HaroldWilson
1yr ago
Heart disease, diabetes, urban violence?
Well guns are part of the urban violence, for one. In terms of other issues, maybe there are more important things (but consider what policy response you would propose for obesity etc. - are there any ones which would both have a shred of support and make a big difference)? However guns are certainly a sufficiently important problem to be worthy of some national debate. The West ought to talk about traffic deaths and heart disease more, but in America ideally at the expense of culture war fluff like trans issues rather than something genuinely important like guns.
And in fact, I support greater enforcement against people who carry unlicensed guns. Putting people who have illegal guns behind bars would greatly reduce gun violence,
True, but so would many conventional gun control measures like ERPOs, and indeed just reducing the overall ownership of guns. American should be doing all of these.
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
This is not actually wrong/rude, especially coming from an American, but still unusual and the norm would be to answer it without answering the question and just giving another general greeting like 'morning' or whatever, or most commonly as someone else your own 'alright'?
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
Context and intonation always distinguish between the two, and I have never found myself wondering what was meant by the phrase in any particular situation.
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
the statue necessarily glorifies the war itself
While a statue of Lee might not be glorifying him or the war, this particular one does seem like it is.
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
I think this is revealing. Is the problem guns or is it murders? Because these mass shootings are a very small percent of overall murders.
Well it's both. Guns contribute to the murder problem (not just mass shootings but generally), but also to suicide, overall levels of violence etc.
they just want to stop gun nuts (the outgroup) from having guns.
Lazy and uncharitable. Even if you reject them, there are reasonable, and to my mind persuasive, genuine public safety rationale behind restricting gun ownership, so why not talk about those instead of navel-gazing about how much your own outgroup are out to get theirs'.
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
North ignoring all of their agreements
This is just credulously swallowing Southern propaganda whole, on several counts. Apart from the trivial point of 'ignoring their agreements about what' (i.e. slavery), there are several things to say here. Firstly, as Potter the 'compromise' of 1850 was never really so - it was in fact an armistice, with both sides ready to press an advantage if they felt they had it. Nothing wrong with this, it's just politics, but the point is both sides acted fairly similarly. If we want to talk about ignoring agreements, what about Dred Scott, which Southerners were only too happy to celebrate, or the attempts to advance the Lecompton constitution, the latter of which made a mockery of democracy and any pretence at popular sovereignty.
The fact is that the highest priority of most of the South - or the planter elite that dominated politics at any rate - was the continuation of slavery, and 'constitutional' government important mostly insofar as it protected that institution.
There are so many relevant quotes here, but perhaps John W. Overall summed up the Southern mindset best.
"The people of the South," says a contemporary, "are not fighting for slavery, but for independence."
Let us look into this matter. It is an easy task, we think, to show up this new fangled heresy---a heresy calculated to do us no good, for it cannot deceive foreign statesmen nor peoples, nor mislead any one here nor in Yankeeland.
Our doctrine is this: WE ARE FIGHTING FOR INDEPENDENCE THAT OUR GREAT AND NECESSARY DOMESTIC INSTITUTION OF SLAVERY SHALL BE PRESERVED, and for the preservation of other institutions of which slavery is the ground work.
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
I think you should read the declarations of secession.
Mississippi's makes it as clear as possible that all other issues were sideshows in comparison to the conflict over slavery.
Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world.
Hard to get more explicit than that.
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
Sure but that only gets us as far as the question 'whence culture'? There are obviously right-valence answers to this question which are the most prominent, but there are also progressive answers a la Ogbu, that African-American culture, if it has 'problems', is the product of their 'caste-like minority' status.
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
This is how news works. Obviously if this was actually a one-off freak occurrence then I agree it would be relatively unimportant, but it stands as a particularly stark example of a broader problem which actually is important - which is to say America's gun problem. You could make this criticism of almost any famous event. 9/11 has already been mentioned, but for a different example take the murder of Samuel Paty. That was only one man killed (plus the perpetrator), but it even became a famous event outside of France as it gained a symbolic relevance surrounding the general issues of Islamic extremism and integration.
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
controlled opposition/this is why we need "red flag" laws?
How is it controlled opposition to talk about policy responses which might actually improve things?
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
So I don’t think the anti-gun people are gonna win.
Is the implication here that everyone being armed would somehow improve the situation linked to in the tweet?
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
prepare for the gun control debate to be revved up full force tomorrow
As it should be? Deeply tragic event downstream of stupid policy choices should definitely result in discussion of those policy choices.
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
That's not actually what he said. He said it was glorifying the war fought in an effort to go on owning people, which it is surely is.
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
Scottish secession
British 'neoliberals', however you want to define them, mostly don't like Scottish independence. Blair, Cameron etc., but broadly there is no decisive left-right political valence to it. Unionists run the gamut of the British and Scottish political spectrum, from Andrew Neil to Brown to George Galloway.
One could point to slavery as the key point of contention, but that rule isn't exactly applied consistently:
The point isn't just the South wasn't entitled self-determination because of slavery - it's that there was nothing to secession except slavery. There was no other real grievance or basis for 'national feeling' than that institution.
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
editing for culture war.
Any particular examples?
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
"You’ve put yourself in a dangerous situation because you’ve done a foolish thing by flirting with that guy wearing that dress"
Because in the quoted example the woman hasn't done anything wrong, whereas in the Moran example it's implying that someone is exploiting a woman's drunkeness/mental illness to get them to do something they would not if they were thinking straight.
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
Maybe global popular reach but among those who should be his actual peers - specialist scholars - he is considered a bit of a lightweight no?
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
Hotels would presumably have to hire significantly more staff to handle this
This is really more than an aside. More work for their members seems like a pretty slam dunk argument for a union supporting a ballot initiative. See in a different vein;
Hotel industry spokespeople have said they believe the ballot measure is a negotiating tactic by the union, which is currently on a rolling strike against unionized hotels in Los Angeles.
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
I mean this comment rather proves his point. The vast majority of historians, sociologists, political scientists, musicians, writers, artists etc. etc. are all at least on the centre-left, but that's balanced out because the right demonstrates its sparkling creativity with... memes.
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
were so open-bordery
Maybe because they genuinely believe it is the best thing for Britain?
Aristocratic disdain for the native proles? Desire for cheaper servants? Regular cosmopolitan posturing?
This is so fucking boring, and at least an uncharitable as 'accusations of hating brown people' towards anti-migration politicians.
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
Consider the two qualifiers though. That takes to almost to 2100; we probably don't actually need to plan that far in advance, and in addition raising the cap would bring in more revenue.
It's a lot of money obviously and shouldn't be taken lightly, but Americans are relatively under-taxed compared to the rest of the developed world, and all in all with the mentioned qualifiers taken into account this isn't a massive crisis.
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
On reflection my comment was poorly written, but both Aymette and Buzzard cover collective rights no?
From Buzzard (Ringo);
That object could not have been to protect or redress by individual force, such rights as are merely private and individual, as has been already, it is believed, sufficiently shown: consequently, the object must have been to provide an additional security for the public liberty and the free institutions of the State, as no other important object is perceived, which the reservation of such right could have been designed to effect. Besides which, the language used appears to indicate, distinctly, that this, and this alone, was the object for which the article under consideration was adopted. And it is equally apparent, that a well regulated militia was considered by the people as the best security a free state could have, or at least, the best within their power to provide.
The question of arms useful for war is closely connected to this because if the purpose of the 2nd Amendment (or state equivalents) was collective then it would provide no protection for arms both not 'borne' in fact and not able to be borne under any circumstances.
Lysander Spooner
Indeed so, my point here is not to suggest that there is no equal tradition of, and evidence for, an individual right interpretation, merely to contest the point in the comment I replied to that more restrictive interpretations being deployed now are simply innovations that not even their proponents believe are consistent with the Constitution. While we are here though, see the reverse case from Benjamin Oliver, Rights of an American Citizen (1832);
The provision of the constitution, declaring the right of the people to keep and bear arms, &c., was probably intended to apply to the right of the people to bear arms for such purposes only, and not to prevent congress or the legislatures of the different states from enacting laws to prevent the citizens from always going armed. A different construction however has been given to it.
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
This isn't liberal media, this is simply the fact of voting patterns in the Senate.
my lying eyes?
Jesus this cliché should be banned. Code for 'I don't have to substantiate my views with any evdience'. As a wise man once said, if you cannot measure it, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind. Why should I accept your unevidenced reckonings over the relevant facts?
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
Raise the payroll cap, raise the payroll taxes, widen the tax base, privatize the system, none of it will matter.
Yes it will. Read the trustees report and stop being so hysterical.
Perhaps I'm biased being progressive myself, I think 'progressive influence' is really only obvious in culture-war adjacent topics; if you pick up a recent or semi-recent academic publication on history, even something charged like, say, civil rights/race/black history, the bias would be considerably less than it seems you imagine. If you avoid pop history/economics/whatever you'll be fine; I don't think they are broadly that partisan either, most of the time, but they're often bad anyway, and trendy culture war topics, you'd be fine. Who knows though, maybe I'm just so deep in progressive ideology I can't notice when it's there.
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