People seemed to enjoy the discussion in the original article, so I’m going to expand on it based on some of the conversation we had in the comments. As noted in the comments, August is employing the Socratic method. In real life, August is a 
classmate from law school who was a philosophy major. He and I enjoy sipping bourbon, smoking pipes, and talking politics, philosophy, and theology.
In the original article, I made the assertion that rights are meaningless outside of a relationship. I also asserted that rights are definitions of the boundaries of authority between co-equal entities (man to man; man to human institution). In this article, I will address some of the points brought up in the comments: conflicting rights, objective v. subjective rights, negative v. positive rights, how rights flow from self-ownership.
The conversation picks up at the end of the prior article:
AUGUST: So if rights are based on authority and the equality of man, are you saying that rights are attempts to prevent inequity between men and between man and institutions created by man?
OSCAR: Yes! As with any co-equal relationship, there are certain things solely in the domain of the first, other things that are solely in the domain of the second, and some things that are in an overlapping domain between the two. For example, parenting.
AUGUST: So, in this Venn Diagram description, your domain is your rights with respect to me, my domain is my rights with respect to you, and the shared domain is collective rights between us and conflicting rights between us. How can rights conflict if they are natural?
OSCAR: Well, this is more of a semantic difference. Either you can paint with broad strokes (“right to life; right to play loud music; right to swing your arms”) and deal with conflicts of the rights (“my right to swing my arm ends at your nose”), or you can paint more carefully (“right to swing your arms in open portions of your personal space”) and not have to deal with conflicts. Either way, there is a limit to the extent of your rights where you begin to infringe somebody else’s rights.
AUGUST: This still seems fuzzy. How do you know when you’re infringing somebody else’s rights?
OSCAR: Well, we need to know how to identify a right in order to be able to tell if we’re infringing on rights. There are two things called “rights” these days. One is negative rights, and the other is positive rights. Positive rights are largely a misnomer in the context of strangers (including the government). The only relationship in which positive rights make sense is the dependent/caretaker relationship. This is why people refer to the “Nanny State” when government enshrines positive rights in law. Negative rights, however, are natural rights. They derive from self-ownership. Negative rights are things whose direct, tangible consequences are felt only by the rights owner and consenting others. In essence, you are the sovereign of your own 
domain; only you have the authority to make decisions that result in consequences to only you. Thus, you are infringing on somebody else’s rights when you do something that keeps them from exercising sovereignty over themselves and their property.
AUGUST: Direct, tangible consequences? Like economic externalities, emotional effects, and social consequences?
OSCAR: No, usually rights violations are one of three categories: force, fraud, and coercion. Nobody forces you to feel a certain way. Nobody coerces the market to ripple when you make a transaction. Nobody forces society to react to your actions. All of these consequences to the exercise of rights may be of concern to people and to society at large, but they are outside of the authority of strangers and the government to resolve by infringing on the free exercise of rights.
AUGUST: But we discussed before that there are times when you can use force, like in self-defense. It seems like you can’t use force until you can.. it’s all very arbitrary sounding.
OSCAR: Not at all. There is a basic principle that you can respond to immoral force with force of your own, but you cannot initiate immoral force: the non-aggression principle.
AUGUST: Ah, so when my neighbor accidentally steps on my side of the property line, I get to kill him?
OSCAR: No, the NAP is better seen as a negative limitation than a positive one. The NAP tells you when you CAN’T use force, but doesn’t dictate HOW you can use force when it is not immoral to do so. There are rules of proportionality that are outside the scope of rights.
AUGUST: That is all well and good, but I’m still not convinced that negative rights are a necessary consequence of self-ownership.
OSCAR: Ownership implies control. If you own yourself, you have control over your actions. Ownership also implies exclusivity as to strangers. There can be co-owners of something, but co-ownership implies a consenting relationship. You cannot be a co-owner with a complete stranger. Therefore, absent consensual abdication of your self-ownership, your claim to your own body and to your actions is exclusive. As previously discussed, the only time this changes is when your actions cause direct, tangible consequences to non-consenting others.
Part of your actions include your labor. You are the owner of your labor, including the economic value of your labor. Economic value of your labor can be traded for physical property, which makes you exclusive owner of capital. Throughout this entire chain, your exclusive ownership and control has not been severed unless consensually negotiated for. Therefore, self-ownership implies control over your actions, your labor, and your property, up to the point where you cause direct, tangible consequences to non-consenting others. It is important to note here that the direct, tangible consequences need to be caused against a legitimate claim of the non-consenting other. If I buy the Mona Lisa, I deprive you of being able to see it. However, you have no legitimate claim to the Mona Lisa because you have no grounds to claim ownership of the Mona Lisa.
AUGUST: What’s the point of all of this if a “might makes right” government comes in and imposes its will on you?
OSCAR: Rights are not subjective. Negative rights are natural outcroppings from the physical reality of self-ownership. Positive rights are natural outcroppings of the duties that are inherent in a caretaker role. Practical infringements of rights do not affect the ethical reality of rights.
AUGUST: Do you have the right to do something that is wrong?
OSCAR: In my definition of rights as authority boundaries between co-equal entities, the question is somewhat irrelevant. If your “wrong” thing does not involve using force, fraud, or coercion on a non-consenting other, then government has no rightful authority to stop you. However, this says nothing of the inherent morality of your actions. You could perpetrate a horrible evil against yourself (or against God, for those who believe), and it would no more be within the government’s rightful authority than if you did a great good for yourself (or for God, for those who believe).
For a detailed treatment of this question and other related topics, I turn it over to Milton Friedman (1 hr youtube vid).
I think Oscar had his feet under him better in part 2 than part 1.
I wanted to interrupt with a Goedel reference at one part though.
I prefer a corset to a Gödel.
There’s an answer for the Socratic method…
*prepares Hemlock soup*
I have much to say
and no time to type it.
I really want to contribute here but am slammed. Can I just tee up my response for when I have time with the following:
Definitions are important to have clear communication
I prefer a different paradigm than the positive vs negative
I have written this a bunch over at TSTSNBN but want to again here
“Thus, you are infringing on somebody else’s rights when you do something that keeps them from exercising sovereignty over themselves and their property.”
I feel like the mayor Berkeley should read your post. (http://hotair.com/archives/2017/08/29/berkeley-mayor-school-doesnt-shut-right-wing-speakers-next-month-antifa-will-riot/).
Natural rights? How does that work?
“Rights” have become such a convoluted and misused notion I try to avoid the use of the word altogether, unless I’m giving directions.
Take a triple left at the light…
great, now we’re at the gas station.
You took a regular left, didn’t you?
That’s right.
Noooo, a regular left is left, no wonder you went the wrong way on a triple left!
Like a roundabout?
No, don’t go there, that’s a silly place.
Which one of you is Simplicio in this dialogue?
My take: rights are fundamentally basically the same as property. They constitute an etiquette that describes what behavior is going to make someone kill you. “Take my shit? Keep it up and I’ll fucking kill you.” “I have to buy a stamp to publish a newspaper? How about fuck you and I fucking kill you?” Etc.
Time for that children’s book: Uncle Warty Explains Liberty.
We tried to make an audiobook version, but the distributer required some censor bleeps. It ended up sounding like morse code…
And the morse code itself spelled out words that needed to be bleeped out.
I lol’d
Wait so if I shoot someone for parking on two spots in a crowded area what rights are involved? Cause those people should be shot. Also people who do not put the plates back at the gym.,
That strikes me as disproportional.
They should at least have their tires slashed.
You don’t love in what is by some measurements the most traffic jammed city in Europe
That’s true. I don’t live in Europe, and I took an undesirable shift so I didn’t have to sit in traffic on my way in and out of work. And the grocery is twenty-four hours, so I don’t usually have to fight for parking – except for the streetside by my house, and that’s parallel…
Creature of the night, huh?
Also people who do not put the plates back at the gym.
This.
I say give them over to the wrath of the Avenging God of Lifting….Warty.
The Avenging God helps those who help themselves…
Or people that want to tie up three stations to do a circuit. Or use the power rack to stretch. Squat or GTFO!
Good part II. Keep it up.
If one took a flamethrower to a fire ant raft, would it be possible to kill the colony before the waters recede?
I would think so. Gas floats so how about a funeral pyre raft? Give them the Norse treatment.
Kill the queen and the larvae. Nothing else matters.
I wouldn’t dare get close enough to a fire ant raft to pick out individuals – better to burn it all.
A blowtorch. The ones on the bottom are already dead, and there’s no reason to light the hurricane on fire too.
“Flaming Hurricane” sounds like a hotel bar drink.
Copyright 2017 Hurricane Harvey
I appreciate that your fellow is engaged enough to push and prod against your arguments. Most of the people I talk to are so disinterested in engaging in this type of discussion that the usual response is some variant of “yea, but still”. I also love how this type of conversation quickly becomes a crucible to ideas. They are either refined into something more cogent or scraped away like so much slag.
*Standing ovation*
This is good stuff. I wish I had time to really dig into some of the discussion. A few quickies:
AUGUST: Do you have the right to do something that is wrong?
Morally wrong, or legally wrong? I certainly have the natural right to do things that may be proscribed by some moral codes. By definition, if I have the right to do something, it shouldn’t be legally wrong to do it, at least if we subscribe to the definition of rights that does not say I have the right to violate someone else’s rights. The legal code should essentially pre-define the limits of my rights when they are in conflict with another’s rights – in fact that’s one of the few justifications for having a legal code at all.
Rights are not subjective. Negative rights are natural outcroppings from the physical reality of self-ownership. Positive rights are natural outcroppings of the duties that are inherent in a caretaker role.
I struggle with idea that rights are objective, in the sense that they exist outside of our heads. Leaving that aside, I think that’s a pretty decent short definition of negative rights. Positive rights, though? I don’t think there are natural positive rights. The “caretaker role” is either (or both) defined by society and/or voluntarily undertaken. Any duties that are voluntarily undertaken may create moral or social duties, or even contract duties, but they do not create a positive right independent of those duties.
Example: You are the parent of a child. You have voluntarily undertaken the caretaker role, either by agreeing to it or by engaging in activities that carry a foreseeable risk of becoming a parent*. By your actions, you have assumed the duties of a caretaker, which creates concomitant rights by the child against you. Those rights are “positive”, in the sense that they require you to do something. They are not “natural”, because the child does not have rights against anyone who hasn’t voluntarily undertaken the caretaker role. The child’s rights against you spring, not from the fact of the child’s existence and dependence on someone, anyone, to take care of it, so it is not a natural right to a caretaker.
*There is an edge case here of rape, of course.
I’ve actually given this a lot of thought. If you’ve somehow committed actions that make you a caretaker of someone/something, you should have to provide positive rights to the being you’ve created or assumed responsibility for. It’s one of the cases where I believe they are necessary, and haven’t been able to find some other way to ensure the well being of children, animals, or the retarded.
The only thing severing that relationship is unfortunately some arbitrary age/competency test. But any kind of system like this would be imperfect. If the being you care for is able to assert one or more negative rights in a coherent way, you should be absolved of having to continue providing care. Possibly even before some cutoff “age of adulthood”.
Likewise I think you should be able to claim care of some beings negative rights, like an un-owned animal, or a child without a legal guardian. People already do this when they adopt animals or children anyway.
I think we’re probably agreeing on everything but the semantic question of whether there is such a thing as “natural positive rights”. The closest you could come would probably be in a parent-child relationship, but even that relationship isn’t grounded in the child’s existence and need for a caretaker (which would mean that any random person could be saddled with the caretaker role), it is grounded in the parent’s actions.
When you make a baby, you have obligations. This has nothing to do with “rights”.
I agree with both of you, R C Dean and kinnath.
What I wrote is the closest thing I can get to a compromise between “voluntarily taking care of something” and “being forced to take care of something”. If you’ve made the kid or adopted/bought/whatever a child/animal, it’s your responsibility. This means you’re stuck providing positive rights to that being until it’s of age, or in the case of most animals or severely handicapped children, for the rest of its life.
There are those libertarians who don’t want to touch this, or handwaves it away, but in a free society you’d have to come up with a mechanism for it. Luckily most people are perfectly happy taking care of their kids or animals.
This means you’re stuck providing positive rights to that being until it’s of age, or in the case of most animals or severely handicapped children, for the rest of its life.
I would have phrased this a little differently: This means you have duties to that being, which duties creates rights against you, until it is of age . . .
But I suspect we are into the “how many libertarians can dance on the head of a pin” phase.
It does raise another question, though:
Many rights arise out of or are the mirror image of duties – your rights against me under a contract are my duties to you under the contract. I don’t think natural rights do. Is that the distinction between natural rights and civil or contract or other rights?
I don’t think natural rights do.
I grazed by this in the article. It depends how you define rights. Do you have a right to swing your arm and a duty to avoid hitting my nose? Or do you have a right to swing your arm only as far as my nose?
Similarly, do you have a right to blow your money and a duty to financially provide for your offspring? Or does your right to blow your money only go as far as not depriving your offspring?
In some sense, this is just semantics. However, I think these comments (let alone discussions had in politically mixed company) show that its hard to talk about how rights are practically applied when we can’t even agree on a consistent model of what rights are.
So I’ve been rereading Trotsky’s The Revolution Betrayed, most because I think the words of an insane violent self-righteous communist are somewhat relevant in today’s environment. However, I, hilariously, found this argumentation in regards to the Soviet Union:
But the very fact of its appropriation of political power in a country where the principal means of production are in the hands of the state, creates a new and hitherto unknown relation between the bureaucracy and the riches of the nation. The means of production belong to the state. But the state, so to speak, “belongs” to the bureaucracy. If these as yet wholly new relations should solidify, become the norm and be legalized, whether with or without resistance from the workers, they would, in the long run, lead to a complete liquidation of the social conquests of the proletarian revolution. But to speak of that now is at least premature…
…The attempt to represent the Soviet bureaucracy as a class of “state capitalists” will obviously not withstand criticism. The bureaucracy has neither stocks nor bonds. It is recruited, supplemented and renewed in the manner of an administrative hierarchy, independently of any special property relations of its own. The individual bureaucrat cannot transmit to his heirs his rights in the exploitation of the state apparatus. The bureaucracy enjoys its privileges under the form of an abuse of power It conceals its income; it pretends that as a special social group it does not even exist. Its appropriation of a vast share of the national income has the character of social parasitism. All this makes the position of the commanding Soviet stratum in the highest degree contradictory, equivocal and undignified, notwithstanding the completeness of its power and the smoke screen of flattery that conceals it.
Trotsky: More honest than more leftists.
Its appropriation of a vast share of the national income has the character of social parasitism.
Working as intended.
Bkunin- more honest than all of them.
I’d say rights are basically moral prohibitions on human interaction: “You can do whatever you want up to the point of doing this to someone else”. Even more than Warty’s “I’ll fucking kill you”, it’s “And the rest of us won’t give a flying fuck while Warty kills you. Hell, we might even offer him some help.”.
now we’re at the gas station.
Try the egg salad. I hear it’s excellent.
No, Brooks. Gas station sushi, ftw!
*Pukes thinking about it*
Hope you don’t have to ask for a key, cause you ain’t gonna make it.
Find a gas station with a “Roy Rogers” in it. That’s your ticket.
Ah, so when my neighbor accidentally steps on my side of the property line, I get to kill him?
And there it is. We have to give an answer to such a ludicrous question because we actually have a coherent philosophical principle. Before even answering that, I’d ask, “Do you want to kill him for that? No, well that doesn’t make you unique. Now that we’ve dismissed Hobbes, can we get serious?”.
Well, he said they were engaging in Socratic dialogue. His friend was serving the role of questioner.
That’s kind of my point. Yes, his friend is fulfilling his role, but my point was more about how defending the NAP or even something as simple as free speech rights, inevitably turns into a sophistry mining exercise. Sam Harris talks about attacking the steelman position instead of the strawman. A question like, “If I catch my neighbor punching my 16 year old kid, do I have the right to kill him?” would make the same point and not come across as disingenuous. The Socratic method can be used in myriad ways.
I think the benefit of going reductio ad absurdum is that principles break down at the edges. Yes, you can take a more common or favorable case and make the point that your principle works really well in that case, but I think the argument that it doesn’t fall apart in unfavorable circumstances is stronger. People are more afraid of dystopia than they are excited for utopia.
Well this is why most societies will have customs and laws which decide these things. Stepping over you property line without no potential harm to you is not an direct infringement of rights in itself. But this is for the courts to decide. If you shoot a burglar that’s breaking in your home at night, you would be justified due to potential harm- especially if you have kids and such . If you shoot someone walking through your forest, you will probably be punished for it. Even if he is picking your mushrooms.
Clearly there’s a proportionality component which is arrived at using reason and emergent community standards. It’s an insult to offer up such silly questions as “If you sneeze on me, can I split your head open with a battle axe?”. If your journey together is to arrive at some kind of objective truth, shouldn’t you cut out the BS and get to the point as soon as possible? (Not “you” “you”). Arguing in good faith is a prerequisite with me.
Ah, so when my neighbor accidentally steps on my side of the property line, I get to kill him?
That would be violating his rights, so no. Not every violation of your rights is the same, so not every response to those violations should be the same. Your response to a violation of rights should be two-fold: (1) stop the violation and (2) collect restitution for the harm done.
Killing him doesn’t even stop the violation – he’s still on your property, only now you have to haul his corpse off rather than him walking off. Unless you go through his pockets after he’s dead (a violation of his heirs’ rights, BTW), it doesn’t get you restitution, either.
It conceals its income; it pretends that as a special social group it does not even exist. Its appropriation of a vast share of the national income has the character of social parasitism. All this makes the position of the commanding Soviet stratum in the highest degree contradictory, equivocal and undignified, notwithstanding the completeness of its power and the smoke screen of flattery that conceals it.
Don’t worry. They’re just holding that wealth and power in trust, until such time as it may be properly distributed to the Citizenry. They’ll let you know when that time has arrived, Comrade. Now GET BACK TO WORK.
“After the dictatorship of the proletariat! How many times do I have to explain this to you? We’ll give you the means of production after we’ve used them up”
And then it rubs the lotion on its skin.
if I shoot someone for parking on two spots in a crowded area
That depends. If it’s a 1981 Corvette, I’d call it justifiable.
We don’t have any of those. It is usually a BMW X5 or some such SUV bought second hand in Germany by an owner who usually can hardly afford the gas for it.
Secondhand from the German, or secondhand by way of Poland?
neah usually directly. Since Romania is in the EU most go directly to Germany and buy a car there
I might make exception to this if its a classic car double parking. However, if you know the parking lot will be crowded why take it? You’re just asking for trouble.
I dig it, though I take issue with the negative vs. positive rights. I will be attacked as arguing semantics, but I maintain that “positive rights” don’t exist. A positive right is more correctly thought of as an entitlement to something at the expense of someone/something else. Such a concept is no right at all. The only rights, properly understood as “rights” (inalienable for all time in any situation), are the so-called natural or negative rights.
Great stuff, this is why I come to this site; well that and HM’s videos.
Is a right to a jury trial a positive right?
Probably. The purpose of having a justice system should be to handle conflict. Which justice system in particular depends on society . I don’t think there is a negative right to say jury versus judge versus council of elders. Trial by battle is a right though.
I disagree. A trial by jury may not be a natural right (you aren’t born with it and the courts are a product of the government), but it is a civil right, such as the right to vote. A civil right is not a natural right, because it isn’t acquired through birth, but are complimentary to natural rights as they limit government overreach.
A positive right is a completely made-up term and holds no legitimate basis other than ‘feelz’
Jinx. But you beat me by 1 minute.
Also “civil right” is probably better than “procedural right”.
Fast fingers
I had to figure out how to spell procedural.
I’d say yes, but admitting the need for a jury trial is admitting the need for a judicial system is admitting the need for laws is admitting the need for the state… so to me that goes to a more fundamental libertarian debate re: anarchism vs. minarchism. I’m kind of torn on that one. I like anarchism as a concept, but I’m not sure it isn’t just as Utopian as Marxist workers’ paradise.
In practice, the members of the jury are compensated for their time, but they are coerced into showing up for jury duty. However, they are promised a jury should they ever need one. Not really a “right”, but part of the “social contract” (another shitty concept)? It’s definitely valuable to a functioning society, but I wouldn’t call trial by jury a right; at least not in the way self-defense is.
The problem with utopian ideals is that they never take into account a major part of human nature. We can be assholes.
I was thinking about Jury trials the other day and thought it would make more sense for jourist to be a job, like notary public. Do it as a side gig for a few bucks so they aren’t enmeshed in the state, but not completely ignorant rubes. That way people aren’t coerced into juries.
It wouldn’t truly be a jury of your peers then, though.
I think there is a tight rope walk between “purely negative rights”, and “just enough positive rights to make society function.” I guess it’s the difference between anarchy and minarchy.
Something like jury trials, provided the law is simple enough for everyone to understand, is possibly one of those cases where a positive right could be necessary. You could take it even further, the right to a trial is essentially a positive right, because there has to be an impartial judge. I’m not convinced that compensating said judge, or even the jury, for their services makes it less of a positive right.
Yes. Agreeing with what has also been said. I think of it more of a procedural right. Like voting. Neither are natural rights, but if a state exists, these rights help protect us from the abuses of the state.
I wish another word existed other than “right”, but english is what it is.
Privilege?
Entitlement, privilege, immunity, all can be used to describe something that isn’t a natural right. I think “civil” or “procedural” rights aren’t an obvious fit with any of those words, at least in their current usage.
Ah, so when my neighbor accidentally steps on my side of the property line, I get to kill him?
Probably not. A simple straightforward “Go away” should suffice.
Should.
So… seems like Bushwick couldn’t have been released at a worse possible time, right? I mean, it’s bad enough portraying your countrymen into horrible monsters at the best of times, but while they’re hauling bodies out of floodwaters, it just seems especially heartless. I’m wondering how much guilt is going to impact its box office.
I don’t think it would have done well without the unfortunate timing – I had to look it up to figure out what you were talking about.
Regardless of its timing, the reviews have not been good in general. I think it’s probably going to flop regardless and not have that much influence on the cultural zeitgeist.
Shorter Bushwick: Fuck you Red America! See, now no one needs to see it.
On top of that, it’s extra-delusionally stupid considering Californitopia is the place actually trying to secede, not bigoted, knuckle-dragging, redneck Texas.
California doesn’t work as a good secession target in fiction because they’re dependent on the rest of the country, have a ready-made local partisan effort in the residents of ‘Jefferson’ and the bases in the area, and have infrastructure that makes military action against them relatively easy. Texas at least controls a lot of the petrochemical industry with makes them have far more economic pull in terms of military action.
They also have their own power grid; saw a pretty spiffy documentary about how they would fare much better than the rest of the country in an EMP attack because of that.
OT: But somewhat related to morning links discussion and Pie’s question about killing bad parkers:
I was meeting my wife at the mall for lunch, and some old woman (with a handicap placard, of course), turned down the wrong way and was going out thru the entrance just as I was coming in. Head on. She turned on the wrong side of the median. She was moving slow, I had plenty of time to lay on the horn and change lanes. I don’t think she ever figured out the problem.
And that is why I want self-driving cars. It isn’t the great drivers I want to move out of the way. Its fucktards like that. And myself, who doesn’t have the best historical record either. If she had been capable of driving more that 3 mph, she might have killed me. And people turn wrong onto the interstate, whether old or drunk or whatever. And they do kill. Maybe autonomous vehicles will make those mistakes too, but not at the same rate.
Also, having a handicapped placard is not an excuse to drive like a retard.
Careful what you wish for. Next time you’ll be in your automated car, and it will be a dottering John or Tundra headed the other way, only you won’t have a brake…
By the time your cartopia happens, John and I will be so old we’ll be driven around by Eastern European supermodels or some such.
Until then…
*zooms off*
As long as self driving cars are not mandatory I see them being great for carting the old ones and drunk ones around.
Shut up and get back into your government-mandated tin can of death peasant!
I don’t care what the focus groups say, that’s still an awful name.
I want old people that cause vehicular manslaughter as aggressively prosecuted as DUI manslaughter. Both were driving impaired.
I would agree if they knew they were driving impaired. I think most of them truly and honestly believe they are driving just fine, and they would be offended if you suggested otherwise. Until we have a multi-million (billion?) dollar, multiple decade long campaign convincing people that old driving is impaired driving, I don’t see it happening.
*Old Person: “In fact, I drive better then those crazy whippersnappers doing the speed limit! And my, aren’t the speed limits high these days? I refuse to drive that fast, it’s just not safe. Most speed limits are 10-20 mph to fast. Goodness!”
I don’t think DUI manslaughter should be a thing. If you are operating your vehicle in a way that is reckless and it causes the death of another person, then you are guilty of manslaughter. period.
Self driving cars will probably record where you’ve gone and I’m certain that Google or some other company will share that information with the government, if the next president is super ‘woke’ (but still doesn’t give a shit about individual rights).
Remember when everyone thought that Silicon Valley would usher in a new libertarian business culture? That was a funny observation in hindsight
Well, the problem appears to be they set down roots in a patch of rock stupid.
Name a technological advancement that the government hasn’t abused?
Beta-Max?
And are you sure that the NSA isn’t storing all its info on unused Beta tapes?
Bernoulli boxes.
Is a right to a jury trial a positive right?
I don’t know.
I’d rather have a secure right to not be imprisoned for activities which harm nobody.
Me and robc already took care of this.
“A trial by jury may not be a natural right (you aren’t born with it and the courts are a product of the government), but it is a civil right, such as the right to vote. A civil right is not a natural right, because it isn’t acquired through birth, but are complimentary to natural rights as they limit government overreach.
A positive right is a completely made-up term and holds no legitimate basis other than ‘feelz’”
Further, the government can limit civil rights, much more broadly than it can natural rights. Civil rights are provided by the government (rather than natural rights which we are all born with predating the existence of government), so they can limit who gets to vote, what procedures are followed in courts, how the law is interpreted (civil code or common law), and other reasonable limitations.
But how much are civil rights the logical application of natural rights in a legal setting? While a trial by jury itself is not a natural right, the right to not be immorally agressed against is, and if a jury trial is the best way to ensure that right, couldn’t you argue that it is indispensable?
I see your point, but if we accept that courts are the application of natural rights in a legal setting, then what would you call ‘the right to vote’? You aren’t born with this ability and, in theory, you could maintain a free society with no ‘right to vote’.Civil rights are important in order to have a free society. They are complimentary to natural rights, but they are not the same. The government does have leeway in regulating civil rights.
Again, perhaps an application of natural rights. Since the NAP requires consent for any abdication or alteration of rights, then you might argue that you have the right of voting as a manifestation of your consent, as participation in that society.
Then again, no government I know of allows voluntary membership/ individual consent if you are within the geographic realm of their power.
So are you arguing that trial by jury and voting are manifestations of natural rights? That’s a fair point.
So, then, would restricting those two activities (such as requiring people to register before voting or allowing hearsay in court) be considered a violation of the underlying natural right that they manifest?
Manifestations? If there is a non-semantic difference I would prefer “application in context”. Since, as with any philosophy, you are attempting to be as consistent as possible while dealing with imperfect knowledge between actors and imperfect motivations probably as well.
As such, whether I would consider a particular requirement to exercise a “right” a violation of that right would entirely depend. Again, we are handicapped by the fact that we have imperfect knowledge (a fact that would cause trials to be necessary in the first place), and also have to deal with hard, empirical limits on time, abilities, and resources. At the end of the day, we must muddle through as well as possible. Any structure you adopt for any right necessarily limits all other possibilities. Does that make them wrong? In some cases, yes, in others, no.
In this case I am happy to be persuaded, I don’t have a dog in this fight.
And that is why I want self-driving cars.
And, absent self-driving cars, there is no conceivable way for Granny to get to the mall.
I find it interesting that many people (not directed at robc specifically) seem to assume self-driving features will be costless. I’m reasonably certain the actuators required to steer, stop and otherwise maneuver the vehicle in every conceivable weather or traffic conditions will not reduce the price of a new vehicle. And, of course, the manufacturers will lobby for mandatory inclusion of the technology, to distribute the R&D costs as widely as possible. And besides, we don’t want free riders to reap the benefits. Maybe there will be a surtax on my not-in-any-way-technologically-sophisticated car, because those autonomous cars “make me safer”.
I want self driving cars so I don’t have to have awkward small talk with an uber driver.
Hot tip: headphones/earbuds.
Heated headphones hurt.
You don’t have to turn on the heating element, you silly goose. Just pretend to be listening to music and ignore the driver’s attempts to engage you in conversation.
But how will you find out where the good strip clubs and brothels are?
In orlando? There aren’t any. You have to order up hookers, or so Pie tells me.
And, absent self-driving cars, there is no conceivable way for Granny to get to the mall.
Apparently there isnt. At least safely.
I always object to the objectification of qualitative preferences–that almost always means disregarding them entirely.
I enjoy driving. Where does that show up in the studies?
Utilitarians have always, always, always had a hard time dealing with qualitative criteria. It’s a problem they’ve never adequately addressed, much less solved.
More isn’t always better. When you’re dying of thirst, more water is better. When you’re drowning, it isn’t.
Even universal values like safety aren’t universally preferred in every way. If I enjoy riding a motorcycle through traffic every day despite the danger, does that mean I don’t care about safety at all? Of course not! I take precautions to minimize the risks. But riding a motorcycle isn’t safer than driving a car through traffic. Only I can make those approximations of risk for myself. This is too risky. That’s not.
Where does my qualitative preference for pleasure over safety show up on a bureaucrat’s spreadsheet? If he’s making decisions that maximize my safety, isn’t that simply pushing his qualitative preferences on me?
That’s probably the best thing about markets–they let individuals represent themselves and their own qualitative preferences when making choices for themselves.
I do not expect my freedom to drive my own car to survive driverless car technology. Eventually, they’ll refuse to offer me a license renewal. I’ll be a risk to other people. There’s no substitute for people who qualitatively prefer freedom, and yet those qualitative values can’t show up on anybody’s utilitarian spreadsheet.
I would like to compare this comment to a randomly selected comment from a random story from “The Paper of Record”.
“I didn’t vote for trump, but I still feel that we all, in the U.S. owe the world an apology.”
That is all.
I’m closer to robc than I am to John and Tundra on this. To me driving is a complete waste of time, so I’m inclinded to be more pollyannish than doomsayer on this topic.
I don’t want to put words into robc’s mouth, but my frustration with this topic is the idea that autonomous cars have to be centrally controlled. That anyone who wants a self-driving car is a sheep who is willing to give up all their freedom (BTW, my guess is that the people who bitch about cars tracking their movements all have cell phones in their pockets).
My guess is that what we end up with is some sort of hybrid. A lot of safety features that might make it nearly impossible to crash, or hit something by accident. Long term, I think that the art of driving will be as lost as that of horse riding is to us.
I was really late to the party on the last article. I posted my comment after the thread was basically dead. I’ll briefly restate my argument here. It’s not standard anarcho-capitalist or libertarian doctrine. It’s more a product of my own evolution on the subject. I can’t say no one has ever said anything similar–if it’s influenced by anyone in the libertarian canon, it would be Adam Smith going all the way back to “Theory of Moral Sentiments”. It’s underpinnings are standard observations regarding agency and social adaptation. Anyway, here’s the short version of the story:
Rights are choices. They arise naturally as an artifact of our agency.
We know they’re real because violating them has consistent consequences in the real world–across cultures and throughout history.
Violate someone’s right to choose one’s own religious beliefs, to choose to physically defend oneself, to choose to speak one’s mind, to choose who gets to use one’s property and choose how it’s used, etc., etc., and the consequences are similar–across cultures and throughout history.
That is what I mean by “natural rights”. They arise naturally as an artifact of our agency and violating them has real and consistent consequences in the natural world.
No, our natural rights are not created by government, but government (as a social adaptation) has evolved over time to be in harmony with those rights. Central planning could not persist in China and the USSR because the negative consequences of violating people’s natural property rights were too onerous to survive. Yes, our legal rights are a creation of government, but they’re a pale shadow of the real thing. Our legal rights are the fruition of society suffering the negative consequences of government violating people’s natural rights.
Our legal rights are more important here in the United States than in many other countries because our Constitution does an unusually good job of approximating our natural rights–and that kind of success has lead to a lot of confusion among average people. We would still possess First and Second Amendment rights even if they weren’t in the Constitution, but our Constitution is unusual in protecting those rights. In one sense, that is one way to describe the difference between legal rights and natural rights. Our legal rights exist to protect our natural rights from government.
But never forget that rights are choices, and they arise naturally as an artifact of our agency.
Academia has developed all sorts of euphemisms for people making choices. They don’t want to talk about how unwashed individuals should be free to make choices for themselves, so they talk about “agency”, “market forces”, “rights”, etc. They don’t want to talk about how individual’s rights should be violated either–that’s also embarrassing in its own way. But no matter what name they call them, “market forces”, “rights”, etc. are people making choices.
Well put
Dammit, where were you when I was having a drunken argument with my wife about whether or not rights in fact exist and what “natural rights” entail?
Well said indeed.
I like that. Shorter, Rights arise naturaly as we understand the harm caused by violating them.
The agency aspect is important because the implications of agency are well understood–even by people who aren’t libertarians.
Take the wiki entry for instance:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agency_(philosophy)#Human_agency
Our rights are an aspect of our agency. Once I make that claim, non-libertarian economists, psychologists, sociologists, and philosophers can go “Oh! I never really thought of it that way!” (even if they don’t say it out loud).
I don’t think there’s anyone who’s ever taken a college level class on ethics and hasn’t been exposed to the idea of agency.
Our agency is the origin of our rights. It’s our capacity to make choices. A right is the right to make a choice, so, of course, rights are an artifact of agency. The critical observation is that a right is a choice.
Our legal rights are not natural, or, it should be said, they evolved to be in harmony with rights the way our thumbs evolved to grasp tree branches. There are steep penalties to pay for violating the rights of people to make choices for themselves. It’s easy to see that in the realm of economics because economics is so quantitative. That’s why Smith got more traction with “Wealth of Nations” in 1776 than with “Theory of Moral Sentiments” in 1759.
However, violating other aspects of our rights, like the right to choose your own speech and choose your own religion. have negative consequences, too. We all know about the chilling effect of censorship–even if it’s harder to quantify. It had the same effect in 4th century BCE Greece, 12th century CE China, and the 20th century’s Soviet Union. The same can be said for the government violating our right to choose our own religion–but that right evolved from the Peace of Westphalia and its success in both bringing about an end to the Thirty Years War and preventing Europe from being torn apart by another religious war between Protestants and Catholics. When people aren’t free to choose their own religion, bad things happen.
ISIS makes non-Sunnis frightened because they violate people’s right to choose their own religion. Even the original Muslim invaders had to evolve ways of respecting the rights of non-Muslims. Zoroastrians aren’t people of THE BOOK, but they do have A BOOK, and we need them to pay taxes. So, we’ll pass a law refusing them the ability to convert to Islam, and we’ll tolerate them as “people of A BOOK”!
Incidentally, we can make the same claims about the origins of laws that protect people from rights violations like rape. We’re evolving laws that protect us against rights violations like the drug war. Terrible things happen when women aren’t free to choose their own sexual partners, and people who refuse to accept the negative consequences of the drug war are straight up denialists–in my book. The harm of the drug war outweighs the benefits, and our society will have evolved once it recognizes that and changes the laws to protect those rights. If we don’t have conscription anymore, it’s because we came to understand the negative consequences of violating those rights better–it’s better when people are free to choose whether or not to serve in the military.
I would say that our legal rights are a product of the harm that comes from violating them.
However, our natural rights are a product of our agency. They evolved to protect our natural rights from government.
How’d I get that so backwards?
I screwed up the sequence.
Our legal rights are a product of the harm that comes from violating them. They evolved to protect our natural rights from government.
Our natural rights are an aspect of our agency.
Fixed!!!
George Carlin has a good bit on rights. The short version is rights are from people, not nature or god. Things like language, money, units of measurement, laws- they’re all from people. Now, just because they’re from people doesn’t mean they’re worthless, but they ought to be subject to criticism and change.
***
Boy everyone in this country is running around yammering about their fucking rights. “I have a right, you have no right, we have a right.”
Folks I hate to spoil your fun, but… there’s no such thing as rights. They’re imaginary. We made ’em up. Like the boogie man. Like Three Little Pigs, Pinocio, Mother Goose, shit like that. Rights are an idea. They’re just imaginary. They’re a cute idea. Cute. But that’s all. Cute…and fictional. But if you think you do have rights, let me ask you this, “where do they come from?” People say, “They come from God. They’re God given rights.” Awww fuck, here we go again…here we go again.
The God excuse, the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument, “It came from God.” Anything we can’t describe must have come from God. Personally folks, I believe that if your rights came from God, he would’ve given you the right for some food every day, and he would’ve given you the right to a roof over your head. GOD would’ve been looking out for ya. You know that.
He wouldn’t have been worried making sure you have a gun so you can get drunk on Sunday night and kill your girlfriend’s parents.
But let’s say it’s true. Let’s say that God gave us these rights. Why would he give us a certain number of rights?
The Bill of Rights of this country has 10 stipulations. OK…10 rights. And apparently God was doing sloppy work that week, because we’ve had to ammend the bill of rights an additional 17 times. So God forgot a couple of things, like…SLAVERY. Just fuckin’ slipped his mind.
But let’s say…let’s say God gave us the original 10. He gave the british 13. The british Bill of Rights has 13 stipulations. The Germans have 29, the Belgians have 25, the Sweedish have only 6, and some people in the world have no rights at all. What kind of a fuckin’ god damn god given deal is that!?…NO RIGHTS AT ALL!? Why would God give different people in different countries a different numbers of different rights? Boredom? Amusement? Bad arithmetic? Do we find out at long last after all this time that God is weak in math skills? Doesn’t sound like divine planning to me. Sounds more like human planning . Sounds more like one group trying to control another group. In other words…business as usual in America.
Now, if you think you do have rights, I have one last assignment for ya. Next time you’re at the computer get on the Internet, go to Wikipedia. When you get to Wikipedia, in the search field for Wikipedia, i want to type in, “Japanese-Americans 1942″ and you’ll find out all about your precious fucking rights. Alright. You know about it.
In 1942 there were 110,000 Japanese-American citizens, in good standing, law abiding people, who were thrown into internment camps simply because their parents were born in the wrong country. That’s all they did wrong. They had no right to a lawyer, no right to a fair trial, no right to a jury of their peers, no right to due process of any kind. The only right they had was…right this way! Into the internment camps.
Just when these American citizens needed their rights the most…their government took them away. and rights aren’t rights if someone can take em away. They’re priveledges. That’s all we’ve ever had in this country is a bill of TEMPORARY priviledges; and if you read the news, even badly, you know the list get’s shorter, and shorter, and shorter.
Yeup, sooner or later the people in this country are going to realize the government doesn’t give a fuck about them. the government doesn’t care about you, or your children, or your rights, or your welfare or your safety. it simply doesn’t give a fuck about you. It’s interested in it’s own power. That’s the only thing…keeping it, and expanding wherever possible.
Personally when it comes to rights, I think one of two things is true: either we have unlimited rights, or we have no rights at all.”
***
http://mindofv.blogspot.com/2008/04/excerpt-from-george-carlin-on-rights.html
That’s my wife’s viewpoint. To sum it up, “rights” are privileges that society agrees to bestow on its constituent members, and they don’t exist absent society, nor do they have any special properties or inherent qualities. They’re just lists of perks you get for being part of a group, and they can be removed or changed by consensus.
I disagree. For one, claiming that a right doesn’t exist because it can be violated is like saying murder isn’t a crime because it can be committed. I’d also say that the fact that the government can only violate certain rights by using force to change the results of your choice seems to indicate that rights do not in fact originate with the government.
She is taking the positivist approach, which has the virtue of being utterly amoral. Essentially, “your rights are what you can get away with, nothing more or less.”
Even positivists have some things that they think they should be able to do, society be damned. The fun starts when you identify one of those things, and get them to admit they don’t have a right to it at all, merely temporary and conditional societal tolerance of it. When they say “but it would be wrong to prohibit X”, ask them why allofasudden morality is part of the conversation.
Moral relativists don’t really exist. I’ve found that all of them have their own list of things they want outlawed, as well as things which should never be interfered with.
And on the other end, “you see, there are some crybabies out there – religious types, mostly” who say their morality is absolute because it comes from god. Of course, they tend to get upset when you ask them to prove their god exists.
So if relativism and religion are out, what’s left? I think reason and empathy work out pretty well. It’s the basis for the Golden Rule. Yeah, some people lack either reason or empathy, but that’s like saying we can’t eat candy because some people have diabetes.
One of the many things Bod Dylan got right is that you have to serve someone. The conceit or proclaimed moral relativists is one of the things I find most annoying.
As far as I can tell, all discussion of law and morality boils down to might makes right.
Segregation in the US didn’t end because the law changed. The law changed because a critical mass of people came to believe that segregation was wrong.
The world is full of people who are free on paper, but live as slaves.
The best thing to do is to live among people whose views on morality resemble your own.
The philosophy that I subscribe to, which I admit is mostly a starting point, is “natural rights” are things you’d have absent the state. there’s a whole bunch of clarifications that go with this which segregate things you can do, or activities in which you can engage which don’t violate the rights of others.
But for quick examples, absent the state, I have a right to free speech. Absent the state, I have a right to keep and bear arms, and the right to self defense. Absent the state, my things should be free from search or seizure (theft in the simplest terms).
We certainly have other rights society bestows upon us which are more complex– such as a right to a Jury trial etc. These things you clearly don’t have in the absence of a state, so they become dangerously close to “privileges”. And Privileges are defined as things that society provides to or for you, and therefore can be taken away via consensus or diktat.
I think Carlin was being a little disingenuous there.
“Okay, George, I’d like to put this ice pick directly in your eye and twist it around until I turn your brain into pudding. Why shouldn’t I? It would be “wrong” you say? Oh, George, right and wrong are imaginary! We made ’em up. Like the boogie man. Like Three Little Pigs, Pinocio, Mother Goose, shit like that. Good and bad are an idea. They’re just imaginary. They’re a cute idea. Cute. But that’s all. Cute…and fictional. But if you think putting an icepick in your head would be wrong, let me ask you this, “where do this come from?”
Roger Ebert’s review of Bushwick gave me a sensible chuckle:
***
I know that screaming-man-on-fire is a favorite shock effect of hack filmmakers the world over, but “stop drop and roll” is a real-life thing, unlike “shooting zombies in the head is the only way to kill them,” which is only a movie thing. Stop, drop and roll works. I once set my entire forearm on fire in a lighter fluid mishap, and I stopped, dropped and rolled instinctually, and it worked! Why don’t more movie characters try this?
….
Additionally, they seem to have written their dialogue by typing out “We gotta get the f**k out of here!” into their Final Draft document, copying that, and then pasting it onto each page, two or three times. For some reason they have crafted an inadvertently hilarious exchange between its two main characters: “Where are you going?” “Hoboken.”
***
http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/bushwick-2017
…so it isn’t about the Geto Boys?
My first thought too…”My mind playin’ tricks on me.”
‘What’s the big deal? Ask Martin Scorsese. He has recounted in several interviews how nuts it used to drive him, in old Hollywood movies, to see a couple turn a corner in Greenwich Village and wind up strolling down the Brooklyn Heights Promenade’
I don’t really know what to say about this, except that it seems that it’s always ever thus. I seriously believe that ‘location shooting ‘ is resolved by the location scout simply identifying spots as cinematic, and then lining the shot up there, then there, then there. In the very small number of movies I’ve seen shot in places I’m intimately familiar with, this has happened 100% of the time. It’s not just a new York thing.
You should hear my brother-in-law rant about the locations in the chase in Bullitt
I’m sure it’s especially noticed in locations such as new York, an iconic city that’s been the set of gazillions of movies. But the places I live get much more sparse treatment, and usually only have a few external shots with the rest filmed in a sound studio in L.A.
Large chunks of “American Gangster” – both Newark and harlem/Manhattan sections – were all shot in Williamsburg and Greenpoint Brooklyn while i lived there. large swaths of the north brooklyn were being demolished for new construction, and they used that to their advantage, using the demolished bits to look like “shitty neighborhoods”, and then mildly dressing the new-construction up to look like 70s hi rises, serving as more-upscale manhattan-looking set.
e.g. this photo is on Bayard st, just north of mccaren park
https://www.uphe.com/sites/default/files/2015/04/American-Gangster-Gallery-21.jpg
if you frame it right, it could be anywhere next to central park, if you see what i mean. they also used the J train elevated tracks to look like the former el tracks in Harlem.
That seems forgivable to me. If you’re doing a period piece, but can’t do it in the real location because all the buildings were clearly built in 2004, you go somewhere which looks or feels like 1950s Brooklyn… or wherever you’re setting the movie.
I just don’t like the weird incongruity of driving on this thoroughfare, then turning and appearing on that thoroughfare which are at opposite ends of town or in an entirely different neighborhood.
I wasn’t criticizing them for not doing things on ‘the real’ location. I was just pointing out how clever they were in capturing the look of “70s” NYC by finding a corner of industrial brooklyn which was being redeveloped, and so had a wide range of possible ‘cityscapes’ all in a very compact neighborhood.
Wburg was actually used in a lot of “old ny” movies. It was used for large parts of “Once Upon a Time in America”, 1920s NY
They used the same house in the Big Chill and as Forrest Gump’s childhood home. It sits in the middle of Beaufort, South Carolina. It is literally right in the middle of town with no yard or anything around it. Yet, in both movies, they filmed it to look like it sat back in a big lot.
In Fargo, they shot the ransom drop off scenes in a couple different parking lots. I guess it didn’t bug me that one scene was at the top of the City Center parking lot and then as he exited he was across the street from the Normandy Inn (10 blocks away).
It’s all just flat and snow out there anyway, no one would notice.
‘main feature is a group of long-take, moving-camera action scenes that I guess might have been more engaging had the characters on the run and in battle been figures you wanted to spend any time with. They’re not. These set pieces are either getting much easier to do, or they are the sole talent of co-directo’
Huh, I’ve noticed this little… conceit being used increasingly as well. sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. What I will say is that it sometimes takes away the value of a second, or subsequent viewings of the movie. For instance, ‘birdman’ was a pretty good movie that I never need to see again.
‘Texas is attempting to secede from the Union, and militia forces have descended upon New York City to claim it as an East Coast base of operations and negotiation tool.’
Huh, to be fair, if I were going to attack an East coast location, Brooklyn would be a good start. Residents completely unarmed and largely incapable of defending themselves.
Um… I don’t know who you know from Brooklyn, but the one’s I’ve met could compete in the hunger games.
Brooklyn is this bizarre mix of the worst sorts of Prog yuppie scum, the worst sorts of hipsters, and the remaining black people who were just too poor or crazy to escape.
John, Brooklyn is home to nearly 3million people over 70 square miles. Your description isn’t even that accurate for the few places that yuppies/hipsters live (north brooklyn, park slope), which contain far more variety (latinos, working-class italians, polish, hasidics, etc), and plenty of not-really-poor black people as well.
That’s why you start in park slope.
These Photos of Sad Brooklyn Hipsters in a Bar Watching the Comey Hearing Are Hilarious
http://ijr.com/the-declaration/2017/06/894646-accounts-brooklyn-hipsters-bar-watching-comey-hearing-hilarious/
Day drinking while watching a congressional hearing? Barney Gumble had more self-respect.
Oh my god yes, that’s the bar I’m setting my HQ up in. That shit’s whiter than an NPR broadcast.
The Brooklyn of my youth? Yes. The Brooklyn of today? No. It’s chock-a-block with millennial hipsters.
https://www.wired.com/2015/09/photos-brooklyn-hipsters/#slide-2
OT Link: Winter Park-based Tampa professor fired after Hurricane Harvey ‘karma’ tweet
1) Stay classy, progs.
2) Florida Man is Florida Man regardless of his station in life.
3) To all you predicting ‘dur hur dis iz wut u get 4 votin TRUMP!’ responses to hurricane harvey, please come pick up your prize.
What’s weird to me is it never even occurred to me to blame a natural (or unnatural) disaster in NY as ‘ punishment for Hillary. Never even occurred to me.
On one hand you have people blaming hurricanes and natural disasters as punishment of mankind by the great-spirity for their sinfulness.
On the other hand you have global warming deniers, who think its because of abortion.
here we go again
https://www.thecollegefix.com/post/36127/
***
The University of Maryland marching band has decided it will no longer play the state song before the college’s football games because of the song’s ties to the Confederacy, The Baltimore Sun reports.
A university spokeswoman told The Sun that the school’s marching band won’t play “Maryland, My Maryland” for the time being to allow the university to “evaluate if it is consistent with the values of our institution at this time.” The public university is the latest college to rid itself of any relic related to the Confederacy following the recent violence in Charlottesville, Virginia.
…
“Maryland, My Maryland” is based off of an 1861 poem by James Ryder Randall. The lyrics include references to President Lincoln as a “despot” and “tyrant.” It’s unclear whether the University of Maryland marching band actually sings the lyrics when it plays the song.
***
[head desk]
The tune is @*(#$&@(& “O Tannenbaum”
i doubt the people playing the horns are also singing lyrics in their mouthpieces
Tannenbaum is German, and Nazis are German. Therefore, by the transitive property of batshit crazy, Tannenbaum is Nazi. Better ban the tune too just to be safe.
Pretty sure I mentioned this one by name a week or so ago. I knew it was coming.
The song has nine verses of which only the last four have anything to do with the Civil War. And surprise surprise, no one ever sings those verses because the song would be too long if they did. God these people are fucking morons. The controversial lyrics are a hoot, however.
Maryland!
Virginia should not call in vain,
Maryland!
She meets her sisters on the plain-
“Sic semper!” ’tis the proud refrain
That baffles minions back again,
Maryland!
Arise in majesty again,
Maryland! My Maryland!
VII
I see the blush upon thy cheek,
Maryland!
For thou wast ever bravely meek,
Maryland!
But lo! there surges forth a shriek,
From hill to hill, from creek to creek-
Potomac calls to Chesapeake,
Maryland! My Maryland!
VIII
Thou wilt not yield the Vandal toll,
Maryland!
Thou wilt not crook to his control,
Maryland!
Better the fire upon thee roll, Better the blade, the shot, the bowl,
Than crucifixion of the soul,
Maryland! My Maryland!
IX
I hear the distant thunder-hum,
Maryland!
The Old Line’s bugle, fife, and drum,
Maryland!
She is not dead, nor deaf, nor dumb-
Huzza! she spurns the Northern scum!
She breathes! she burns! she’ll come! she’ll come!
Maryland! My Maryland!
Dennis Prager: making progs cry
***
Fordham University has launched an investigation after students were reduced to tears by the screening of a PragerU video during a Resident Assistant (RA) training on sexual assault.
The film was shown as an example of the conservative perspective on campus sexual assault, and was juxtaposed with a trailer for “The Hunting Ground,” a documentary presented as an example of liberal views on the issue.
Some RAs were apparently upset by PragerU video’s claim that there is “no evidence that rape is a cultural norm” on college campuses, as well as “the depiction of the experiences of victims as a ‘left-leaning political agenda.’”
***
https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=9666
If they really believe that rape is the cultural norm on campus, they must like being raped I guess. Otherwise, why are they there?
You’ll make them cry with that kind of talk.
It is fantasy morality. They get to pretend they can fight a rape culture that doesn’t exist, poses no danger, and as such can be imagined to be a perfectly black and white issue with none of the pesky moral dilemmas and grey areas that come with actual morality.
The statement from one of the snowflakes is a hoot:
***
The following is my statement regarding Resident Assistant CARE Training on 8/18/17.
…
He played a video from PragerU that asserted that there is “no evidence that rape is a cultural norm” and said verbatim that “there is no evidence of a national rape epidemic”. During this video, many more RAs left the room — many of them women. Some were in tears.
…
I sat through the presentation a little longer and then left the room. I went to the bathroom where I found at least 10 other female RAs, many of whom were in tears.
….
In closing, a presentation from the Deputy Title IX Coordinator should not leave dozens of female students in tears.
….
I will not be talked over. I will not be interrupted. I will not sit down.
***
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1k_4vQ8z-En2E5ZpgJm5ZnFCFk0PLGhh_9U7RLz9PFYg/edit
They get to pretend they can fight a rape culture that doesn’t exist, poses no danger,…
But that captures the bulk of their antics, doesn’t it? They get to pretend they’re brave for attacking people who won’t hit back. They get to impose their will while pretending they’re the victims of the people they’re trying to attack.
I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it. They’re broken people whose fondest desire is to break others.
Damn, I’m impressed with your argumentative skills. I need to improve mine.