bmdrocks21

this is actually a great idea

everyone seems to have lost focus on what the scope of government entails

the primary use case for government is to provide basic public services, roads, water service, electricity and more broadly, public safety in the public sphere

the secondary use case for government is to mediate disputes between citizens

if you have personally been harmed in some quantifiable way by another citizen, then you have the right (not the obligation) to file legal action against that specific citizen

 If I somehow cause another person to need a kidney (and mine is compatible) no one would dare suggest I be forced to hand mine over (not even after 6 months), but this is exactly what some expect pregnant women to do.

Typical response from the lazy "trust authority" crowd that can't be bothered to take individual responsibility for society and passes that off to "the experts"

I think governments should trust the wisdom and experience of doctors and mothers and stay out of it to the maximum extent possible.  I have zero expertise in the matter and so my opinion is worse than unwanted but also probably oversimple and wrongheaded.  I suggest we leave the entire question in the hands of obstetricians and their patients.  

I thought you supported the 2% mark for NATO.  My bad.

This GDP increase can be obtained by letting any taxpayer into the country, thereby contributing to our GDP if the US government got out of the way and let people come here without government permits.

 Sic semper tyrannis.

They have degrees and no PTSD yet.  They can get civilian jobs with no problem.

Given that we have thousands of nukes, no country will invade us, so I think we can spend less on military technology and be safe from invaders.  We probably could spend nothing on the military except for nuke matience and no country would want to invade us because they would be worried about nuclear hellfire from our nukes.  We can make a deal with Russia that we get rid of 3/4 of our nukes if they get rid of 3/4 of their nukes.  This way, if nuclear war happens, it won't be as bad and both the US and Russia still have about 1500 nukes.  We also agree that if any more nukes get developed by either country, then the other country can develop 1 more nuke per nuke developed by the other country.  This, combined with the cost of dismantling and rebuilding nukes serves as an incentive for both countries to not produce any more nukes once 75% of their nukes get dismantled.

Military spending by the NATO quotas are already an arbitrary proportion (2% of GDP).  A 1% military budget would be enough to keep us safe.

Military spending should be 1% of the GDP of the US

This is largely due to the military industrial complex, which neocons support.

Well then you live in self-deluded ahistorical fantasy world.

• Bullshit.  In the summer of 2019, Clinton gave an interview where she said "Trump knows he is an illegitimate president" because he got Russia to hack her emails, Republicans suppressed voting rolls, etc.  Even that phrasing suggests concession- whatever the legal or political results, Trump will always know he cheated.  Such a statement is mere free speech and bears no resemblance to Trump's oath-breaking.  If you can't tell the difference between the loyal opposition and disloyal hostility to Democracy itself, then I suggest you are not a sufficiently informed voter.
  

Hillary Clinton called Donald Trump to congratulate him just three minutes after the last polls closed in Hawaii and Alaska.  The next morning she publicly conceded the election:  "We must accept this result then look to the future.  Donald Trump is our new president.  We owe him an open mind and the chance to lead."  Clinton has never taken any legal or political action contradicting her concession, in spite of her rhetoric.

• Donald Trump is the ONLY Presidential candidate in American History who has failed to congratulate the winner.
  
• Donald Trump is the ONLY Presidential candidate in American History who has ever refused to concede (Al Gore withdrew his concession until the courts ruled against him on Florida)
  

plans to return to the White House in late 2022,

Trump illegally organized an attack to interrupt and overthrow the Constitutionally mandated confirmation process of Jan 6th breaking his oath of office (for the thousandth time, at least) and worked to prevent his own Vice President from carrying out that officer's constitutionally mandated duties by any means necessary. 

• We know now that Trump insiders began discussions on Nov 5th on illegal ways to hold on the presidency.
  
• We know now that Trump's legal team advised him on November 10th that there was no lawful path remaining to hold on to power and that Trump then began discussing unlawful options.
  

Andrew Yang suggested if you pay 10% of your income for 10 years the balance should be forgiven. I think that’s fair, or something close to it. But forgiving the debt of doctors and lawyers who just graduated is disgusting. If he does cancel some debt it better be capped at some modest level or I’ll be furious 

Sure but there's a world a difference between complaining about an election and actively working to overthrow the government.  The former is just democracy  then latter is just treason.

but "conservatives" loooooove to prattle on about "smallergovernmentsmallergovernmentsmallergovernment"

also, isn't public funding for roads "socialism" ?

also, isn't public funding for schools "socialism" ?

also, isn't public funding for police and fire departments "socialism" ?

i'm suggesting that iff a corporation, or a land owner has the wherewithal to provide the services we normally associate with a local government for themselves, on their own land, and that land is the size of a typical town or city, then don't you think it makes perfect sense to allow the land owner to opt-out of "government services" ?

And BTW, the change we’re talking about is the government telling Disney “you can’t govern your own property anymore, we’re going to do it”. So how you start this off with the notion that government was made smaller by this is beyond me.

If the government is getting rid of rule it itself implemented, that by itself would result in a smaller government. But the act of making that change as a result of the government’s disapproval of the entity in question’s free speech means that the government is now the arbiter of what is allowed to be said within the free market. That leaves us with a far bigger government than we started with.

isn't the "conservative motto" basically "stay off my lawn" ?

Florida using the power of big government to crack down on private companies for saying what they believe. 

3) She supports Medicare for all

Clearly we disagree on immigration, so here is something that I think can work for both of us.  Lets send all the undocumented immigrants and their families to blue counties by the standards of the 2016 election.  If the right wing counties don't want the undocumented, fine, they don't have to have them.  If the blue counties want the undocumented, fine, they can take them in and get the extra taxpayers.  Trump and DeSantis proposed this as a compromise and I accept it.  I live in a blue county; I don't mind the extra taxpayers paying off my state's debt.  Thoughts?

What if the pregnant female felt the kid inside her and due to her not liking the feeling, she aborted.  If the female thinks she is killing a human being but kills them due to convenience (a huge proportion females that abort think they are killing a human being and do so because of pregnancy pains) would you support giving her the death penalty?  If so, that sounds more authoritarian than making the guy who impregnate her get sterilized and give a kidney.

One small group of horrible immigrants did 9/11.  Banning immigrants from flying planes based on this is akin to banning guns for white people because a white person did a mass shooting.  Both ideas are equally authoritarian and horrible.  If your not worried about heart disease deaths (about 600,000 US deaths annually) it makes no sense to be worried about terrorist deaths (less than 170 deaths a year(American Deaths in Terrorist Attacks 1995-2016 (umd.edu))).

I don't want these foreigners on welfare (

Would she get the death penalty?

I don't feel threatened when foreigners buy guns.  The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

The kids in our borders though get a free education by law, paid for by tax dollars so they don't end up on welfare when they are older by the current law.

What's your alternative punishment for abortion?  In order to ban abortion, a punishment is required.  I hope you realize that.

It doesn't.  If I speak out against Allah in Saudi Arabia, I get subjected to Saudi Arabia's law, not America's.

I disagree with this.  I think anyone should be allowed to buy firearms because the constitution states, "The right of the PEOPLE (not citizens) to keep and bear arms SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED"

The constitution applies to everyone in America's borders; just like the constitution wouldn't apply to an American living in a foreign country.

Also conservative logic:

Abortion: Save the children.

Immigration: Screw the children.

This violates the 8th amendment.  kneecapping - Search (bing.com) also indicates that what you are proposing is terroristic.  If you don't like ISIS because they are terrorists, you should apply that same anti terrorist mentality for what America does.

The US population would fall if that happens.  I don't want to encourage reproduction because kids are expensive for the state to educate, but if you want to reproduced that's fine.  I don't think it should be encouraged.

But when bmdrocks21 heard this, he went away sad, for he had many possessions.

WWJD

Oh, look, the republican Satanists are out. We don't want to help any poor people. 

If you just mean regularly sending the same people back across the Mexican border, then numbers will  be relative to how my times in a year someone can be bothered to try and cross.

And despite Independence, and depending upon where in time one chooses to stick ones pin....Then most or all of you are the descendants of immigrants.

 “The best argument against democracy is the a five minute conversation with the average voter.” There must be many average voters in Hungary.

Although Hungarian democracy has been weakened, it was still within the people’s power to oust an autocrat. 

It is not the EU’s duty to fund the election campaigns of parties that undermine European values.

Isn't the statue of Liberty a French gift? Our immigration policy is nowhere near as sane or sound as France's immigration. Seems like we should ask the French for a real poem to go along with the statue they gave us since America is so incompetent at making statues and poems.

Well, since it is on the Statue of Liberty, yes.

The New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

The 1 White South African I met said whites weren't oppressed in South Africa to this day.  It's just a White lives matter crowd that is as woke as the BLM crowd.

I live in an area where I as someone who is white is the minority when I was in high school.  People weren't taught to hate white people.  People may support BLM, open borders, or repealing qualified immunity, but that's not the same thing as hating white people.  Don't race bait

Suicide is extremely rare among all races

Opioid Crisis Statistics | HHS.gov states that less people died from opioid use than from car accidents.  This shows how rare drug overdose deaths are.

You sure about that?  A male is more likely to marry a woman than a man and vice versa.

There are those stereotypes, but it's not like there is an organization called, "blond lives matter" that seeks to end discrimination against blonds.  Most black people aren't part of BLM.  It's just these fringe woke people and their fervent opponents that are part of the identity wars.

I'm a short guy and I can tell you that I don't get verbally abused for being short.  If someone did verbally abuse me for being short, that's their free speech.

Just as people with different hair colors, genders, and heights can get along fine without fighting, people of different races can do the same.

. It would be a disservice to democracy to discourage certain demographics to be informed which issues particularly affect them.

Social problems will therefore inevitably arise, in a society that naturally fragments into sub-groups based upon perceivable differences.

Factoring in the appeals etc., how much does it cost to execute one prisoner? Comparatively, how much does it cost to keep them in prison for life?

You see, that's the funny part- I do. In a democracy, everyone else and I have the right to make damn near any choice for anyone.

Prove it.

I see an appeal to force, nothing more. Your unsigned social contracts and your legal fictions won't do a single thing to convince me to obey. The bullets are doing all the convincing. Bullets obey many masters. If you're fine with that there is nothing else to say.

If I leave the gravitational well of the earth don't I have more freedom of choice over where I go?

That is a completely different kind of freedom. To confuse it with political/ethical freedom is equivocation. Political freedom, the freedom that is established by the moral derivation I gave and which is referred to in the definition of proper rights is freedom from the force, threats of force, and equivalent deceptions of other moral actors.

Freedom to live in a nice house is a privilege, earned from nature or given in charity.

No government deserves to exist in of itself. There is no coherent objective moral concept "sovereignty".

If you're just going to ignore the important bits I'll run out of things to say fairly quickly. I didn't just assert it, I proved it. "rules and structure alter the course of the choices we make" has no relevance to my derivation whatsoever. It's just hand waving.

Depends on who you ask.

I was asking you.

yours is my ratings... I'm surprised at how low even Democrats rate Clinton.

Trump would have gotten a B if he could’ve accepted his loss and not landed many of his most gullible followers in federal prison and cost republicans the senate during his tantrum. If he had acted like an adult his entire term he would get an B+ (he would also still be President.) Most of the stuff he actually did I liked, but I was so incredibly tired of doing mental gymnastics to defend the man. 

You haven't the right to make that choice for others.

Subsidization isn't freedom.

That is revisionism. It wasn't a war for sovereignty, it turned into a demand for sovereignty because that was the only way to get liberty and because there is no point playing for lower stakes when the other side has declared that you must die a traitor's death (something democrats today should remember when they throw around terms like "insurrection").

We each choose our end, and therefore liberty is the beginning, middle, and end. The notion that someone has too much freedom because they made a choice that harmed them in your opinion or even in their own is the tyrant's delusion. The tyrant can use lies and force to control behavior saying he is doing it for their own good but he can never fulfill the values of his victims because all of their values rest upon their self-determination.

What is conservative? What is being conserved if not liberty? And what encroaches against it?

When you grow up in a country founded in a violent insurrection in the name of liberty, liberty is the conservative value.

Liberty is worth conserving, it has objective value. Liberty is worth progressing towards, it has objective value

I vote right-tribe because they lie a lot less often and they tend to be wrong in ways that don't destroy civilizations, but if being conservative means favoring the old simply because it is old I will never be a conservative.

I'm sure there are instances like you point out, but the overall balance seems to indicate individual liberties are being lost as more and more individuals are being coerced into  fewer options. More permissions are required to pursue happiness. 

Yeah a kid has the freedom to ingest whatever drug the pharmaceutical companies advocate. How about a child's freedom to operate a lemonade stand? Nope, not in Democrat states. How about a Child's freedom to go maskless or helmetless? Nope.

How about a Child's freedom to opt out of public education? Nope.

The females aren't the horny ones usually.

If a man doesn't want kids, he shouldn't have sex.

Anti Roe V Wade people have been preaching, "If you don't want children, don't have sex" to females this entire time.

If you are really worried about a female you had sex with getting an abortion, just don't have sex with her.