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@JoeBob
Kamala definitely won the debate, but didn't score a win in the most important area: "defining herself"
I actually agree with your assessment. By all measures Kamala was near perfect in executing her apparent strategy to get under Trump's skin and put his unhingedness and complete disconnect from reality on full display, but that's what Trump is and everyone already knows that so I don't think this will move the needle as much as many on the left seem to think.
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@Tarik
So how do you differentiate a "moral" standard from a non "moral" standard?
A standard is anything you judge something else against to measure it's virtuousness. Have you never heard the phrase "very high standards"? In basketball, Micheal Jordan is normally considered the standard. That's why people will all the time say something like "Simone Biles is the Micheal Jordan of gymnastics" - because he is the standard by which nearly all athletes are judged.
A moral standard just means it's the standard you are applying to morality, as in the thing you will judge actions against in order to determine whether they are good. For Christians, Jesus is normally invoked as their standard ("what would Jesus do?"). But invoking Jesus or God does not solve any of the issues you are trying to call out as being problematic with my position.
Google the problem of infinite regress.I already told you why that's not applicable here.
Then you don't know what it is or why it is important.
Why did you choose eternal happiness as your moral standard?You're not slick, I know this is your demonstration of infinite regress, we've done this dance before.
Why is it slick when I do it and yet that is all you've had to offer this entire conversation?
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@Tarik
Hate to break it to you but calling something a “moral” standard is a judgment.
A "moral standard" is by definition, not a judgement. It is the thing today moral judgements are derived from. This is basic English.
Which is exactly why it’s NOT a sufficient answer, because of how vague and unhelpful it is.
Google the problem of infinite regress.
The means to eternal happiness is what it means to be good/moral.
Why did you choose eternal happiness as your moral standard?
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@ADreamOfLiberty
My resurrection of this thread was inevitable *snaps fingers*
So was your destruction *pulls out the real stones*.
You didn't think I forgot about this thread did you? Well yeah I did actually...
Spending personal money on an expense that could exist without a campaign...
Once again, this is not the standard, says the law, the FEC, and common sense.
The mere fact that A could be B doesn't mean we pretend A is B. If that were the case then criminal convictions wouldn't exist because "beyond a reasonable doubt" =/= "the defendant could not be innocent"
This has been your go to throughout this entire conversation no matter how many times it's pointed out to you. And you continue to claim that my interpretation (the same one the FEC spelled out in plain English) would violate precedent yet you haven't provided a single example anywhere in this thread. You're clearly just making shit up to avoid taking the L while projecting that very idea into me.
The FEC has not singled out shoes or suits to be exempt from any guideline or rule. <- cite to the contrary if you can
It's in the link you provided. Are you really that dishonest that you need me to dig up your own post to show you in your own source where the FEC singles out clothing for exclusion?
Clearly you are, because you even go on to reference it later in this same post:
I agree that your interpretation leads to absurdities. That's why I had the hypothetical candidate explicitly state his intent to influence his campaign. You have and you just admitted again that one could certainly buy apparel to influence a campaign
Correct, which is exactly why the FEC singled apparel out as an exception to the rule. My interpretation doesn't lead to absurdities, it leads to what logically follows from the law. The FEC recognized that, so to prevent candidates from abusing the law they singled out a few different expense types (including clothing) as an automatic personal expense. They wouldn't have had to do that if clothing wouldn't have been deemed a legitimate campaign expenditure under a strict reading of the law given examples like yours along with their own irrespective test.
In other words, your example proves me right on my interpretation, I just missed their exceptions. So you claiming that your gotcha proves my interpretation wrong demonstrates that you're either woefully dishonest or deeply confused.
"determine for themselves" yet when I gotcha (and you are still got), you clearly believed that intent of the candidate was a determiner. If he admitted it was for campaign purposes you thought that meant he had to report it as an in-kind contribution to himself.
He does, for anything that the FEC didn't single out as an exception. Says the FEC, in the link you provided.
If the candidate bought a pair of shoes for the exclusive purpose of propping up his own campaign then that does meet the legal definition of a campaign contributionOr your interpretation is wrong.
Because they singled it out genius.
Where in the law does it except suits?... because if the law says that intent is what matters, and you claim that suits are indeed an exception to this law, then the exception must also be in law.It's not like the FEC can contradict federal law at will right?
Everything I've been arguing on this topic came from the FEC pages you brought into this conversation as your source for your argument. Now you're challenging me to prove it legitimate? Really?
I've already stated the only legitimate purposes of the law:1.) Keep candidates from stealing donor money by using it for things that don't affect campaigns2.) Inform the public of special interests
Citation please.
And no, "my ass" does not count.
Just amazing how your fake jurists have cobbled together laws in such a way that it's all intent and zero fact.
Zero fact... Wow. We had a whole trial over this. Even you aren't this stupid.
and this is something you actually claimed, and claim it again in this post #280) there doesn't even need to be another crime.
You do not need to succeed in killing someone to be convicted of attempted murder. This is really basic stuff.
Problem is that leaving your house while under house arrest might actually be illegal.
So is falsifying business records.
Uh... I think the real problem is that the other jurisdiction didn't charge the defendant much less convict him.
This is insane. There is no way you've spent weeks arguing this trial with me and was unaware that the DOJ indicted Cohen for this (did you forget about Individual 1?) and that Cohen plead guilty. This crime has been fully adjudicated. NY did not need to adjudicate this crime, it was already right there.
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@Tarik
theirs nothing logically incoherent about saying someone has “good” standards
It's not incoherent because you're judging someone else's standards, so to do that you're using your own standards. There's no issue there. But if someone says "I have good standards" then they would be judging their standards against their standards, which is circular.
I simply stated that you believe your moral standard to be good otherwise you wouldn’t have chosen it, you deflecting to the word “value” other than good doesn’t help you because you wouldn’t value it if you didn’t think it was good.
All you're asking me is why like my standard. The answer to that is the same as to any question regarding why I like anything... Because I do. It doesn't matter whether we're talking about morality or anything else. Why do you want to live? Because you do. You're trying to paint this as a problem with my conception of morality but it applies to why we prefer anything we prefer in life.
There's nothing of value down this road, this argument is no more enlightening than what a 5 year old discovers when realizing that they can just ask you "why" over and over again until you have a melt down.
When did I say I have a moral standard?
Because if you didn't then the word good would have no meaning to you.
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@YouFound_Lxam
You don't get to choose a name and choose your own definition for it.Atheist: a person who disbelieves in the existence of God or gods: (Oxford Languages).Suck it up.
Telling me I don't get to cherry pick my definition while you cherry pick your definition.
Two can play this game:
Atheist: a person who does not believe in the existence of a god or any gods
The greater question is why do you feel like you need to define atheism as a belief system?
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@Tarik
Except it didn’t start there, you judged that “moral” standard as “right” otherwise you wouldn’t have chosen it.
It started with my emotions, because that's how I feel about it. You can't "judge" a moral standard, that's logically incoherent.
Just because isn’t an answer
"Just because" is the eventual answer to any string of consistent "why" questions. Google the problem of infinite regress.
you wouldn’t value it if you didn’t judge it as “good”, like I already said in my most recent prior post, CIRCULAR.
Did you choose God to be your moral standard because he is good, or is he good because he is your moral standard?
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@Swagnarok
Am I supposed to be impressed that all it took was for him to bend the knee and say "orange man bad" for you to love him? Yeah, you're right. I am.
Could you please explain where in this post or anywhere you got the impression that anyone on the left loves Dick Cheney? Are you really that impervious to the point being made here?
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@Tarik
It's not circular to start with a moral standard and judge right and wrong from there. What about that is so difficult to understand?
I choose this moral standard because that's what I value. I value it just because. That's all. If you value these things we can coexist. If you don't value these things then we can't and any society that shares your value system is probably destined for extinction. That's it, that's all.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
So by this logic, we should all be able to run to the store and pickup a nuclear warhead... Right?By this logic the constitution should have been amended with the advent of weapons of mass destruction
But it wasn't, so according to you, we can all purchase or own nuclear warheads according to the constitution.
You're entitled to your own opinion, even if it prioritizes the annihilation of human civilization over using common sense to interpret words written over 200 years ago.
So ex-cons, domestic abusers, people on the FBI watchlist, people diagnosed with mental illness... Anyone can purchase a missile launcher and apparently even a nuclear warhead... Correct?Yep, their liberty might be curtailed by due process of law but not their right to sell or buy a weapon upon opportunity.Would have been nice if there had been amendment before the insane clowns became a major political bloc.
lol my thoughts exactly.
Government is an institution created by manSo are language and mathematics.so it's purpose is necessarily decided by manDefinitions are decided by man, the logical implications are not.That by definition, makes it subjective.Then stop wasting your time on a debate site, language is by your definition subjective.
Just take a moment to stop and think about what you're saying... You're arguing that the *purpose* of government is an objective fact. Does that not give you pause to recognize how absurd you are falling just to defend your position?
There are two foci, first, the false dichotomy you relied upon to say this:I've never heard of a single lawmaker who's against gun safety laws come out with a mental health bill aimed at curbing gun violence
It's not a false dichotomy to show how people who say "look over there" don't actually care what's over there.
I never said you can't debate. I just said there wasn't a dichotomy which required someone to come up with an alternative solution before rejecting your proposed solution.
And I never made that argument so you are still arguing with yourself. I wonder why you can't just address the points i'm actually making.
I enjoy watching you try to escape the pits you dig for yourself.
The pits you dreamt up...
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@ADreamOfLiberty
The context of the 2nd amendment is clear. It protects missile launchers MORE than a switchblade because missile launchers are MORE useful against a potentially tyrannical government.
So by this logic, we should all be able to run to the store and pickup a nuclear warhead... Right?
Or did I miss the part of the constitution that requires it's citizens to carry state ID?When a qualification is implied so are the minimal effective means of determining the qualification.
So to be clear, you're a second amendment absolutist? As in you believe the only qualification to be able to purchase whatever arms one wishes is that they are an American citizen. So ex-cons, domestic abusers, people on the FBI watchlist, people diagnosed with mental illness... Anyone can purchase a missile launcher and apparently even a nuclear warhead... Correct?
No, that's your opinion on what you think the government should be limited to.It's an objective fact
If you believe this then you don't know what an objective fact is. Government is an institution created by man, so it's purpose is necessarily decided by man. That by definition, makes it subjective.
Until the constitution changes, the constitution determines the legal role of government.
That's not what we're talking about. This conversation is about what should be done, not what the legal hurdles are to get there.
There is no requirement in reason for a false dichotomy to confer any responsibility on anyone, e.g. "If you can't stop the shcool shootings through a mental health law, you must allow us to take away the guns".The false dichotomy implied there is that a universe without school shootings (or equivalent) MUST exist and anything that the speaker perceives as standing in the way of that universe must yield.
This is such a nonsense strawman. This debate is about the balance between security and liberty, because these principals often do stand in direct contrast with each other. But 2A advocates demonstrate the intellectual weakness of their position everytime they engage in this tactic - pretend that the left is arguing that only security matters and 'to hell with liberty'.
You do this because you can't make a coherent case for why a 21 year old should be able to purchase an AR15, so you instead pretend you are fighting for some vague notion of 'the people's right to protect themselves', as if an AR15 is necessary to uphold that right.
It doesn't matter if a universe without school shootings would be an improvement
Doesn't matter? That's the entire point of why we debate policy.
A universe without black crime being a good thing does not mean you can do anything to get there nor does it mean anyone who tells you to stop your immoral actions must come up with another way to your utopia.
Your analogy is equating the concept of regulating guns in order to save lives with committing genocide. That's absurd.
You can bury your head in the sand but the analogy is still here.
And it's still irrelevant.
You are incapable of responding to an argument without strawmanning it.Then you should stop responding to me, I don't find your sophistry and constant context-shifting red herrings all that interesting.
Then you should take your own advice. I respond because I'm curious to see how you will deal with what I have to say. When you constantly and consistently strawman my points it just shows me that you really don't have a response to them otherwise you wouldn't have to.
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But I literally conceded to that much when I asked you to define good/right or bad/wrong but instead of answering the call you talked about what your “moral” standard was
Nonsense. I answered your question directly in post 53 when I stated:
"My morality is based upon the concept of reducing harm in a way that is fair to all. Anything that comports with this principal is good, anything that contradicts it is bad."
I didn't talk about my moral standard instead, I began with my moral standard because in order to make any judgment about what is good or bad you have to have a standard to compare it to in the first place. That's not my requirement, it's a logical necessity.
Moreover, read the second sentence. My definition of right and wrong is right there.
if I say legalizing abortion is morally wrong that’s the opposite of saying legalizing abortion is morally right, so if one party believes the former and another party believes the latter it’s self refuting to say they both hold “moral” beliefs.
No, it isn't. You're focusing on the end result. When we talk about what morality is, we're talking about a system by which actions are judged. The standard is irrelevant to that definition. It is when you insert the standard that you get different results. There is nothing self refuting about that.
Going back to the pool analogy, under the rules of "call pocket" if you get the 8 ball in without calling it you automatically lose, under the rules of "last pocket" (as long as that was your last) you'd win. Same exact thing, but completely opposite results. This is case no matter what we're talking about. In most election systems the person with the most votes wins, under ours you have to win the electoral college. Same exact process, entirely different results based on what set of rules we are playing by.
This is how just about everything in life works, morality is no different. Under my rules eating shellfish is fine, under the bible's it's apparently terrible. That doesn't make the system itself to be self refuting, we just have to agree on our standard.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
There is no qualification in the 2nd amendment.
Do you believe people should be allowed to buy missile launchers?
The only qualification to vote is citizenship.
Then apparently you are against voter ID laws, correct? Or did I miss the part of the constitution that requires it's citizens to carry state ID?
The job of government is to protect rights.
No, that's your opinion on what you think the government should be limited to. But under a government of the people by the people and for the people, it is the people who decide whatever the role of government should be. And overwhelmingly, people believe government should be a vehicle to solve problems within our society. That includes ensuring it's citizenry is safe, which is the opposite of what you get when you allow guns to flood our streets.
You only find it ridiculous because you understand why the presumption of innocence must be a right.
The presumption of innocence has nothing to do with this conversation, that's what makes your analogy ridiculous.
I'm not the one who thinks "it's the law, whatever the 'judge' says goes" is the end of the controversy.
You are incapable of responding to an argument without strawmanning it.
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@Mall
So what do you do?Eliminate and take away all guns. No doubt many of you believe bloodshed will stop with the absence of guns.
If a mass murderer walked into your school, would you rather he be armed with a gun or a knife?
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@YouFound_Lxam
What advanced protective measures do we have to ensure that someone with a gun can't kill other people? I've never heard of such a thing.Two words.Law Enforcement.
That's not an advanced protective measure, we've had that for centuries, as has every other nation on earth.
The issue with assault weapons is how much more lethal they are compared to say handguns or hunting rifles.But that depends on the skill level of the shooter.
No, it doesn't. The lethality of the gun has absolutely nothing to do with the skill level of the shooter. If the shooter is not skilled to the point where he would fail to cause mass casualties with an assault weapon imagine how much harder of a time he'd have with a standard hand gun.
But then you're taking away the rights for those who aren't mentally ill to defend themselves with weapons of their choice.
Again, this is the same tradeoff we make in every other area of our lives. Why do you hanger to remove your shoes when you go through the airport? Because some other idiots decided to hijack planes. Every rule in our society that limits things we are allowed to do was made on the basis that some people might be irresponsible with that privilege.
The golden rule of any civilized society has always been that the freedom to swing your arms ends at someone else's face. Your right to carry a gun on you might make you feel safer, but that endangers the safety more for every individual around you.
The government is to be a servant to the people.
Yes, and they can start by listening to them. Background check laws poll at over 90%. The majority of Americans also agree with pretty much every other proposal out there, like red flag laws, an assault weapons ban, banning extended magazines, etc. Trying to frame this debate as try he people vs the government is ridiculous. We are the government, it's made up of the people we sent there to represent us, and these are three things the majority of us want, because it's common sense that a society overflowing with guns will see more people getting killed by them.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
It's not an either/or. Dealing with mental health does not exclude us from dealing with gunsNo, it's the bill of rights that excludes you from "Dealing with guns"
The bill of rights doesn't exclude us from requiring someone to pass a background check before letting them buta gun. And even if you think it does that's an entirely different conversation.
I've never heard of a single lawmaker who's against gun safety laws come out with a mental health bill aimed at curbing gun violenceThey aren't obligated to.
Yes they are. If you're going to pretend that we're in a mental health crisis which is the "real" reason people are getting shot up in schools and elsewhere regularly, then as a lawmaker it is your job to figure out how to address it.
That ultimatum ignores the fact that the suspension of liberty is itself a greater problem than crime
Yes, your ultimatum does because it was crafted to be ridiculous. As is the position that the right for every American to go out and own an assault weapon, buy a gun with no background check, or carry around a firearm in public outweighs the danger to the public these rights have.
Here is a suggestion: How come it's always bullied nihilistic kids, half of them with a history of psychoactive drugs? How about we let the kids who are being bullied not attend school
Please tell me this is satirical
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@Tarik
Different models "collide" with each other because they are different. They are different because that's what subjective view points are. So when you provide this as your reason for claiming subjective morality refutes itself you are demonstrating that you don't even understand the concept being offered when someone tells you morality is subjective.
Question: have you ever played a game oof pool? You do realize that there are a number of different ways people play - some play "last pocket", some play call your shot, etc. These rules collide with each other, that doesn't mean playing pool is self refuting. It means that for us to play the game we have to agree on a set of rules first, rules which are subjective. But once we agree, from that point the winner if the game is an objective determination. Morality works exactly the same way.
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@Mall
Having no belief in gods/having a belief in no gods is the same difference. Like saying half full, half empty. You get the same value.
Having no belief towards proposition X, and believing proposition X is false are two very different things. One is an assertion, the other is not.
Right now there is a man in Texas who has been detained in connection with a murder. Do you believe he is guilty or do you believe he is innocent?
If you have any basic understanding of critical thinking, your answer would be "neither". You can't form a rational opinion on that to which you have no valid information.
You are right that believing God does not exist and not holding any belief regarding his existence is the same on a practical level, that's why it is useless to define atheism as the belief in God's nonexistence. You are sperating people into two categories that serves no purpose, other than to make yourself feel better because you can't meet your burden of proof.
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@Tarik
That has nothing to do with the morality model I've offered. If you begin with a standard and judge everything according to that standard then within that framework, when you have opposing forces one side will be right and the other will be wrong.
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@YouFound_Lxam
That doesn’t change the fact that we have more advanced protective measures now that match the danger just like back then, and even so, assault weapons aren’t the only weapon that is lethal.
What advanced protective measures do we have to ensure that someone with a gun can't kill other people? I've never heard of such a thing.
And no one is arguing that only assault weapons are lethal. You're engaging in a black or white fallacy. The issue with assault weapons is how much more lethal they are compared to say handguns or hunting rifles. The more lethal they are the more likely the shooter is to be successful in killing someone else or killing multiple people.
Guns is actually not the only issue in this area of school safety. More knife attacks are happening today in schools by students than ever in American history.This doesn’t seem like a problem of weapons. It seems like a problem of motivation or mental health.
It's not an either/or. Dealing with mental health does not exclude us from dealing with guns. And as a side note, the mental health argument has shown itself time and time again to be nothing more than an excuse and a distraction. I've never heard of a single lawmaker who's against gun safety laws come out with a mental health bill aimed at curbing gun violence, in fact the same people who rail against the left for trying to increase gun regulations are almost always the same people who argue against laws that increase access to healthcare (which includes mental health).
But all that aside, you still ignored every point I made about the idea that harm caused by any tool or product should be regulated. If the problem is that people are more mentally ill than ever, then it's common sense that this gives us more of a reason to limit the access that people have to weapons which a mentally ill population can use to destroy itself.
There is a reason we don't let toddlers play with knives, and the more toddlers you have running around the more careful you have to be with how many knives you have and what you need to do to secure them. It is once again, common sense logic that we apply to literally everything else in our lives, except guns.
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@YouFound_Lxam
Atheism: Belief that no God exists
You're free to define atheism however you wish, but this definition does not apply to the vast majority of people you would call atheists.
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@YouFound_Lxam
Now more than ever we have the strictest gun laws ever in American history.
That is not true at all. Up until recent decades assault weapons were banned nationally and many areas of the country restricted guns in ways the SC blew up when they decided the term malitia in the constitution meant 'every individual American'.
Also, guns are far more advanced today than they were for the majority of the nation's history and the quantities in which they flood our communities is relatively new as well.
Maybe it's not a gun problem. Maybe it's a societal problem.
This really isn't complicated. No other developed nation on earth has as many guns as we do, and no other developed nation on earth suffers from gun violence at the rate we do. How 2A advocates leap over those two facts to search for some other root cause never ceases to amaze me.
Moreover, even if it is a societal problem that doesn't mean we have no obligation to respond. There is a reason prisons take their inmates shoelaces. No one in their right mind would just say "we have an inmate problem" and leave it there. It's common sense that we apply in every area of our life - if a tool or product is being used in a way that is causing harm, we regulate or even ban the use of that tool or product to minimize it's harm. Why logic itself suddenly changes once we're talking about guns is beyond me.
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@Sidewalker
That's not how it works, the solution to gun violence is more guns.
Ah yes I see it now, more guns = less gun violence. Brilliant!
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@ADreamOfLiberty
Funny how the culture problem in the US is 57 times worse than that of comparable countries. I wonder what that's about.Ask Switzerland.
Why?
I suspect the answer is that it's the outlier in some statistic you decided to cherry pick. Let's see if I'm right.
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@badger
Maybe it's something to do with all those guns you guys have lying around. I definitely think something like that would foster a general anxiety.
You mean a country that is inundated with guns will have more gun violence? Nah, couldn't be.
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@ILikePie5
Funny how the culture problem in the US is 57 times worse than that of comparable countries. I wonder what that's about.First world country problems. Too much electronics. Not enough personal interactions, etc
So every first world country has the same problem then, is that right?
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@Mharman
However, Roosevelt has made many threads talking about how “red state crime is out of control”… a claim anyone reasonable would recognize as ridiculous. In truth, crime rates in any location are a product of many factors, and it isn’t a blue/red split.
He's being facetious. It's a response to the ridiculousness of republicans framing every problem in the country as purely the result of democratic policies when it is not that simple, so you two seem to be in agreement.
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@ILikePie5
A 14 year old. When will people start realizing that the next generation is full of degenerates like this guy and that we have a culture problem in the US.
Funny how the culture problem in the US is 57 times worse than that of comparable countries. I wonder what that's about.
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@Tarik
The point is that I'm using that as my moral standard. Both of the concepts involved are determined objectively, so what is or is not moral can be objectively determined from that starting point. The starting point however, whether it's the reduction of harm + fairness or whether it's 'whatever God says' will always be up to the individual, thereby making moral judgements subjective.
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@Greyparrot
No, it's not. At all.
John McCain's son is railing against the Trump team for their antics, and your reply to me says that you agree Trump was being disrespectfully political. Yet the title to this thread says his son didn't understand his father. The two have nothing to do with eachother and everything you've written says the opposite of your title so this entire thread is one big contradiction.
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@Greyparrot
lol, yes.
Then what point were you trying to make?
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@Tarik
What's your point?Morality is objective.
Then you failed to make it.
Fairness is objectively determined because fairness is ultimately about whether people are treated equally, and equality is not a matter of opinion. Fairness is not morality.
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@Tarik
Ok, so for those of us who speak English correctly, what you were trying to say is that objective thinking promotes fairness. Yes, I agree. What's your point?
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@Greyparrot
The point of Arlington Cemetery is to go and show respect for the men and women who have given their lives for this country when you make it political you take away the respect of the people who are there....
You mean like recording your visit so you can feature it in a campaign ad?
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@Tarik
Objectivity is fair
This statement doesn't make sense. Please rephrase.
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@Greyparrot
He was likely given a "list"... like all presidents get from the deep state.
It's the deep state in the room with you right now?
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@Tarik
Yes, because two posts back is so far lol
My point exactly
Unless you’re conceding to my original point that those are interchangeable terms.
Yes, within the context of this conversation, they mean the same thing. I don't know why you're calling that concession, I've never argued against that. What I did argue against was your assertion that most who share my general worldview on this subject are engaging in circular logic. That would be the case of there was no starting point, and yet there is which I already explained.
Lastly the operative word in your definition is “all” which makes your definition impractical because we “all” don’t agree on what constitutes as harm and we “all” don’t agree on what is fair.
My usage of the word "all" had nothing whatsoever to do with everyone agreeing. I defined what is right partly as what is "fair to all".
That's not a controversial interpretation of fairness, in fact it's essentially baked into the definition. Anyone who is not treated with the same deference as everyone else is by definition being treated unfairly.
Reading comprehension Double_R,
Reading comprehension indeed.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
You know that the deep state kept troop deployments hidden from Trump to the point of telling him they had no troops in an area that they did?
Deep state, aka the people Trump hand picked to serve in his administration.
The level to which Trump supporters will go to blame everything on anyone but him is truly astonishing.
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@Greyparrot
The woman who got 13 U.S. Service members killed in Afghanistan...
After 4 years of railing about Biden's incompetence on the Afghan withdrawal, suddenly now it's all Kamala's fault?
Not that MAGA cares anything about consistency or intellectual honesty, but you guys really need to pick a lane. Either the VP is effectively the president or they aren't. If they aren't then your consistent attacks on Kamala are BS. If they are then voters are really choosing between Walz and JD Vance, in which case you know you will lose terribly. Let us know which one it is.
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@Greyparrot
So funny how all politicians eventually take on Trump's policies as they lose elections and drop out of races. They are racing to be the better version of Trump.
Right, first president to ever impose a tariff. Also the first president to ever cut taxes, and first to ever build a physical barrier at the border. What a pioneer.
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@Tarik
No instead you evaded the question completelywhat’s the definition of right and/or wrong?
Now I remember just how pointless it is to try and have a dialog with you.
Had to go way back, all the way to post 53 to remind you of my definition...
My morality is based upon the concept of reducing harm in a way that is fair to all. Anything that comports with this principal is good, anything that contradicts it is bad.
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@Tarik
The issue is often times words like moral, right, and good are used interchangeably so they can easily be defined by one another making the definition circular.
If someone defines "right" as "that which is good", and then defines "good" as "that which is right" then they are engaging in circular logic. That's certainly not what I or any of the prominent figures i'm aware of arguing that morality is subjective are doing.
My morality is based upon the concept of reducing harm in a way that is fair to all. Anything that comports with this principal is good, anything that contradicts it is bad.
Now if you ask me why are these principals good my answer is not "because they are", it's "because I say so". In other words, that's where it begins. If you agree with me that these are solid principals to build a moral foundation upon then we have enough ground to agree on a moral system and coexist within it. If you don't then we may not be able to. It's that simple.
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@Tarik
you can try to define it but eventually it would just lead to infinite regress
Infinite regress is inevitable in any subjective evaluation, which is what morality is. Here, I'll demonstrate:
Morality is means to an end, that end being heaven.
Why is that the definition?
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@Greyparrot
So the best woman in all of America is still no match politically for a game show host with balls.
It's called misogyny
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@Greyparrot
you accuse me of bad faith when I clearly gave you one freebie to start your list.
I accuse you of bad faith because there was already no reason to sperate out nonverbal acts from verbal to address my point. That was clearly intended as a gotcha, so this was already going no where. Furthermore, there is nothing a list would bring to the conversation that my first example didn't, yet you ignore it and press for a list anyway and then act as if my unwillingness to play your silly little game proves that I'm the bad faith actor. Talk about pot calling the kettle black.
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@Greyparrot
Again, not asking for something he said or communicated. You literally claimed Trump DID something (policy wise foe example) that was abhorrent.
Notice my literal first half sentence in my response...
In just the past day and a half he filmed a campaign ad at a cemetery
That's not something he "said". And again, that's just in the past day and a half or so.
I have no reason to provide you a list of anything because you have yet to show yourself to be interested in any good faith conversation. I have you an example address it or go away.
And what ever happened to you being a Trump hater? Are you finally admitting that you were full of shit from the start on that, or are you going to pretend that you don't think he routinely says and does things that are abhorrent?
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@Greyparrot
Can you list 5-10 things he has done (not said ) that you find abhorrent? A "daily basis" would mean you have thousands of such actions to select from, so a list of ten should be a softball ask.
In just the past day and a half he filmed a campaign ad at a cemetery and reposted a video talking about how blow jobs impacted Hilary Clinton and Kamala Haris, essentially calling Harris a whore (with of course, no evidence any of that ever happened).
Do you think Biden would still be in the race if not for the negative coverage?
Yes
Do you think people would accept that he is fit for office after that final debate?
Most people only watch spliced clips and highlight reels, so no.
CNN recently got roasted on a comedy show for supporting Biden/Kamala after the debacle debate from their own Democrat crowds...
Do you have a point?
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@Greyparrot
1. If you are capable of lowering prices for Americans, why haven’t you done it in the 3½ years you have been in office?
Do you believe Trump is going to lower prices? Yes or No?
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@Greyparrot
It's actually more likely Trump detractors do not see Trump as a person, but as an existential force of evil and hyperbolic fear. Trump does a ton of folksy chats on social media, which has personalized him to many who tuned in.
Folksy chats? It's that what you call his 3AM all caps screeds on social media screaming about fake polls and fake AI generated crowds?
You haven't addressed a word of the OP. If you guys look at Trump as you do any other human being, then why on earth do you dismiss and make nothing but excuses for the abhorrent things he says and does on a daily basis for which no other political figure is allowed to get away with? Joe Biden mixes up someone's name and it's a week's worth of coverage in rightwingville, Donald Trump goes on an hour long tangent about sharks and Hannibal Lector and you guys are like "yeah that guy is sharp enough to be president".
The complete and total lack of any standard by which Trump can do anything wrong demands some explanation, if the video's suggestion is ridiculously off then by all means you are free to offer one.
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@Swagnarok
You believe Trump would make himself a Mussolini-style dictator and value judgments like evil have never popped up in your mind?
My worldview is apparently a bit more nuanced than yours. I don't see Trump as evil, I see him as a narcissist who is incapable of empathy and only recognizes the world in terms of what's good for him thus he is incapable of understanding why anyone else would see it differently. He doesn't understand the value of democracy because to him the world is just one big game of winners and losers.
Evil is for superhero movies. Once we grow up we recognize the world is far more complicated than that. Everyone is the hero in their own story.
It's about a systemic bias in one direction against the other by the most influential voices in society.
And why do you think that is?
On the other hand, if the headline "Trump threatens a 'bloodbath' if he loses reelection" were to appear on CNN (even though, of course, Trump was talking about the US auto industry and anyone who bothered to watch the original clip should've known this), people believe that kind of stuff. It's much more effective propaganda than anything Trump or Biden is capable of. They have an outsized power to shape public opinion and they're using it solely against Trump and his campaign.
The bloodbath thing was taken out of context and many on the left including Biden did take it too far, but it wasn't nothing. If Trump had not already tried to overthrow a violent election and demonstrated as president a tacit endorsement of violence in an effort to attain it, people would not be interpreting his words the way they did.
And one would figure, if they're being accused by a massively large swath of the country of being a dictator wannabe, they would be a bit more careful of the language they use. But it's Trump so of course not. His refusal to change anything about his approach given what's already happened suggests that these kind of quotes in many cases aren't as out of context as they seem. Because context isn't just about the sentence before or after.
With all that said, you're acting as if people believe the framing of these quotes because places like CNN reported on then the way they did. You have it backwards. It's because people see Trump this way that the media puts it in that light. The media is only reflecting the impression Trump is giving, and those impressions whether you accept it or not are for good reason.
That's not to say that there is no propaganda or public opinion shaping going on here, but the viewers understand much better what's going on a play a much bigger role in the shaping of the narrative than you seem to think.
And I say that when journalists decide elections
They don't, what silly thing to say.
Taking the high road doesn't mean pretending that your political opponent isn't the threat that he is.If you're gonna go with this, then anything and everything is justified
Complete nonsense. Calling reality what it is and anything else are not the same. That's common sense.
If Ted Bundy were running for president his political opponent would call him a rapist and a murderer. That's not resorting to political insults, and it would be absurd for any campaign to treat him as a normal human being in the name of taking the high road.
It's not the democrats fault that the republican party for the third time has nominated a man who is one of the worst kinds of people we've ever seen in American political life, so it's not their responsibility to ignore it.
I'm talking about the guy who suggested we drop a nuclear bomb in a hurricane, thought the solution to California wild fires is a rakeThat's a lack of knowledge, not stupidity.
How much knowledge do you need to know that raking the forest is not a solution for CA's wildfire problem?
Should anyone have followed Trump's advice and raked the forest floor? No, but what it demonstrates is that Trump can think flexibly, a skillset that suits any President of the United States well as they go about doing what the job entails.
Demonstrates that he can think flexibly... Wow.
I accuse him of that because he is, as evidenced by the fact that he constantly fawns over dictators because of how tough and in control they are of their countriesFor what it's worth, it's not an unpopular opinion that some countries are unsuited for democracy.
This has nothing to do with my point.
Calling a lie hyperbole doesn't mean it's no longer a lie."Gee, I'm so swamped today. I've got a million things to do." Was this a lie or hyperbole?
That isn't what we're talking about and you know that.
When Trump says democrats support the execution of babies after birth that's not hyperbole, that's a lie.
You mean like loudly declaring that if a NATO ally doesn't "pay up" he would tell Russia to "do whatever the hell they want"?You mean things he was saying back in 2015/2016, before he proceeded to become President and not touch NATO?
Do you seriously believe nothing has changed since 2016?
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