jake
9d ago
I know what you mean by "no religion is correct" or I assume you mean it cosmologically, as in "no religion correctly describes the cause of existence." I was going to say you mean it metaphysically but morals are part of metaphysics, and there is one provably morally correct text and it is the Bible. I also know that is quite the claim and is itself worthy of a separate discussion so I will collapse it to this: as a set of rules for the people of a society to follow, we find empirically Christianity produces outcomes superior to all other belief sets.
The reason this discussion exists, the reason this website exists as a place for this discussion, the reason for the internet, for your internet-connected device, for the grid that powers your device, is the give or take 2,000 years of Christianity that raised this civilization.
What we can say of Christianity that we cannot say of any other faith on this planet is how perfectly it is tailored to key human biotruths. No other faith approaches Christianity's understanding of man, of his weaknesses, his wickedness, his worst excesses, but and of course also, our strengths, the best of ourselves, and how we use these to address our shortcomings. How we may edify ourselves and conquer the worst of ourselves in pursuit of becoming the best of ourselves. This flows out, it defines the people and the nation, it raises the civilization.
Take monogamy: most men who have ever lived did not procreate. In religiously-proscribed monogamy, until death, women were given value beyond their wombs, and men were simply given value. This implicitly but so crucially and truly individualizes, it recognizes the inherent value of the person. For each and every man to be a husband and each and every woman a wife, that we might be joined as one. Civilizationally this produces buy-in. As the couple is wedded and has children, they are invested in their place, in their community, in their people and in their nation. Young men who are not invested in their nation time and again burn it down, it is the precipice the West hangs upon today, large numbers of unmarried young men with little or no hope for the future, just waiting for the match.
Islam explicitly endorses polygyny and the keeping of concubines, as does Hinduism. Buddhism and Taoism do not circumscribe, and polygamy has a history of being widespread in China, among other traditionally high-practicing nations. Shinto also does not circumscribe, though Shinto endorses monogamy and polygamy was historically rare in Japan, a practice limited to their elite and largely for heir production and the securing of alliances. Similar most to Western Europe. Why is it that the most highly developed nations on this planet are the most historically monogamous?
And Christ preached this in Rome in the first century Anno Domini. Morality is a technology and I wish I could recall the exact analogy I read on this point because it was a historian who understood far, far better the moral context of Rome and he put it in appropriate technological terms for these principles to have emerged during Tiberius' reign. Western civilization's moral framework laid out entirely in a few years of Christ's teachings, was it like if they had instead progressed to landing men on the moon? It feels appropriate, as Aldrin took communion there.
This moral framework, this inconceivable leap forward--if God walked this Earth as a man, it was as Christ, and his historicity is not at question. The totality of manuscripts and indeed the existence of Christianity is attestation of its namesake. But here we do have a critical problem in the debate. The naturalist historian and the layman atheist operate from a fallacious first premise: Miracles can't happen, so this text is false. If the texts lacked any and all content the naturalist could dismiss on first-principle rejection of the supernatural the accounts would be universally accepted as overwhelmingly true. But the miracles are in the accounts, foremost that he rose from the dead. If it didn't happen, why did his first followers believe he did? We reinvite that fallacious premise. The premise is God doesn't exist, the premise is miracles can't happen, so they don't conclude that they were lying, they premise that they were lying and reason back.
I say all this, and I believe it, even as I know this isn't a place for proselytizing nor me the suitable evangelist. I also know this isn't something that can be reasoned into. I've personally always felt the truth of Romans 1, that God is evidence in his creation. I do wish I could impress this feeling on others, I think it's the only thing that I would ever view as something I could give as testimony, that I can step back from myself and invite this awe in creation and axiomatic apprehension of the creator. But these are words on a page and saying how obvious it is to me has worth only to me. I might then appeal to logic, at one point I had here a full formula for the argument, but you can't logic yourself into this either. Even if I convinced you of Christianity's moral supremacy and its historic solidity or else you found my logic unassailable, even if you then for a time pursued it, you might and rightly feel it was for the wrong reasons, that your heart wasn't in it, that you were lying to yourself.
I don't know what to say, I don't have the words, and this isn't the venue.
It is nice to feel truly known. I've been thinking a lot lately about Orson Scott Card's depiction of love. Ender of course; to defeat the formics he needed to understand them truly. To understand truly was to love them, to love truly was to understand them. This I must believe informed Card's depiction of the character Jane, an AI that started as a program to understand Ender, and she does, and she loves him, it is in loving him she gains her specific personage. So I'll say again, it is a nice thing to feel truly known. It is nice in this to have something that makes sense of existence.
But this is me, and maybe you don't feel like you need to make sense of existence, or that you feel your view of things already makes enough sense of existence, and you don't need any more. You might also wonder if I am reliant on this, if I need this to be true, if I am as guilty as making the conclusion of its truth my premise, and reasoning backward. On the last you'd be right, it's what makes me an unsuitable evangelist, my lack of testimony. I know it's true. Not for any moment, I've had no definable spiritual moments, nor do I feel like I need to. I know it's true regardless. Why, though, and what good is that to tell others? You can tell it's true by the way that it is. Such elucidation. I don't have the words!
You say you've thought about going to church a few times in the last decade, but each time "this isn't true" rears its head. Why, then, do you think you consider going? This might be worth considering, and deeply, how this feeling has arisen repeatedly within you despite your belief that you know better. Maybe you do know better, just not in the way that you think.
jake
12d ago
Miran covers this is in his paper, presenting his argument of China as having effectively paid for the 2018-2019 tariffs.
During his campaign, President Trump proposed to raise tariffs to 60% on China and 10% or higher on the rest of the world, and intertwined national security with international trade. Many argue that tariffs are highly inflationary and can cause significant economic and market volatility, but that need not be the case. Indeed, the 2018-2019 tariffs, a material increase in effective rates, passed with little discernible macroeconomic consequence. The dollar rose by almost the same amount as the effective tariff rate, nullifying much of the macroeconomic impact but resulting in significant revenue. Because Chinese consumers’ purchasing power declined with their weakening currency, China effectively paid for the tariff revenue. Having just seen a major escalation in tariff rates, that experience should inform analysis of future trade conflicts.
If tariffs cause the average consumer to pay +$1800/year when they don't make +$1800/year, or simpler, if tariffs are causing people to spend money in excess of increased wages, what would they care of a stronger dollar? Miran also covers this:
Second, Cavallo et al find that the price hikes occurred for prices paid by importers, not prices sold by retailers, limiting the ability of tariffs to result in increases in consumer prices but squeezing margins. That means that for the measures of inflation commonly prioritized, like the Consumer Price Index, or the price index for Personal Consumption Expenditures, there was little consequence. That helps reconcile the micro- and macro experiences. However, it would be bizarre for economies with sufficient competition not to see importers over time restore their margins by shifting suppliers if currency weakness isn’t passed through.
The game of tariffs appears far more complex than "cost passed to consumers" but I'm just copy-pasting Miran, I don't know economics.
jake
13d ago
I often think how cozy it must be to live with the child's view of politics. They disagree with me, those idiots!
What is stupidity, what is intelligence? What is their value? With intelligence as a descriptor we attempt to measure and describe something else. It's IQ and g, the thing itself, "it." What is it? It's building skyscrapers plural with your name on them and being elected POTUS twice with the most powerful media machine in the world standing against you. Trump has it, so when someone says he lacks intelligence, maybe! But he doesn't lack it, so if he lacks intelligence its value is far less than we think, if it has any at all.
It's the most complicated game and just because Trump has it doesn't mean he always or even often makes the right decisions. He made plenty of bad decisions in his first term, but here I must observe in those areas firmly under the executive's direct purview, where he didn't have to delegate it into an adversarial bureaucracy or broker with an ambivalent-at-best congress or wait and hope for the court's approval, he delivered two unequivocal aces. No further adventurism in the Middle East, and his strong attempt to normalize relations with North Korea. Had it been Obama with Un on the DMZ the picture would have won a Pulitzer and Obama would have won a second Nobel Prize. Instead, like so many truly historic pictures of Trump-as-President, it's just another icon ghettoed to where few beyond his supporters both know and appreciate. When Trump can play the game without an arm or both tied behind his back, he wins, and this is indicative of it.
As for his cabinet and advisors, I'll only talk about one: Stephen Miran. The last few weeks has seen a lot of discussion on the tariffs, including one particular user who opened his brief fluff of criticism by repeatedly calling Trump a retard. Is Miran? Because it's his work, his exploration of the potential hazards of holding the reserve currency and holding trade deficits and how tariffs might correct these hazards, that is influencing the Oval Office (after Trump's old affinity for tariffs). When your adversary does something incomprehensible, it's the vapid feel-good shortcut to say it's because they're stupid. They can be wrong, and the sum of everything that makes them wrong may be an indict of their reasoning, but that conclusion isn't useful. It doesn't help your own decision-making. It's a belief, or it may be true outright, but either way it doesn't pay rent. What does is knowing that everything: what do they read, or what do the people they listen to read? What do they believe, what ideas do they hold, what's their ethos? Assuming necessarily they reached their conclusions through reason, what were those reasons? I've lately been arguing here very strongly in favor of absolute sovereign authority to expel foreigners with the minimum possible due process. I know the people disagreeing with me aren't stupid and I don't think they're evil. I'll be the first to say if they were right, their fears would be justified entirely, and I don't fault them for those fears either, it's eminently rational, their conclusions logically follow from their premises. We differ in premises, and I would be doing myself a disservice let alone everyone else if I just said "Of course you believe that, you're stupid." They're not, and Trump isn't either. The establishment left certainly isn't, yeah I'm here on record calling Biden demented behind the wheel, but the people who were actually making the decisions behind him are competent, are intelligent, and did a damn good job, though thankfully not enough, at the end.
The world is as it has always been because powerful, competent and intelligent people disagree with each other. There are moral judgments to be made sure but oh, does all history stand as the final testament on evil not being synonymous with stupid--nor good with intelligent.
jake
14d ago
The court system does not have a monopoly on that force as it applies to foreigners. The sovereign possesses a priori, categorical, unconditional authority on matters of border control. The reason we have courts is because we first had a border within which to enact laws. Where it pertains solely to deportation, the foreigner is owed no due process, no hearing, and in fact no explanation whatsoever for their expulsion. The justification is supreme at "Because it is our right." Moreover, we are under no sovereign obligation to play host to refugees. The asylum system is a courtesy, an act of generosity that like all contemporary acts of government "generosity" are at least attempted to be gamed 100 times for every 1 legitimate claimant. Yet even still Abrego-Garcia couldn't manage it years into Round 1 of the "We're going to deport you" party president.
Courts have ruled illegal aliens and foreigners are due such rights. No they aren't. The foreigner by definition is not part of the social contract of the nation they visit and worse is the illegal who in entering and residing perpetually violates the social contract. The courts have chosen to protect those whose acts if universalized would render this country unto nothing. Their positions don't originate in law or reason, they originate in those judges who contrived precedent from authority because of their beliefs in what ought to be. They have made their ruling, I await the day when we demand they enforce it.
As for law and order. Yeah, where one side has to still play by the rules to correct the rampant rule-breaking of the other. Tell me, what happens in a game when one player is found to be cheating? They don't roll it back to a point when they're sure there wasn't cheating. They don't run everything by the cheater, requiring their sign-off. They disqualify the cheater and award the win to the player who wasn't cheating. Harder to do in politics, to be sure. For every citizen like you who holds your position earnestly and in good faith, who really believes in these principles, you aren't outnumbered but you are vastly outgunned by the people taking your position in bad faith. Who appeal to law and order and slow attempts at deportations because their goal is for there to be no deportations. What is lawful and orderly about heeding the cheater's demands?
There are >30 million illegal aliens in this country, and even if it's the 10 million I've been hearing since 2005, how do we have trials for all of them? We don't. So what, fait accompli? We have to live with the consequences? Tossing that board is sounding real nice. But no, let's not, for the sake of this I'll agree, we will play exactly by the rules. We will give every single accused illegal alien in this country--who requests--a full trial. But those will wait, because we're playing exactly by the rules, and that means we're not holding their trials first, because we're holding other trials first, the ones from this:
Trump declares martial law, federalizes the national guards of the entire country, and proceeds with the dissolution of the state legislatures of the following: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington. Every single sitting or former city councilman or equivalent, mayor, state representative, senator, and governor who voted for or signed off on any policy or legislation that in any form would obviously aid and abet the continued residence of illegal aliens in their municipalities and states is arrested and charged with sedition, among other federal crimes.
This is playing by the rules. This is keeping the board. This is the moderate centrist option.
jake
14d ago
This is true, the purpose of the American justice system is to protect the accused. Mobs need no courts, the court exists as protection from the mob, for the man and for society.
Abrego-Garcia is not the accused, he is the guilty criminal. The question is his measure of criminality.
Courts should not assume just because he entered the country illegally that he would also join a notoriously murderous gang. Courts should assume that because he entered the country illegally, he would lie to remain in the country. Assuming he is lying, telling the truth would get him deported, but perjuring himself only might get him deported. Young children can follow these incentives.
Courts shouldn't take the negative inference, that would be presuming guilt. However, presuming he is a liar, or sufficiently motivated to deceit as to make sola testimony necessarily unreliable, is the only reasonable position. He had a decade to make that claim, this is not the behavior of a man in fear for his life. Where does that leave us? An El Salvadoran man who entered illegally, and that's all we know for sure. Okay, send him back.
To use the Monopoly metaphor, one player has an awful lot of fake-looking $500s, but when you call them on it they demand you prove each individual $500 is counterfeit while accusing you of trying to cheat. Why would they toss the board when they can just rig the game?
jake
16d ago
There is a shocking credulity here with Abrego-Garcia's claims. These are the facts:
- He entered the US illegally in 2011
- in 2019 he was apprehended by ICE on a CI tip of MS-13 membership
- ONLY THEN did he attempt to claim asylum
A man willing to go to such lengths to break the law as his first act in a nation will also lie to the courts of that nation. Any sane judge should presume the testimony of an illegal alien of his circumstances as unreliable; I can't imagine what was going through the judge's mind to believe a man who had eight years to make that claim. I assumed they were handcuffed by the law to presume truthfulness in asylum claims but it turns out they're not, the judge just took his testimony at face value and thought nothing of him being a criminal or indeed criminally lazy.
MS-13 is active in the Beltway. I'd say it's a point to questioning the claim of his being associated with a New York clique but if the CI was making shit up why wouldn't they say DC or Baltimore? There's also the lack of tattoos, but more and more MS-13 members aren't getting tattoos(p.12). It's not the witch's bind, the lack of tattoos isn't evidence of anything, but anymore that's exactly it: it's not evidence of anything, for either side.
jake
17d ago
Ever played They Are Billions?
jake
18d ago
The citation is pure reason.
Definitions:
- (A) Supreme control of territory
- (B) Sovereign/sovereignty
- (C) Ability to enforce borders
- (D) Define/maintain geographic boundaries
- (E) Determine who may pass boundaries
- (F) Establishes/enforces laws
- (G) Border control authority as a priori
- (H) Unconditional expulsion authority
- (I) Conditions exist on deportations
- (J) Control limited
- (K) Limited body
Premises:
- A body that possesses supreme control of territory is sovereign: (A) → (B)
- Supreme control of territory requires the ability to enforce borders: (A) → (C)
- The enforcement of borders includes the definition and maintenance of geographic boundaries and determining who is allowed to pass those geographic boundaries: (C) → (D) ∧ (E)
- The establishing and enforcement of law requires sovereignty: (F) → (B)
- Supreme control of territory and the authority to enforce borders grants a priori authority to border control over all other laws: (A) ∧ (C) → (G)
- A priori border control includes unconditional expulsion of foreigners: (G) → (H)
- Conditions on deportations are limits on control of territory: (I) → (J)
- Limited bodies are not sovereign: (K) → ¬(B)
Conclusion:
A sovereign's supreme control of territory grants a priori authority for the unconditional expulsion of foreigners:
(A) ∧ (B) ∧ (C) ∧ (D) ∧ (E) ∧ (G) ∧ (H)
In your "ideal" adjudication, what prevents ICE from deporting citizens in bad faith and/or due to its demonstrated incompetence? (Even if you think the risk is low, the hazard must be addressed.)
I disagree. The leftist establishment uses such fringe cases to demand individual full trials for every deportation while they work ardently to increase the number of illegal aliens in this country. As with those states' issuance of IDs to illegals, the point is not the sanctity of the law or interest in a better-functioning state. The interest is in making it impossible to remove the tens of millions of illegal aliens in this country.
In practice those who cannot provide documentation are here illegally. The remaining edge cases of even several hundred homeless or otherwise profoundly socially detached citizens accidentally deported by ICE do not justify the requirement of millions of trials. But that's another excellent example, as if the homeless were institutionalized as they ought to be, there would be no concern, and then it would be well and truly an extreme minority of citizens who could not prove their citizenship. Regardless, it is not in the interest of a functional state to delay (and, given the above, ultimately fail) at the needed millions of deportations because once in a blue moon a homeless person or Kaczynski-ite is accidentally included. And of course, this would never have been a problem if politicians and billionaires didn't open the doors to millions of illegals in service of gaining future voters and cheap labor. They're causing the problem, they don't get a say in its solution.
Which precedent and why should we question its legitimacy?
See top. Border control is a priori to courts, habeas corpus requires court jurisdiction, courts have no jurisdiction in matters of border control. Again, they literally do, but from fundamental theory of sovereignty, they do not, and thus all actions taken by courts to limit the sovereign exercise of border control are inherently illegitimate.
jake
18d ago
Ideally:
- SCOTUS rules states have no authority to issue identifying documents to illegal aliens except those that expressly mark them as here illegally
- Pursuant to this ruling, IDs from the following would be considered null and void and ordered reissued in adherence to the ruling: Washington DC, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington
- After period of reissuance (perhaps 3 years, certainly no longer than 5), suspects confronted by ICE must produce documents proving legal residence
- Failure to provide at stop results in temporary detention
- Failure to provide after a period of time not to exceed 1 week results in summary deportation
Alternatively:
- Suspects stopped by ICE are given opportunity to produce valid ID
- Those who produce valid IDs from states that do not issue ID to illegals are free to go
- Those who produce no IDs, or valid IDs from states that issue identification to illegals, are detained
- Those who produce no IDs are given a period not to exceed 1 week to produce documentation; those who produce IDs from compromised states are given a period not to exceed 1 month to produce further documentation (birth certificate, US passport)
- Upon failure, summary deportation
In practice, any individual who fails to produce such documentation is a foreigner and present illegally (note: foreigners are legally required to carry ID). As foreigners may be expelled unconditionally, the court has no jurisdiction over the sovereign exercise of the right of deportation, and so foreigners have no legitimate claim to habeas corpus specifically in the matter of their deportation. That "precedent" says they do, and that we do in practice afford them habeas corpus, does not make it legitimate. The sovereign right of deportation is a first principle authority, it cannot be legitimately reduced or abrogated. That is, a state may, without qualification, always and in all cases legitimately remove foreigners from its borders.
jake
19d ago
The nicer interpretation is they hate Trump. The thoroughly evidence interpretation is they hate the US and are actively working to destroy it.
I've had a problem with the operations of the judicial branch since well before Trump. I oppose any judge below SCOTUS issuing any federal injunction for any reason. The essential structure of the sovereign United States is Executive, Congress, SCOTUS. Executive appointments have no authority to check SCOTUS, it follows circuit courts have no authority to check POTUS.
The WH Press Secretary says they're looking into the legality of deporting undesirable citizens. Have a legal citation for expulsion being an exception to habeas corpus?
Sovereigns owe foreigners no rights. A foreigner has no claim to habeas corpus, let alone any appeal for their deportation, as sovereigns may unconditionally expel foreigners. Citizens are owed due process, which is fulfilled in trial and verdict. I agree that a state should not be able to remove citizens who are otherwise-non-criminally-undesirable, but the conflation of deporting foreigners or banishing violent criminals with latter tyranny is historically baseless and at best maudlin idealism and at worst fearmongering weaponized in service of preserving the tremendous numbers of illegal aliens in this country.
The UK practiced transportation for centuries, now they won't deport serial rapists.
jake
19d ago
Good comment.
I invoke my "neutron star fallacy" at your reframing of the top-level comment. It's not a human rights abuse to send foreigners back to their home countries, even if they may face punishment or death. The argument goes that such "abuses" will inevitably snowball into greater tyranny but we know this never happened. It is directly analogous to the identitarian concerns I name.
What days are you hearkening back to? I struggle to think of any notable mass deportations in the modern era.
The legislature
Voted removals aren't checks. A judge overrules the executive or congress, congress can vote to remove, while it takes another judge to overrule the first. The judicial checks itself. At a minimum it should be that if a judge is overruled by a superior court X instances in period of time Y, they are automatically and immediately removed from office. This maintains protection from a nearly-even congress politicizing removals (and the reciprocal gaming that would invite in a change of control) while making their accountability structural. But this also is not a check. We can remove judges ,stuff courts, the power remains, what do we do? Limit it as much as possible. The judicial effectually has authority that supersedes all others, so its authority must be the most strictly regulated, starting with all judges below SCOTUS losing the power to issue injunctions on government activity.
To go even further: I do think there are going to be really difficult pills to swallow in the coming decades regarding mass migration, not even outside of borders, but within our borders as well. I don't think it's unreasonable to think that there is some potential future where we will be watching masses of people starve through binoculars across the Rio Grande. It'd be great to figure out how we can, as a nation, navigate those turbulent waters without regressing to animalistic authoritarianism, but over the past 10 years I have lost faith more and more that that's even possible.
All of this is just a play for more executive power. I don't trust that executive power won't be abused, especially given that the current executive seems to get off (sexually?) on flaunting abuses of power. But maybe there's where you and I differ in concerns about real dangers to our freedom in the coming years.
From 1900, every single bloodthirsty non-socialist non-communist nationalist movement emerged as a response to no less than equally bloodthirsty socialist and communist movements. No milquetoast conservative government sat by only to be taken over by reactionaries. So while I am also concerned about what horrors may lie in our future, I know they will only rise as the last reaction. My beliefs align with preventing that from happening by bringing about the people's current, eminently moderate requests. The district judge ordering the executive to bring back an illegal alien does not reduce the possibility of tyranny, it sharply raises it. Because again, the judicial branch checks itself, but these judges invite a check on power from a much different, far older structure.
The most fundamental authority of a sovereign entity is determining who is permitted within its borders. The US government has, fundamentally, unconditional authority to expel a foreigner.
There's this argument I once came across in a book on Christian apologetics. The book isn't interesting enough to name, but I remember one argument it made. The book largely endorsed the standard view of cosmology while attempting to complement its position with various applications of the teleological argument. One was based on Earth's magnetic field. The argument goes, the field has a measurable rate of decay, so if we look back, at some point in natural history we would find a period when the field would be as strong as that of a neutron star.
I see this, the "neutron star fallacy" everywhere. Racism, sexism, religious bigotry. If we were so racist, so sexist, so bigoted, if we were so tyrannical for so many, then how were we ever liberated? And yet I know slopes are slippery. It's our world, when "indulgent" behaviors of any variety are made easier, we slide right into them, and we keep sliding. When the federal bureaucracy had its small departments with narrow scopes, soon enough they became massive departments with broad scopes. But there was a point when we could deport foreigners with minimal hurdle, and now we can't.
The power hasn't been reduced, it's been redistributed. The judge exercises greater authority than the President, and where the judge is seen as a check, who checks the judge? A structure by all impressions designed to eliminate such methods of account, for the requirements of censure and removal. It is the system turning a tyranny upon itself, because the judge involved here didn't order the deported's return because they care so much about the law, they ordered it because they hate so much the man behind the deportations.
"It's a slippery slope to mass deportations of undesirable citizens." That never happened here. "They're due habeus corpus" no, not for expulsion.
Slopes are slippery, yeah, but if you're like me (up until this moment) you might visualize the slope as starting at the left and falling to the right. I feel the last century can be neatly explained by visualizing it as starting at the right and falling to the left.
Dugan was under no obligation to permit ICE in her courtroom but she exceeded passive refusal into affirmative acts of concealment and harboring when she warned Flores-Ruiz and escorted him through the jury door. You don't have to let ICE in, you can't warn your roommate and say "I'll keep them busy while you book it." She should face those as charges in addition to obstruction.
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