. (You still Kant dismiss univeralisability.)
ÂąProving too much: an argument which, if valid, would also prove something known to be false; elaborated here.
²In its older sense of 'a proof of P that assumes P'.
I'm a bit surprised that foreign oligarchs and billionaires haven't set up a scheme to flood those districts with ex-pats who are available for jury duty.
That would require changing federal law, as currently, non-citizens are ineligible.
Not necessary to it, although I did notice, and it adds another level to it....
I dislike the continual minimizing/maximizing of windows and the break in flow of thought
I forgot that not everyone here is using a desktop browser. Would footnotesÂą be a better alternative?
linking to a website instead of simply explaining in words what it is you yourself have intended in your post.
OK, I will try to explain it in words. "wow. very revenge plot. which caskete choose? argument much clever." is a description of the plot of The Merchant of Venice in the dialect associated with the 'doge' meme, for which Elon Musk has a particular fondness.
The Merchant of Venice is a play by William Shakespeare, containing the line "Thou calledst me dog before thou hadst a cause. But since I am a dog, beware my fangs.", meaning that Shylock was treated as villainous before he had done anything questionable, and therefore was not incentivised to be forgiving. (Act III, scene 3.) I was alluding to that line in the first part of my comment, in that Mr Musk was also treated as deplorable by the chattering classes prior to having thrown in his lot with the Trump campaign²; the spelling of 'doge' and 'fange' was an allusion to the same meme.
ÂąLike these.
²A comparison can also be made to the Dazexiang Uprising in late-3rd-century China, in which two officials realised three things:
-
The then-ruling dynasty imposed the death penalty for being late.
-
The then-ruling dynasty imposed the death penalty for rebellion.
-
The roads being impassable due to rain, they had no chance of arriving on time.
... because the other side called him a doge before they had a cause; if he is a doge, beware his fanges. (wow. very revenge plot. which caskete choose? argument much clever.)
I wonder how many of them ever un-ironically used that line about those accustomed to privilege perceiving equality as oppression....
Rotherham
- 80% is not, by any stretch of the definition, a 'minority'.
- Per the article you quoted, the gangs preyed on many children of South Asian extraction.
- Many of the people who ignored the problem were white; they did not take measures against it because (3a.): the victims were largely working-class, (3b.): they didn't want it to be seen that there had been a problem (a common failure mode, even when everyone involved is the same ethnicity), and (3c.): they feared that a mostly-white police force arresting mostly-South-Asian criminals would spark a backlash.
The last, I believe, comes from an ideology which seems to approach the notion that the relevant subject of moral enquiry is racially-defined subsets of humanity, that individual human beings are rightfully thought of as cells within the racial super-organism, and that the 'white' super-organism has wronged the other super-organisms and is obligated to atone for its sins; the last point being the largest difference between them and the ideology which killed 6,000,000 people who had done nothing to provoke so much as a sharp glance, thus leading to the necessity of a Jewish State.
The antidote to this ideology is not to say "Ackchyually, the white super-organism has never done anything wrong and is entitled to its demands.", but to reject the entire framing of races being more fundamental than individual human beings. This brings us closer to a world in which the principle of 'states should not be defined by ethnicity' can be applied without exception, and the State of Israel can extend citizenship without regard to ethnicity. Giving more ethnic groups the entitlement to stay the majority in "their" countries moves us further away from that world.
the ethnic cleansing that befalls Christians in so many Muslim-dominated countries
The perpetrators and victims in this case are usually either the same ethnic group, or groups more closely related to each other than to Northwest Europeans.
The persecutions are often motivated on religious grounds; they ask not so much 'is Fulan al-Fulani white or brown' as 'is he a Christian or a Muslim', and if the latter, 'what kind of Muslim'; they often show no less vitriol towards the 'wrong kind' of Muslims than towards Christians.
the unofficial anti-white quotas that are now present at every level in the UK and hold back many talented white men because they have the wrong skin colour
... caused by the same 'races-over-individuals' ideology mentioned above.
From now on, anyone who wants my support for anything has to earn it. You want my support for a feminist initiative? Great, let’s talk about what you can do to solve the problems I think men have. You want my support for an ethnostate for Jews? Fair, let’s talk about what you’re going to do for the native British. And I’m far from alone in this.
Which is at the root of many of the issues plaguing us today; people asking "What can I get out of this?" rather than "What is the right thing to do?".
However, we can talk about 'what you’re going to do for the native British'. (I'm not sure what you mean by 'native British'; sensu strictissimu, it would only include Welsh, Scottish, and Ulster Irish people; sensu latissimu, it would include anyone born in the United Kingdom to a British citizen or permanent resident. I will assume we are setting the cut-off in 1491, thus including the aforementioned Celtic peoples, plus the Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian, and Norman peoples arriving between the 5th and 12th centuries.)
If Omega-the-super-intelligent-computer-with-a-100.00%-track-record-of-being-right were to predict that, if ethnically British people become a minority in Britain, they will be expelled by the whatever ethnic group becomes the majority, regularly driven from whatever countries they have lived in for 2,000 years, and ultimately targetted for industrialised mass murder, then I would concede that you are justified in wanting to maintain your current majority status. (Note that ethnic British in Britain and Jews in Israel both constitute approximately three-quarters of the population.)
Furthermore, if Omega-tsicwa100ptrobr were to predict that there will be a backslash against racism, ethnonationalism, and nativism in the United States, that, from ~2040 onward, the United States will not privilege any ethnic group over any other, and will admit anyone who might plausibly be in danger of ethnic/religious violence in their current country of residence, disirregardless of any of the usual reasons for limiting immigration, and that opposition to these policies will not rise above the lizardman constant at any time in the next 10,000 years, then I would be more sympathetic to a secular, ethnically-neutral, union of Israel and Palestine, admitting any of the descendants of the Arabs who fled in 1948 on the condition that they respect the right of their Jewish neighbours to live peaceably as equals.
Otherwise every man who ever bought his child an ice cream instead of buying mosquito nets is racist.
No, there is a difference between favouring one's immediate relatives and favouring one's own ethnic group. If two people can trace each generation of their lineage back to a common ancestor, and that ancestor is recent enough that, as I linked to previously, the ninth-century Catholic Church would have considered a marriage between them to be incestuous, then one of them favouring the other over a random stranger becomes more justifiable in your example, and, in cases such as favouring someone for employment, is 'nepotism' rather than 'racism'.
True; we should have re-negotiated, changing '10-15 years' to 'until the signatories unanimously agree to lift the restrictions, which won't happen as long as you keep supporting Palestinian claims on Tel Aviv.'
My ruling on that particular case would have been something along the lines of "Before the Civil Rights Act, Defendant explicitly excluded black people from the higher-paid jobs. Therefore, the Court can conclude that Defendant harbours animus toward black people. Defendant did not require white people to pass any kind of test before hiring them. Therefore, by revealed preference, Defendant had no objection to a low-scoring white person holding higher paid jobs. Therefore, Defendant's imposition of the testing requirement, on the same day that the Civil Rights Act took effect and Defendant could no longer exclude people on the explicit grounds of skin colour, indicates that,
- Defendant is attempting to keep black people sub-ordinate to white people (the exact thing Congress just outlawed), and
- Defendant apparently thinks that they can pee on Uncle Sam's leg and tell him it's raining."
Do you genuinely believe that businesses do not have a preference for intelligent employees over non-intelligent employees?
No, I was attempting to present the strongest possible case for disparate-impact laws. Thus, in the situation I described, the standard wasn't 'must be more mentally capable than McNamara's 100,000' so much as 'must have 'professional-looking' (i. e. white) hairstyle' or 'must be able to lift 50 pounds' for a desk job that won't involve lifting anything heavier than a full cup of coffee.
I can only think of two reasons why someone might come to that conclusion, neither of which I would consider even close to reasonable.
The first is if one values 'costs and benefits to someone of the same ethnicity as me' more highly than 'costs and benefits to someone of a different ethnic group'. This covers pretty much all of what 'racism' meant before the 'prejudice-plus-power' gerrymandering. It tends to end badly.
The second is if one has an understanding of history and current events that, to put it charitably, is very different from what I understand to be the case. The only examples I know of in which white people qua white people were, or even may have been, persecuted are:
- Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia, formerly Southern Rhodesia)
- South Africa (questionable to what extent it is racially motivated, but I will concede the point for the sake of argument)
- Haiti, following the overthrow of the slavers.
All of these occurred in countries which had, until immediately before-hand, been governed under a system in which black people were oppressed, the people doing the oppression were white, they attempted to justify the oppression using a world-view in which one's ethnicity is more relevant than one's character as an individual, and there were few if any white people questioning the system and advocating for racial equality. This was not conducive to making the distinction between 'this white person who personally wronged me' and 'this person who didn't technically do anything to me, but shares skin colour with the people who did.'
Anti-Semitic persecutions, however, were generally not preceded by any action by Jewish people other than 'existing while not being exactly like us', and were perpetrated under circumstances which had very little else in common.
I am willing to listen if you can offer any examples of white people who were minding their own business, not harming anyone, and were persecuted for being white; or if you can describe a 'way of drawing the cost-benefit differently' that does not fall into either of these two categories.
At this time, I would like to steelman disparate-impact legislation.
Some people decide that they don't want to hire (or sell to, or admit to their schools) black people (or women or Chinese people or Irish people...), but are forbidden by law from having such a policy. They then impose a standard that many white people can meet, few black people can meet, and that they most likely wouldn't give a rat's arse about if it were un-correlated with race, and in some cases didn't give a rat's arse about when they were allowed to discriminate openly. (Sometimes they go further, and enforce a zero-tolerance standard on black people while ignoring violations by white people.) The government than comes in and says "That sounds like a whites-only sign with extra steps; I thought we had made it perfectly clear that you are not allowed to do that! What part of 'do not discriminate on the basis of race' did you not understand?"
Let’s suppose that Jews do indeed have the greatest past history of genocide, and that this makes them the most liable to be genocided again, and that as a consequence they ought to be first in line for a homeland. I can follow this line of thinking. What I fail to see is why any white person would be persuaded to abstain from forming their own homeland.
Because maintaining an ethnostate involves discriminating on the basis of ethnicity, which has major costs, almost always greater than the benefits (if one is primarily concerned with the well-being of individual humans.) In the case of Israel, past events create a sufficient threat that the cost-benefit calculation passes the zero-line (the MS St. Louis passengers et al. being the factor pushing it over the top); white people do not face any threat great enough to outweigh the reasons for avoiding ethnostates in general.
Ideally, there wouldn't be any countries deciding citizenship based on ethnicity; however, given both past events and current attitudes towards ethnicity and immigration, the N deliberate N maintenance N of N a N Jewish N majority N in N at N least N one N state N is, N at N least N at N this N time, N an N un-fortunate N necessity N for N the N well-being N of N individual N Jewish N people, N in N much N the N same N way N as N poking N someone N with N a N pointy N bit N of N metal N is, N given N our N current N medical N technology, N an N unfortunate N necessity N for N telling N the N immune N system N 'watch N out N for N this N specific N microbe'.
(The 'N's stand for "Not to be taken out of context".)
political affiliation is not a protected class
A good response to an argument is one that addresses an idea; a bad argument is one that silences it. If you try to address an idea, your success depends on how good the idea is; if you try to silence it, your success depends on how powerful you are and how many pitchforks and torches you can provide on short notice.
The principle “usually, it is not justifiable to take coercive measures to keep certain ethnicities in the majority” has a big exclusion for “unless it prevents genocide”.
The exception is more 'unless a group has been repeatedly been persecuted by many other groups, to a degree greatly above background, and given no refuge when they tried to escape a mad-man bent on their extermination.'
Just a cursory look through the annals of history shows that every group which lacks dominance over a territory risks genocide, and that these happen at mostly unpredictable times. Therefore, it is justifiable to take coercive measures to keep an ethnic group in the majority of some territory (or subsection thereof) to prevent its genocide, as this is the best way to protect against genocide.
But this is not an argument for why other groups should not get a homeland. Shouldn’t our interest be in reducing genocides down to 0%?
Such a plan would be very destructive to human freedom and well-being; furthermore, even if it had been accomplished fifty years ago and every ethnic group had their own country, the division between ethnicities is not a constant throughout history.
Therefore, to prevent genocides from occurring, the best method is to
- establish a principle that members of ethnic minorities ought to be treated as equals, and that the relevant subject of moral/ethical concern is not 'a group of people defined by distantÂą blood-relation' but 'an individual human being', and
- establish that if an individual is at risk of being murdered by the country they live in because their neighbours have decided that their ethnic group are undeserving of life, other countries ought to let them in.
Once this has been accomplished, and the ideas that 'an individual is less worthy of concern because they are of a different ethnicity' or 'we have the right to send an individual back to a country where they will be murdered rather than risk them causing some inconvenience² to us' are taken no more seriously anywhere among the Nations than the idea that '2.00 + 2.00 = 5.00', then we can discuss whether the State of Israel is justified in limiting the number of Arab citizens to less than the number of Jewish citizens.
Âą'Distant' meaning 'far enough apart that even the Medieval Church wouldn't object to them marrying.'
²Such as 'they're poor enough that they might cost us money in social support', 'letting in 10,000 of them might contain one or two people who might wish us harm³', or 'we can't distinguish which ones are in actual danger, so avoiding type II errors (deporting someone who will then be murdered) will cause type I errors (some people might move here for economic opportunity, even if we have told them not to!).
ÂłDuring the interbellum period, some Unitedstatesian opinionists opposed the admission of Jewish refugees on the grounds that Germany might hide saboteurs among them.
The biggest flaw in the JCPOA was that the restrictions on uranium enrichment, intended to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, expired at T+10-15 years, thus potentially allowing Iran to obtain a nuclear arsenal 'later' rather than 'never'.
I don’t think it follows that other groups should be prevented from such a state.
That follows from the principle of "Ethnonationalism Considered Harmful" leading to the notion that, usually, it is not justifiable to take coercive measures to keep certain ethnicities in the majority.
The list of genocides in history is long and the subjects are totally random.
Not totally random. Some groups have been dis-proportionally targeted; this pattern becomes more visible with a data-set that includes sub-genocidal persecution.
It’s reasonable, then, for every group to desire a clear majority territory in order to decrease their risk of being genocided.
No, because not every group has the same risk.
It’s unreasonable to say, “because this group has already been subject to genocide, they should have an eternal homeland”
That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that "Because this group has been subjected repeatedly to genocidal and lesser persecutions, and were turned away and sent to their deaths when they tried to flee the most recent attempt, they should have a homeland as long as there is widespread animus against them and government control over immigration."
If the passengers on the MS St. Louis, and all the other Jewish people fleeing the Nazis, had been allowed into America, there would have been a lot less impetus for the formation of a Jewish State.
If all other countries had open borders, showed no sign of any desire to change this, and that situation continued for several decades, it would be reasonable to urge Israel to follow suit.
(Often cast is the accusation of wanting 'open borders for every country except Israel'. I think a better description, at least of those whose political opinions reside on Level 1, would be open borders for every country, with Israel bringing up the tail end of the process. [Those on Level 3, on the other hand, {if their social circle consists of the kind of people in the Respectable Media} will oppose immigration enforcement in the U. S. because their friends do, support Israeli policies because their friends do, and give no more regard to resolving any apparent contradiction in their ideas than they would give to ensuring that their ideas are expressed in sentences ending in words with an odd number of letters. {The same applies to people whose social circle consists of college radicals yelling "From the river to the sea" without any knowledge of the bodies of water to which that slogan refers.}])
do you really think there’s going to be another Holocaust? ... Jews will be safe in the west for the foreseeable future ....
In 1900, would anyone have thought the Shoah would have been started by Germany?
If you brought someone forward from that era, told them that there would be a persecution and mass murder of Jews on an un-precedented scale, and asked them to guess what country it would come from, I suspect most people' first guess would be Russia, possibly followed by France.
how oppressed they’ve been
It's not 'how oppressed they've been', per se, so much as 'how likely are they to be oppressed in the future'.
The former is largely relevant as evidence of the latter.
I am happy to support the Jewish ethnic homeland exactly to the extent that they support mine
This would be reasonable if there were a danger, supported by historical precedent, of your ethnic group, if a minority in every country, being declared unwelcome in your country of residence, denied admission to other countries, and then targeted for mass murder. (I don't know what ethnicity you are, so I cannot say for certain that that is not the case. If it is, than your group would also be justified in wanting its own country in which it is the majority. 'White people', on the other hand, do not fit this criterion; if that were to change, then you would have an argument for wanting to live in a white-majority country.)
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And then the poltergeist shows up and plates start flying out of the cabinet!
Fights start when someone chooses to attack someone who has not attacked them. Society has an interest in getting them to make better choices.
And it is every bit as insensitive as asking a woman who has survived a sexual assault 'why she was dressed that way'.
Which, if taken as licence for Bob to assault Alex, allows Bob to impose demands on Alex by becoming personally irate if his demands are not followed.
Which is why 'masculine environments' are increasingly frowned upon by many of the institutions of society.
Yes. We have a system for establishing a policy of "Do not do $THING or There Will Be Consequences." The Legislative Branch passes a law against $THING; the Executive Branch takes necessary action if someone does $THING anyway, and the Judicial Branch makes sure that $THING isn't something one has a right to do (such as 'voting while black' or 'printing a column questioning Professor What's-Xir-Face of the Department of Oppressed People Studies's opinion on the best way to oppose racism').
If the government votes that $THING should remain legal, or the courts find that $THING is a civil right, it is not generally appropriate to turn around attempt to impose Consequences for $THING on one's own initiative, especially if $THING, to quote Jefferson, "neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg", because that way lies madness.
People have spent thousands of years moving us up the entropy-slope, from a world in which the strong can do whatever they feel like and expect the weak to cater to their whims, towards a world where The Rules Are The Same For Everyone; they do not appreciate attempts to shove us back down into the abyss.
--Jon Stewart
Which is why we have laws against it. Seldom do people make laws against things that nobody does anyway.
In which case one approaches the problem by degrees -- prosecute the man who becomes violent over a tiny slight before the man responding to a more serious insult; prosecute the man who attacks someone smaller than himself before the man who picks on someone his own size, &c.
As the more egregious incidents decrease in frequency, one can establish stronger standards, and move the Overton Window in the direction of "use your words, not your fists."
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