The part where you have yet to give an example.

If there is the involvement of other states, why would you not mention their misdeeds as well?

Yeah, because there are few misdeeds that Europe was not involved in.

Sure, specify a time frame and give an example.

Given that Europe is the crucible of the worst wars in history, the breeding ground of communism, fascism, and nazism, the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire into the Middle East, I’m curious as to what might be several orders of magnitude worse than what Europe has been up to. Perhaps worse is the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan, but I cannot think of much else.

I don't disagree with much of what you wrote, but trust in US government and media is at very low levels, whereas trust in the EU is at high levels. That's really all I need to know about a stupid citizenry.

As for Russia-gate, I totally agree, and it was proven to be bullshit. The Mueller report, which was transferred from a failed and and highly-criticized investigation called Crossfire Hurricane, was fruit from the same poisonous tree. It turns out they ended up investigating the wrong campaign. Subsequent investigations implicated no one but the Clinton campaign and the FBI. As you can see that debacle is still having its effect on pliant minds.

A beautiful irony is found in Thomas’ ruling. While the fevered dissenting opinions opine about the president as king, Thomas’ concurring opinion notes the illegal means with which Jack Smith was appointed, in a way similar to how the King of England created offices out of thin air.

By requiring that Congress create federal offices “by Law,” the Constitution imposes an important check against the President—he cannot create offices at his pleasure. If there is no law establishing the office that the Special Counsel occupies, then he cannot proceed with this prosecution. A private citizen cannot criminally prosecute anyone, let alone a former President.

The limitation on the President’s power to create offices grew out of the Founders’ experience with the English monarchy. The King could wield significant power by both creating and filling offices as he saw fit. He was “emphatically and truly styled the fountain of honor. He not only appoint[ed] to all offices, but [could] create offices.”

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-939_e2pg.pdf

This could be the end of the Biden regime’s illegal and monarchical persecution of their political opponents.

That’s when the 2nd amendment comes into play. Just another reason why the tyrant Dank Brandon regime fears the constitution.

It must hurt to have unconstitutional and illegal mechanisms to do politics taken away from you, so I wager Biden is quaking in his boots. But should Biden do something stupid as you suggest, there are still legal and constitutional paths to check executive power, and it’s called impeachment.

The Supreme Court ruled presidents have absolute immunity for official acts, likely delaying the government’s persecution of Donald Trump a little longer. If Biden’s DOJ could learn to follow the letter of law and judges took their time rather than force it through the courts to influence an election, none of these cases would be an issue.

Manufacturing Consent describes a time over 40 years ago, from before the fall of the Berlin Wall, when information wasn’t as prevalent. The freedom to persuade, which Chomsky argued was in the hands of the few, isn’t as possible as it once was. I’m speaking of a generation or two later.

What would you point to as evidence that people are trying to keep other people divided, with malice and not stupidity, so as to push their own agenda in the background?

While I agree one ought to follow his own conscience, his conscience needs to be developed, and studying moral philosophy is helpful in that regard. Emerson, for instance, was once a preacher, and it is doubtful he would have come to his later conclusions had he not put in the study of those doctrines. One needs to know a doctrine before he can become unsatisfied by it.

In Emerson’s example we discover that no one can be controlled by a normative claim, moral, ethical, or otherwise. The only coercive rules are the legal ones, enforced as they are by the threat of force, violence, and kidnapping.

I don’t think they could coordinate on such a level. It’s just blind and stupid instinct at this point. Lying is easy, but coordinating the division of the entire West is something I don’t think they could execute. That’s to give them too much credit.

At any rate, I haven’t seen much evidence of conspiracy. In the United States, for instance, those who put together crossfire hurricane and duped a swath of true believers into pretending the president coordinated with the Kremlin to subvert the United States were acting like teenagers who just so happened to have a little power and influence. Reading their emails, text messages, testimonies etc. revealed blind emotion and poor reasoning. They believed the most obvious nonsense and were equipped with enough hubris not to question their own susceptibility.

And droning innocent families and lying about it. Remember ISIS-K?

Wow. It’s quite embarrassing that the president of the United States must be spoken to like a child, but his stupid grin says it all.

It was funny because during the debate someone from the Biden campaign ran to the media and told them he had a cold. They reported it dutifully. His whole presidency has been a blizzard of lies, but this particular one was perfect as it encapsulates how Biden has gotten away with it for so long—plausible deniability.

All of it reads to me like it assumes some modicum of cunning and foresight. I don’t think there is a conspiracy of any sort because most are too dumb to pull it off. What we’re watching is simply the result of the insane and self-interested (and now dementia-ridden) in their natural state when they’ve achieved a little bit of power. The state of the world is the result of their choices, sure, but I don’t think they’re trying to divide people, for instance.

Is Biden a national security threat? His performance and public meanderings make it clear that the first virtual President of the United States is hardly able to close his mouth or walk off a stage, let alone discharge the powers and duties of his office.

Fair enough. I appreciate the honesty.

Oh dear. I’ve never claimed to be non-partisan. Meanwhile, you voted Biden and told people to vote for Biden. No need to pretend.

This is a gooder.

It wasn't me carrying water for a brain dead candidate. If that ever happens I'll at least own up to it rather than pretend I was above it all.

Another win for Trump and loss for Biden. The supreme court has ruled in FISCHER v. UNITED STATES that Biden's DOJ, including Jack Smith, stretched the law beyond the constitution in order to prosecute J6 political prisoners and Donald Trump. Much of the government's case regarding the charge against Trump, "obstruction of an official proceeding", relies on this stupid theory.

The real criminals, it appears, are the ones running the justice system. The scam is crumbling in real time.

I will toot my own horn on this one because I received quite a bit of pushback from it, even from self-described lawyers. When failed congressman Jamaal Bowman pulled the fire alarm in congress I joked that he should be prosecuted under the same legal theory that the Biden justice department was prosecuting j6 prisoners and Donald Trump. Out of fairness or stupidity, one or the other, other posters agreed. The problem was the theory was nonsense.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/841733

Maybe I’m wrong. Perhaps the cope is still going hard.

We always knew their candidate was Weekend at Bernie’s, but one has to admire the persistence with which they carried that husk of a human being over the finish line. One question that wasn’t quite answered was whether those who dragged him forward are delusional or liars about their candidate, their president. But there is just no more denying it any longer. The party of democracy and their press apparatchiks are having open discussions about subverting the will of their primary voters, as they are wont to do. It appears they give up precisely when they can no longer maintain the lie.

Who is the real president? Obama? Jill? This is a dangerous moment for the country. There is no one leading it, and now even the true believers have given up denying it. If there was ever to be an attack on the most powerful country on Earth or her allies, now is the time.

Recall the last time the Trump and Biden debated.

By that time Hunter Biden, the Biden crime family bagman, had stupidly left his laptop in a repair shop, and the contents found its way into the pages of the New York Post. The reporting displayed his numerous crimes for the world to see.

But the propaganda wing of the Biden campaign brewed up some misinformation in order to fool their base and any undecided voters. The Big Lie they conjured was that the laptop was Russian disinfo. They called in some favors from former deep state apparatchiks to help sell the lie to the gullible, and it worked. The information was censored and discredited in public discourse. And when Trump brought up laptop in the debate, Biden reiterated the lie.

This was one of the largest disinfo campaigns in recent memory and it defrauded the country, and exists as an exemplar of election interference. To this day no one has been held accountable.

I’m excited to see what Biden comes up with next.

That’s a lie. I’ve already established a reciprocal transaction is a moral basis for a claim to pretax income. But you haven’t responded to my arguments numerous times now.

For one, I do not believe there are such things as “moral outcomes”, for the reasons I’ve already stated. I believe in moral behavior. Morality concerns behavior and conduct, not “outcomes”.

The two parties have a moral claim because the exchange concerns their property, and they acted morally towards each other by voluntarily agreeing to the exchange. The tax collector has no moral basis because he is acting immorally towards the other parties by intruding into their exchange and stealing their property. The theft of property is both immoral behavior and an immoral outcome: both parties had their property stolen from them.

You have not proven the tax collector has any legitimate claim to anyone’s income. Even where the tax man claims he desires a “moral outcome”, you could not prove that there is one.

you don't have morality only a procedure.

That you are the beneficiary of a transaction doesn't mean you should be.

That is true. That one is the beneficiary of a transaction doesn't mean he should be. At some point one must prove he is entitled to the benefits. As an uninvited third party, the tax collector cannot provide that proof, therefor he should not be the beneficiary of the transaction.

It is morality wherever conduct between two or more people is concerned. In matters of trade, morality requires that people act morally and not immorally, just as in any other interaction. Fair dealing in such matters is moral. Stealing from others or extorting them is immoral.

I’m not talking about moral outcomes. I’m talking about moral behavior. And intervening in another’s transactions and taking their property is immoral.

That income is theirs because that is the terms they agreed to with their employer.

Wrong

I suggest there is moral and immoral behavior. You suggest there needs to be moral outcomes. This seems to be the principle upon which we differ, leading us to wildly different conclusions.

Given your advocacy for and defense of taxation, steeped as it is in statism, I fear you are willing to treat people as a means in order to achieve your desired end, namely, “moral outcomes”. As with all utilitarian thinking, you assume you know what regulations and prohibitions are required to reach a “moral outcome”, and that you’ll know you’ve reached one when it occurs—two impossible calculations. Worse, your quest for a moral outcome justifies you treating people unfairly, unjustly, and as a mere means for what is plainly some desire of your own rather than any discernible moral result. You’re willing to break a few eggs because you want to make an omelette.

You know better how one ought to live better then the Bangladeshi does, so you regulate everyone’s lives until you see the Bangladeshi living how he ought to. All of what you write indicates, to me, immoral behavior. After all, morality is has to do with conduct, not about the promise of some future state of affairs. And from what I’m reading this conduct is tyrannical. The desire to regiment people’s lives, to take from the fruits of their labor, all to satisfy some bureaucrat’s wishes, seems to me horrible, and I will oppose it tooth and nail.

It is relevant because Trump is proposing to eliminate income tax.

So what did the US do before the 16th amendment? What does Monaco or UAE or Bahamas do without income tax, for example?

There are two means by which a state can generate wealth: by exploiting the labor of others, like a criminal, or through production, like everyone else. So why not quit exploiting people and start producing? Why not charge people for these so-called services?

There were and are plenty terrible, immoral, and dubious legal concepts. Slave codes, for example. When morality and law contradict one has to lose either his moral sense or his respect for the law. I’ve chosen to retain my moral sense, and gave up quite easily my respect for the law or anyone who practices it. Any appeal to law is just a routine fallacy, anyway, so I’ll just disregard them.

But economic transactions concern morality wherever they involve human interaction. Theft, robbery, extortion, plunder, exploitation etc. are both economic and immoral transactions because the exchange involves the treatment of others. Sharing, charity, or any fair dealing are both economic and moral transactions, and for the same reasons. When you offer me something in return for my labor, and we both agree, and the transaction is satisfied, that’s a moral transaction. The inclusion of laws and contracts, as far as economic interactions go, is immoral because it is to involve a third-party and its coercive powers in the transaction.

Who pays for foreign wars? You benefit from cruise missiles dropped on wedding parties. You’re just getting together with your sensible community to build military bases on someone else’s land.

Go freely give them your money, Tim, instead of pretending that you do.

That's called being a citizen. The same way children are children and not slaves, even when they are "slaves to the whims" of their parents. Especially the first few years. It's really quite pathetic you're equivocating paying taxes to being a slave when we all know what a slave really looks like. You aren't it. You're just a pathetic selfish whiner.

The power parents have over their children is legitimate; the power the government has of the people isn’t. One can be justified, the other cannot. You’re probably employed by the government, living off another’s wealth, so I’m not surprised.

A slave is a person who is forced to work for and obey another.

People do not freely pay it because it is a crime if they don’t. It is garnished from their wages or taken at the point of sale, and without their permission. So this nonsense about paying it freely for the good of all, as if people are getting together with their neighborhood to throw money in a pot for a community garden, is fiction.

Go freely give your money to the government,Tim. That’s the only way you can escape the canard you’ve built for yourself. You believe the lie, you spread the lie, so why not be it?

What’s your counter argument, Tim? Maybe you pay taxes voluntarily. Except I wager you would never pay more or less than what they tell you to pay. Tell me why you are not a slave to their whims.

As with so many, one can question whether you read - it's clear you did not understand and that you took your quote out of context.

What am I supposed to take away from those two quotes, Tim? I’ve read the book and understand the context. I already know Nozick thinks taxation is on par with forced labor, and redistribution is unjust. I don’t understand how quoting from the work I just cited is an argument against what I or Nozick have said. You’re supposed to counter it, not reiterate it. Unfortunately this isn’t the stupidest thing you’ve done yet, but getting close.

But why not answer and argue for yourself? Modern society is built on infrastructure, "infrastructure" broadly understood. Without it, no society as known and understood. And society itself aspirational, continually trying to be better. But it comes at a price. One aspect of the price is taxation. Taxation paying for infrastructure, for the betterment of the lives of all. You call that theft and those who pay, slaves. If it's justice how is it theft? And if society freely chooses, how are they slaves?

Taxation isn’t the voluntary transfer of property. That’s why the transfer is unjust and that’s why it’s theft. Society does not freely choose. Those in power do. That’s why it is slavery.

I can’t wait!

I’ve laid out the argument almost exactly as it was first laid out by Robert Nozick half a century ago.

“taking the earnings of n hours labor is like taking n hours from the person; it is like forcing the person to work n hours for another's purpose”

-Nozick, “Anarchy, State, Utopia”

The argument has generated much discussion which anyone can find for themselves. You are then supposed to give me a reason why it isn’t forced labor or why the argument is wrong. But for whatever reason you dodged it, even straight up ignored it.

As for it being theft, I made my argument.

“When they take your property without your permission, that’s theft.”

You’re then supposed to tell me why it isn’t theft or why the argument is wrong. But you trade your opportunity for vitriol and slander. Sorry, Tim, you’re a fake.

Whether the charges should have been brought is one question, and to my mind not an interesting question, and certainly an ignorant question. The fact is he was charged - with crimes - tried and convicted.

Charged by a DA who campaigned on prosecuting him, tried by a judge who donates to the opposing campaign in violation of the states ethics rules, and convicted by a jury who were given poor jury instructions. They are willing to sacrifice justice itself on the altar of their mental illness.

I have addressed my claim and put it right in front of you in the form of an argument, and here you are on public record continuing to avoid it. Here you are on public record continuing to use the same reasoning found in the justifications of slavery and tyranny. Others witness you do it, your subsequent bad faith, along with your slavish proclivities, and that’s fine enough for me.