If I’m ever the last man on Earth I’ll be sure to remember your penetrating insight and denounce all ownership as meaningless. Thanks for that.

If I own something, someone else does not. Wow. The clouds part and I am finally enlightened.

That’s exactly why I said there no justice in expropriating someone’s wealth and giving it to others.

Ignorance prevents one from giving reasons for his assertions. What role is played by others in ownership?

I don’t get the point. I do not own anything except in relation to those around me because…

Your furtive attempts to further a conspiracy theory in a country that is not your own is the going rate, ssu. Get in line.

Pure contextomy. He’s not insistent on anything to do with the military, and you pretended that he insisted Trump should get the military to seize voting machines. You furtively left out what exactly it was he was insistent about (appointing a special counsel and investigating the machines and elections) in favor of pretending his hypotheticals were some form of advice to Trump. But the hosts questions clearly distinguish between what Flynn thinks Trump should do and what he could do. You took from the “could” pile and pretended it belonged on the “should” pile. Even now you can’t even post the whole interview!! Utter lies.

ssu - “Yeah, just an ex-National Security Advisor (and former US general) of Trump insisting that Trump should use the military to confiscate the voting machines.”

NOS4A2 = “No, Michael Flynn insisted Trump should appoint a special counsel to investigate the voting machines and exactly what happened in swing states.”

ssu - “You simply cannot deny that he asked for the military to be used do this, to confiscate the voting machines.”

General Flynn - “The things he needs to do right now is he needs to appoint a special counsel immediately; he needs to seize all of these dominion and these other voting machines we have across the country; he needs to go ahead and prioritize by state and probably by county—Fulton county and Maricopa county for example—exactly what they did up in Antrim county, Michigan, and what they discovered; I think if he looks at probably a couple of random sampling of these counties he’s going to find exactly the same problem.”

https://www.newsmax.com/amp/politics/trump-election-flynn-martiallaw/2020/12/17/id/1002139/

Why won’t you state exactly what he did insist, instead of making it up?

Altruism is when you act with the interests of everyone in mind. Everyone votes for some decision or group because they believe that they will benefit the interests of everyone. Whether or not what or who they have voted for succeeds at that does not change the fact that the voter was well-intentioned.

I don’t think altruism is when you act with the interests of everyone in mind, especially when it comes to voting. To me, to suppose that one can know what the best interests of everyone in mind are, and that a vote can help to bring them about, is the height of egoism.

I took a rare look on Twitter yesterday just to analyze the cringe and I wasn’t disappointed. True believers and CNN talking heads were practically begging people to believe the narrative, speaking about their trauma, pretending those who died that day were not all Trump supporters.

They had a remembrance ceremony in Congress, of course, because a show must be made of it. Crypt-keeper Nancy Pelosi brought in musical guests during her remembrance of January 6th. The cringe makes it hard to watch.

The fact is exactly how I stated it, and you’ve done nothing to refute it.

That’s rich. I neither brought up the interview nor shared it. I only used it to show what was said, and only because I couldn’t find it anywhere else. You might have to use other fallacies to refute it.

I was linking to the interview.

Yea, an irresponsible fear.

No, Michael Flynn insisted Trump should appoint a special counsel to investigate the voting machines and exactly what happened in swing states. The rest was purely theoretical.

“These people out there talking about martial law like it’s something we’ve never done,'' Flynn told Kelly. ''Martial law has been instituted 64 times. I’m not calling for that. We have a constitutional process. … That has to be followed.”

https://www.newsmax.com/amp/politics/trump-election-flynn-martiallaw/2020/12/17/id/1002139/

But you might had known that if propaganda didn’t sway your thinking, like it did with everything else.

It’s not like medicine or anything else has advanced in a century. No, it was surely the fact that we outlawed dancing and meddled in everyone’s lives that saved them. Bless the government for taking our rights.

Yeah, one wasn’t a pity party for celebrities and had a little more balls to it.

Never forget: it was ok to take over Capitol Hill when Hillary-supporters did it.

You don’t know right from wrong? You can study laws until the cows come home, but if you do not know right from wrong, just from unjust, you could not know whether the laws are right or wrong or just and unjust. You’re simply abiding by dictate, not reason or any sense of justice. The idea that law dictates right or wrong, Justice or injustice, is not only absolutist, but an appeal to authority.

I’m not speaking about the state, though it is certainly one arbiter of justice. Anyone can be just and any amount of people can determine whether an act is just or not. To leave all that to the state is not too bright, for the reasons you mention.

Do you suppose that a man who murders an innocent person deserves the same treatment as the man who kills the murderer?

The principle is justice. With his actions he has proven he isn’t deserving of human life and dignity.

I suppose if a crime shows such a disregard for human life and dignity the perpetrator deserves nothing less than to be put down.

I mean specifically to protect the innocent from violence, to counter one act of violence with another. But I also believe violent reciprocation is often warranted. Sometimes it just isn’t right that someone should get away with certain acts without a comeuppance.

Violence is ethical if it is used to counter unjust violence. I would even say it is ethical when used in the service of justice, for instance, with the death penalty. So an ethical violence would have to be a just violence.

Yes, it’s a state-managed collectivist economy through-and-through, and the current seizure is only evidence of how far it is willing to go. But forcing businesses to limit capacity, to enforce mandates, to close early, to adopt shifting policies, to collect subsidies, to outlaw dancing, gathering, walking to the bathroom without a mask etc. is unprecedented, especially in countries that haven’t quite swallowed the socialist pill yet.

The fact that a slave could choose to escape his masters doesn't make him any more free. Perhaps we have different conceptions of freedom.

I much rather stay and convince you to stop stealing my wealth. It’s in both of our interests.

No agreement here. I register my vehicle, get a license, drive on their roads because I have no other option. :down:

Around here the government has seized the economy, effectively denying many people to conduct businesses, and in some cases to leave their homes, to enter businesses, to gather with others.

Unfortunately, these aren’t market forces at work here, but legislation that favors those who can afford to adapt to capricious government policy, those who who can afford to work from home, those who work on the internet, and so on.

None of this would have been possible without a vast segment of corporate interest, as large telecommunication companies, social media companies, multinational technology companies, media companies, have already provided the infrastructure required to pull it all off. We have effectively been forced to use their products and services, if not to survive, than to retain some sanity during isolation. Our loss, in fact, is their gain.

I would not be stealing if I use them because the roads are available to use by anyone, including those that don’t pay their taxes and foreigners. I would not be stealing anything because I have not taken anything that is not mine.

It sounds about right, to me. Combine this with the fact that no other force, being, or object can be shown to cause or direct a person’s decisions but the person himself.

No. Even in areas where I think the state is legitimate, I have never once thought to myself “the government sure did a good job.”

I thought taxes paid for roads.

You’ve always been creepy. If you quit stealing my wealth I’ll quit using your roads.

Stay off the state's roads then. Do they have roads up there in the Arctic circle where you are?

Does it upset you when I criticize the state?

You are a thief.

The exploitation of labor is when you steal the fruits of someone else’s labor for your own benefit, like a thief, like a state.

Would you steal someone’s wealth if there was no law or state prohibiting you from doing so?

Maybe I’m old fashioned, but working together for common goals seems to me to involve a little more work and community than letting an institution skim from your income. In this arrangement the only folk meeting their potential is the state, and I fear it is at the expense of everyone else’s potential. Nor is there any justice in expropriating someone’s wealth and giving it to others. So the hut on the hill is yours.

No thanks. I seek no membership in a social system that runs on exploitation. If you want to be altruistic you ought to stop delegating someone else to do it for you.

Voting confers power. It can only go so far as to give a person or party the right to control and regulate and make decisions on your behalf. It serves no other function. Giving someone the right to control and regulate and make decisions on your behalf is not an act of altruism.

The act of voting itself can be no more altruistic than making a similar mark on any other piece of paper

Taxation is not altruistic because taking money from someone is an act of theft. Paying taxes isn’t an act of charity because, since you’ve conferred the power to the government to dispense with your wealth as it pleases, you could not know whether it goes towards an altruistic act, or towards purchasing missiles, bombing innocents, or wrongfully imprisoning an innocent man.

The whole altruism angle is humbug.

When you give an institution the power to realize needs you give them the power to determine what the needs are. If you give the government the power to do something for you, you give it the corresponding power to do something to you. I suspect it wouldn’t be long until the government determines you need a decade of hard labor.

Our technology has advanced exponentially while the species has hardly evolved. This seems to me a fundamental problem.