naraburns
nihil supernum
No bio...
User ID: 100
naraburns
nihil supernum
1mo ago
What kind of attempts do you have in mind?
Red flag laws and assault weapons bans, specifically as they are likely to be unevenly applied against more conservative groups, would be annoying at best. A continuation of Biden's "what border?" policies would be annoying at best. Following her running mate's record on transing the kids or preventing religious universities from promulgating their own views would be annoying at best. Under a Harris administration, we could expect the Department of Education to do everything in its power to undermine SFA v. Harvard, which would be annoying at best.
These are all things that aim toward shutting down the ability of the "deplorables" to defend themselves from government overreach, to maintain democratic influence in their own nation, to protect their children from politically popular social contagions, to participate in society on the basis of merit, and so forth.
The limiting factor on the Democrats is not the Supreme Court.
I'm not so sure about this. I agree that she probably will not enjoy the assistance of a particularly unified Congress, but that remains to actually be seen. Court Packing remains unlikely, but it is certainly more likely under Harris than under any alternative administration.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1mo ago
"It" was a blog that a FtM (that's chick-to-dude) transitioner was keeping about their ... transition. It was well written, deeply personal, and absolutely without trans ideology talking points or vibes. It was a wonderful example of an honest seeming person without any sort of ideology-induced hangups. It was incredibly and (unfortunately) uniquely informative.
Many years ago I read something fitting this description, but the entry that I read was explicitly discussing testosterone-fueled sex drive rather than anger, and the view being expressed was exactly as you've put it here. I'm pretty sure it was a blogspot thing, but whether or not it was the same author you were reading, I'm afraid I'm no help in pinning down the source.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1mo ago
If it couldn't be done from the start (which was your point), then why would you ever think it could be now?
I did say maybe ever, and I was being perhaps a touch hyperbolic. This is... complicated... but I think that the aspiration toward enumerated powers is often almost as important as actually achieving it. I do think there have been efforts in that direction, many times throughout our nation's history. I think they have in general been for the best. I also think that opposition to that principle has also been present from the start, and that said opposition has generally operated for the worse.
It's a process, in other words. Attempts to adhere to principle allow that process to continue. Circumventing that process by abandoning principle entirely, not so much. There are many, many things in the world that I suspect genuinely work in this way, that is, aspirationally. But I've not found a really good way of communicating that even in a book-length work, much less a forum post. Sorry.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1mo ago
I think the biggest concern is that Harris/Walz really don’t seem like a pair who understand that their ideological enemies are allowed to survive and flourish and even win occasionally, and think they need to change the rules if that’s going on.
This seems right to me. Something that has long niggled me about Trump is that he often talks in the same way--but he doesn't seem to actually mean it. Like, "lock her up" was his big 2016 thing, and immediately upon victory he was like, "nah, we don't say that anymore." Clinton was not prosecuted, that was the end. Like for Trump, it was all just trash talk over a game. Whereas, Harris seems to be genuinely interested in putting a permanent end to the possibility of flourishing deplorables. I'm skeptical of her ability to do that even if she wins, but living through even her failed attempts promises to be annoying at best.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1mo ago
But it isn't the same as not understanding.
People who make themselves deliberately stupid, are still stupid. People who consistently act as if they are stupid, just are stupid. The kind of person who answers "what is a woman" with "I'm not a biologist" is being a stupid person, even if they could in theory generate a wall of text explaining to me why in context it was better to pretend to be an idiot than to give an intelligent answer--that is, even if they have the ability to not be a stupid person.
This is what it means, to be a mistake theorist: I genuinely believe that the people who disagree with me, are making a mistake, and that if they were smarter, it is not a mistake they would make.
For if she is not stupid, well, what remains is for her to be actually evil.
As a mistake theorist, I'm open to the possibility that it's a mistake to be a mistake theorist! But that's where I am right now.
it is clear she isn't a moron who doesn't understand that the Constitution is there to put limits on government action
I think it's clear that she is kind of a moron (see: "I'm not a biologist"). That aside, there is understanding, and then there is understanding. I'm sure she knows what enumerated powers means. I'm also sure she doesn't give a shit about enumerated powers if the principle happens to get in the way of the result she wants, which constitutes a failure to genuinely grasp the principle and her responsibility to it. That's the problem with results oriented jurisprudence. It's a naked exercise of power; it's illegible and thus illegitimate as a jurisprudence.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1mo ago
Exactly, if it wasn't carefully adhered to, from very early on, there is no reason it should be now.
This is straightforwardly fallacious. There are many reasons why it should be adhered to now, but even if there were not, "no one has ever does this so there is no reason to do this" is clearly bad reasoning.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1mo ago
Eh she seems to at least be marginally smarter than Sotomayor. Sotomayor consistently has the most braindead opinions of the entire court.
You may be right about this, I don't have a strong view here. Either way, people who find themselves in high political office based more on their skin color or sex than on their demonstrated merit often end up in over their heads. And yes, when I say that, I get a lot of pushback from people who want to tell me all about Jackson's merits, but like... Biden himself said it. He wasn't even looking for the best candidate, just the most plausible black woman for the job.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1mo ago
Then she should have sided against J6 surely? That was a Federal case.
It was still "local LEOs" on the ground, though. DC's unique character makes it a special case.
That is one of the reasons I like Jackson, she consistently pushes for them to make actual real decisions
The extent to which we agree or disagree on this probably depends on what you ultimately mean by "real decisions" and "results oriented." In legal theory, "results oriented" is a term of art specifically connoting "uses the law to achieve particular outcomes (whether in the particular case or in more general sociocultural ways), rather than pursuing a consistent jurisprudence grounded in clear principles." So for example, Roe v. Wade was a badly-decided case (even RBG thought so), but the clear outcome was so desired by certain people that they enshrined it in their jurisprudence anyway. Was that better than a wishy-washy dismissal? Maybe, but I'm skeptical, and "wishy-washy dismissal" is of course not the only alternative.
The problem with a results oriented jurisprudence is that a clear answer to this question may actually muddy the waters on many other questions. That's the point of principle: if I know how the Court has ruled in relevant principle, I can get a sense of how the Court is likely to rule on similar and related questions that are not answered by the case under immediate consideration. And one of the most important principles of American governance is the doctrine of enumerated powers, which has not been carefully adhered to since, well, maybe ever... but the accrual of power to the federal government certainly accelerated through the 20th century in a trend that seems to be continuing into the 21st.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1mo ago
The only time I genuinely couldn't comprehend where she was trying to go in terms of jurisprudence was her questioning in Murthy v Missouri.
This was certainly my top example, but I don't think it was hard to comprehend. I think it was stupid.
So my biggest concern is that your view has the First Amendment hamstringing the government in significant ways in the most important time periods. I mean, what would — what would you have the government do?
Like, seriously? "The Constitution limits government power, but sometimes we don't like that. What are we supposed to do when the Constitution limits government power in ways we don't like?" This is almost as straightforwardly embarrassing as her inability to answer the question "what is a woman?"
She is similarly stupid in her engagement with issues on race (though Sotomayor has similar problems).
This is not a person who is sophisticated but merely wrong. She's probably smarter than, say, Kamala Harris. But she's definitely bottom-of-the-barrel for SCOTUS, maybe even for the Circuits.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1mo ago
I am not saying she is conservative by any means, but she does have a very specific jurisprudence that can lean what has been described as libertarian on criminal matters.
To the extent that "Woke" is downstream of stuff like BLM, this would appear to be a case-in-point of my read on her decisions. A consistent libertarianism (e.g. on Murthy, where the Democrat appointees sided with Roberts, Barrett, and Kavanaugh to empower the federal government against the First Amendment) would have shown some sophistication. Someone who is libertarian when it protects petty criminals from local LEOs but statist when the federal government wants to bully corporations into doing things the federal government is forbidden from doing, does not have a sophisticated jurisprudence. They have a results-oriented political agenda.
And I do think that Murthy shook out in approximately that way, split between plausibly principled jurists and mere creatures of the state. Barrett is the one I have the hardest time pinning down, it seems I am as often disappointed by her as I am impressed. They all get it right sometimes, and they all get it wrong sometimes, and that's to be expected. But the "freedom contingent" is small, and gains allies only inconsistently.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1mo ago
Indeed she has been slightly less liberal than Sotomayor or Kagan
I'm pretty skeptical of the use of the word "liberal" in such contexts, and cases where justices don't line up with what the news media "expects" of them often come out that way precisely because the case does not neatly align with orthodoxies like "Woke." I suspect SCOTUS analysis carried out along "blue tribe/red tribe" metrics could be more helpful than "Republican/Democrat" or "conservative/liberal" metrics--but I haven't actually done the work, so that is only a suspicion.
(With specific respect to the 2020 protest, I did see some discussion of Jackson and Barrett "swapping places" but in the end I think far less attention was paid to that peculiarity than was maybe warranted.)
naraburns
nihil supernum
1mo ago
It's such a weird thing to say. Doing that for real absolutely has big incel energy. And the movie's pretty neckbeardy even as a movie.
Trolling is bad enough, but this one isn't even an artful troll. If you're going to spend time contributing nothing of value to the conversation, you could at least aim for a little originality.
Banned for a week.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1mo ago
The fix was in in 2016 too. What makes this time different?
Eight years.
Specifically, eight years of learning how to deal with Trump. In 2016, Trump played the media like a fiddle. Their exasperation and outrage only increased support for him. He was slinging mud while they were trying to coronate their queen in the most manifest destiny play since the days of Polk. Well, now they're slinging mud. Now they're pointing and laughing. It's probably not the sort of thing that would be sustainable through a contested primary... so the Democrats did away with the primary.
Furthermore: Trump already won! He defeated Joe Biden. He shot his shot, he achieved the victory he set out to achieve... but it was too early to make the difference that mattered. The only question now is whether three months is long enough for the fresh polish to wear off the Harris campaign. I won't say it's impossible! I have been wrong about Trump's chances before. Maybe I'll be wrong again. But I'm skeptical that Americans have the energy to prevail against the will of the media elites twice in a single year.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1mo ago
Certainly the corporate news media has been spinning wildly in hopes of a Trump defeat.
I have a number of criticisms of Harris, but historically, the most consequential impact of most Presidents has been through Supreme Court nominations. And Harris has always been a "no friends to the right of me, no enemies to the left of me" sort of politician. The independents/undecideds are rarely sufficiently dialed in to understand or care about the intricacies of law and its long-term impact on culture. Justice Jackson has already shown herself to be an unsophisticated jurist who simply votes for whatever seems Wokest, and Harris would appoint more of the same.
The fact that we've reached a point in our political history where every cultural disagreement turns into a Constitutional Question does not really bode well, I think. We are supposed to have a federal system; not every question of importance is supposed to be answered the same way for the entire nation. To the contrary--questions of importance are precisely the questions that states should be free to disagree about. Trump's nominees have moved the needle in the right direction, albeit only slightly. Harris would move us more toward totalitarianism and ruin than Trump could ever hope to manage, assuming she gets an even slightly sympathetic Congress (and I do expect her to win in November, as a direct result of the corporate news media being the propaganda arm of the Democratic Party--the fix is clearly in).
I don't like Trump, I've never liked Trump, and he has been a disaster for the Republican Party. But he was genuinely a kind of bland president who made okay SCOTUS picks. I would expect Harris to be essentially his equal-but-opposite--actually a much more boring President than one might expect from her public buffoonery, but something of a jurisprudential catastrophe in the long run.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1mo ago
What they wrote was
Call an online rightoid weird and he responds with thousands of anti-trans memes that he has saved on his phone for some reason, starts talking about drinking horse semen...
As a repeat offender they got escalated to a week ban. It's been a long time, I think, since we had someone break the "accept bans as a time out" rule and get perma-banned for it, though.
This is all "boo outgroup," which you've been warned and banned over before.
Stop, or the next ban will be longer than the week I'm giving you this time.
EDIT: User permabanned and comment removed for post-ban comment editing.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1mo ago
naraburns
nihil supernum
1mo ago
We clearly disagree about some important things, but at this juncture it seems like you are more committed to making personal attacks and aggressively mischaracterizing my position, than you are to understanding and dialogue. So there doesn't seem to be anything else to say. I am only responding now to note to anyone else reading this thread that you've put a lot of words in my mouth, here, and all of them are wrong.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1mo ago
I've complained before that @naraburns is also pretty bad at rounding off recklessly in this way.
You were wrong then, you're still wrong, and now you've brought a third moderator into this conversation.
Your complaint, every time we have these conversations, boils down to "other people did bad stuff and got away with it." That is certainly true! We do not moderate every bad post. We do not moderate all of your bad posts. Why? Well, as I've explained to you before, we have to weigh the costs and benefits of every second we spend moderating. The rules ultimately function only in service of the foundation. Sometimes a not-great post just isn't worth the hassle, and isn't doing sufficient harm. Sometimes a not-that-bad post is worth the hassle, or is doing sufficient harm. Sometimes we just miss it because no one reports it. Sometimes we're busy with other things. "Consistency" is not the goal; the goal is to serve the foundation to the best of our abilities.
But since you seem to at least want more consistency, here you go: I've consistently told you that the bad behavior of others is irrelevant to your own. Arguing with us about what other people have or have not "gotten away with" is meaningless. We've banned leftists, we've banned rightists, we've banned more flavors of political perspective than most people know even exist. But always in service of the foundation. We've never yet banned someone "based on rounding discussions off to preconceived notions from your previous experience on the internet." As long as you believe otherwise, you will continue to believe something that is false.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1mo ago
You are part of the identitarian left since you support identity politics for Jews
Uh, no. I don't, and I'd appreciate you not putting words in my mouth. Who do you think you're talking to? What "identity politics" do I support for Jews? What do you think "identity politics" means in this context?
For the sake of clarity, when I say "identity politics" I mean "advocating for and allotting special benefits to individuals purely based on their membership in a particular category." So for example, I favor the state of Israel against Islamic terrorism because (1) terrorism is bad and (2) Israel is a reasonably successful pluralistic state in a region of the world that desperately needs more such things. And you might say "aha! This is still advocating for special benefits based on nationality!" But I would disagree, because there are no benefits I would extend to the Israeli people that I would not cheerfully extend to anyone whose behavior is reasonably comparable. Since I do not give any special consideration to the Jewish people or Israeli nationals (many of whom are not Jewish), it is nonsense to say that I "support identity politics for Jews."
In fact if the world were arranged according to my principles, there would be little to no government at all, anywhere, but the world is not arranged according to my principles. This is not a "commie immoral ideology," it's much closer to libertarian anarchism... but I'm not really a libertarian, so much as a classical liberal. I'm conservative enough to think we probably need some regulation, and some government. But mostly I think people need to be left alone, and not have their social existence engineered by the Leviathan. If people want to form interest groups, they should be free to do so. And government actors should be forbidden from giving any of those groups special treatment based on group membership.
Objective differences between individuals is a different story, and sometimes these will be expressed in the language of groups. But for example treating "men" and "women" differently (in situations where the realities of sex matter) is fine, but strictly speaking that's not allotting special benefits based on membership in a category, it's arranging behavior in response to real individual differences.
Why shouldn't the majority ethnic group have their collective interests be taken seriously by its rulers?
Because there's no such thing as collective interests. Or, perhaps it would be better to say that collective interests are an abstraction which erode proper attention to individual circumstance. My rejection of interest aggregation in moral reasoning (I am a Scanlonian contractualist) extends to a rejection of interest aggregation in political action.
Of course, in practical terms, it's very difficult to carry out sweeping government intervention without engaging in interest aggregation. To me, this seems like an excellent reason to not have sweeping government interventions. Government should focus on coordinating behaviors for the good of everyone. Thus for example, having a standard for traffic flow is good. It doesn't matter who you are, you stop on red and go on green; this is not a deep moral principle, it's just the otherwise-arbitrary standard we all follow so we can all accrue benefit from the common use of roads. That's a totally appropriate use of government power, on my view, and there is not so much as a whiff of "identity politics" in it. Many things are good for everyone, and many things can be appropriately targeted toward objective individual differences rather than group membership.
Maybe you have a different definition of "identity politics?" But as far as I can tell, you're simply wrong. Certainly you're wrong about me.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1mo ago
I assume you meant to reply to @urquan, since that is who you're quoting. But you're right:
Notre Dame and BYU are far from the only well-respected religious university in the U.S. Notre Dame is far from the only well-respected Catholic university in the U.S. Georgetown is technically Catholic, Marquette and Gonzaga and Loyola as well. They don't seem to care much about homosexual conduct though, as far as I can tell.
Southern Methodist... it's in the name. Pepperdine is affiliated with the Church of Christ. Pepperdine as well as Baylor (Baptist) have codes of conduct that exclude homosexual sex, though they otherwise seem happy to use progressive-approved language in discussing sexual identitarianism. I have no idea how serious they are about enforcement, though.
But most of the schools I just named are "top 100 national universities" in the US News rankings.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1mo ago
More realistically, it's just an attack on the existence of religious colleges at all. Which is shameful.
Specifically, religious colleges can (and do) use faith statements to effectively exclude homosexuals from professorships. Their position is essentially "There's nothing wrong with being homosexual, it's just that you have to sign a statement saying that you won't do sinful things, like have homosexual sex." This is why organizations like the American Philosophical Association changed their anti-discrimination language to something like:
This includes both discrimination on the basis of status and discrimination on the basis of conduct integrally connected to that status, where "integrally connected” means (a) the conduct is a normal and predictable expression of the status (e.g., sexual conduct expressive of a sexual orientation, conduct expressive of a disability status), or (b) the conduct is something that only a person with that status could engage in (e.g., pregnancy), or (c) the proscription of that conduct is historically and routinely connected with invidious discrimination against the status (e.g., interracial marriage).
In other words, it's not enough to say "we accept everyone as long as they live up to our religious standards"--you have to accept everyone, and their "integrally connected" behaviors, too, even though the failure modes of such a requirement are probably easy to imagine. Anyway, as a consequence, some religious colleges lost the ability to advertise jobs in APA publications.
Progressives dominate academia, by a wide margin. It's pretty important to them to keep the door slammed very firmly in the face of possible competitors to that monopoly on propagandizing America's young adults (and is probably also why they tend to be in favor of pushing "college for everyone" even when the economics of such a thing make no sense).
It would be... interesting... to see how all this might interact with a Muslim-sponsored university, but there aren't many of those in the US. (Yet?)
Steelmanning the Strawman: Trump Has A Point About Kamala
Trump stepped into a fairly obvious trap. Remember: political progressives are the people who do things like call Bill Clinton the "first black president," say that Clarence Thomas is white, or flatly declare that black Americans who vote for Donald Trump "ain't black."
Scott Alexander explained this a long time ago but Americans in general still don't get it. Even the Leftists tried to explain this, by capitalizing "Black" and explaining why:
At the Columbia Journalism Review, we capitalize Black, and not white, when referring to groups in racial, ethnic, or cultural terms. For many people, Black reflects a shared sense of identity and community. White carries a different set of meanings; capitalizing the word in this context risks following the lead of white supremacists.
Being Black is important, because Black people share a sense of identity and community. Sometimes it is asserted that this has to do with being descendants of American slavery (DOAS), but if that were really true then Kamala would not be Black. No, the reality of Blackness is that Black is a voting bloc. People who deviate from that bloc, are not Black, even if they're black. White people are not a voting bloc; ergo they must not have a sufficiently shared sense of identity and community to be of value as a political unit. Kamala Harris is Black even if she ain't black; she could be Black if her parents were, say, Bill and Hillary Clinton. Sure, DOAS might find it tasteless or even offensive, but what are they going to do about it--vote Republican? Not a chance.
Audre Lorde once wrote,
For the master’s tool will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.
This is the fundamental problem with the Identitarian Right. Yes, embracing the politics of grievance and oppression can allow one to beat the Left at their own game sometimes (often in hilarious ways), but then one is fundamentally playing the Left's game. Arguing about whether Rachel Dolezal is "really Black" means focusing your attention on categories over which you have no actual control. It means turning away from the real individuals around you to obsess over cultural judgments governed by a never-ending churn of bureaucrats and theorists and busybodies seeking to endlessly manipulate humanity for their own venal ends. "Fine, let's endlessly obsess over race (etc.)" is not the victory the Identitarian Right seems to think it is.
So yeah: Trump isn't really wrong. Harris is a grifter and a buffoon whose sex and ancestry are, as far as I can tell, the only reasons she was invited to join the Biden ticket in the first place. But even so, Trump's comment was a mistake, if his goal was to win the election; it wasn't the kind of comment that persuades the unsophisticated undecideds. Whether it ultimately costs him the election, well, I doubt that this particular comment matters, in the grand scheme of things. But while it would be nice if society at large could have a reasonable discussion about the interesting things happening in the intellectual background of his commentary... I think most people would be completely baffled by the attempt.
In what context?
It does seem to be a popular meme on reddit, where literally anything critical of Republicans has had a solid chance of becoming a popular meme for approaching twenty years.
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