TheThrowaway
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User ID: 2171
TheThrowaway
2mo ago
Can you explain what you think is absurd or incoherent about it? The United States has an expressly and explicitly federal structure, and this isn't a new or unusual development - it has literally been this way since even the Articles of Confederation. The individual States retain their general police powers and can legislate regarding their own offices as they see fit, including (but not limited to) offices of their own sub-political units (like counties). In what way is that incoherent with respect to whether or not they are permitted to set requirements for expressly and explicitly Federal government positions?
This and some of your other comments lead me to believe you are not familiar with the subtleties of the political structure of the United States, and especially not with the jurisprudence regarding the intersections and resolution of conflicts between State and Federal law (e.g., your comment below about state courts not being allowed to enforce the 14th Amendment - the 14th Amendment is a part of the Federal Constitution, so although a state court might apply it, that application could and would be reviewed by the appropriate Federal court for that political subdivision to make sure the state court decision comports with the Federal Court precedent on that Amendment). If it isn't overly personally identifying, can you give some background here to understand where you're coming from? It might help me respond more usefully.
TheThrowaway
2mo ago
If you apply even a modicum of charity, no, it doesn't necessarily imply that. It stands simply for the proposition that the second society (the one into which you are abducted) is not committing (in the general case) a worse sin than the first society (the one from which you were abducted), and may in fact be committing a less-worse (but still sinful) act. None of this requires anyone in either society to have purely clean hands.
TheThrowaway
3mo ago
It doesn't dispute that because it isn't actually a meaningful issue to address and it isn't necessary to defend their side of the case (and it deals with lots of facts not relevant), not because there's no case to be made - if you read the brief carefully, the whole point is that whether or not what others did that day could qualify, the argument is that nothing Trump did would. At most, his brief simply characterizes what the Colorado Supreme Court held, and does not admit its correctness or otherwise opine.
Your second paragraph just assumes the conclusion to be proved - while that's one interpretation of the results, it's not the only reasonable one, nor indisputably correct. And your Virginians hypothetical, while useful to think about, hides more than it illuminates because it only seems particularly bad if you also allow all the subsequent Civil War context in, and assume that their motive is exactly as described. If, for example, their motive was plausibly "wanted to confirm that all electors had an opportunity to cast their votes uninfluenced by outside pressures" and the result after what they did wasn't the Civil War but a peaceful transition to the next administration, I don't think we end up with the 14th Amendment in its current form.
Unless you are willing to grapple with the likely meaning of "rebellion" in this quote (given the specific historical context), you're still not engaging with the meat of what "insurrection" means - this quote simply says that speech or writing could qualify, but only where they were connecting to "inciting others to engage in rebellion." Given that the antecedent was the actual Civil War, you're skipping the hard part, which is analogizing actual, immediate, and realizable secession from the Union to the facts of January 6th. I'm not saying that's impossible, but just saying that speech or writing could qualify under certain circumstances doesn't really help, because the circumstances are the biggest part of the dispute.
TheThrowaway
3mo ago
I have no opinion whatever about whether Epps is or isn't a federal agent, nor do I care.
With that said, though, I think some of what you are encountering is based not on any of the individual factors you discussed, but rather the combination of all of them together all seeming to roll on the "lenient" side, along with the perception that Epps is a (relatively) prominent defendant. I think to some degree you have mistakenly focused on individual probabilities rather than the compound probability that a "prominent defendant" would have all of those individual elements all come up in a way favorable to him.
Not saying that's right or wrong, but I think that is at least some of what is going on here, and if you wanted to be more convincing, I think that's where you'd want to focus.
TheThrowaway
4mo ago
This was true of us as well - having small children, needing to figure out how to work while they were stuck home with basically no support, then watching them flounder in virtual school, and (though better) under masked conditions for a further year was very difficult to watch and live, and the toll it took on their intellectual, social, and emotional development was obvious and extremely painful to watch.
In my case, what made me most angry was that it seemed like nearly a textbook case of a society eating its seed corn. It seemed that there was (in general societal terms and from the ruling political class) a very cavalier attitude of "oh kids are resilient they'll be fine" to save, yes, some number of mostly much-older people, with no acknowledgement that there was even really a trade-off being made. Not that I want (or wanted) anyone to die, but there seemed to be no real discussion of what we were "buying" and what its actual cost was.
TheThrowaway
8mo ago
I can't speak for others, but I didn't report it for being unpopular - I reported it as being consensus-building and being an extraordinary claim without evidence. It's written both as "we all know this is literally true" and uses over-the-top language which seems... at odds with significant evidence of teachers and administrators affirming the opposite. If the claim had been that "being cis and straight will likely pass without notice" I wouldn't have said anything, but that's very clearly not what was said.
TheThrowaway
1yr ago
Fair enough. I suppose my point was that if you broaden to "traditional Christianity" instead of "fundamentalist Protestant," there are quite a number of denominations available that would appeal to the group of people that would like a relatively stable foundation for beliefs and doctrine that doesn't have to involve the specific ones you mention.
TheThrowaway
1yr ago
It's a tenet of some varieties of Protestantism, not a universal principle of every Christian denomination, and the same is true of the vengeful deity view. Without delving hugely deeply into the differences between (at a very high level) Protestantism, Catholicism, and Orthodoxy, the concept that no human is without sin is not inexorably tied to "faith not works" as the basis of salvation across those denominations (see, for example, the extremely different treatment that the "faith without works is dead" bit gets).
I might quibble with "take ideas seriously" here. I don't think what's happening is so much "taking ideas seriously" as "taking ideas to the farthest endpoints still supported by the underlying logic while not performing any real cost-benefit analysis on any of the steps on the road to that endpoint." It's a form of pretending that trade-offs don't exist, and not engaging in that kind of analysis by saying that logic doesn't require it. That's a consistent position, but precise logical consistency isn't necessarily the most important factor when considering a pragmatic policy choice.
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