I would call myself a liberal in the classical sense.

No, I do not approve. This sort of stuff leads to the killing fields. I think your ideas are unjust and I fear for the countries where such mindsets achieve power.

Not only stupid, but ignorant. Can you say rhetoric? The art of persuasion? And never mind Aristotle's measly Rhetoric when you can have Quintillian's whole bookshelf on the subject. And these just two of thousands. Every letter write, every poet, every person who attempts literature of any kind, in particular every speech writer. Every mother who calls her child. These just examples; in short every person who communicates. Btw, nos4, are you aware of music? Do you know what that is? As usual you are an insult to these forums. You just don't usually display this "level" of ignorance.

Then why won’t you persuade me, Tim? Surely you know some of these arts.

Well, it was text. I looked at the screen, I read the words, I interpreted the symbols, and I typed the response. How, in your neuroscientific view, is the word causing me to do any of this?

You repeat that the words are causing my response, telling my body to type, and in the same breath accuse me of magical thinking. But I’ve also seen a few posts in this thread which seem to be unable to cause a single response, not only from me but from others. Were these pixels, arranged as they were, lacking the causal force? Did they cause people not to respond? Did the “signals” travel down the wrong neurons?

So far all you’ve done is written about me in the passive voice and the words in the active one. I think it should be the other way about.

I would be for defunding people and institutions who are guilty of those crimes against humanity, but I could not in good conscience lay blame and seek punishment upon an entire class of people without knowledge that each and every individual composing that class were guilty of said crimes.

I would not be opposed to defunding the government, though.

Is it logical or illogical to take into account a real statistical difference between groups when dealing with an individual in that group? Not to stick with this difference when updated with individual information, but to start off in the absence of individual data/experience?

It depends on the group. I think it is illogical to take account of statistical differences between groups if the existence of those groups can be easily questioned. Take the idea of reparations, for instance. I think there is a solid argument for reparations, and I do think the United States should compensate the victims of slavery. But should someone like Kamala Harris get reparations on the basis of her “race”, even though she is (according to her father) the descendant of a slaver?

I refuse to acknowledge the notion that “speech has consequences” beyond the immediate physical effects, for instance the movement of breath from the mouth or the application of ink to paper. Since no one but myself can control my motor cortex, I believe the activities you described are the consequence of other, more personal factors. But I can understand the folk psychology of the notion.

The problem with this notion, as I see it, is that if speech is to be blamed for political skirmishes or violence, it can be blamed for any and all opposite effects. If you and I hear the same speech, but you go out and riot while I go home and read a book, we remain ignorant to the real reasons why you did one thing and I did another. Free speech becomes the innocent victim.

I doubt the physics and biology of such an assertion, but I am aware that such folk psychology exists and do not completely disagree.

How?

The Nazis were routinely censored in Weimar. Worse, Hitler himself used their own censorship to justify the Enabling act. After that Nazi Germany became a huge safe-space for Nazi ideas, with all critics censored in some manner or other.

The recent Capital insurrection suggests that words, specifically words that compose a big lie in that particular case, can have serious consequences. Ignorance can be exploited by unscrupulous influencers.

Could you use your words to guide me like a marionette to this or that action? Let’s give it a try.

Even if that were easily possible our values are not so easily reconfigured.

I think it is only a matter of time before one fallen belief leads to a collapse of those that depend on it.

Censorship is a huge problem, and will continue to proliferate as the means of expression become more widespread. But I think there is hope. As soon as the cowardly fear of words and voices is proven to be illusory (which, given the ease with which we can communicate, is only a matter of time), the fashionable idea that articulated sounds, marks on paper, or pixelated letters can be the same as violence will become increasingly untenable, and its believers increasingly silly.

I believe argument is valuable for its own sake, that one should subject his opinions to the grindstone of debate in order to form a better understanding of the world. But such a practice is a problem for those who have their identity all bound up with their ideas, so much so that an attack on an idea becomes an assault on the people who value it.

Personally, I believe a reconfiguration of the notion of self is a necessary step to disentangling identity from ideology. Being able to remove pride and self-esteem from the marketplace of ideas seems crucial if one wants to remain in it without fear and stress.

Lots here, (though almost none of it addressed by my post).

Sure, many substitute skin pigmentation for race and base discrimination on it, that is (somewhat inaccurately) referred to as "racism". It is a small subset of the larger topic of "discrimination".

Many discriminate based on race (among many other things), that is not necessarily negative. However, you stipulated: "… discriminated AGAINST...", which, of course is negative by definition, so I am against that.

There are many examples of racial discrimination that are not negative (and I am not against those).

There is little difference between so-called positive and negative racial discrimination, in my view. In each case, one adopts a perverted racial taxonomy, a race hierarchy, and applies it to actual people. To give preference to one racial group is to do so at the expense of other racial groups, with little care for the actual flesh and blood individuals involved. Positive racial discrimination is not contrary to racism. It is the continued application of racism.

What you didn't seem to grasp four years ago, and still don't seem to grasp is that there are laws against foreign participation in an American election. It is a crime.

Twitter and Facebook have nothing to do with American elections, so all that nonsense about Russian bots and fake news on social media was piffle. You guys live in some weird alternate reality.

It could be just that. Maybe the difference lies in the object of scorn, whether it be an actual, extant individual or an abstract generalization. If scorn is not grounded in something that exists, one must aim it an idea, which is an extension of the self.

That's all very well. But take the group of cunts. They're all cunts aren't they? They just are. Same with wankers, there's no non-wankers among them.

All groups are composed of individuals. There is nothing connecting one individual to the next. One can try to bridge that gap with generalizations and words but none of that means anything outside of human imagination.

No, I couldn't care less because there is no crime or evil occurring anywhere folks like yourself have been crying wolf for the past half-decade. Trump, like the mods and rockers, just happens to be the source of your hysteria.

I've never said nor implied Biden colluded with foreign powers to win in 2020, so I'm not going to bother.

Yeah, I could care less if Russians bought Facebook ads. Biden employed Facebook and they censored information that might look bad for Biden. Where were you?

Years of Russia conspiracy theories and where were you? It sounds like double standards but there is no evidence you have any. Is it because you have a Trump-shaped hole in your heart?

A lot of good that did. What they got was a pro-American, “America-first” agenda. The KGB fell with their commie empire. Maybe Trump cultivated them and we can thank him for the fall of the Berlin Wall.

It is complicated, agreed.

I would argue censorship is one big problem. Not only does it deny the hater’s right to speak it, but it also denies our right to hear it, ridicule it and prove it false. The Nazis were routinely censored up until they seized power and Weimar Germany had fairly modern hate speech laws. Such rules proved ineffectual on the one occasion when there was a real argument for it. And they used their own persecution as justification to persecute others.

So, in my opinion, prejudice of the type we’re speaking about needs to be met in the open and without fear.

I think removing the desire to attribute characteristics to entire groups as if the group itself was an individual is a good place to start. That way lies stupidity and bigotry. There is too much diversity within groups than between them to come to any rational conclusion about this or that individual by referring to any classification.

Well Im not really making the PC point. Im not even really sure PC is at work in a significant way among the mods. They seem to be concerned about guidlines, as they should be. If PC was a problem in this forum, wouldnt NOS be banned?

Am I not PC enough?

It reminds me of a Thomas Sowell quote:

“If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 50 years ago, a liberal 25 years ago, and a racist today.”

This is why you must do whatever is possible to have the smallest government possible. Government is at best, treacherous, at worst, the Devil, Himself.

That used to be what it was like for people across the spectrum. For Engels the state machinery would necessarily whither away. For Thomas Paine the government was at best a necessary evil. But over time it has only become bigger, more entrenched, and its subjects have lost most of their power. The covid response proves their totalitarian aspirations, and the obsequiousness of today’s statists.

Biden’s treasure Secretary Janet Yellen made a speech to Citadel for $800,000, but hasn’t recused herself from advising old Joe regarding the GameStop affair and Citadel’s involvement. Refilling the swamp is easy. When asked about Yellen, press secretary Jen Psaki was quick to remind us that Yellen is a woman.

But it’s nice to have a press secretary who understands the details.

Biden has signed 30 executive orders in his first week, which to me is dictator status. Compare that to Trump’s 6 and Obama’s 5. Whatever he’s doing he’s doing it fast and with an iron fist.

Is skin-color not used as a marker of race? It is, as are other biological factors.

Let’s get this out of the way, then. Do you believe people should be discriminated against on the basis of race?

Clearly I was talking about race and race-based policy and medicine. I mistakenly thought you were as well, but I guess your entire argument was a red herring.

also, maybe stop equating skin colour with race, racist.

I have always been speaking about race, race-based discrimination and its institutional variations, and here you provide a study about the colors of skin and melanoma in an effort to prove the discrimination on the basis of skin-color is a good thing. I think it is you equating the two, racist.

I never said there is anything wrong with discrimination, so your point about bleach is a stupid one.

My point is that we shouldn’t discriminate on the basis of race, whether you choose to do so by looking at skin-color or some sort of one-drop rule.

Your advocacy of race-based medicine and diagnosis is utter bullshit, not a repudiation but a continuation of racism, and a mindset that has led to some of the worst atrocities in the history of medicine.

It is wrong because race, as fuzzy as it is superstitious, is no proxy for genetic susceptibility and actual biology. The use of racial discrimination in medicine is certainly no argument for it, especially given the history, the Tuskegee experiments for example.

It is racism. Racist societies have routinely set the state machinery to favor this or that racial group for no other reason than that they share the same shade of skin color. Your paternalism doesn’t absolve you of its stain.

how can I know that though? I have no way to confirm any of what you are saying, that others feel what I feel or even feel to begin with.

You can ask them. You cannot feel what they feel because you are a different human being, but you can share, relate and empathize with another.

Perhaps this quandary exists because for so long we’ve elevated the inner invisible world at the expense of the outer physical world, instilling in our thoughts a divide which does not exist. We cannot exist in both, so I suspect a sort of dissonance occurs.

Partisanship is not a fundamental feature of democracy; it is the fundamental corruption of democracy: suspending your own right to vote in your interest by instead subscribing wholesale to the views of someone else.

Without parties we get the single-party politics of fascism and communism. In democratic countries, at least one can choose to assemble with others of like mind and influence politics. He can also, like myself, remain independent of any single party.

Biden is about to set his administration to fighting systemic racism with his new executive orders. Susan Rice said this was about “racial justice and equity”, which implies fairness and impartiality, but in newspeak means instituting discriminatory racial policies that target people based on the color of their skin. This used to be known as “institutional racism”.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/26/politics/executive-orders-equity-joe-biden/index.html

But, from of the mouths of those who are unable to remove discredited and superstitious taxonomies from their thinking, looking for disparities between them becomes a motivating factor in this “whole of government approach”.

So "socialist" means "officially socialist at some point in its history irrespective of what it is now" sort of thing? Well then the aforementioned eastern European countries aren't socialist either. There has, for instance, never been an officially socialist country called the Czech Republic. Czechoslovakia, yes.

The Czech Republic is not socialist either. They replaced the word “socialist” in the name Czechoslovak Socialist Republic with the word “federal” back in 1990, shortly before the country dissolved. Their economy has been liberalizing since the Velvet Revolution.

In Slovakia, the same is true. It has also transitioned from socialist economics to the free-market variety and privatization, and it has faired much better now than during its socialist past.

Marx couldn’t predict this transition from socialism to capitalism. Everything from air quality to life span to wealth is better in Easter Europe than when it was back under communist rule.

Are there numbers for people trying to leave? Canada is pretty socialist. Is there a mass exodus or are Canadians restrained?

Well, Canada is not a socialist country. It is a constitutional monarchy, liberal democracy with a market-orientated economy. It has no reference to socialism in its constitution or founding documents.

Perhaps we have different conceptions of “socialism”. I’m speaking of countries, past and present, that explicitly or actively seek to achieve socialism, like Venezuela or Cuba or North Korea. When you say “socialism” do you mean state intervention?

I never said socialism leads to emigration. In fact emigration was mostly illegal and movement was restricted.

What I said was think more people try to escape from socialist states than move to them.

I guess I can’t expect good faith, though, can I?