domain:betonit.substack.com
Throwaway05
2hr ago
There are always limitations. If I state that I have the right to murder people I disagree with because murder is expression of my speech. I will get laughed out of court for making this argument.
For 2A there are limitations..... well first of all what is a gun? I say a tank, a Warthog, and a fissile device are all guns. The court may say they are not guns and therefore I have no constitutional right to them. Some fictional guns are gun shaped and launch projectiles but are sufficient to destroy the planet. The government better ban them, I live on the planet.
Limitations must exist, else you live in a society where I can murder you legally for no reason because I assert it is my constitutional right to do so.
I don't think you believe that no limits should be placed on constitutional rights though, I think you are mad at the current limits, which are more expansive than what I'm asking for.
American citizen Jihadis absolutely have the right to guns if they haven't been convicted of crimes. We can't just have a member of the priesthood point to them and say "Man, those are some BAD muzzies" and no guns for them.
This is in bad faith. I didn't say Jihadis couldn't have guns. I said they couldn't have nukes. That is an example of a common sense limitation.
Certain people can't be trusted with certain powers. Determining this adequately is hard and frustrating. Nearly nobody should be trusted with nukes. Nearly everybody should be trusted with a fork and knife.
If you want to criticize an aspect of the current plan you need to either assert that no rights limitations are appropriate (which you have alluded to but not actually done) or come up with an alternative solution to the problem.
anon_
2hr ago
Indeed. And since Reagan made a set of rules and it led to the golden age of the 90s, that’s exactly the right lesson.
anon_
2hr ago
Yes, I get that.
I must have written exceptionally poorly for so many folks not to actually get my point.
hydroacetylene
2hr ago
'Legitimacy' means 'Emperor who is at worst neutral about my tribe'. The US isn't a nation anymore and everyone accepts it; an imperial government which takes your tax money(ideally as little as possible) to fuck off and spend on its own pet projects but doesn't demand anything else is far from the worst thing in the world- it's the default human governance arrangement. Trump makes a big show of this and that is why he's so successful at campaigning on 'legitimacy' when he's blatantly wrong. He has more black support than previous republicans because he doesn't talk about rap music and 70% illegitimacy and sagging pants- he doesn't want to impose red tribe values and religion(socially conservative but orthopraxic Christianity) on the black tribe. That plus caudillismo plus pomp is the secret sauce to Trump's 'mandate of Heaven'.
I'm not sure that the percentage of people who just want a good strong emperor to make the government leave them alone is a majority yet- I think Trump is Marius, not Caesar. But it's clearly a rapidly growing percentage that explains a huge chunk of Trump's appeal. The people who feel like their tribe's values and religion are something Washington wants to replace love him because of it, even if they're not ready to crown him with laurels when his troops force the senate to suspend elections.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
2hr ago
· Edited 2hr ago
The constitution is not a suicide pact, case law establishes restrictions to constitutional rights
So we've reached the "There are limitations, therefore this limitation is OK" stage of vitiating the Second Amendment.
The same for 2A. Jihadis can't have a right to nukes just because they are American citizens. That is not sensible. You can still be pro-2A and think that murders have lost their right to guns.
American citizen Jihadis absolutely have the right to guns if they haven't been convicted of crimes. We can't just have a member of the priesthood point to them and say "Man, those are some BAD muzzies" and no guns for them.
Ultimately your right to live supersedes my example crazy guys right to own a gun. If you believe otherwise you are in a gross minority.
You're not asking for a right to live; it's illegal to shoot you. You're asking for a right to safety, by taking away the guns of those who you think might shoot you based on some very lightweight procedure amounting to the word of a doctor. There's no such right.
BahRamYou
2hr ago
what if you're homeless/transient and don't have a driver's license or any other sort of ID? That's the argument that's always been used against requiring voter ID, so I don't see why it wouldn't apply here.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
2hr ago
Absolutely is!!! I think it’s mostly a meaning or community issue frankly. But our medical system is not well designed for that sort of thing.
hydroacetylene
2hr ago
I think this is a little far- the median white democrat is some normie teacher who thinks children should be planned and in a stable relationship that they might not be super explicit about needing to be marriage but they would be skeptical about non-marriage relationships filling the same role.
hydroacetylene
2hr ago
women having impossible standards for men
While there are definitely a minority of women on the internet demanding men be 6'5 self made millionaires who believe every woke shibboleth and yet act like conservatives, it seems like most women have eminently reasonable standards(be stably employed in a good job, not be a porn/substance/gambling addict, not a criminal, taller than her, etc) and simply aren't exposed to men who meet them.
phailyoor
2hr ago
Democrats defected first with immigration laws. Maybe deliberately bringing in millions and millions of people through a legal loophole wasn't the best idea to encourage a spirit of cooperation. Endlessly cooperating with them is a sure way to get trampled on.
hydroacetylene
3hr ago
A few from the fifth circuit in the Abbott v Feds standoff under the Biden admin. I don't think it made any difference in the end.
hydroacetylene
3hr ago
Is Texas just requiring the same sort of "age verification" that's existed since the 90s (the website says are you 18 and you click yes)?
Texas is requiring that pornhub make potential viewers upload a photo of their driver's license. Presumably if a parent uploads a photo of their driver's license to let their kid watch porn and Texas attempts to enforce the law against pornhub then that would be a different lawsuit but let's be real, the tiny number of people who actually do this won't get caught.
hydroacetylene
3hr ago
I understand that 'more abortions for black women(and this is South Carolina)' is your #1 priority. But no one said you can't complain about South Carolina not funding planned parenthood.
Throwaway05
3hr ago
I think you can probably draw a line of separation between "normal" people who have personality traits, tendencies, hobbies, and political views I do not like and people who have severe mental illness (or an episode of the same with increased risk of recurrence).
Admittedly this guy was a lot further back so that the standards were different then they are today after some testing and improvement, but you have to work very hard to earn an involuntary stay and be very poorly behaved. Almost ALWAYS it involves true serious mental illness such and Schizophrenia, Bipolar disorder, severe Borderline, or MDD with suicide attempt or suicidal ideation. Or. It involves someone who is so unpleasant, uncooperative, violent, etc. that they are almost always a dangerous criminal they just might not have gotten caught yet (and the latter bucket is much less common).
If you are a threat to yourself or someone else in a real and foreseeable way you will likely be so again and the amount of danger is quite a bit higher. This is not "I dislike Nazis and they could do bad things!!!" this is "30% chance of murdering someone."
Throwaway05
3hr ago
The constitution is not a suicide pact, case law establishes restrictions to constitutional rights, 1A is the biggest place we see this. You aren't allowed to say anything and everything. This has been tested in a court of law to make sure that deranged actors do not ruin society and devastate the rights of others (admittedly with varying success and priorities).
The same for 2A. Jihadis can't have a right to nukes just because they are American citizens. That is not sensible. You can still be pro-2A and think that murders have lost their right to guns.
Ultimately your right to live supersedes my example crazy guys right to own a gun. If you believe otherwise you are in a gross minority.
If you think this guy doesn't have a right to kill you then you need to come up with a different way to prevent that because the legal system has already come up with their approach and you criticizing it can be easily blown off with "okay but like, how are you going to be sure you/your family doesn't get murdered?"
If you don't like the solution propose a different one that doesn't get you shot in the head for no reason.
felis-parenthesis
3hr ago
Thank you for engaging whole heartedly with the riddle of the flute children. Your excellent comment has given me the push back I need to rethink my position (or to retreat from the bailey to the motte)
The suggestion "kill the person who asked the question" is to be taken seriously but not literally. Think of it as a cry of pain: For fucks sake, notice the fucking problem.
Taking one step upstream, the intellectual default is to treat power honey pots as exogenous. They exist. There is nothing to be done about it. Cope as best you can.
That is at least half true. Consider the maxim "those who do not work, neither shall they eat". Not true individually. Perhaps society is organised as 50% Slaves who grow twice as much food as they eat and 50% Masters who eat but do not farm. Or perhaps society is organised as 50% able-bodied who grow twice as much food as they eat and 50% children, elderly, and sick, who eat but do not farm. The fundamental point is that the collective cannot eat more food than it grows. This is going to create a power honey pot around farm work and the distribution of food, which is intrinsic to the human condition.
Endogenous honey pots are real too. Sometimes it is a matter of degree; we leave the lid off the honey pot, forgetting that it will attract wasps. Sometimes we create a honey pot that needn't actually exist. (Weak example: We need to mandate vaccinations to counter the distrust created by mandating vaccinations. If government had focused on earning trust, rather than demanding it, we wouldn't be in our current mess. Explanation.
A strong historical example flows from the slogan "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need". I used to believe that the problems in the USSR in the 1930s were fully explained by incompatible incentives. Implementing the slogan will lead to increasing problems with people hiding their abilities and accumulating needs. But I gradually noticed that death toll from the Terror was too high, and reached too far into the ruling class. There was something worse, down stream from "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need".
The problem with Utopian ideas that are not incentive compatible is that things go to shit. Then the ruling elite must construct mechanisms of coercion to create artificial incentives. There must be an Ability Finder General. There must be an Adjudicator of Needs. Imagine the surprise among the more idealistic members of the ruling elite when the battle for these position leads to them being sent to the Gulag.
Endogenous! The power honey pot exists because it is created by the unfolding logic of that particular system. It didn't have to exist. People could have looked ahead and decided on a different path. It would have saved their lives.
A weaker example, (but from 2025, so more relevant) is UK Prime Minister Starmer putting VAT (the UK's fancy sales tax) on "School fees". The UK has a "pay twice" system of secondary education. Government run schools are free at the point of use. You have already paid for them through your taxes. If you are unhappy with the education that your child is receiving, you can send them to a private school (traditionally called a "public" school, meaning open to any child whose parents were rich enough to pay the fees, and contrasting with the practice among the nobility of engaging a private tutor to teach their children exclusively.)
Sending your child to a private school saves the government money. They don't have to provide a place for your child in the government school. However, you get no refund of taxes. You have already paid taxes to provide that place and must pay a second time to fund the private school.
Starmer had two motivations. Tacitly, levelling. He wants to destroy private education so that every child has the same education, even if it is not very good. Explicitly (fig-leafly? cloakatively?), money. The money has run out and the government is thrashing about, desperately seeking new sources of money. This has somewhat backfired. Many of the parents who send their children to private schools struggle to afford the fees (the pay twice structure makes this hard). Some are admitting defeat. The addition of VAT makes the price too high and they send their child to the government run school. Providing the place costs the government money. (Hence the sense that though the government says it is trying to raise money, this is a fig leaf over levelling.)
For fucks sake, notice the fucking problem. If we want to remake society according to our own Utopian design, our best bet is to capture the education system. Then we can design the curriculum and ensure that every-one's children are taught right-think, regardless of their parents wrong-think. Starmer hasn't noticed this. He wants money. He wants equality (but doesn't much care what is in the curriculum, provided it is the same in every school). But he is squeezing private schools. Every child moved from a private school to a government school is a drop of honey in the pot. VAT is only a small matter; he is leaving the lid of the honey pot ajar.
Nobody else in the UK is noticing that the lid of the curriculum honey is left ajar. This is what I am trying to point to when I say "the intellectual default is to treat power honey pots as exogenous."
This example might not resonate in the USA, because the right has noticed that the public school curriculum is a power honey pot and maybe the left noticed first and its wasps have already arrived; the fight is starting.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
3hr ago
You have not proposed an alternative.
Nor do I need to. If you're actually a 2A advocate, it's not somehow the "default" that if a psychiatrist thinks a person deserves to be committed that they lose their gun rights forever. If you think that for gun rights to apply, the proponents of gun rights must come up with a solution to all crimes which could be prevented by taking away someone's gun rights, you're not a 2A advocate.
gattsuru
3hr ago
The specific law here holds that a "commercial entity" (some carveouts for Google) that serves material on the internet "more than one-third of which is sexual material harmful to minors" must use either commercial or government identification of age, or be subject to fines up to 10k USD per day plus 250k if a minor sees it. There's pretty widespread potential to interfere or discourage adult-to-adult speech that is only obscene to minors, or even some speech that isn't obscene at all so long as it comes from one of these companies.
There's also a compelled speech problem in the original bill, 14-point font inclusion of a substance addiction help line level. This is currently blocked, though it had a weird period where that block was under an administrative stay for nearly six months.
WhiningCoil
3hr ago
Hey, you hit me back! I don't want to hear any complaining about me hitting you first!
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
3hr ago
Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic - Abortion.
It sounds to me like Congress put a condition on federal Medicaid funding, South Carolina is ignoring it, and the Supreme Court is saying "the federal government can enforce the condition by taking away South Carolina's Medicaid funding" knowing it will not actually do so, effectively nullifying the condition Congress put in place. Maybe the court decision was right, you don't want to create a situation where the government is buried in endless lawsuits, but it certainly looks like the executive branch is just blatantly ignoring the law. If that's acceptable, I don't want to hear any complaints about Democrats refusing to enforce immigration laws.
Throwaway05
3hr ago
You have not proposed an alternative.
If your neighbor goes off of his medication and keeps following you around as you leave your house saying "Nybbler you raped me, I'm going to shoot you."
What do you want to do with this guy? Sure you could get him committed, but he'll be admitted, get stabilized, go home and go off his meds again and then go buy a gun and shoot you.
Especially in NJ the cops won't get involved because it is clearly a psychiatric matter not a criminal one.
faceh
3hr ago
That right there is the time I think the Husbands should be willing to sacrifice their libido on the altar of fertility.
If she carries your kid for 9 months and is now willing to commit to raising it with you, then you can either abstain for a few more months, or do self help for a while.
But yeah, the addition of kids leads to a lot of biological, economic, and just pure scheduling issues, and the guy's desires probably don't reduce at all, so somebody is likely going to compromise.
haroldbkny
3hr ago
Ah, I see. Well, that makes more sense, then.
faceh
3hr ago
Yeah, I'm sort of gesturing at the absurdity that comes with these busybodies trying to enforce rules heavily, when the only way they can really make punishments stick is to literally have the cops show up and arrest them.
That is, if the troublemaker doesn't abide by the busybody's authoritah.
And getting arrested because you wouldn't stop running in the pool area or did too much horseplay is just a bit absurd.
I have identified the problem.
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