LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
No bio...
User ID: 657
If you want to argue that what the authors meant by jurisdiction is in fact the duty to pay capital income tax in the US, and that the former slaves had this duty but foreign residents do not, or find some other bizarre interpretation of jurisdiction.
Or, you know, the pretty basic argument thar "jurisdiction" means just citizens, and a very particular carve out for ex-slaves and native Americans.
My perspective as an non-American third party is that it's pretty clear why the language "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" was used instead of just explicitly writing the 14A to restrict citizenship to children of existing citizens (jus sanguinis). It was to include the weird cases of ex-slaves (and later, native Americans, though that's messy about their jurisiction status and for any future similar unusual circumstances) and was never intended to allow for blanket jus soli citizenship.
Ex-slaves and native Americans, even though they weren't citizens, were clearly subject to the jurisdiction of the United States in a way that an anchor baby of a citizen of another country is not.
On the contrary, from what I can gather the 250k figure seems like a perfectly reasonable estimate, and is probably actually lower than the real number as the Rape Gang Inquiry Report suggests.
Firstly, the report clearly says this figure is an estimate only and the countersignallers only trying to "debunk" this figure are by disingenuously portaying as a hard statistic with bad methodology.
Secondly, while the estimate is extrapolating from data from the Rotherham inquiry (and a couple of other smaller inquiries) and you can criticise how accurate such and extrapolation can be:
- there is no reason to doubt the original Rotherham estimate which itself was conservative.
- using Rotherham to extrapolate from is actually a reasonably conservative example as the percentage of Rotherham who are Muslims is actually lower than the UK as a whole.
- the percentage and certainly the absolute number of Muslims in the UK has gone up, not down. The problem would have gotten worse since the Rotherham, not better.
- as noted below, the number covers all kinds of child sexual exploitation, not just rape though the scale of that shouldn't be downplayed either (while the Rape Gang Inquiry emphasise rape, it's clear from other parts they are referring to a broader category of sexual exploitation).
- if you do a very basic, extremely unsophisticated extrapolation of Rotherham to the whole of the UK population you end up with a figure more like 500k not 250k, by my back of the envelope calculations.
You can quibble about how specifically representative Rotherham is, but basically the argument comes down to whether you this Rotherham (and some of the other local inquiries) are broadly, if imprecisely, representative of Muslims in the UK, or you think Rotherham was just some weird fluke or exception.
I have no reason to believe it isn't or wouldn't be representative, and on balance the evidence that does exist seems to suggest the opposite.
It seems grossly unjust for the entire British state apparatus to cover up, refuse to record or report statistics on this matter, and then at the same time supportors of this apparatus turn around and reject any estimate based on the infomation that is available. We all know why there isn't more information and stats being reported. The criticism is all being made in bad faith. I am yet to see a single person make a reasonable counter-estimate. I have not seen someone say, "actually 250k is maybe too high, actually 200k/100k is more reasonable for these reasons."
The approach is basically to assume that 250k is an absurd number to begin with, and then work backwards to "prove" it's false with no real counter-estimate or one that's ironically absurdly low. It's apparently not absurd to believe the official British Government estimate that 3.1 million people in the UK have experienced some kind of child sexual abuse, but it is absurd to believe that 250k is a generally reasonable estimate of those raped and abused by Muslims specifically.
The Rape Gang Inquiry Report is sloppy in some respects, I don't deny but its general thesis and reporting is correct.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
13d ago
I've posted here previously I how I strongly suspect that childcare subsidies, maternal leave and similar economic policies actually counter-intuitively maybe be actually lowering, or to be precise limiting fertility.
The economic approach bakes in assumption that mothers should be working, actually quite insidiously. Maternal leave has a defined period, even if generous. It says to mothers 'great, you've had your generous months with your newborn, now get back to work and put your child in childcare'. Childcare subsidies obviously only make sense in a scenario when a mother is working and not caring for her kids herself. That you should have maybe one or two children then go back to work, and not make childrearing a central part of your life and identity. So economic incenitives end up implicity actually push mothers towards working and reinforce the two-income trap.
In otherwords, I think economic incentives encourage mothers to start or continue working, limiting their fertility, rather than encouraging working women to be mothers.
It is completely a status thing. Modernity is actively hostile to children and childrearing. The worst period of the Great Depression had a higher fertility rate than today.
Putting aside Stop Killing Games (which I support), there is a bigger question about how dependent we are on these tech companies and how it gives them basically unlimited leverage over... well, everything.
In the West, virtually every government agency, every small and big business, every school, college and university, half-assed book club, is dependent on infomation services provided by one of Google/Alphabet, Amazon Web Services or Microsoft (or in some cases, all three. My understanding is Apple is a distant fourth).
Any one of these companies could basically crash the global economy single-handedly just by revoking their services to even a small segment of the population or economy.
I can't imagine how a government plans to regulate these tech companies while they're using the very services provided by those companies to plan said regulation. It seems like there's always a loaded gun on the table, even if these companies superduper pinkie swear never to abuse their power, even putting aside the natural price gouging that occurs.
It might have always been the case that other companies, such as major banks (looking at you GFC) have at similar, if not the same leverage in the past, but I think the difference is that even the banks are now dependent on these tech companies!
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1mo ago
You're correct but I think this is overcomplicating it.
- Women want a man who is 'nice' but only to her.
- Men want a women who is a 'slut' but only to him.
Women's fantasy is to have a strong-willed, dominant, somewhat abrasive/disagreeable man who gets what he wants, but softens around her and only her, that she can wrap around her finger, not a pushover but 'I would do anything for her'. She is the exception to the other women.
Men's fantasy is to have a youthful, viriginal, agreeable, respectable women, but so enamoured and devoted (unconditionally) that she is willing to throw herself at him and only him, and become his 'slut'. He is the exception to other men.
Everyone wants to feel special.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
6mo ago
Was pre-Communist Russia particularly low trust? It was certainly highy authoritarian and absolutist, but I don't think that's the same thing as low-trust. Even the relative destitution of the Russian people isn't really indicative of low trust and I would say more to do with Russia's lack of industralisation and entrenched serfdom. But previously other European countries had entrenched serfdom and were high trust (e.g. medieval France)
My only cultural touchstone is Crime and Punishment, which does imply a certain level of high trust in Russian society at the time. Indeed, one of Dostoevsky's main points with his writing is that these new modernist (and ultimately proto-Communist) ideas becoming popular at the time destroys morality and society.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
9mo ago
Yeah, they're called Islam and Mormons the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
I'm only half joking. And Mormon theology is really wack. Interestingly when Islam first emerged, the original view of Christendom was it was a heresy, not a distinct religion.
Some Unitarians in eastern Europe (Hungary) might be more conservative, I don't know.
Other major contemporary (socially) conservative non-Trinitarians (if not specifically Unitarians) include Oneness Pentecostals, and Jehovah's Witnesses. There's a whole range of smaller denominations that are anti-Trinitarian in various ways that you may have heard of, generally they're pretty crazy and their theology is a joke.
As a general comment, I understand why people have problems with the Trinity, but at the same time it is the orthodox Christian position for a reason and does have intellectual weight behind it.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
9mo ago
You quite literally went to the worst denomination possible. Unitarians aren't even Christians under most traditional definitions, as they reject the Trinity.
The whole Unitarian movement has always been very liberal. They basically were created to be a liberal denomination of "Christianity".
As a Catholic, if you're interested in engaging intellectually with Christianity, look into a welcoming, conserative Catholic parish. Parishes associated with cathedrals are your best bet. No shade to our Protestant brothers, but Catholics have the longest and most robust intellectual tradition.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
9mo ago
Long-term it’s probably true that this kind of immigration is good for the economy and makes the pie larger for everybody, but it’s just too much too fast.
It doesn't. Countries with mass immigration like the UK, Canada, and Australia (most of Europe is not far behind) have had negative real GDP per capita growth in recent years (despite massive and increasing government spending as a major contributor to GDP I might add). US still has positive real GDP per capita growth, but that's probably due to US having a larger population able to absorb more immigration and the fact the US is still the centre of technology and innovation.
The pie technically does get bigger, but the number of people who eat the pie outpaces it. Liberal politicians love it, because it does technically grow GDP even if it makes their countrymen individually poorer. I'm reminded of the fact that Boris Johnson increased immigration ("Boriswave") because he wanted positive press coverage from the Financial Times. Any GDP growth is probably captured by the rich anyway, due to the wage suppression caused by immigration among other things.
Maybe once upon a time immigration does increase GDP (per capita) when immigrants were of a higher quality, able to integrate well, and came over to work and had no expectation of being supported by the state. Those days are long gone.
Far cry from the millions that people seem to get the impression about. No, a lot of these races are more small-dollar than you'd expect.
If American politics are anything like Australian politics in this regard (which it certainly is), of course this is not how bribes work. No, it takes the form of "not bribes" where while in office, corporations and donors will invite them to galas and events with fine dining, ridiculously high "speaking fees" and so on.
But the important part is when they leave office. You can expect a nice cushy job on a corporate board paying 7 figures, or a lucrative "consulting" role. The revolving door, as they say.
That's only if you're unwilling to abuse your position outright though, unlike a particular former US Democratic Speaker of the House.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
9mo ago
How many "left-wing violence incidents" go unprosecuted or otherwise unrecorded and therefore never end up in any dataset. Quite a lot I'd wager.
The problem with trying to take this "scientific", "quantifiable" approach to measuring and comparing left-wing and right-wing violence is that the right believe that institutions at virtually every level are structure in favour of the left and against the right. At every step right-wing violence is further monitored, scruntised, highlighted, pathologised etc etc while the inverse is true for the left. There is no clean, unbiased dataset. Your own scrubbing of the dataset only proves the bias exists, not that you've managed to produce a useful or accurate dataset after cleaning out all the garbage.
People need to understand that the institutions making these claims have lost all credibility and authority with the right, and that appeals to them are meaningless.
This is in addition to basic issues like trying to quantify "level of violence" by counting the mere number of incidents, when it's really a qualitative phenomenon (do 3 mild cases outweight 1 major one?), and in isolation a narrow definition of violence incidences would exclude other forms of political repression or harm.
So the leftist middle class needed a new victim for whom they could claim to fight. Women. Ethnic and sexual minorities (except pedos, because everyone hates pedos). Victims of colonization. Of course, unlike Marx, they have much less of a master plan, a grand strategy, a theory of victory.
Exactly right, but I have to emphasise that was not merely an organic development, but quite literally what the Frankfurt School/Cultural Marxists/Critical Theorists (and later, the woke), advocate for as a deliberate and concious development of Marxism.
Herbet Marcuse's 1969 Essay on Liberation:
No matter how rational this strategy may be, no matter how sensible the desperate effort to preserve strength in the face of the sustained power of corporate capitalism, the strategy testifies to the “passivity” of the industrial working classes, to the degree of their integration it testifies to the facts which the official theory so vehemently denies. Under the conditions of integration, the new political consciousness of the vital need for radical change emerges among social groups which, on objective grounds, are (relatively) free from the integrating, conservative interests and aspirations, free for the radical transvaluation of values. Without losing its historical role as the basic force of transformation, the working class, in the period of stabilization, assumes a stabilizing, conservative function; and the catalysts of transformation operate “from without.”
This tendency is strengthened by the changing composition of the working class. The declining proportion of blue collar labor, the increasing number and importance of white collar employees, technicians, engineers, and specialists, divides the class. This means that precisely those strata of the working class which bore, and still bear, the brunt of brute exploitation will perform a gradually diminishing function in the process of production. The intelligentsia obtains an increasingly decisive role in this process – an instrumentalist intelligentsia, but intelligentsia nevertheless. This “new working class,” by virtue of its position, could disrupt, reorganize, and redirect the mode and relationships of production...
The ghetto population of the United States constitutes such a force. Confined to small areas of living and dying, it can be more easily organized and directed. Moreover, located in the core cities of the country, the ghettos form natural geographical centers from which the struggle can be mounted against targets of vital economic and political importance; in this respect, the ghettos can be compared with the faubourgs of Paris in the eighteenth century, and their location makes for spreading and “contagious” upheavals. Cruel and indifferent privation is now met with increasing resistance, but its still largely unpolitical character facilitates suppression and diversion. The racial conflict still separates the ghettos from the allies outside. While it is true that the white man is guilty, it is equally true that white men are rebels and radicals. However, the fact is that monopolistic imperialism validates the racist thesis: it subjects ever more nonwhite populations to the brutal power of its bombs, poisons, and moneys; thus making even the exploited white population in the metropoles partners and beneficiaries of the global crime. Class conflicts are being superseded or blotted out by race conflicts: color lines become economic and political realities – a development rooted in the dynamic of late imperialism and its struggle for new methods of internal and external colonization.
As for the lack of master plan - that's also true. Horkheimer said the point of Critical Theory was not to construct or develop a blueprint for a new society, but merely to tear down the existing society so whatever 'good' existed in the society would be liberated and form the basis for the new society. Their whole plant is basically deconstruct everything and the perfect communist society will somehow rise from the ashes.
A big problem with discussion Cultural/Neo-Marxism is that even when you describe or paraphrase their ideas accurately, people think you're being uncharitable, or making it up, or being conspiratorial, because they can't believe someone would actually support those ideas.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
11mo ago
You could at least pretend to display some performative scepticism towards a Guardian article on immigration before uncritically accepting the narrative wholesale. Obvious baitpost.
Because the American Indian Act of 1924 might have been unconstitutional if not for the 14A.
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