Journal pudge's Journal: The State Over The Individual 10
So WillAffleckWU says I am "a Royalist and avowed hater of our Freedoms and Rights, after all, not to mention a combat avoider" and that I have "ill-informed neoconservative opinions."
I am about the farthest thing from any reasonable definition of "royalist," for whatever he could possibly mean by that. I've never in my life taken a single action to avoid combat. None of my opinions are neoconservative, and as to ill-informed, well, no moreso than anyone else's. I tend to not form opinions at all until I do get significant information. Funny, though, that his opinions of me are obviously ill-informed.
As to being an "avowed hater of our Freedoms and Rights"
He wants to take away our freedom and rights, both coming and going: take away the fruits and the mechanism of our liberty (our money and property) in order to take away the expression of our liberty (the ability to drive from place to place). And as a Green, this is his normal M.O.
Another "winner" recently said that I put "the power of the state over that of the individual." I can't think of any example where I do that, and neither could he: his one example was about preservation of natural resources, but he takes the side of the government over the individual on that issue. And I don't take sides on that issue at all out of a specific context, which he didn't provide, so it wasn't an example that fit me anyway.
So the reason I bring all this up is because I was hoping maybe one of you can help me come up with examples of where I put the power of the state over that of the individual. I can't think of any. The only time I can think of that I favor the power of the state over the individual is when that power is used to directly defend other individual rights -- such as arresting someone for assault -- which obviously doesn't count.
But maybe I am missing something. Help me out!
Cross-posted on <pudge/*>.
moof (Score:1)
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Seems like you said you favored Affirmative Action, in some circumstances.
Not in any case that would put the power of the state over that of the individual, no. I support the idea of, for example, government having programs to try to find potential inner city black employees, but not any quotas, not any special treatment in HIRING -- just in helping to provide opportunity to apply -- and certainly not forcing any private businesses to do likewise.
So that doesn't fit.
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Govt. should not be in the business of giving special advantages to some.
Fine, but that's got nothing to do with this.
In those cases, giving advantage to some is to disadvantage others.
Even if that is true -- and in this case, I do not believe it is, but putting that aside -- it still has nothing to do with this.
(The reason why I do not believe it is a disadvantage to anyone is because affirmative action as I've described does not hurt, in any way, people who do not get that attention; and I defy you to give an example of how it does. The "advantage" to the object of the affirmative action gets no preferential treatment in hiring of any sort
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I support the idea of, for example, government having programs to try to find potential inner city black employees,...
So I had to guess at what you meant. But in any event, where in the Constitution does it say govt. should have programs to help people of race X achieve state Y?
And you may be not seeing the creation of disadvantage because you don't want to. I went to a public university. They had a program to help latino students make it in engineering. I dropped out of en
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Well, your statement didn't parse:
I support the idea of, for example, government having programs to try to find potential inner city black employees,...
So I had to guess at what you meant.
Huh. Well, that was the original MEANING of "affirmative action." JFK signed an executive order that required government contractors to take "affirmative action" to ensure equal treatment of applicants and employees "without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin." It's talking about EQUAL treatment, not PREFERENTIAL treatment. That is what I am talking about.
And I explicitly stated (!!) that I was against hiring preferences or quotas of any kind, so I am not sure how you could "guess"
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Yes it does. Maybe there are kids who belong to other sets, according to your delineated "groupings", that also don't know how. To assign individuals to groups and then give only certain groups a "hand up" is to advantage some and disadvantage (relative to your privileged groups) others. It's no business of the govt.'s to be looking at college enrollments or any othe
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here's a group of kids that isn't enrolling, ... so let's go to them and see if we can't help them enroll,
That doesn't constitute an advantage.
Yes it does.
Not in regard to any preferential treatment in getting the position, or maintaining it.
It's no business of the govt.'s to be looking at college enrollments or any other private action of individuals and slice and dice them and decide there's too much of this or too little of that, and then interfere, where they have no proper role.
I never said it was. Nothing I said had anything to do with that.
To distill down our big difference here, I'm reminded that you also indicated once that you supported social engineering via the tax code
Nope.
(something about how taxing us for acting in certain ways is okay, because we can avoid those actions, but taxing us for just simply being is wrong).
Well, everyone who believes in ANY taxes believes that taxes for acting in certain ways is OK, unless you think all taxes should ONLY be on simply "being." Tax on earning money, tax on spending money, tax on owning property, whatever: almost all taxes are based on certain activities. Is there any tax you support, at all? It is either based on ac
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Not in any case that would put the power of the state over that of the individual, no. I support the idea of, for example, government having programs to try to find potential inner city black employees, but not any quotas, not any special treatment in HIRING -- just in helping to provide opportunity to apply -- and certainly not forcing any private businesses to do likewise.
I have to agree. There is no issue with making certain populations aware of opportunities they may not have otherwise considered. For example efforts by the CIA, DOD, FBI, and State Department to recruit people who speak Arabic or Farsi. (though in this case the government is looking for people with desirable special skills)
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I have to agree. There is no issue with making certain populations aware of opportunities they may not have otherwise considered. For example efforts by the CIA, DOD, FBI, and State Department to recruit people who speak Arabic or Farsi. (though in this case the government is looking for people with desirable special skills)
True, that is slightly different. And I believe I've had this disagreement with Bill Dog before, in that I think the government has a responsibility to certain minority groups. Not so much that it justfies special rights or privileges to the detriment of others, but our government -- due to government's policies of slavery, segregation, and more recently, failed social policies for the last few decades -- have largely created the black inner city problem, and where possible and not Constitutionally illeg