Thanks for taking the time and effort to write this, Pfhorrest. Well done.

I suppose I would be a “right libertarian”, though I refuse any position on what I see as an inadequate spectrum. (I prefer “liberal” simply because I believe in liberty). So our differences are few, I think, though we both tend towards anarchism.

I too do not want any collapse into anarchy. With entire generations weened into government authority and dependency, such a collapse would be dreadful. But I do believe a shift from government paternalism into self-reliance through piecemeal reform is the way to go. I also believe a limited government is necessary for an extended time, so as to ween people off the notion state as a providing father, and to clean up the mess government has left behind as we head towards anarchism.

Anyways, I do have some other points of objection, but you probably already know them.

My ontology is pluralist, I suppose (but also a cop-out of sorts). There is a vast variety of individual things and substances. I think metaphysical pluralism can account for differences in time and space as well as differences in kind, which monism and other taxonomical accounts rarely offer. This also entails nominalism and individualism.

The belief that the law must conform to an "assumed standard" of some kind, and isn't the law if it does not, ignores the law; it doesn't explain it. It leads to a fundamental ignorance of the nature of the law and its operation.

What say you to that, if anything?

I say: There is no Law but the Law!

I agree. Laws mostly protect the interests of the state, the preservation of the established order, and the power of the ruling class rather than conform to any standard of “natural law” or morality.

Personally, I much rather the risk of freedom than the paternalism of statism. I do not believe a "social contract" exists in any case, and is little more than statist apologetics, so maybe our differences here lie in the general principles.

Either way, I disagree that any restrictions on freedom are the consequences of free citizens. Every restriction on freedom has been implemented by those in power who believe they know what's best for everyone else, and is therefor the consequence of their actions, not of the free man. Freedom can be bridled by choice and responsibility, and if we hand off these choices and responsibilities to some central authority we do so at our peril.

Sounds like you live in a freer area than most. In others there are curfews, stay at home orders, rule by decree, state seizure of the economy, line-ups at the grocery store. Had we not had an internet to supplement our social lives, our employment, our entertainment, I wager we would not be so unresponsive to our reality. Totalitarianism crept into our lives through the decree of establishment politicians and public health bureaucrats, and not through the dictator we were once promised.

A few years ago people started buying Sinclear Lewis' It Can't Happen Here because the media was making much ado about dictators and fascism. It turns out their warning were misplaced, because no populist fascist dictators were required to toss us into totalitarianism. And it is totalitarianism. The control is total. We're ruled by decree; governments have seized economies; the people can no longer assemble; the police have set up checkpoints; officials have closed borders; dissent is suppressed; religious observances have been cancelled.

What is surprising is that most have accepted it, even applauding it.

Is all that worth the pain the child will have to go through in life? The way things are going - prevailing values which put money and power first - the present is a basket case and the future looks even bleaker and that's being optimistic.

I think so. One could raise his children in such a way as to deal with those pains, and at the same time combat the proliferation of such values.

What possible reason could there be for creating another person?

To make a family is the main reason I opted for children. The benefits include support, relationship, security, and a chance to shape a human life.

I am also bringing up the idea of exploitation in terms of people forced into labor. Why is this not an issue? In any other case where someone is forced into a situation when not necessary, this would be unjust. However, why does generalizing this concept to life itself rather than a particular circumstance get an exemption? What about the generalization makes it "too general"? There really doesn't seem to be a good answer for forcing in a particular instance unnecessary and the more general instance of bringing into life itself.

The main reason why “generalizing this concept to life itself” is untenable is because living is not forced labor. Living is not suffering. Living is not a “situation of negative circumstances”. I am not convinced there is any overlap between the concepts “life” and “forced labor”, let alone a 1-to-1 ratio, so I am unable to equate one with the other and move forward with your logic.

Forced labor and exploitation each require a beneficiary, someone who benefits from your forced labor and exploitation. Someone must be forcing you to labor or someone must be exploiting you. If not, then no forced labor or exploitation has occurred.

I suppose that in your scenario the exploiters are the parents, but then I see parents carrying and feeding children as if they were the most precious things in the universe, and am forced to laugh.

You mentioned he doesn’t like babies, and ran with it. But there is evidence contrary to your claim. I choose the evidence, you choose...what exactly?

There isn’t a strand of chewing gum connecting the premise to your conclusion, but that’s how the internal logic of anti-Trumpism usually works.

I think I know the difference sarcasm, hyperbole and sincerity.

I hate to say it but I knew it wouldn’t be long before a few sensationalized statements plucked from the vast sea of his rhetoric would occupy your opinion of the man. That’s how contextamy is supposed to work, after all.

Of course I could be wrong.

You sincerely believe he doesn’t like babies, yet there are countless pictures and videos of him kissing babies, picking them up, bringing them up on stage at his rallies, displaying behavior opposite and contrary to your sincere beliefs. So forgive me if I do not immediately agree with them.

I do have a bad habit of giving people the benefit of the doubt, and do so at my own peril. But so far I have not yet felt deceived by the man.

I'm sure you know this but you can have two things be true. Your parents labored for you, and now that you were born, you must work-to-survive. You choose to labor or you die from neglect and starvation. That is the situation.

Laboring to avoid neglect and starvation is one thing, forced labor and exploitation is quite another. Either my parents forced me to labor or they didn’t. They exploited me or they didn’t. In fact, they took care of me when I couldn’t do so for myself, and equipped me with the knowledge to survive.

I’m fairly certain you have not met the man, have zero personal observations, and like the rest of us derive your opinion from news stories and commentators.

He had some choice words for those who participated in the incursion, so I think it can be said he was not a fan of them.

In the Trumpian value system they would be classified as losers and suckers.

That you believe such a thing occurred is a testament to your own value system, one easily moved to conclusion by gossip and palace intrigue.

I disagree, entirely.

Hopefully no one is forcing you to associate with assholes. I would argue, though, that throughout history, the inquisitors were the assholes and those they cancelled were victims. Cancel culture is a lighter form of bullying than the abject cruelty of mob violence, sure, but it is eerily reminiscent. It’s much better to defend human rights for everyone, especially for views we dislike, than to pick and choose who gets them.

Anyways, I don’t want to derail Frank’s thread.

Cancel culture negates any chance of forgiveness and reform. The ostracized tend to gather at the fringes, where their views and resentment metastasize away from the withering light of free and open debate. It always escalates. Soon we get McCarthyism and the like, ostracism based on rumors, smear campaigns, until it expresses itself in injustice and tyranny. Rather than protect the “social contract”, it violates it, leaving everyone at risk.

I’m of the mind that we must bring these people closer, protect their right to express their opinions, and hopefully change their minds. I think this pertains also to the covid and vaccine sceptics.

I can understand discriminating between sick and healthy, but discriminating against people who do not conform, whether they are healthy or not, doesn’t sit right with me. The same goes for cancel culture, which is little more than the enforcement of thought crime through mob tactics.

There’s talk of “vaccine passports”, people getting fired for not taking it, and anti-vaccine people are routinely demonized.

I don’t think any anti-vaccine sentiment is right. I just believe people shouldn’t be forced to take it or be discriminated against if they do not.

The “will” is another abstraction of the human being. How could it be otherwise? Whenever I look for the genesis of human action, and follow it through to it’s execution, I need not avert my eyes to any other being, state, or idea in the entire universe but the one committing the action. That a determinist must retreat into his mind to find some other cause is enough for me to be suspicious of the position.

But is it always about "unpaid" labor? How about forced labor in general onto another person because you simply like labor yourself (or don't mind it).

I’m opposed to forcing labor of any kind on another. But I don’t believe my parents forced me to labor by birthing me. In fact, they labored for me for quite a period, and I was wholly dependant on them. At any rate, I choose to labor for my own survival.

People rioted outside Trump's inauguration. People rioted outside the Whitehouse. People overtook entire blocks of some cities. Since they were violent and were aimed at government, were these insurrections to you?

You are arguing that it was not violent and not against the government?

I'm arguing it isn't an uprising or rebellion.

What was the right thing?

"only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated"

I don't see an argument, naturally.

I used your argument.

What was his intended purpose?

"After this, we’re going to walk down and I’ll be there with you. We’re going to walk down. We’re going to walk down any one you want, but I think right here. We’re going walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators, and congressmen and women. We’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated. I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard."

The actions of those who stormed the capital and the meaning of insurrection.

So it you can think for yourself, how was it not an insurrection?

The actions of those who broke into the capitol, the definition of insurrection, legal precedent and history. What occurred simply doesn't resemble an insurrection.

You can't think for yourself?

I can and do think for myself. The authorities have, at least so far, confirmed my view. If you'll note, the insurrection theory was the prevailing view in the press and in congress. Curiously enough, you seem to share the same view. So what did you base your insurrection theory on, if not someone else's thinking?

Is putting people into a situation where they have to produce in order to survive, its own exploitation of people? If not, why not? No one chose that the initial conditions of how life works (like producing something for someone to survive), yet we assume that it is good that people must endure. Why? How is this not immoral/evil and at the least exploitative of people?

It wouldn't be exploitation because survival doesn't necessary involve the forced appropriation of unpaid labor. One must labor for his survival, sure, but it makes little sense to say one must be exploited in order to survive.

Forcibly entering the chambers of congress with the intent of overturning the results of a free and fair election. That’s not insurrection?

No one has yet to be charged with the crime of insurrection, let alone convicted of it. So according to those with the authority to make such judgements, the answer is no.

Frankly, he wasn’t a great leader in this instance. His idea that the crowd would be “marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard”, to “cheer on our brave senators, and congressmen and women” wasn’t followed. In fact, the violence had started before he finished speaking, both on the same day and the night before. The theory he desired a coup is contrary to his explicit statements from both before and after the event. No charge of insurrection has been levied; probably the worst charge was assault. On top of that, the defence in the impeachment trial was a sufficient refutation of the insurrection theory.

America did survive the insurrection for the simple reason there wasn’t one.

This sentiment is precisely what I wanted to express earlier. The issue of pornography - how the demand for it sustains a large-scale industry and how, simultaneously, there are many are against it - brings to the fore a very intriguing facet to hedonism-based morality which is, if you haven't guessed already, that not all pleasurable things are good. The puzzle of pornography - how well it runs and how bad we feel because of that - is just one of the many ways in which the marriage between hedonism and morality falls apart.

Conversely, if masochists have anything to say about it, not all painful things are bad.

One of the paradoxes of modern liberalism is that it has become increasingly liberal in moral affairs and increasingly controlled in economic affairs. While it gets easier for a horny lad to engage in behavior that satisfies an every-expanding array of kinks, a growing body of external regulations prohibit his deviation from orthodox productivity.

I, for one, welcome the end of moral coercion (as Mill called it), but without a corresponding decline in economic coercion, I think the only direction we can go is towards a libertine rather than libertarian society.

I’m surprised you didn’t mention Russian disinfo.

Here’s a weird story in the Hunter Biden saga. Imagine if this was someone else’s son.

On Oct. 23, 2018, President Joe Biden’s son Hunter and daughter in law Hallie were involved in a bizarre incident in which Hallie took Hunter’s gun and threw it in a trash can behind a grocery store, only to return later to find it gone.

Delaware police began investigating, concerned that the trash can was across from a high school and that the missing gun could be used in a crime, according to law enforcement officials and a copy of the police report obtained by POLITICO.

But a curious thing happened at the time: Secret Service agents approached the owner of the store where Hunter bought the gun and asked to take the paperwork involving the sale, according to two people, one of whom has firsthand knowledge of the episode and the other was briefed by a Secret Service agent after the fact.

The gun store owner refused to supply the paperwork, suspecting that the Secret Service officers wanted to hide Hunter’s ownership of the missing gun in case it were to be involved in a crime, the two people said. The owner, Ron Palmieri, later turned over the papers to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, which oversees federal gun laws.

The Secret Service says it has no record of its agents investigating the incident, and Joe Biden, who was not under protection at the time, said through a spokesperson he has no knowledge of any Secret Service involvement.

Days later, the gun was returned by an older man who regularly rummages through the grocery’s store’s trash to collect recyclable items, according to people familiar with the situation.

The incident did not result in charges or arrests.

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/03/25/sources-secret-service-inserted-itself-into-case-of-hunter-bidens-gun-477879

It’s an invitation to you to prove your smears. If you can assert I don’t recognize facts, surely you can name a fact I do not recognize. If I have not recognized a fact maybe I can explain why I don’t. If I wasn’t clear I can clarify. If I was wrong I will admit it. But if you will not let me defend myself, or as always, weasel away, why bother? If this is the intellectualism you’re trying to protect, then yes, consider me opposed.

You don't recognise facts.

Name one.

It was my point. The only answer to my question “which expert will teach us which expert we should believe?” is ourselves.

You assumed my view and intention without evidence. Had you asked me what they were instead of levying false accusations we might be in less of a quarrel. So much for common ground.

Medical malpractice is one of the leading causes of death in the US. It’s why we get second opinions, or more. So yes, I believe it is prudent to treat expert opinion with a little skepticism.

It was my point that it is up to us to evaluate expert opinion, and here you are restating my point after accusing me of anti-intellectualism and trusting another user on some message board. Just brilliant.