BF2S Forums Presidential Election 2016

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According to the Republican Party, the biggest threat to rural America was Islamic terrorism. According to the Democratic Party it was gun violence. In reality it was prescription drug abuse and neither party noticed until it was too late.

Unlike registered independents who are socially liberal and fiscally conservative, America's non-voters tended to be poorer, less educated citizens who are fiscally liberal and socially conservative. Neither party listened to them, let alone represented this populist center, until Trump gave them a voice.

America will survive Trump's campaign, and the temptations of protectionism and xenophobia he offers. But in the aftermath that follows, both political parties must start prioritizing the working-class for a change. And that starts by listening to Trump's forgotten America.

http://www.usnews.com/news/the-report/a … ps-america

Reads true to me

Trump supporter sucker punches protester in the face, Cops ignore assailant-handcuff & tackle victim.


interview with attacker


Slate is keeping a record of all the violent confrontations at Trump rallies.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/ … vents.html

Making america great again.

Last edited by SuperJail Warden (2016-03-10 16:50:21)

Jay wrote:

uziq wrote:

Jay wrote:

They're mutually exclusive. How can I have a regulation that imposes a tariff on all imports and maintain my freedom of choice when certain companies are favored by the scheme?

no they are not mutually exclusive. governance consists in nuance and subtle thinking, problems understood as particulars rather than generals. your moronic way of blundering from one pole to another is totalitarian and only equals one hypocritical despotism or the other. libertarianism is a pipe dream arising from muddled thinking and rash solutions to complex issues. same shit with fascism and communism. you elevate some unattainable ideal above the lived reality and concrete detail of the thing. society is not a building plan and it doesn't have a mathematical schematic.

Precisely. The point is to be free of the mathematical diagrams and to be free to live an organic life where your choices are your own, not forced upon you by well meaning, but ultimately flawed, technocrats. Libertarianism isn't a form of government, it's a way of thinking about government. It's an ethical system.

Libertarianism is in fact exactly what it claims not to be, mob rule at the bottom and hierarchical autocracy at the top.

No regulation leads directly to fiefdoms comprised of kings and serfs, whoever holds the biggest whip and directs the largest brute squad holds the power and the money.

You're so smug in your tightly regulated country and industry you are blind to reality. Take a look at Afghanistan or Somalia to see how Libertarianism works in practice.

Think about a Presidency with Trump beholden to no-one, not even the Republican party, that's what 'Libertarianism' would look like.

KEN-JENNINGS wrote:

it's obvious trump appeals to ignorant dumb fucks (see four posts above).  What do you expect?

It's the why that is interesting. Those were all Democratic voters thirty years ago. Snobbishness like you just displayed is why they no longer do.

It's slightly unsettling that there is a subset of people who are evidently only interested in that "outsider" status. I've seen numerous comments saying "I wanna vote for Bernie, but if he doesn't get the nomination, I'll vote for Trump", which is just mind-boggling that some people claim they can support both despite them being vastly different. Bernie is an independent, but has at least been an elected official for many years. Trump is an outsider to the political field, or was, as he got entwined within that whole birther BS for Obama, but is firmly part of the establishment. He may be a prick, but he's still part of The Man.

Jay wrote:

Precisely. The point is to be free of the mathematical diagrams and to be free to live an organic life where your choices are your own, not forced upon you by well meaning, but ultimately flawed, technocrats. Libertarianism isn't a form of government, it's a way of thinking about government. It's an ethical system.

there is nothing 'organic' about something described as an 'ethical system'. systems are not pragmatic. they are systematic. putting any sort of ideal or ideology before the lived-facts right in front of you will always end up putting a cheap discount on discomfort and ignoring very real human misery caused by your proselytising.

it was pascal who said (since you are so well read): "men will never do evil so completely and so cheerfully as when they do from religious conviction". well political ideologies are the mass motivating belief systems of our day – all predicated on faith, on marching with some word or concept in the front of their minds towards that utopian paradisiacal state of society. substitute 'freedom', 'liberty', 'utility', 'historical materialism', etc., for the casuistry of pascal's day and you have the same result. you touting mill and Bentham just shows what a relative simpleton you are: you are taking elegantly argued philosophical tracts, neat examples of classical rhetoric, and thinking they can literally be engineering scheme for a whole complex society. anyone can read mill or Bentham, jay. you're not privy to some higher state of enlightenment because you've gulped down a few set texts. here's a few other examples of people whose thought systems could just as persuasively lead to a basis for a society: Hobbes, More, Burke, Fourier, Marx, Nietzsche. i could go on. you're supposed to read and consider these people as part of a classical canon, not flip like a spastic dolphin from one system to another. which is essentially all you do. you just started out on a substandard thinker who can't even make a cogent body of work out of it – Rand – and haven't progressed very far. must try harder when trying to become an intellectual, jay.

Dilbert_X wrote:

Jay wrote:

There is no 'top' as power is pushed down as far as possible. National diplomacy wouldn't be pushed down to town level, but things like educational criteria would be because the people actually impacted should have the chance to voice their opinion.

Honestly I can't tell if you're just ignorant or being an ass, but your constant misrepresentations are tiring. It's really not that difficult. Go read some Mill or Bentham.

Nope, in a power vacuum someone takes power, no checks and balances make it easier.

Show me a historical example of 'Libertarianism' which hasn't descended into a Lord of the Flies bloodbath or collapsed in on itself. There isn't one.

Its a pipe-dream theory which doesn't work espoused by ignorant and stupid people with no foresight.

It's the principles of the Enlightenment and what the US was founded on. Its why all the revolutionaries after 1848 emigrated hete. Until the turn of the 20th century we essentially had no federal government. It was tiny. Our government then grew because progressives are forever looking to Europe for ideas and the idea of a technocratic government used to solve all the issues of the day became their ideal. 100 years later it's morphed into an albatross with tens of trillions of debt, an absurd military and social programs that draw fraudsters like honey.

uziq wrote:

Jay wrote:

Precisely. The point is to be free of the mathematical diagrams and to be free to live an organic life where your choices are your own, not forced upon you by well meaning, but ultimately flawed, technocrats. Libertarianism isn't a form of government, it's a way of thinking about government. It's an ethical system.

there is nothing 'organic' about something described as an 'ethical system'. systems are not pragmatic. they are systematic. putting any sort of ideal or ideology before the lived-facts right in front of you will always end up putting a cheap discount on discomfort and ignoring very real human misery caused by your proselytising.

it was pascal who said (since you are so well read): "men will never do evil so completely and so cheerfully as when they do from religious conviction". well political ideologies are the mass motivating belief systems of our day – all predicated on faith, on marching with some word or concept in the front of their minds towards that utopian paradisiacal state of society. substitute 'freedom', 'liberty', 'utility', 'historical materialism', etc., for the casuistry of pascal's day and you have the same result. you touting mill and Bentham just shows what a relative simpleton you are: you are taking elegantly argued philosophical tracts, neat examples of classical rhetoric, and thinking they can literally be engineering scheme for a whole complex society. anyone can read mill or Bentham, jay. you're not privy to some higher state of enlightenment because you've gulped down a few set texts. here's a few other examples of people whose thought systems could just as persuasively lead to a basis for a society: Hobbes, More, Burke, Fourier, Marx, Nietzsche. i could go on. you're supposed to read and consider these people as part of a classical canon, not flip like a spastic dolphin from one system to another. which is essentially all you do. you just started out on a substandard thinker who can't even make a cogent body of work out of it – Rand – and haven't progressed very far. must try harder when trying to become an intellectual, jay.

I'm not trying to engineer a society, I'm simply stating that when presented with two options: control over the masses, or freedom, my argument will almost always come down on the side of freedom. This isn't because I'm being rebellious or an anarchist, it's because government solutions invariably do more harm than good. When the working class gent next to you says "there should be a law..." I'm the one crying stop.

I mean, do you Brits get off on involving yourselves in your neighbors business? Most of us here are at least superficially very laissez-faire about what our neighbors do. It's the busy body minority that is the problem.

Uzi wrote:

. anyone can read mill or Bentham, jay. you're not privy to some higher state of enlightenment because you've gulped down a few set texts. here's a few other examples of people whose thought systems could just as persuasively lead to a basis for a society: Hobbes, More, Burke, Fourier, Marx, Nietzsche. i could go on.

I had to read all of those and maybe 2 dozen more. I wouldn't recommend anyone in search of a political system to live by go back and read any of those. There is 143 years of new information, events, science, and more between the death of Mill and now. You would be better off reading something by a modern philosopher who could argue against and use new evidence to build a political argument around. And even if some of the views and ideas are timeless, they aren't going to be helpful on a practical level today. There is nothing on climate change in the Wealth of Nations. Adam Smith's free market ideas aren't going to be useful against rising ocean levels.

Dilbert_X wrote:

Jay wrote:

There is no 'top' as power is pushed down as far as possible. National diplomacy wouldn't be pushed down to town level, but things like educational criteria would be because the people actually impacted should have the chance to voice their opinion.

Honestly I can't tell if you're just ignorant or being an ass, but your constant misrepresentations are tiring. It's really not that difficult. Go read some Mill or Bentham.

Nope, in a power vacuum someone takes power, no checks and balances make it easier.

Show me a historical example of 'Libertarianism' which hasn't descended into a Lord of the Flies bloodbath or collapsed in on itself. There isn't one.

Its a pipe-dream theory which doesn't work espoused by ignorant and stupid people with no foresight.

http://www.newyorker.com/humor/shouts-m … department

SuperJail Warden wrote:

Uzi wrote:

. anyone can read mill or Bentham, jay. you're not privy to some higher state of enlightenment because you've gulped down a few set texts. here's a few other examples of people whose thought systems could just as persuasively lead to a basis for a society: Hobbes, More, Burke, Fourier, Marx, Nietzsche. i could go on.

I had to read all of those and maybe 2 dozen more. I wouldn't recommend anyone in search of a political system to live by go back and read any of those. There is 143 years of new information, events, science, and more between the death of Mill and now. You would be better off reading something by a modern philosopher who could argue against and use new evidence to build a political argument around. And even if some of the views and ideas are timeless, they aren't going to be helpful on a practical level today. There is nothing on climate change in the Wealth of Nations. Adam Smith's free market ideas aren't going to be useful against rising ocean levels.

Disagree.  One of the great things about reading philosophy and political discourse is the ability to take the 143 years of new information and bounce it against those treatises.  I strongly believe having a strong base of knowledge from historical political philosophers is integral to being able to progress and develop better ones.

SuperJail Warden wrote:

Uzi wrote:

. anyone can read mill or Bentham, jay. you're not privy to some higher state of enlightenment because you've gulped down a few set texts. here's a few other examples of people whose thought systems could just as persuasively lead to a basis for a society: Hobbes, More, Burke, Fourier, Marx, Nietzsche. i could go on.

I had to read all of those and maybe 2 dozen more. I wouldn't recommend anyone in search of a political system to live by go back and read any of those. There is 143 years of new information, events, science, and more between the death of Mill and now. You would be better off reading something by a modern philosopher who could argue against and use new evidence to build a political argument around. And even if some of the views and ideas are timeless, they aren't going to be helpful on a practical level today. There is nothing on climate change in the Wealth of Nations. Adam Smith's free market ideas aren't going to be useful against rising ocean levels.

This is the dumbest thing you've ever written. It supplanted kitty stomping and saying travel is pointless. Congratulations.

Jay wrote:

SuperJail Warden wrote:

Uzi wrote:

. anyone can read mill or Bentham, jay. you're not privy to some higher state of enlightenment because you've gulped down a few set texts. here's a few other examples of people whose thought systems could just as persuasively lead to a basis for a society: Hobbes, More, Burke, Fourier, Marx, Nietzsche. i could go on.

I had to read all of those and maybe 2 dozen more. I wouldn't recommend anyone in search of a political system to live by go back and read any of those. There is 143 years of new information, events, science, and more between the death of Mill and now. You would be better off reading something by a modern philosopher who could argue against and use new evidence to build a political argument around. And even if some of the views and ideas are timeless, they aren't going to be helpful on a practical level today. There is nothing on climate change in the Wealth of Nations. Adam Smith's free market ideas aren't going to be useful against rising ocean levels.

This is the dumbest thing you've ever written. It supplanted kitty stomping and saying travel is pointless. Congratulations.

I would really take that to heart if I wasn't 100% sure I read a lot more political philosophy and political science than you will ever read in your lifetime just doing my undergrad. Wealth of Nations wasn't some identity forming political philosophy for me. It was Week 7 of my Western Political Philosophy class.