jake
1mo ago
There's a lot I wonder here.
In the Catholic framework and the theological traditions that believe in sacramental graces, the state can grant a mercy to the condemned-to-death by allowing them last rites and Christian burial. But there is mercy in life in prison rather than condemning to death, especially in traditions that don't believe in sacramental graces but do believe in prevenient grace, such that a murderer might with time gain repentance.
I wonder if this latter, in part, contributed to what became the idea of rehabilitation. That as we moved into a materialistic framework the idea of mercy was retained and repentance became the generic idea of a person being rehabilitated. I have a problem with this as a critique for the materialist framework: if murder dispatches a mind to oblivion, execution would surely become the only just punishment, as it is the only punishment that approaches proportionality, except perhaps for letting the murderer live but only to put them through physical torture until they die.
I want to stay generally abstract but there is a common response, from those who advocate for leniency-based reforms around incarceration, of questioning the incentives. The death penalty doesn't work because people still murder. Maybe, it wouldn't be unfair for a person to say there were many more executions in the past and there was still crime, what's it doing? But this all supposes we punish crime as a disincentive to crime, but that framework, consequentialism, looks out the corner of its eyes at countries like El Salvador, or another example with Indonesia. Indonesia has one of the lowest homicide rates in the world, and not to put too much stock in genetics, but Indonesia is not high on the IQ charts. They just very aggressively prosecute crime, as El Salvador now does, to great effect.
A last note on this point: I also wonder if it's not so much that the death penalty doesn't work, it's that there are many, many individuals in the US who could have been justifiably locked away for life long before they ever murdered. Around 50% of US inmates have 10 previous arrests. It's difficult not to suspect people who say policing and incarceration don't work when some of those people dedicate their lives to making it harder to police and incarcerate.
But this still looks at the problem by assuming a given framework. I don't believe in punishment to stop other people from being criminals, I believe in punishment because crimes, evils, create disorder, the literal lived disorder but also and, for me the greater, gestalt moral disorder, and disorder must be matched with order. If only one person ever murdered and we knew no one else would again, we could still punish that murderer even if it were an objective certainty no disincentive to future crime would be produced. We can put a murderer in prison for the rest of their life because what they have done, in and of itself, justifies that treatment. I don't believe we have to caveat it as the secondary to the primary purpose of rehabilitation. We don't owe it to criminals to see to their rehabilitation.
To this, the examples given suppose the rehabilitatory or incentive frameworks. If we put the murder-virus person in prison, they're already technically rehabilitated, and you can't disincentive a virus that overrides reason. Same for the schizophrenic, if they're rehabilitated, why keep them locked up? Within these frameworks these are good hypotheticals, especially since these frameworks are how the West now largely approaches crime.
But I still don't buy the frameworks. If a person inexcusably takes life, that itself, for no other considerations, is sufficient grounds to lock that person in a box until they die. If they were in a psychotic state, we can put them in a different, softer box, that they will nonetheless remain in until they die. If they wouldn't again, I would say that doesn't matter, because my framework isn't that we lock them up to stop them from committing more crime, it's that what they've done is enough to lock them away forever. If it doesn't stop others from doing it, that also doesn't matter, because we can put those people in the box, too.
To branch to something very specific: this is one area where I'm extremely optimistic about coming automation. Robot guards and human-simulacra orderlies for lifelong psychiatric institutions will do a lot for assuaging fair concerns at institutional abuse. Robot guards can't be killed or themselves be complicit in crime such as smuggling in drugs; a simulacra orderly won't torment or rape the persons under their care. These alone won't necessarily perfect prisons and psychiatric institutions, but solving the problem of manpower could allow these institutions to be run in new and much better ways.
jake
3mo ago
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State,
Nominative absolute
A well regulated Militia,
Subject phrase
being necessary to the security of a free State,
Participial phrase completing the absolute
the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed
Main clause
the right of the people to keep and bear Arms,
Subject phrase
shall not be infringed
Predicate phrase enshrining the right
The second comma marks the end of the nominative absolute and the beginning of the main clause. The absolute is grammatically independent of the clause, it provides context but gives no conditions to what makes a well regulated militia necessary. Semantically it's actually an embedded unconditional premise: [Because] a well regulated Militia [is necessary] to the security of a free State. The Constitution declares the Militia will always be necessary.
The main clause contains the unconditional predicate phrase "shall not be infringed" modifying the subject "the right of the people to keep and bear arms." 2A tells the government it has no authority to infringe the right to keep and bear arms. The government does this constantly, and while most of those infringements are patently unconstitutional, I have no problem with those who argue the framers didn't have rocket launchers in mind. It's the same for felons, the language would suggest blocking felons from owning arms is unconstitutional, but the qualified annulment of certain rights of criminals is part of the sovereign prerogative.
The prerogative is those who break the social contract can be treated differently. The power to prohibit a person from owning firearms comes from the same authority expressed differently as the power to put a person in prison. What this means is even if 14A were all-persons-born-are, it still wouldn't mean it must, under full force of law, apply to literally every person born in this country. In all other categories of law, "all" effectively never means "all."
So, as with how 2A, of which the framers would absolutely include all small arms ever made, the right obviously does not extend to violent criminals or to the FGM-148 Javelin, despite the former technically belonging to the category of infringements and the latter technically belonging to the category of arms, then just as with 14A, it is obvious that the children of diplomats, hypothetical alien occupier women, birth tourists, and all other aliens otherwise intending to exploit the Constitution, are none intended or justifiably said as beneficiaries of birthright citizenship despite them technically belonging to the category of persons born in the United States. This is where the legal artifice is transparent. Aliens who exploit the sovereign do not enjoy her special protections.
Finally, 14A is specific in the opposite direction for its clause, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, as the clause invokes a construct of jurisdiction. One inexplicable point of all these courts is how they suppose the Framers of 14A didn't understand the idea that everyone in this country is subject to her true jurisdiction. Those Framers knew in a far deeper sense of truth exactly that point of power, they knew everyone was, truly, under the jurisdiction of the sovereign. That's what the clause says, and in making the clause it so invokes the construct, and those who would exploit the law are obviously excluded from the construct where it would affirmatively implicate in the question of citizenship. This is both found in the conveyed language, for if diplomats who are here through the most rightful means (and who are not named in 14A!) are not under our jurisdiction, so much less then are illegal aliens not under our jurisdiction, and it is found as an axiomatic power in the prerogative of the sovereign.
The mothers are criminal aliens here specifically so their children get citizenship (birth tourists included as criminal aliens), so, obviously, their children don't get to be citizens.
jake
3mo ago
Whatever is to be said about the "sensationalism" of the claim, the point at the end is there is now the prospect of benefit to calling them invaders.
If the courts say the exclusion only applies to the children of invaders, and so, they say, it's legal to do something about the children of invaders, then that's a strong incentive for those who want them gone to shift to primarily calling them the children of invaders. There is no sense of norms left to maintain and the sentiment is already rife among reactionaries. Now they have a reason to formalize and strengthen it.
jake
3mo ago
Where they pay taxes and where they are subject to the legal system, because both are tenuous to flatly assert, that they have the opportunity to pay taxes or the "opportunity" to murder Americans are contraventions of the will of the American people and with the effect of producing further contraventions of the will of the American people.
That this doesn't meet prescriptivist definitions of war doesn't matter because the only valid prescriptivist definition of war is the continuation of policy by other means. If there are such other means to effect the same outcome as war without doing anything that "counts" as "war" then sophisticated actors will employ those means. It is a continuation of policy by asymmetric means of demographic replacement to ultimately hijack ordinary means with that very demographic replacement. Americans have never wanted this, and the nature of the matter necessarily rejects input from its beneficiaries. An anchor baby doesn't get a say in whether they can stay, and because Americans have never wanted this, the ordinary and legitimate means of effecting political change have been superseded by myriad inherently illegitimate legal artifices, i.e.; policy continued by other means.
The idea that during the sacking of a city, local policemen would go around arresting individual invaders for assault or murder seems totally absurd
This is exactly what's being said by the idea of us needing something in the constitution specifying that the children of alien occupiers aren't citizens.
jake
3mo ago
I'm certainly open to believing the framers were so intellectually rigorous as to consider it necessary to incorporate language for the situation where an occupying army brought along their own women, and further, the framers were so morally steadfast as to believe they would require a solid legal standard to apply to the children born of such women.
It's absurd, the sovereign doesn't need such specificity, but I'm open to it, because those men would say an invasion is exactly what's happening.
This is the door left open. This decision is now a legal impetus for the reactionary machine to mass-label aliens as invaders. It attaches possibility of material benefit to framing this as an actual war. That's is a perilous thing to incentivize.
jake
3mo ago
It is unambiguous.
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States
The inclusion of the clause is unambiguous that not all those born in the United States are subject to its jurisdiction. Its enshrinement in the Constitution is the US government defining a hard limit on its own sovereignty. The argument of Wong Kim Ark is that "People born here are under US jurisdiction" when, for the clause, that is explicitly denied by 14A. Its first test and major precedent was a complete inversion of the language.
It's somehow worse than that. We see with these rulings that successive courts read 14A as though it were written:
All persons born in the United States are citizens of the United States
That's not what it says, and to emphasize as it's beyond question, this is the obligate read of 14A by every court that has upheld categorical birthright citizenship. As their read necessarily omits the clause, they are tacitly admitting that with the clause their read is wrong.
And, qualitatively, Gorsuch consistently breaks ranks in preference to the text of laws as-written. If it were "unambiguous" in your sense, he would have joined the majority.
jake
4mo ago
I don't think you're wrong about the Jews as primary antagonists, at least up to the destruction of the Second Temple. Still, by 70 AD, Peter and Paul had been martyred by Rome. We also see a certain prototype in the Passion account. Jesus asks forgiveness for the Roman soldiers, and now in the nearly 2000 years of martyrs since, where we have their last words, we at least very often read of them forgiving and asking forgiveness for their murderers.
jake
4mo ago
I could have clearly worded that better. Europe is more progressive than the US, so if we look at a field, such as NGOs in the US, and we find it dominated by progressives, then we should expect an even greater degree of progressive control of charities in Europe. But that's an issue, one of two here I've produced. The first is I am just assuming the European NGO employees are more progressive, and the second is the data references a study of American Catholic charity employees who donated to political causes. I didn't look further to check what percentage of employees donate, so 83% must be wrong, and really it's that 83% of those politically-active donate to leftist causes in the US. Helping women get abortions, which includes donating to and voting for pro-abortion politicians, also incurs automatic excommunication.
So in the studied Catholic NGOs, 83% of their politically active employees are either:
-
Atheists / Non-religious
-
Members of other faiths
-
Catholics who have excommunicated themselves
This isn't an argument about those non-practicing Catholics not being Catholic. They are still Catholic, and they are taught they will be judged more harshly for what they know. This is an argument against aspersing teachings because of the behaviors of people who do not follow those teachings. Is this a useful distinction? POSIWID and all? I think in some things it might not be useful, but here it is useful because it's the governments that are doing this, and they don't need charities to help.
jake
4mo ago
Jesus says "love your neighbor", this works fine in his time because "your neighbor" is literally your neighbor and it's probably societally adaptive
In the time of Christ and the early Church, the key neighbors in question were the Romans who tried and failed across the next >350 years to torture, rape and murder Christianity out of existence. It wasn't be nice to your immediate neighbors, everybody does that, it was show love to the men leading you to the pyre. If purely for reasons of history and epistemic hygiene, should your primary understanding of Christianity have come from American Scripturalists and the modern atheism they spawned, you are lacking 1800 years of empirical record.
And that's how the Catholic Church pushed for regularizing half a million immigrants to spain this year.
In the US, which means far more in Europe, 83% of employees of such charities are either atheists, members other religions, or cultural Catholics excommunicated latae sententiae. This is irrelevant, though, because none of these charities could operate without the prevailing interest of their governments in overseeing demographic replacement. There is the point that the government gives charities large amounts of money and the charities give it back to favored politicians, but the charity industry is the domain of leftists and there are expressly nonreligious charities doing the same work. Regardless of that, it is, also, not as though charities are the bottleneck. Demographic replacement is top-down, charities, any charity, may influence where foreigners are finally placed once in a country and the privileges they enjoy, but those foreigners would be in the country regardless, because that's what power wants. Everything else is set dressing.
"We need more cruelty." How do you think we got here? It wasn't a superabundance of love. In cruelty we destroyed the structures that could support such people and standing in the wreckage we say now tear them apart in the womb.
jake
11mo ago
Inflammatory is perception so I can't say it's not inflammatory, I can say people who think it's inflammatory are wrong.
There aren't substantive arguments to be made here. It's not an argument to say "They don't think he means it," I'd apply this generally, but it is objectively false to take that angle in the wake of the assassination of Charlie Kirk and (1) the glee of leftists on social media and (2) the utterly unapologetic media coverage, culminating in Jimmy Kimmel blood libeling the right and keeping his job.
There are exactly two possible conclusions from Jones winning his election.
- 1,791,589 Virginians must be permanently loosed of the franchise
- Fraud
On point 1, we have the following justifications.
(A): Those of the constituency who didn't know the man they voted for wished death on the child of a state nobody; too ignorant to make decisions on the future.
(B): Those of the constituency who thought he wasn't serious, see: Kirk, an inexcusable naivety; too foolish to make necessary decisions on the future.
(C): Those of the constituency who liked what he said. There are only two further steps on the ratchet from Jones' remarks, I have frequently explained here how it's not actually time for action, this is, those who have no problem with him wishing horror on a state nobody, psychopaths; this group should be put in prison. The current step on the ratchet is enough for the DOJ to three-felonies-a-day Jones; the next step, "Won't someone rid me of these meddlesome children" if ignored would be cause to dismantle the organization backing such a figure, as the last step is war.
On point 2, the government is currently guilty of fraud in 100% of elections where it cannot prove itself free of fraud. The people are under no obligation to prove a crime committed by the government; the government is obligated to prove it hasn't committed a crime. By philosophy and by precedent, the government has no claim to a right against self-incrimination and the adverse inference may be exercised. The inability to prove itself free of fraud may be concluded as definitive evidence of fraud. We have the ability to have ballots with established and sufficiently anonymized provenance, our continued failure to implement such a system must only be because it would impede fraud.
And I'll say also, a fair reading of my original post would be understood as anti-inflammatory. No, it's not that 1,791,589 Virginians are a mix of inexcusable fools and psychopaths, it's that the machine stole the election, and in fact the vast majority of dems had a problem with Jones' remarks.
You don't get to say what he said. It is truly that simple, everything less than disenfranchisement or fraud is rationalizing. Tribalism? Yeah, radicalize the reds even further, great plan. "Economy" He was running for state AG. State AG. The position in the top 5 of the 100% of offices it disqualifies him from holding.
jake
11mo ago
Okay. 9 in 10 Republicans have no problem with sexual assault. 9 in 10 Democrats have no problem with wanting their opponents murdered.
It was a wrong thing you did here, to present these as comparable.
jake
11mo ago
The Democrats have installed themselves
They certainly have.
As above, the claim that, now, 9 in 10 dems have no problem with "I want your children to die" is a conclusion not found in reality. That is not the United States of 2025. If the demo had been inculcated with that degree of animus, the rate of leftist violence would be higher. There have been the handful of loud examples but they are a handful, nothing systemic, and if the suggestion is they're successfully moderating extreme elements, they would have taken the loss on forcing Jones out.
The conclusion found in reality is an unimpeded fraud machine, as most demonstrated by the massive changes in blue voting in Florida under DeSantis.
jake
11mo ago
The pages for the elections
They've updated now -- Spanberger at 1,967,646 and Jones at 1,791,589
jake
11mo ago
If these trends hold up not a good sign for Republicans!
NYC, Philadelphia and DC suburbs are not bellwethers.
It's obviously fraud, anyway. As of a couple Wikipedia checks, Spanberger is at 1.469 million, Winsome Earle-Sears at 1.156 million. Jones is at 1.483 million to Miyares' 1.375 million. In no world does a man who says "I want you to watch your children die" in the wake of an assassination not have impacted turnout.
This is also mens rea. An organization who backs Jones says "We will cheat if we can."
What happens when someone decides the humane decision is sparing the world of you?
The essential point of it has always been that humanity is not equipped to render such a judgment. Legally protecting murder in narrow circumstances will inevitably progress to legally protecting murder in broad circumstances. Early abortion became allowing late abortion; murdering unborn children for medical concerns became murdering unborn children for the convenience of it all; murdering unborn children became murdering viable and crowning children, and now, though I am certain it has happened before, as was said would happen, an infant has been murdered "for cause" but what constitutes cause will not be left narrow. This played out exactly as was said would happen with physician-facilitated suicide: it would not stop with those in palliative care, it would and did expand to the psychologically unwell, and the medical systems of countries such as Canada would and do now recommend it.
A narrow but still arbitrarily qualified definition of whether a life is worth living will not stay narrow, and it hasn't.
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