Only the state gets to legislate. In the absence of referendum the “people” have had no say in any of it.

As for rights, in my view no right shall be infringed. One should not exercise a right that would infringe on the rights of others.

But what if the overwhelming majority who do not kill or injure others? What do they give rise to?

Positive rights confer a duty to act upon another person. So if you believe in positive rights such as the right to healthcare, welfare, employment, you also believe in the duty to provide them. Negative rights confer a duty to refrain from acting upon another person. So if you believe in the right to free speech, conscience, liberty, you also believe in the duty to refrain from suppressing them.

Here's another question for you, since it's clear not enough people will distance our take a vaccination, how do you propose to deal with the fall out that causes? Eg. overrun healthcare systems.

I would not propose any government solution beyond the ones I have always stipulated: the protection of human rights. As for dealing with the potential of disease and infection, I deal with it by protecting myself.

It seems to me that the solution to overrun healthcare systems are better healthcare systems. This is especially true of so-called "universal" systems, where everyone is assured healthcare. The people pay for universal healthcare and they are owed universal healthcare. If a government has to restrict and confine people because of their failure to uphold their end of the bargain, then they are the problem. But if the lockdowns are any indication, the government would rather violate the most basic of human rights to skirt that responsibility.



I cannot see it like you because I’m left wondering how someone like you or me “gives rise” to a 30 zone, as if I had any hand in legislation. Do I give rise to a 70 zone if I drive too slow?

As for rights, I speak only of the negative rights, not the positive privileges.

I don’t see how I can blame someone else for the actions of some government official. The people who have shuttered my livelihood, restricted my movement, banned friends and family from society, banned funerals, weddings, and religious gatherings, are not those who flout state-sanctioned medical advise.

But that’s the way collectivism works in a nutshell. The actions of one individual makes the rest guilty by association. Rather than consider things on a case-by-case, individual basis, lazy collectivist solutions come to the fore. This is not because they are right or more just, but because they are easier and involve less effort.

Principles like due process were devised to protect the individual from the state. It is because of the state’s malfeasances that it exists. It wouldn’t exist, in the Magna Carta or the American constitution, for example, if the state had its way. The protections of these individual rights are the proper sphere of government, in my opinion, but beyond that it should not go. But, as you mention, they have taken on collectivist tasks like providing health and welfare, so rights be damned.

The assumption that no individuals privately and voluntarily respond to risks is the greatest friend to authoritarianism during the pandemic. One wonders if they factored individual risk-mitigation into any of their models at all.

Look at the fantasies you have to tell yourself to justify all this. “You know these kids would flaunt the rules! Their escape is proof of the necessity of mandatory quarantine! The kids escaping is an obvious example that quarantine centers are a good idea!” You present a counterfactual and use weasel words to prove the necessity of authoritarian measures. No concern, no pros and cons, no rights-based approach, just counterfactuals and weasel words.

You say there is no effective difference between my normative claim “people should isolate” and “the government shouldn’t put people in internment camps”, as if people are unable to isolate and stay away from others without government internment. I’m some sort of hypocrite for making too big a fuss because government internment is no different than staying home.

No matter. Just as the Centre for National Resilience let’s us know that people should not look at their confinement like prison, but as a moment to reflect and learn about themselves, Benkei says we should look at it like a sacrifice and pat ourselves on the back for being good team players.

What is this but the most laughable, slimiest sort of propaganda?

It was only a criticism of the idea that by paying tax dollars you are somehow working with others, coordinating your defence. That’s not the case, to me. It appears more like ignorance, in the sense of “not knowing”. Since one is unable to follow his tax-dollars to their final destination, so he is unable to say he is coordinating education, a police force, or the toilet paper in a public washrooms. Far from coordination, he is ignorant of it, and has no say in all coordinating aspects of its application.

Some would rather delegate the responsibilities and the means for their defence on to others, to “professionals”. So in times when defence is required, he has long absolved himself of any responsibility and can let others handle it for him. Far from efficient, it’s laziness. It isn't without irony that we find a dutch John Oliver ridiculing Americans and their guns while benefiting from the liberation and defence of American firepower.

And since they confer their responsibilities to the state, they correspondingly confer it the power to govern their own lives. The monopoly on violence hints at who is serving whom.

I used legalism in the pejorative sense. I mean that ethics is dismissed in favor of appeals to law and authority. Law shapes the "mindset of the people", rather the other way about. I fear we cannot discuss the ethics of defending oneself from a mob or a right to bear arms without limiting ourselves to state-sanctioned principles, many of which are younger than the disco era.

The point, anyways, was that in the view of my erroneous ideology I have yet to see anything better on offer.

Denying fundamental rights on a hunch is ludicrous. The just and ethical thing to do would be to fix the testing, not toss them in an internment camp just in case.

Sure, the fact that someone can hear birds and see the sun is nice, but it isn’t much a consolation when you are confined against your will.

As for the toys, fair enough—even though it says toys are prohibited, gaming systems, puzzles and cellphones could be considered toys—but that wasn’t the only thing I listed.

I already did link to the Centre for National Resilience in my first post. It was my mistake to think you had read it.

If people are in contact with a Covid-positive person they should isolate, stay away from others, and get tested as much as possible.

You obviously don't need to commit a crime to be sequestered. We also lock up crazy people when they haven't committed a crime. And in this case, being in close contact with a covid-positive person means you can become a vector for transmission as it takes time before viral load is sufficient to be picked up by a PCR test. About 24 hours before a PCR test is positive, you can transmit the virus. In Australia they've opted to quarantaine such people in separate facilities to ensure the disease doesn't spread any further. By comparison, in the Netherlands you're supposed to self-quarantine for five days after the last close contact with a Covid-positive person.

You’re either a “vector of transmission” or not. You don’t jail people who cannot spread the virus. If you don’t know whether they can spread the virus or not, you figure it out.

A frightening place? Sure. That's because you're apparently a pussy and your confirmation bias doesn't allow you to quote the upside of the experience. So let me:

Aah yes, hearing birds and smelling eucalyptus trees are the upsides to being interned in a camp, confined to a small building. Are you serious?

Kids under 12 do not have to quarantaine, so the "no toys" doesn't seem like a huge problem but is in any case not true because only balls, skateboards and swimming and playing in drains during rain are prohibited.

The following are not permitted in either quarantine facility;

Toys or recreational items such as swimming pools (plastic or inflatable), scooters, skateboards, bikes, balls and roller blades. These will be stored until your exit.

I’ll just say that there is a fine line between efficiency on the one hand and laziness and ignorance on the other. You would rather delegate the right to bear arms and to defend yourself to other people. You don’t know where your tax money is spent—out of sight, out of mind—but are confident authority will spend it on some “public good”. Your sense of justice has been reduced to strict legalism. In short, Tobias, your ideology is servile and unjust and immoral.

But again, thanks for the funny video.

The epidemiological relevance of the COVID-19-vaccinated population is increasing

High COVID-19 vaccination rates were expected to reduce transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in populations by reducing the number of possible sources for transmission and thereby to reduce the burden of COVID-19 disease. Recent data, however, indicate that the epidemiological relevance of COVID-19 vaccinated individuals is increasing. In the UK it was described that secondary attack rates among household contacts exposed to fully vaccinated index cases was similar to household contacts exposed to unvaccinated index cases (25% for vaccinated vs 23% for unvaccinated). 12 of 31 infections in fully vaccinated household contacts (39%) arose from fully vaccinated epidemiologically linked index cases. Peak viral load did not differ by vaccination status or variant type [[1]]. In Germany, the rate of symptomatic COVID-19 cases among the fully vaccinated (“breakthrough infections”) is reported weekly since 21. July 2021 and was 16.9% at that time among patients of 60 years and older [[2]]. This proportion is increasing week by week and was 58.9% on 27. October 2021 (Figure 1) providing clear evidence of the increasing relevance of the fully vaccinated as a possible source of transmission. A similar situation was described for the UK. Between week 39 and 42, a total of 100.160 COVID-19 cases were reported among citizens of 60 years or older. 89.821 occurred among the fully vaccinated (89.7%), 3.395 among the unvaccinated (3.4%) [[3]]. One week before, the COVID-19 case rate per 100.000 was higher among the subgroup of the vaccinated compared to the subgroup of the unvaccinated in all age groups of 30 years or more. In Israel a nosocomial outbreak was reported involving 16 healthcare workers, 23 exposed patients and two family members. The source was a fully vaccinated COVID-19 patient. The vaccination rate was 96.2% among all exposed individuals (151 healthcare workers and 97 patients). Fourteen fully vaccinated patients became severely ill or died, the two unvaccinated patients developed mild disease [[4]]. The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) identifies four of the top five counties with the highest percentage of fully vaccinated population (99.9–84.3%) as “high” transmission counties [[5]]. Many decisionmakers assume that the vaccinated can be excluded as a source of transmission. It appears to be grossly negligent to ignore the vaccinated population as a possible and relevant source of transmission when deciding about public health control measures.

If an unvaccinated person with no covid and a vaccinated person with covid show up at busy pub, who gets let in?

It’s true, high murder rates are not a good thing, but neither is a monopoly on violence, the inability to equalize force, the inability to defend one’s property, an so on. At each step, from the shooting of Jason Blake onward, the professionals failed in Wisconsin. Frankly, I would much rather take my chances.

Three teenagers from the indigenous Binjari community recently escaped from one of Australia’s internment facilities, the “Centre for National Resilience”. The authorities had initially rounded them up and interned them, it appears, for the non-crime of being in contact with covid-positive people, not because they carried any virus or posed any sort of threat.

The facility seems a frightening place, to me, especially for children. No visitors, no toys, no care-packages, round the clock confinement, and an ever-present police force—one wonders the point of it all if it is not an exercise in totalitarianism. According to Washington Post correspondent, Robyn Dixon, who was forced to stay there, "the feeling is part trailer camp, part hospital, part prison". At least the good officials there provide propaganda on how to maintain insanity during your internment:

“Tip: Instead of looking at this quarantine as ‘prison,’ try seeing it as a time to get to know yourself again, reflection, media detox and so on.”

No wonder they escaped. According to Obergruppenführer Michael Gunner, “all of them had tested negative for Covid the day before”. So why not just let them go? They had yet to finish their arbitrary sentence. And the threat was so grave that officials determined a police manhunt was required. They set up police checkpoints, checked registrations and car trunks, and scoured the areas until the young people were found.

The penalty is likely to be severe them. Prisoners are subject to fines and extended quarantines if they flout the rules, and all of it "at your own expense".

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/australasia/australia-covid-quarantine-howard-springs-b1967561.html?amp

That’s true. But when we address a portion of the body we are nonetheless addressing the body. So we need only reduce our focus and area of concern, not the object that perceives.

It’s a funny video, and quite apt. There is something addictive about owning and firing guns. I suppose it could resemble an epidemic in a way, but when the satire comes from a people who require strict paternal supervision when it comes to such weaponry, it falls a bit flat in my eyes.

This is just elementary stuff that I'm sure you fully accept, so I'm wondering why it need be explained and that there's this dropping back to some sort of holism that demands that every part of me is sentient and every part of me cognitive, from the hair on top of my head to the my toenails.

It is the only answer to the question “what perceives?”

And such an answer doesn’t demand that all parts of the organism are cognitive or sentient. That would be a fallacy of division. An eye removed from the organism does not see. A brain removed from an organism does not perceive. Parts do not perceive.

In short, we need not reduce the concept of “perception” to any other object in the world, whether faculty or organ. So why would we we?

What I am trying to do is speak about these things in terms of direct realism, without appealing to noun-phrases that signify nothing, which is admittedly difficult at times.

I said and meant that perceivers are organisms, which I can prove by pointing at entities that perceive. I don't believe an organism needs to be completely whole or without certain bodily functions in order to perceive, so I don't think the "entire" modifier need be added.

I struggle to see how 4 seconds of electrical activity in the brain of a decapitated mouse suffices to refute direct realism. Such electrical activity probably occurs in the bottom half, as it does with headless chickens. At best it indicates that electrical activity doesn't immediately disappear upon severing a spinal cord.

It's just difficult for me to accept that a "part of us adds" or a "part of us perceive", simply because such activities cannot be shown to be performed by parts. If I had to point to an entity that adds and subtracts, I can be satisfied by pointing to human beings. And if for some reason we'd like to narrow our focus, we should do so, but never once do we observe something other than the organism.

No, he did not know him. The man was released from a Milwaukee mental hospital following his second suicide attempt on the very day he attacked the kid carrying a rifle. It is possible that this was another attempt at suicide. "Shoot me, n-----!”

There is a point of agreement. We agree that coercion and force and rights violations are often required to defend another's rights from those who would violate them. That, to me, is the extent of my own statism and the proper sphere of government. Beyond that it should not go.

But your idea that the state should violate my rights because someone else is violating another's is absolutely absurd and nonsensical.



Your analogy was false.

Even now you won’t touch the argument, and that you buttress it with petty ridicule makes it all the more cringe-worthy. Is the protection of rights not an alternative behavior to the violation of rights?

You can remove a pancreas and a nose and still perceive. It's not the entire entity that perceives, any more than it's the entire entity that bends. That task is left to the joints. I do understand that the perceiving faculties must be supported by blood and other life sustaining functions, but that doesn't mean the blood is what is doing the perceiving. The car's headlights shine the light, not the bumper, even if you wish to insist it's the car that is lit up and the bumper is part of the car.

You’ll still be a living organism if you lose your pancreas or nose, at least with the aid of medication. The thing that perceives is, in every case, the living organism. The moment we eviscerate that organism, separate it into perceiving and non-perceiving faculties, there is no perceiving. A brain or faculty or any combination of disembodied organs in a vat cannot perceive.

You're arguing perception is not alterable? Suppose you're knocked unconscious?

I’m arguing that the only thing that is altered is the biology. I think this is what direct realism entails, at least, and that we ought to speak about such activity in this way.

My alternative to a state that violates the rights it purports to protect is a state that doesn’t violate the rights it purports to protect. When I criticize one behavior it follows that I expect the other. It doesn’t follow that I have no argument because I won’t produce some better or historical political organization.

That's just scientifically incorrect. My nose doesn't see things, nor does my pancreas.

You do in fact, regardless of how messy it makes philosophical analysis, have a part or parts of your brain that perceive. The perception occurs when that faculty receives sensory input, either through impulses from your sensory organs, artificial electrodes in the brain, drug abuse, psychological disturbance, damage to the brain, or even through purely internal processes like dreams.

That's just the way it works. If it's easier to think it another way, do that, but it'll be wrong and you'll need to stay a philosopher, as opposed to a doctor.

That’s empirically incorrect. Every being that perceives is an organism. Brains or parts of brains or noses or pancreases do not perceive. That’s just the way it works.

I think you overlook a serious problem here. If you admit that the presence of Y between object X and perceiver Z distorts, modifies, or alters the perception, then you admit to indirect realism as X is no longer what you perceive, but it's instead the conglomerate of everything between X and Z, including all biological processes prior to being perceived.

But I don’t admit that the presence of Y between object X and perceiver Z distorts, modifies, or alters perception. As I stated earlier it alters the environment.

Wait all you need. None of what I said requires painting pictures of how society would look. My only point to you was that states violate the human rights they purport to protect. You even went out of your way to show that rights are subject to abridgement or suppression by the authority that confers them.

You don’t need to explain the physics or biology. And It’s true that if we alter the physics or biology we perceive differently. I just think it more precise, leads to less problems, and is just plain easier, to think of these things in terms of direct realism, at least as far as my limited and naive understanding goes. I think we perceive the flower; I don’t think we perceive perceptions.

If a wall stands between an observer and a flower, we no longer perceive the flower, we perceive the wall. The environment is altered. If an electrode is inserted in the brain, and we are unable to view the flower in the usual manner, we still perceive the flower. The biology is altered. As far as I can tell the fact that we perceive or regard a flower is not altered.

I don’t know if any of this factors into it, but for me the locus of perception is the entire organism. With this I don’t need to evoke Cartesian theaters and brains in vats to understand how we perceive.

B is true: we see the same flower differently than the bee; our lenses and the rest of our biology is different than a bee’s; but the differences are with the creatures themselves and how they act upon the flower. Why must we assume some other thing?

In my understanding of direct realism there are no differing representations of the flower to present and there is no observer beyond the lens to present them to. I think at the very least indirect realists need to prove that there is some sort of barrier between observer and observed.

Yes there is. Read them at your own peril.

Is the flower the way I see it or the way the bee sees it? If some creature sees it as a blinking light, is it a blinking light?

It's a tough question. I might be off here, but I would think direct realism would permit that different creatures, with differing biologies, see the same thing and that the experience is always veridical. So in both instances the flower is observed directly, without any mediating factor standing between seer and seen. In all cases and with all creatures they see the flower. As soon as we insert "the way something sees" (the flower as a blinking light, for example) in between seer and seen we presuppose indirect realism. So I think the question is somewhat loaded.

But for some curious reason it does not feel threatened by it when white people do it. Well, maybe Ruby Ridge and Waco. But not the Michigan State House, Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, Bundy's ranch, Unite the Right and Proud Boy rallies, and countless other examples.

All those people you mention have been met with state force, as far as I know.

Why is that? Did they say that to the black man and his daughter in the photo you put up?

Why would they say that to the father and daughter? there was no violence or rioting or property damage occurring at the time they were exercising their rights.

Thanks for taking the time to write that.

I think you're right that a state legal order would see the open-carrying of weapons as reckless. It is a threat to its monopoly on violence. I always bring up this quote of James Madison's because I think it describes the motives of the state perfectly well: "you'll perceive the old trick of turning every contingency into a resource for accumulating force in the Government".

One needs only look at the Black Panthers to show that the state, both federal and regional, will undermine the militia clause in particular, and the right in general, if it feels threatened by it. All it needs to do is float some frightening contingency to justify violating it. Hoover and Reagan said as much about the Black Panthers, and now no one can open-carry in California because of it. Ironically, people nowadays applaud such “gun control”, even though, in that instance, it was used to undermine a marginalized community’s right to stand up against state tyranny.

Curious question: do you know why the Dutch lost their right to bear arms? Have they ever had it?

I don’t care how many arms people carry. If they don’t attack each other no one gets shot. The child rapist who first attacked Rittenhouse assumed, wrongly, that Rittenhouse wouldn’t defend himself. He said “you won’t do shit” as he attacked him. He wasn’t deterred by the weapon. Boy, was he wrong.

And the picture goes against your race-thinking pundit. Everyone was cool with it.

A recipe for escalation… it’s a nonsensical notion unless people start attacking the person carrying the gun.

A man and his daughter excercized their same right just outside the Rittenhouse trial where people were protesting, and no escalation entered the equation. Had people attacked them it would be a different story, of course.

Fair enough about your legal interests.

But your question about whether his carrying a weapon into a riot should contribute to his blameworthiness is interesting. I say it does not. He has the right to open-carry that weapon in that state (I’m not sure about carrying concealed weapons). He wasn’t out there committing crimes. His attackers are aware he is carrying it. And he used it to defend himself from attack. Why would a legal system ascribe more blame to this scenario?

Probably the best method would be to lead by example rather than diktat. That way you don’t have to force people who want to work more, not less.

Reduce the work week for your employees. If people see that it works or is beneficial or gives you advantage, they might try to adopt it.

Is it a common ploy of yours to rehash what I write into language that comforts you? It’s been a few times now that you’ve done it, that I have to stop reading as soon as I notice it. You’re a good writer, James, and you should use your gift, even if it’s in service to state power.

White people are black people, riots are protests…anymore doublespeak to add?

The Dutch system is probably a fine legal system, but completely irrelevant in both jurisdiction and rights. I’m not sure why we’d compare them.

My point was that deterrence and self-defence is the most likely intent to open-carrying a weapon. I don’t know about you, but my own common sense dictates that I would not go near anyone carrying an AR. Even so, it obviously did not deter the attackers. The first attacker yelled “you won’t do shit” before lunging for the weapon. It didn’t work out for him, but it does help your point about deterrence rarely working.

Rittenhouse went to Kenosha to shoot black people, did so, but was acquitted by a jury instructed to ignore anything Rittenhouse did to cause concern to others.

You’re words, not mine. Race-thinking and disinfo don’t mix, I’m afraid.

How many black people did he kill again?

Thank god it is not up to Dutch law, then. The US has the 2nd amendment, and in Wisconsin a man can bear arms for security. In other words, a man can carry a gun with the intent to protect himself. “Simply being armed” is not only a deterrent but an effective means to defend one’s life from violence. Given that both the deceased attacked him and tried to grab his weapon, it appears that’s what Rittenhouse did, and we need not construct any intent beyond that.