I don’t know the details of the bill but I still don’t think race and gender ideology ought to be taught in public schools. Tax-payer dollars ought not to be spent on such schooling. But if this bill extends to private institutions, businesses, and universities, then that is wrong and I oppose it.

I see nothing wrong with the Parental Rights in Education bill because it restricts the power of the state and expands the power of parents. State employees ought not have the power to instruct children in gender ideology. Those teachers can teach their own kids about sexuality as much as they wish, but they ought not have that same power over other children.

Changing election laws before an election is not suppressing a vote; it’s to ensure voting. All that dark money, those Zuckerbucks, were used to help voters, just like they helped people by suppressing stories that made Trump’s opponents look bad. Not to mention the belligerent groups conspiring to riot should Trump have won. After a full year of violent riots, surely none of those threats led to an alliance of Big Business, Big Tech, and Big Woke to fundamentally alter American elections in the lead up to one of the most important elections ever held, and all behind the backs of voters. It’s no surprise that all of it favored one candidate over the other. Meanwhile a Trump supporter was just convicted of election interference for sharing a meme on Twitter.

The Stalinism was in reference to the politicization of the justice system. Stalin’s chief of his secret police famously said “you show me the man, I’ll show you the crime”. The New York AG campaigned on getting Trump. DA Bragg frequently brought up the numerous times he sued Trump and his family. Trump has been raided while Biden gets away with the same thing for over a decade, and treated with kids gloves. Don Junior and Ivanka are sued into oblivion while Hunter Biden, a corrupt crackhead and philanderer, who left a hand gun in a garbage can next to a school, with photographic evidence of innumerable crimes, is not.

We are human beings.

It’s the nature of state education to have its curriculum determined by the state. If you want to tell kids about sex I would advise doing it at home.

Like I said, word crimes. He spoke and I felt some way, therefor it’s a crime.

His opponents (who are of both parties) fundamentally altered election laws and changed how elections are run. And now they are abusing the justice system in something resembling Stalinism. If Trump did any of that you might have a case, but all you can do is try to make the sound of his voice and words that come out of his mouth into something they are not.

The nature of Trump’s supposed crimes are invariably of the verbal variety. Word crimes. No violence, no criminal intent, just that his mouth made certain sounds at certain times. They don’t like what he says or the way he speaks, this much is obvious, but his voice can bring about the end of Democracy herself. But it is their reactions to his voice that threaten the republic.

By what mechanism do men confer rights? And how do you reconcile this with your earlier statement:

I believe rights are naturally founded, derived from human nature, and not the edicts of those in power.

We use our reason, speech, and bodies to derive, confer, and protect rights, like any right that has ever been uttered.

We observe human nature in order to find what is universal about human beings. For instance, humans need to speak, to communicate, to be creative. So we grant them the freedom to speak, refuse to intervene when they are doing so, and defend that right if necessary.

There are no such rights because you refuse to give them. You will not afford anyone the right to life or the right to own anything. And of course you will not defend them. Only government can do that.

And therefor you wouldn’t confer someone the right to life or to own property, let alone advocate or protect such rights. Is that correct?

Because rights only exist in the context of a wider society and governmental system. You have no power to give that, but people as a collective do.

If the government were to fall tomorrow, would you deny someone the right to life, or steal their property?

I’m sure you’ve helped plenty of children get off the streets. Let me guess: restricting everyone’s rights helps the children—unless it’s Hollywood. They can hire whomever they want.

What will a child do if they are forced to work because the rest of their family is unable to, but they are not allowed to work because some white night fears a Dickensian nightmare? Selling Chiclets to tourists or far worse.

No it wouldn’t.

It’s true. I wasn’t directing it at you.

I do not think so.

You restrict the rights of children to work. What if they want to? Instead they have to sell chiclets on the streets.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum

It’s a fallacy for a reason.

Why not?

But you don’t restrict the rights of everyone to be alone with children so as to protect children. Isn’t that so?

Still appealing to the populace. Cringe-worthy.

My only point is that restricting someone’s rights is not the same as protecting children. You’re welcome.

No. In order to protect someone they must first exist outside of the imagination.

Yes. Do you believe you’re protecting some potential human, in some potential situation, at some time and place in the future? What does he look like?

I don’t think restricting someone’s rights protects anyone. Protecting a child from being shot involves putting life and limb on the line, or neutralizing a threat. Advocating for policy is advocating for policy.

Of course.

The idea that some men must work for governments in order for rights to be meaningful and useful is nonsense. I can confer a right to you and defend it just as any king or official can.

Clearly the overriding consensus here is to restrict gun rights, to defang the populace, and to turn whatever remnants of social power that remain into state power. Americans ought to look at nations with the most placated and controlled citizenry, turn around, and assume the same position. The more padded the cell, the better the existence. Protect the children from being shot, but gnash teeth if you aren’t allowed to abort them with scissors and vacuums.

We know that the DA, among others, campaigned on getting Trump. Statin’s secret police chief’s infamous quote, “You show me the man and I’ll show you the crime”, is exactly the sort of justice at work here. A possible misdemeanor, well beyond the statute of limitations, speciously elevated to a federal crime; the use of a disgruntled perjurer as a star witness; a politicized DA and Attorney general who both campaigned on getting the man; all of this indicates the failure of the American justice system, particularly in New York. A travesty.

It’s about time. Very interesting. It’s safe to say that everything they cried foul about Trump was a reflection of their own impulses. They are indicting their greatest political opponents on trumped up charges, as if there was no political animus behind it. Trump is now like Navalny, and Biden like Putin. It has all been proven true.

Cool, like the right to life- via not getting shot.

Is that how you protect someone’s right to life, by begging the government to restrict our rights?

Or in other cases, abortion control, the right to life via not being chopped up in a womb and sucked out with a vacuum. All this talk of protecting life suddenly falls on deaf ears when this subject comes up. I don’t believe any of it.

What kind of weapon would you use to protect your children, should the need ever arise? Ballots and petitions? Beg a politician?

Obviously I see it differently. I own property because I purchased it or made it. But then again, I only own the title. The government doesn’t claim to own my land, but it can except use tremendous control over it. I’m not even allowed to collect rain water. The government takes taxes on that property, and should I not give it to them, they take my property. Where I live they take my property, the fruits of my labor, in the form of taxes, at nearly every point of purchase. Sales tax, income tax, property tax, capital gains tax, are all instances of the government taking my property. Rather than protecting my right they outright violate it. Whatever is left over for me is akin to a fief.

Besides, governments have eminent domain. They can take my land at their whim and fancy so long as it suits their interests.

That’s how feudalism works. I get to live on a plot of the lord’s land, pay them a certain percentage of what I myself make and create through my own industry, so that I might find solace in the chance that my government will protect me should war come knocking. No thanks.

Sometimes, in order to protect the rights of an individual constraints are put on the rights of other individuals. If you are a business owner, for example, you cannot hire children to work in a sweatshop.

Restricting my rights to own a gun does not protect the rights of anyone else, for I have not violated anyone’s rights. Because of this, restricting my rights, and violating the rights of all across the board, is unjust and contrary to individual rights.

That is an overly broad, vague, and simplistic generalization, intended to pit the government against the individual. The interests of the state are not necessarily antithetical to the interests of the individual. The example, chosen to stay on topic, is gun control.

Yet the government reserves for itself the right to own weapons that can destroy the whole planet. Where is the gun control then? If this isn’t antithetical to the interests of the individual I don’t know what is.

What this all boils down to is that some people, those who get to don the dress of officialdom and power, get all the rights, while the rest of us get…what, exactly?

They do not protect your rights, and the ongoing attempt to restrict your rights is evidence of this.

I am down for any law that is just and protects the rights of the individual. Laws that protect the state, its own interests, or some other interest group are unjust and do not protect the rights of the individual.

Yes we all know your tired, boring views on majoritarianism and general hatred of democracy in general. Has nothing to do with me.

Maybe you didn’t get the gist but your continuous invoking of democracy is a trite piece of propaganda to disguise your deep-seated authoritarianism. That much is obvious.

An anarchist who whines about his rights. Who do you think will protect your rights?

Certainly not you. Certainly not the government. Neither of us can name one right in the Bill of Rights that has not been violated. So how can you trust that they will protect your rights?

Thanks for the summary.

I do not believe rights are conferred by god or nature, which is absurd. Rights can only be conferred by men. But the idea that only man in his official or government form can confer rights is equally absurd.

We have tried law, compulsion and authoritarianism of various kinds to develop some sort of moral fiber and the results are nothing to be proud of. But since one cannot intervene in someone else’s life all of the time, and since one must have some idea of when and for what reasons one should intervene in another’s life, one must formulate principles on the matter. I prefer natural law and natural right because they take into account human nature and justice.

If I watch a swallow build a nest and lay some eggs I come to understand that he is doing what swallows do. Since it is in his nature to do this for the sake of his survival, and since he is not harming anything else, I afford him the right to build his nest and lay his eggs, and for the same reasons, to defend them if necessary. For these reasons I do not destroy his nest and steal his eggs, and believe he has every right to defend his nest and eggs if I were to do so. It is from these reasons that I would not dull his beak in the off chance he pokes someone’s eye out.

Observations of nature can inform one’s judgement and principles far better than any observations of law or constitution, in my opinion.

No need for sour grapes. What’s your hip political theory called?

Legal positivism is quite medieval. But then again maybe you’re speaking of some other theory, perhaps one arising in the disco era. No wonder.

You make rules for family. Very good. You can govern your own household. Except it doesn’t follow that you or anyone else ought to have the same authority of over people who are not your kin.

But then you sell your own and anyone else’s authority to the next political campaign. In this we get the greatest political theory known to man. “I make a mark next to someone’s name. if I don’t like what they do I put a mark next to someone else’s name in a few years. Something something democracy”. Except it’s the rule of some people over others, what with politicians with constituents in the millions.

Your insistence on controlling people and restricting their rights betrays whatever obsequious obedience you’ll display at the ballot box every other year, and whatever nonsense you speak in the name of democracy. You participate in the charades of the greatest monopolies known to history, and advocate for corporatism of the worst kind. Sorry, man, that’s a hard pass for me.

Exactly, “the people” is in fact not the people, the flesh-and-blood residents of a given jurisdiction. Like the “general good”, it’s some abstract universal found floating in the mind of a collectivist, and rather than apply to all people, it apples to some people.