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@HistoryBuff
have you seen the recent polling? Trump is, by a wide margin, the most popular republican politician (among republicans). If the primary were held today, trump would win the republican nomination. No question.Writing off 30-35% of the country as "white supremacists or sociopathic businessmen" is a bit harsh. And it doesn't really help anyone. If you don't try to understand why people do the things they do, then you can't possibly prepare for it. Trump is a horrible person. But he speaks to the very real problems lots of people have. And those people care far more about "the swamp" (or whatever other issue it is they believe in trump over) far more than his mean tweets and corruption.That being said, i don't think trump has any chance of winning a general election. But he would sail to an easy win the republican primary.
Pretty much 100% agree.
I don't want him to run again. He will lose because his name is way too toxic. In terms of the policy proposal changes he brought to the GOP, I am hoping he will have a lasting impact.
There needs to be a Republican president who is much more intelligent who will speak to the issues of protectionism/manufacturing dying, not being war-hungry, takes immigration issues seriously, etc.
His 2016 energy died. His campaign didn't even touch many of the issues that got him elected in 2016, and he lost because of it.
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@Double_R
The first amendment has been widely acknowledged to be no defense against language that harms others. That’s why you cannot threaten someone or why you can be sued for libel. Hate speech is not much different, in this case it’s not the idea of banning it that is problematic but its improper application. What I don’t understand is why then do you spend your energy attacking the former rather than the latter?
Laws determine two things: criminal action and criminal intent. These laws are incoherent because you cannot prove the intention of someone if they merely mention something negative about a group.
Perhaps provide a couple examples of things you would determine to be hate speech to give me a better idea of what exactly you want to ban.
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@oromagi
I agree with your assertion that liberals support free speech ideologically, but I disagree that the party that has historically been considered "liberal" supports free speech, at least to the degree that Republicans do. Free speech, at least until recently, seemed to be more of a bi-partisan thing. Republicans maybe supported it because it was in the Constitution, Democrats supporting it maybe because of ideology or some other reason.
Here is a Yougov poll between parties about their support for criminalizing hate speech, showing that Democrats are the only group that has over 50% support for such a law.
Hard to find any other polls on the matter (as I usually like to provide multiple sources) but feel free to show one that contradicts mine.
Also, as for your comment about liberals being more willing to be friends with conservatives than the other way around (it may be true for you), it seems the opposite is true, generally, according to a 2017 Cato poll:
Of Clinton voters, 61% said it is hard to be friends with Trump voters, while 38% said it is not hard. On the other hand, for Trump voters, 34% said it is hard to be with Clinton voters, while 64% said it wasn't hard.
Here is another article, from the Independent, that shows the same pattern. More Democrats say it will put a strain on a friendship if a friend voted for Trump than Republicans said it would if a friend voted for Hillary. (They cite Pew Research)
So I think that Alec is making the mistake of conflating Democrats with people who possess a liberal ideology.
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@Greyparrot
Yeah, I have to say: despite there being an "epidemic" of White Supremacist violence, I have seen a rather surprising lack of burning crosses and Swastika graffiti (that doesn't turn out to be a fake hate crime)
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@Greyparrot
Lol, Godwin's Law is strong in that one.
I don't know why a 1930-40s German political movement is so relevant that it must be brought up in literally every political discussion.
You don't believe in jailing people for espousing non-mainstream opinions? nAzI>!!1?!!?/
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@Double_R
Passing a hate speech law: the group in power gets to determine what "hate speech" is.
It blatantly violates the First Amendment, which has pretty much been universally agreed upon by the Supreme Court Justices.
The implementation abroad speaks for itself when people are arrested for making jokes on the internet or fined for "misgendering" people lol.
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@Double_R
No. We’re not talking about ideas we’re talking about speech, particularly speech directed towards a certain group.
Ok, I see. Speech that supports ideas that will lead to the starvation of millions is fine to you. It is all about an arbitrary "directed towards a certain group." Indiscriminate starvation FTW!
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@Greyparrot
The government and their supporting powerful lobbies have an interest in preserving their status quo power to label any speech or idea that challenges their power as hateful and criminal, which is the entire reason why we have a 1st amendment.
"Gulf Tonkin was a false flag."
Who's knocking at the door?
AhhhERGSdfsfdsGFGS
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@Greyparrot
I suppose. Violence is neither a good nor a bad thing. It is good to use violence to ban murder.
Government is said to generally have a “monopoly on violence”
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@Greyparrot
Those are some serious bars.... must be from the fetal alcohol syndrome :P
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@Double_R
I’d be happy to answer your question... as soon as you can tell me what this has to do with this the topic of this thread or with anything I have said.
Not sure where the confusion is coming from. You say "hate speech" is speech that leads to violence against people. I'm asking if an idea has historically lead to death and starvation, should it also be banned from advocacy, or do you put an arbitrary rule of "might cause violence" on speech?
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@Greyparrot
HOW DARE YOU!
Are you quoting climate scientist Greta Thunberg?
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@Double_R
What qualifies speech as hate speech isn’t whether someone listening gets their feelings hurt, it’s whether the content of your speech taken to its logical end would incite or serve as justification for violence towards another group.
Are stupid ideas that lead to mass starvation 100% of the time also banned? Or is that fine?
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@TheUnderdog
If hate speech is banned, I'm going to prison.
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@Death23
We are doing things to address the impact of class on opportunity - Why not these other things now that there's evidence of impacts on opportunity? This is my thinking.
I definitely understand your point: that you can be disadvantaged at birth for things out of your control.
But I think the measures to solve socioeconomic differences (taxes) are different in nature than altering biology to achieve the same outcomes.
I think that maybe in another society where eugenics or dysgenics wasn't taboo, I could definitely see measures undertaken to remedy this cause of disparities.
Even mentioning biological differences is taboo, especially on racial lines.
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@ILikePie5
I read it twice in my schooling days lol. Once in high school and grade school. Good read!
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@Death23
And, in thinking about this, let us talk about other forms of disadvantage people are faced with in life over which they have no control (e.g. race, height, beauty - whatever it is).
Sounds a bit dystopian. Are you familiar with the short story Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut?
It is a story about a future in which equality is enforced. Beautiful people must wear masks, smart people wear headphones that scramble their thoughts, strong people carry around weights that keep them from being faster than others, etc.
Sounds like an egalitarian nightmare. Part of understanding the world is knowing that it is hierarchal even on the individual level. Some people will always have an advantage because of genetics and class. Class can to some extent be remedied if you wish to do so. Genetics, barring extreme dysgenics for those with good genetics or eugenics for people with bad genetics is essentially unsolvable.
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@3RU7AL
The Republicans haven't been historically pro-labor, but Trump was fairly pro-labor. So why not support him instead of the guy who has historically voted to screw over labor and outsource jobs to China?
They don't have to be 100% for one party. Simply picking and choosing which politicians to support based on their record is what they should do.
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@3RU7AL
STRONG labor unions always lobby in FAVOR of protectionism.
All major labor unions backed Joe Biden, the guy who wasn't the protectionist. The guy that helped China get permanent normalized trade relations, get them into the WTO, and supported NAFTA.
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@3RU7AL
I think that protectionism reduces the need for labor unions. We had both from early to mid 1900s.
I’m fine with weaker unions if we have tariffs and quotas on imports, personally
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@3RU7AL
Unions can help against outsourcing but protectionist policies, which we had before the 50s, had helped up build a massive manufacturing base.
Protectionism gives less incentive and less leverage to outsource. But outsourcing is primarily for cheaper labor and unions want high wages, hence the reason outsourcing is so common
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@3RU7AL
NOBODY DOES THIS BETTER THAN WORKERS UNIONS.
No, they catalyze outsourcing of those jobs. Protectionism makes it much more costly to outsource, so companies keep or create the high-paying jobs here
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@3RU7AL
I don’t think they need to go that overboard to get the vote. I think a widespread adoption of a protectionist capitalist platform would be good. Using tariffs to protect high-paying jobs that don’t require a college degree is the way to go.
Being socialist would definitely hurt them
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@Double_R
I'm certainly not talking about everyone, my point is that these ideas are not as appealing as the party once swore they were and I think what we are seeing in our politics today is a reckoning on what to do about that.
I'm not entirely sure that social conservatism isn't viable politically, but I know that the fiscal libertarianism definitely isn't viable. Hispanics, the largest minority voting block, are quite religious and socially conservative overall. If the GOP would become a populist conservative workers party, I think they would keep all of the White vote they need while also gaining large portions of the Hispanic vote.
We operate more or less on a pendulum. The widespread degeneracy we are seeing is very likely to have a strong reaction as people can no longer stomach what our culture has become. While Hollywood and the media do everything they can to make conservatism seem "uncool", you have to realize that the GOP has never been the young person's party. It is the party of families, evident as most married people with kids vote for them.
But I certainly agree that the GOP has cast aside most of its socially conservative principles in what Patrick Buchanan more or less describes as a neocon insurgency. Neocons are free traders, social liberals, and war hawks that must be cast out of the party before it can once again become competitive nationally.
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@3RU7AL
Wouldn't those business have monopolies in those 100km areas then? Just like a "company town".
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@3RU7AL
Tradition + Authority + Free-Markets
You like what you see? 👀
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Shifted a little bit on each since the last time I took it, but the same are in the majority.
Fascist gang where you at?!?
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@Bringerofrain
All it is, is tinkering along an acceptable range. The range just happens to be pretty narrow.
That is what all politics is. There is an "Overton Window", a range of beliefs that people believe aren't extreme. It should be the goal of conservative politicians to shift that window to the right.
You can see what happens when there is a legitimate movement to overthrow the established order. Occupy walstreet for example was scaring the bejesus out of the establishment, so liberals coopted the populist movement by making it also a pro SJW movement, which drove conservatives away.
It became an entirely SJW movement. You'll notice the anti-White/White privilege narrative ramped up right before the movement came to an abrupt end. They have the attention span of a gnat and the laser pointer was directed at ol' Whitey instead of the rich that are bankrupting the system. Perhaps some interests with a lot of money influenced the media..... But of course that is a conspiracy.
Corporations pay billions to make sure we only elect politicians who have an acceptable range of views. Trump was the precursor for a figure that will unite left-wing and right wing populists, but he was still a safe ticket that had an acceptable range of views.
I hardly think that Trump is any sort of precursor of unity. He is a direct product of irreparable division and hatred each political camp has towards each other and the general hatred for the current political system.
The fault lines in our society had roots well before his election. He just brought them to light. We are increasingly becoming two countries, political violence is becoming commonplace, and one side is all aboard the degeneracy train that many of the old Christian European stock want nothing to do with. There is no uniting that.
I agree that he was radical in no way other than rhetoric. In terms of accomplishments, other than a couple good EOs and enforcing immigration laws already on the books, he just did what any Republican does: cut taxes and deregulate.
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@Dr.Franklin
I don't think that is conservatism.
Yeah, I am beginning to dislike Reagan more and more every day because that is his legacy: some form of gutted conservatism.
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@RM
I'd agree with a lot of that. I'd say numbers one and two are conservative (although #2 is a little bit of a strawman), however I have never really considered libertarians to be conservative.
Maximizing freedom, aka libtertarianism, is more of a classical liberal stance. They are about maximizing freedom, as you said, while conservatives put order first and freedom second, as Russell Kirk put it.
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@Bringerofrain
I don't buy that they are essentially the same party. Trump pushed for a public charge rule, limited refugees drastically, had a remain in Mexico policy, supported a wall, and supported a keystone pipeline.
Biden is the opposite of all of that and wants to put strong restrictions on firearms, which the Democrat Congress supports and GOP opposes.
There is a liberal wing of the Republican party and conservative (relatively speaking) wing of the Democrat party, and they make up a rather large portion of Congress and are fairly similar in beliefs.
There are a handful of issues the parties disagree on (guns being probably the biggest one), but the majority of Republicans couldn't reasonably be called "conservatives"
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@Danielle
Is there an exemption for religious organizations? If there isn't, I don't know why you expect to get the votes on it lol. If there is, then I'd need to read the actual text to see what they actually want to do. Most GOP don't even care about gay marriage anymore, so I doubt they'll risk vandalism to their house over a No vote.
Since you specifically outline employment, which gays are guaranteed non-discrimination with barring the religious exemption, I'm assuming that either you are reading some old form of the bill from before the SCOTUS case or that they want to strip the religious exemption.
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@Double_R
Well the modern Republican party isn't conservative. They have conceded on most social issues. Since Reagan, "conservatism" has been about low taxes and small government-nothing else.
While minimizing taxes and federalism are part of what it means to be an American conservative, they are really only a small part of it.
It is about promoting a strong family, strong communities, defending the Constitution/having an originalist interpretation of it, monoculturalism rather than multiculturalism, religious/moral laws and attitudes, among other things.
The whole free trade obsession shenanigans are a recent, poor development in the party. Historically, the Republican party supported large tariffs.
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@Conway
It is essentially how the "n-word" is viewed. You can say it if you are of that group, but otherwise it is derisive.
Clearly, the original poster doesn't consider himself a "redneck"
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*calls them rednecks*
*wonders why they don't respond respectfully*
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@Danielle
Ok, Josh Hawley had his book deal rescinded, the President of the United States (at the time) was removed from various social media sites, and hundreds of people in the publishing business are signing a letter to ensure that Trump cannot publish any books.
But surely that happens to previous presidents like Barrack, right?
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Nobody drone struck children quite as well as good ol' Barrack.
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@Danielle
What if a degenerate took authoritarian power? o_O
That would be bad, mkay.
"Mandatory sex changes and sodomy for all" lol
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@Danielle
That's strange! I never heard of someone becoming more authoritarian in college. Why lol did you witness too much debauchery?
Yeah, I think being around so many degenerates as the country culturally declines had quite the effect on me haha
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@Danielle
Most people start their libertarian phase in college.
I find that really odd. I was libertarian starting senior in high school, but started slowly trending authoritarian about halfway through freshman year in college and never stopped lol.
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@Intelligence_06
He cancelled the Muslim ban. How is that not good
He banned travel from countries that had high levels of terrorism. It just so happens that many of those have high concentrations of Muslims. That makes sense due to the nature of the religion.
They did a lot of polls back I believe a few years after 9/11 and countries like Jordan had high support for suicide bombings and high opinions of Osama Bin Laden.
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@Vader
I do understand that there are major flaws of the philosophy, with regards to outsourcing. However, companies outsource and move to foreign lands due to the increase in government regulations. I guarantee you that more companies would stay in the USA if it weren't for these regulations. I just don't think Reaganism is going to drive this country in the right direction as radicalism on both parties is shifting (Trump being Auth Right and Bernie being Socialist Auth Left). I believe freedom is essential into democracy and the one thing preventing us from true freedom is government. Government holds more authority to oppress us than the corporation
If we allowed companies to dump toxic waste in our rivers and they could get away with paying $10 per week for wages, I'm sure more businesses WOULD stay here.
But it depends: do you want to live in an America with pollution levels rivaling China? Do you want people dying in factories left and right? I certainly don't.
There definitely needs to be regulations. If companies want to leave? You screw them. Have a protectionist economy that puts quotas and tariffs on the goods they wanted to make cheaply. We have a massive consumer base that they need access to, and make them "make it in America" if they want to make a lot of money here. Free trade gives them a free pass to outsource jobs without consequences.
If you needed a 'conservative' appeal, that is basically what the Founding Fathers did. They ran the government mainly off of tariffs. Trump was only considered "radical" because our country went full free trade and socially libtarded over the past decades. Very little of what he did was some crazy authoritarian stuff, and I would argue that he should have done more like quelling riots with the Insurrection Act.
And the government has less power to oppress us in terms of taking away rights. Twitter? They can deplatform you for wrong think. The government must respect freedom of speech, at least until they pass an Amendment that says otherwise. The government is a tool that can be good or bad: it can protect or harm. The people vote for these representatives. The corporations are beholden to profit-incentives and shareholders. Therefore, force companies to be aligned with the public by being protectionist, for example. They can force companies to respect free, non-criminal speech too.
The government has plenty of its own drawbacks. They have their place. Private industry also has their place. Use their respective powers to increase Americans' wellbeing as much as possible.
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@Greyparrot
All that proved was the corruption of the corporate media. It depends on if the people fall for their lies hook, line, and sinker.
The connection between screwing over billionaire hedge funds that over-shorted GameStop and "White Supremacy" is hard to make.
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@Greyparrot
Even if Congress couldn’t spend money, their actions still affect people. Always going to be interest groups.
But preventing infinite soft money spending on campaign ads and other expenditures certainly reduces their influence
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@Vader
With the recent fiasco with Robinhood, my outright anger at Robinhood and anger at AOC for dividing the party when there is bipartisan agreement, I lose faith in both parties. Thus is where Libertarianism comes in.
I haven't read to see if everyone has added their two cents in on this, but this seems a little contradictory, friend. The private market supposedly colluded to protect billionaires. That was private corporations working together to further their interests.
So I don't see how giving corporations more power over our lives will necessarily solve that. What really needs to happen is two things: get money out of politics and primary to remove incompetent imbeciles like AOC who cares more about virtue signaling for attention than working with people like Ted Cruz to solve the Robinhood issue.
The government is in many ways incompetent, but that is mainly due to the incompetence and/or corruption of the politicians in power. You need to balance government and the private sector. The private sector is competent and efficient, but rarely has your intentions in mind. The public sector should hypothetically have your interests at heart and it is possible for that to happen (it was that way once), but they are inefficient.
Don't make the mistake of going down the libertarian "do as you want" cesspit. That is why we live in a degenerate society right now. Don't falsely believe that corporations are benevolent entities: they would outsource your job in a heartbeat to save money.
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@Jasmine
Because orange man is bad and Hitler and Mussolini are also bad and they are fascists. Ergo, Trump is fascist
Not to mention, Mussolini, Hitler, and Trump all drank water.
The connections just keep piling up
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@Death23
Yeah, it is just something that we aren’t allowed to even question for some reason without losing our jobs, so we will continue to just blame “racism” for 100% of the differences likely until the end of time.
That’s my pessimistic and likely realistic projection.
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@Death23
I might be looking at the wrong table, but doesn’t the one correcting for the Flynn effect show a White (both) IQ of 110.5 at 7 and 105.5 at 7 and Black (both) IQ of 91.4 at 7 and 83.7 at 17?
That would be a difference of 19.1 at 7 and 21.8 at 17
And my opinion is that it is likely largely generic and environmental. They are both going to be significant.
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@thett3
Most of my male friends are in pretty bad shape too. All but one of my friends are single and we are getting to the age where traditionally most people would be married. It depresses me to no end to think that most people I know would literally be happier if they had knocked up some girl/gotten knocked up by some guy in high school. Not exactly the best life but compared to the extraordinarily lonely 60+ years facing a lot of my generation, yeash. I know what I would choose.My advice to any young person is that unless you’re like a 6’5” male or a female model or something don’t necessarily settle for the first person willing to marry you but don’t dilly dally either. Prince Charming either doesn’t exist or he’s taken by someone you can’t compete with.
It's so sad to hear that so much of our generation is like that. I don't know if feminism is to blame for ruining relationships, or what. I'm sure that isn't the only thing to blame. Seeing a big rise in these "MGTOW" types, though.
I was lucky enough to get engaged, and I'll hold on for dear life lol!
And I'd say that getting knocked up isn't necessarily what would make them happier. We no longer live in a country that forces "shot gun weddings" for people that knock someone up/get knocked up. Meaning, they no longer marry the person they have a kid with. If they did, they would be happier. If not, they would probably be the same emotionally tbh.
After all of this "liberation" it seems all that reckless freedom does is make people miserable. Time to return to tradition!
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@Greyparrot
Standard & Poor's credit rating for the United States stands at AA+ with stable outlook. Moody's credit rating for the United States was last set at Aaa with stable outlook.
Yeah, looks like we have best on Moody and second best on S&P. I'm expecting that to go down since we inflated our money supply bigly during this pandemic lol
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