Trump and Darwin

by

by liberal japonicus

Perhaps red-meat liberalism talking here, but I have to wonder if the whole Trump presidency is a way for Darwinian selection to operate. Case in point: Chris Collins.

here

They’ve got video of him making the call to his son.

whoops

Here’s some background that I thought was interesting.

Another example (hopefully) of Darwinian selection:
Ted Cruz

Economic crimes, Trump endorsements, upper New York state, Texas, the implicit “what about Bob Menendez?”, a lot of buttons here, all are encouraged to press the ones they like and go on about them.

308 thoughts on “Trump and Darwin”

  1. Okay, I’ll bite. To quote someone far more famous than I:
    “Stupid Watergate.” (John Oliver)
    I guess these people think they’ll never be caught. All though I don’t get the impression that it’s all for the same reasons. Fom my not-very-attentive impressions, Manafort thought he was too smart to get caught, and Collins was too dumb to know he should hide it better.
    I hope they all roast.

  2. A couple decades of funding cuts for the IRS. Leading to many fewer audits, and fewer prosecutions for tax evasion/fraud. And a (not totally unreasonable, at least in the short term) belief that they’ll never be caught.
    Then, possibly because those involved get ever more blatant, a tipping point is reached. And there is a cascade of prosecutions and convictions. Of course it doesn’t hurt that a bunch of particularly inept actors end up in very high profile government jobs — say Secretary of Commerce.

  3. Then, possibly because those involved get ever more blatant, a tipping point is reached. And there is a cascade of prosecutions and convictions.
    So just what does it take to reach that tipping point? The S&L scandal sent hundreds to do jail time….now? White collar crime is practically a badge of honor.
    Needless to say, this enrages me.

  4. You know what? If you embezzle a dollar, you should do 20 to life. Maybe then some folks will wake the f up about the state of crime and punishment in this country.

  5. I don’t know that the punishments need to elongate.**
    Far more effective, for this as for any crime you want to discourage, to seriously increase the probability/certainty of getting caught and punished. Which means lots more funding for the IRS, SEC, etc.
    ** Although it might be worthwhile to eliminate the “country club” prisons, and just dump them in with the general population.

  6. Republicans and conservatives lie, cheat and steal.
    It’s in their nature.
    They hire underlings to then steal again what they’ve already stolen .. see Gates and Manafort.
    If you haven’t committed fraud on some magnificent scale, your resume is turned away by republicans and conservatives.
    The entire anti-tax and anti-regulatory movement is designed to enable republican and conservative theft, fraud, lying, and, why not, sexual abuse.
    Government is merely an underaged boy or girl, bending over for the rogering by a piece of shit republican.
    Government is a wallet on a sidewalk with a string attached and tugged on by a republican piece of shit in a dark alley.
    Executions, on some unheard of scale to put to rest and miniturize the Mao/Stalin/Hitler body count sweepstakes once and for all, are in order.
    Finally, America too can be exceptional in the field of killing its internal enemies to save the country,
    Then, what’s left, the decent remnant of America, may hold unstolen elections and carry on.

  7. Count, you could make a better case on “libertarians” than on “conservatives”. Because that’s what the “anti-tax and anti-regulatory movement” is: libertarian.
    Granted there is an alliance currently between the libertarians and the reactionaries. But, as the Koch brothers are discovering, it’s strictly an alliance of convenience.

  9. Now they want to bring asbestos back and Russia is celebrating
    https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/russian-asbestos-trump_face/
    The Donald seems to have been a very pro-asbestos guy in the past. There are even claims that he said the Twin Towers would still stand, if ‘good’ asbestos had been used (on the other hand there is a conspiracy theory that 9/11 was perpetrated by the owners in order to save money on asbestos removal from the towers).

  12. Now they want to bring asbestos back and Russia is celebrating
    he probably licensed the use of his face on the packaging.

  13. The cynic would say that liabilty suits were and are a prime target for the cons (they are by definition frivolous when coming from the lowborn without connections).
    And some read the ‘EPA approval required’ clause as a simple ‘open for business’ sign (of course libertarians have always seen it as a racket).
    In case of doubt it is just another ‘stick it to the libs and especially Obama’ from The Donald.
    On the other hand, since he is believed to have/had mob connection during his real estate days, his claims about asbestos and the mafia should not be dismissed too lightly 😉

  16. Trumper MAGAts should be outfitted with asbestos MAGA hats and Klan robes, to protect themselves from count’s flamethrower, it’s clear.
    It’ll be the start of “cough if you luvv Trump”

  19. Riiiight, Charles. Because, as the Collins case demonstrates, it’s just totally fair to have a trade where one party is in possession of information that is denied to the other party.

  22. Hit the trifecta yesterday as I heard a third individual of the stinking white conservative persuasion (I’m white and I stink which puts one up on the enemy), who forever have been telling us shiftless blacks didn’t WANT to work and were welfare leeches because of the latter’s identity group sociopathy, tout record low black unemployment under racist cuck mp.
    Two in the media and a personal acquaintance whose previous solution to homelessness among the unemployed was to mime a guy rapid firing an automatic weapon at black and hispanic sidewalk sleepers.
    Only during slavery before 1865, these filth think to themselves, was black unemployment lower.
    Yeah, I read minds via the writing on their cuck faces.
    https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000006
    Never did I hear a peep out of their mouths about the plunge in black unemployment from the get go of Obama’s two terms, after the carnage of the Bush crash, nor the months and months of RECORD lows during much of Obama’s last year in office.
    The two liars in the media were not questioned about their misuse of the stats by the news outlets because journalism in this country is just another turd on the stupendous American pile of shit.

  24. I long to be a cheating, lying, thieving American under the protection of the First Amendment who can relay false, optimistic insider information to my friends at OBWI about the equities I own when I want to dump them and take profits as you guys go all in.
    Libertarian Rule of Law. No rules and no law.

  25. In an opinion article on a new Star Trek show (featuring Sir Patrick Stewart; Picard 20 years later), I came across this in the comments:

    Here’s a mental experiment for you:
    Bring all the episodes of Next Generation you’ve seen to mind and replace Jean Luc with Barack Obama.
    It works quite well.
    Now do the same thing, but replace Picard with Donald Trump.
    CAUTION: I will not be responsible for any mental health injuries experimenters might incur.

    Interesting, is it not?
    But then, Star Trek was always about a hopeful future, not a fearful one.

  26. Trump is more like the Ferengi of Star Trek TNG, rather than the more endearing Ferengi of DS9.

  27. DS9 was more efficient than the other Star Trek series. Usually, most of the action took place in a known, predefined environment and didn’t require as much setup at the beginning of each episode. Sort of like the various hotel, cruise ship, island dramas.

  28. I only read the first link CharlesWT provided. Its arguments for making insider trading legal are nonsense.
    First of all, Mathews claims that individual investors wouldn’t be hurt if they didn’t buy individual stocks but stuck to index funds as he (and I) think they should.
    So what? Investors have a right to buy individual stocks, no matter what anyone thinks, and have a right not to be cheated by corporate insiders. Of course not all the stock sold by a crook is bought by individuals, by a long shot. Some – probably most – is bought by mutual funds and the like in which individual investors hold a stake.
    Another argument was that insider trading provides information to the market, and helps assure accurate pricing. Bullshit. The price of Innate didn’t go down until the news about the clinical trial was made public. The trading by Collins’ tippees didn’t move the price, and even if it did, so what? Presumably the price will drop when the news is public, and end up at the same place.
    Then there is the issue of fiduciary responsibility. Collins was on the board. The information he had properly belonged to the shareholders, not his family. What he did was cheat his own shareholders – the very people to whom he had a fiduciary obligation.

  29. Then there is the issue of fiduciary responsibility.
    I have the distinct impression that the very concept of fiduciary obligation is foreign to the folks who make these kinds of arguments. They seem to be really strong on “devil take the hindmost” . . . with the implicit assumption that they will never be there.

  32. There is not much more despicable in financial abuse than board members insider trading. They already approve their own comp including equity, control the strings financially right up to grey areas of material, then to trade on clearly material info should make them criminal and destitute.
    Imho

  33. Punishment for financial “white collar” crime is FAR too light.
    When the greedheads ruin someone’s life by stealing their savings, the greedhead’s life should be EVEN MORE ruined. Life imprisonment at hard labor, frex.

  34. Jesus wept, when you’ve got Bolton being the reasonable one and machinating to save NATO from Trump, you know you’re in big trouble:

  37. 43 percent of self-identified Republicans said that they believed “the president should have the authority to close news outlets engaged in bad behavior.”
    these are likely the same people who were convinced that Obama was a tyrant.
    don’t call them racist, though!

  38. 43 percent of self-identified Republicans said that they believed “the president should have the authority to close news outlets engaged in bad behavior.
    … and 12% of Democrats agreed.
    Instead of the president, we have major tech platforms closing down “news outlets.” (E.g. Alex Jones.)
    So define “news outlets,” and define “bad behavior,” and quote the First Amendment to people.
    Part of our problem is the oversimplification of everything. I have never seen a poll or a questionnaire that I felt I could reply to in thoroughness and good faith, because the answers are pre-loaded and the questions are stupid and both are over-simplified.
    Plus, I have typed and erased “plus people are just too fncking stupid” three times in this comment, but even that’s too problematic and too oversimplified (not to mention too arrogant) to stand.
    /useless rant.
    Saturday, lovely day after a week of heat and humidity……what to do, what to do…..

  39. “what to do, what to do….”
    Yes cool enough to open the windows, watch the rain and listen to my Music from the Big Pink playlist.
    Maybe I will get the 50th anniversary release on vinyl.

  40. Marty, despite loving the couple of albums I knew from the Band, and knowing about Music from Big Pink, I had never listened to it and didn’t know that they were the first people to record I Shall Be Released, which I am listening to as I type this. It just goes to show how a short comment can send someone else out on a rewarding quest…

  41. Overcasted and rainy in Texas too.
    In the spirit of the OP:
    “But champions of these tainted presidents can take heart. Since Jan. 20, 2017, Americans have seen an endless torrent of corruption beyond anything previously imagined. No president has ever had a surer instinct than Donald Trump for finding and empowering scam artists, spongers, and thugs.”
    The Trump Administration Is a Sinkhole of Sleaze: Donald Trump has an instinct for finding and empowering scam artists, spongers, and thugs.
    An upside of this administration may be that a number of people are in the dock that would perhaps never have been otherwise.

  42. we have major tech platforms closing down “news outlets.”
    nobody is entitled to set up shop on someone else’s property.
    and infowars.com is still going strong.

  43. GftNC,
    I find it fascinating that it was a seemingly questionable decision to open the album with Tears of Rage. The producers thought it was too slow for a first song, The Band thought they recorded first. Tons of interesting stuff out about the album because of the anniversary.

  44. nobody is entitled to set up shop on someone else’s property.
    Sinclair Broadcasting knows that quite well, I’m sure.
    I was just trying to point out that poll results depend heavily on simple-minded leading questions, and on whose ox is being gored in any given instance.

  46. “nobody is entitled to set up shop on someone else’s property.”
    I dont disagree with this, but it certainly adds a perspective to the net neutrality discussion. Or should.

  47. we have major tech platforms closing down “news outlets.”
    Far as I can tell nobody is preventing Alex Jones et al. from setting up his own website and spewing his deranged fantasies to his little heart’s content. They are just declining to provide him a megaphone.

  48. Yes cool enough to open the windows, watch the rain and listen to my Music from the Big Pink playlist.

  52. One can only hope (probably futilely) that someone in the administration will work up the guts to say that the President has lost it. There’s a process for relieving a President who is no longer compos mentis — not just doing things which seem crazy, but flat out lost to reality. It’s time and past time to use it.
    Just to be clear, it’s pretty obviously in the GOP’s selfish interest (if the national interest isn’t sufficient, as it seems it isn’t) to give a President Pence a couple of years to establish a track record to run on in 2020.

  54. The republican party is totally creeping me out, and I’m not easily creeped out.
    It could be Omarosa and mp remain comrades, Russian or not, and with the full knowledge of the entire White House staff her book is an attempt to throw chaff in the public’s radar as Mueller closes in, and the republican party is full in on it.
    To take our eyes off republican vermin thieving business-as-usual rapine like this:
    http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2018/08/election-donald-trump-crushing-blow-neoliberal-order-3
    They might be extra-terrestials with malign intent and a funny bone.
    Go ahead, call me the crazy one, but there has never been anything like this in American history.
    Being completely, laughably nuts on August 12, 2018 may be the only path to ascertaining what the fuck these animals are up to.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnpISyu09B4
    When was the moment when it would have been acceptable, as policy to save a country, to murder Hitler or Stalin or any other fucking psychopath?
    Shall we wait again until millions are slaughtered?

  55. “One can only hope (probably futilely) that someone in the administration will work up the guts to say that the President has lost it. There’s a process for relieving a President who is no longer compos mentis — not just doing things which seem crazy, but flat out lost to reality. It’s time and past time to use it.”
    If Pence is given anything other than a jail cell then the government needs to be overthrown with savage violence.
    If Pence is given anything other than a death sentence, then the Constitution is a fake flower on a clown’s lapel squirting poison and should be suspended until these ilk are executed.
    Pence is a sociopath with different, but just as notorious symptoms than mp.
    That his symptoms might be more acceptable to the republican party than mp’s reveals only that the republican party must be utterly fucking destroyed.
    Their remnant can meet annually in Ostritz, Germany and be set upon with dogs, water hoses, and armored vehicles, the filth.

  56. Count, what capital crime, exactly, do you think Pence is guilty of?
    Sure, he’s a horrible person. Probably, he would be a terrible president. I’m with you there.
    But if you are going to demand his death, how about a specific crime that he has already committed? Because absent that, you’re pretty much in the same position as the far right scum who want to kill off anyone who disagrees with them. And I’m sure you don’t want that.

  58. “you’re pretty much in the same position as the far right scum who want to kill off anyone who disagrees with them.”
    Well, it will be self-defense then, won’t it?
    Besides, during the current rule of lawlessness in mp’s republican America, this could be as a good a reason as any …. the crime of mimicking an asshole:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R22wRUHFi7w
    It was Pence’s version of a Nazi salute.
    Ask George Will:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iCst_i00yA
    Ask this guy, one of many Nazi sympathizers winning elections across the country, (or are we watching “Hogan’s Heros” reruns?) and the republican cucks who voted for him what the fucking plans are:
    http://juanitajean.com/missouri-to-texas-here-hold-my-beer/
    I’m not interested in winning civilized elections against Nazis. I want to kill fucking Nazis.
    Because they are Nazis.
    Besides, who is threatening whom with impunity without a single fucking word from shithead republicans:
    https://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2018/08/the-withered-soul-of-moral-majority.html

  59. “how about a specific crime that he has already committed?”
    I’m merely following the conservative playbook of “broken windows” policing with Pence and company.
    You put them away for the small infractions, because if you don’t, you’ll be arresting them later for the big stuff.
    If it worked for Guiliani, it will work against Guiliani.
    Or is that little shit somehow wired differently than the poor blacks he incarcerated for petty crimes?
    Yes, he is wired to commit huge crimes against the Constitution.

  61. Re: “specific crimes”
    If I steal $120M from one person, I have committed some pretty grand larceny. Maybe not death-penalty serious, but possibly worth a life sentence.
    If I steal $1 from each of 120M people, is my larceny less grand somehow? Would our legal system go after me as hard?
    Note that in the first case, the person I stole from had $120M on him to steal. The Law takes offenses against such people very seriously.
    –TP

  62. I’d point out that Malkin is one of the reasons I hate libertarians, because her early career had her using libertarian tics to get visibility until she went full blown racist.
    Nigel posted a link the Ask The Korean blog. I’ve read him quite a bit to get ready to go to Korea, but didn’t think of reading him in the context of this blog until Nigel posted the link, and this post
    http://askakorean.blogspot.com/2017/10/koreas-alt-right-and-how-to-fight-ones.html
    seems to get at a lot of things.

  63. I’d point out that Malkin is one of the reasons I hate libertarians, because her early career had her using libertarian tics to get visibility until she went full blown racist.
    That logic could justify hating just about any and every ideology.

  64. I missed reading Nigel’s link, but looked at the one lj posted, and then read some more of the Ask The Korean blog. It’s really good.

  65. That logic could justify hating just about any and every ideology.
    No, not really. The point is that libertarian philosophy allows a lot of grifters and plainly mendacious people to use those ideas to get a mainstream hearing and then use that to bring in things that really shouldn’t see the light of day. Malkin being a particular case in point.
    https://www.substance.com/right-wing-nut-job-michelle-malkin-loves-marijuana-hated-the-drug-war/6087/
    This could be just a rant provoked by the Count’s invocation of Malkin
    (this link describes her journey, though I don’t know why the text is munged up a bit
    https://crosscut.com/2009/11/michelle-malkins-journey-from-ideas-tribes )
    but it seems like a lot of people on the right get their start with libertarianism. Whether shilling libertarian ideas cause that gives them an initial platform, or libertarianism is a gateway drug that let rationalizations take over, I’ve got no idea, but while that logic could justify hating all ideologies, statistical tendencies support the logic in regards to libertarians, whether they are true or faux.
    Also, it is not simply logic. The Koch Brothers, after providing seed money for the Cato institute, aimed to take over the Cato Institute.
    https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-kochs-v-cato-winners-and-losers
    So in our world, libertarianism has found itself trapped in the orbit of conservatism. If I were an authentic libertarian, I’d be looking for the escape pods…

  66. The point is that libertarian philosophy allows a lot of grifters and plainly mendacious people to use those ideas to get a mainstream hearing and then use that to bring in things that really shouldn’t see the light of day.
    This is true.
    It’s also true that there are much better reasons for hating libertarianism.
    My favorite reasons (although I could probably think of many more) are: the libertarian response to global warming; the libertarian response to old people having made less than optimal financial decisions; the libertarian response to the poor, mentally ill and chronically disabled.
    I kind of like CharlesWT’s views on immigration, although I do think that the government has a role to keep terrorists from entering. (And I’m assuming a good faith definition of the word “terrorist”.) I also think that true libertarians’ views on the autonomy of people with regard to their own bodies is good (although most politicians who claim libertarianism don”t really subscribe to that, in reality).
    So, yeah, a lot of grifters use libertarianism as a launching pad, and that’s to hate, but there’s a lot more to hate, and maybe better things!

  67. my issue with libertarianism is the last 10,000 years of human history.
    it’s a nice idea, but there’s a reason that there has never been a libertarian society since the neolithic revolution. not one i’m aware of, anyway.
    7 billion people on the planet now. ideas that don’t scale are of, at best, limited value.

  68. After reading the “Ask a Korean!” blog post, it would seem that a number of the Korean drama series I’ve watched are closer to the truth than I had thought.
    A cautionary tale about giving a government too much power and influence. And then the wrong people get their hands on the controls.
    Speaking of Korean dramas series, I’m currently watching on NetFlix one of the best I’ve seen so far.
    “The drama is set in 1900 to 1905 and tells the story of a soldier in the righteous army an American Marine falling in love with an aristocrat’s daughter. It begins in 1871 when the hero boards an American military ship as a little boy during the Shinmiyangyo, a U.S. military expedition to Korea that resulted in a battle. He lands in the U.S. and then years later returns to Korea as an American soldier Marine, to the country that abandoned him. While stationed in Korea, he’ll meet and fall in love with a nobleman’s daughter.”
    Mr. Sunshine

  69. A cautionary tale about giving a government too much power and influence. And then the wrong people get their hands on the controls.
    ffs, it’s a country that was made an unwilling colony of Japan at the turn of the century, totally ignored in the aftermath of WWII, such that it was divided in half and then ended up being the site of a proxy war between the West vs. China and Russia that saw the southern half of the country (along the country’s capital!) overrun twice as can be seen in this video.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBeiD6kGugE
    and you take Korea as a cautionary tale about government regulation? Words fail. It is precisely this monomania of libertarians that lets them get hijacked by the right so easily.

  70. Some libertarians are good on some issues. I’m thinking of the ones who oppose our military interventions and the drug war and excessive surveillance and so forth. Even on those issues you find self- proclaimed anti- statists who were for the Iraq War and really just seem like standard Republican militarists. I think Glenn Reynolds was in that camp. But on the other side you had people like Jim Henley and his co- blogger, whose name I have forgotten. They were antiwar. Some of the antiwar posts at the American Conservative are from Cato people.
    On most other issues I agree with sapient’s critique.

  71. Perhaps I should have said, …giving a governments too much power and influence. Then the current US situation might come to mind.

  72. Yes, as we all know, if the governments of the world didn’t have so much power, everything would be hunky-dory now. How this is prevented is, as usual, left as an exercise for the reader.
    I know it is hard to admit that you couldn’t be bothered to take into account the history of the Korean peninsula, let alone the history since 1951, in making your claim. Maybe even impossible. But if you would, it would certainly leave me much more willing to consider any arguments you made. As it stands now, not so much.

  73. Up until about the ’60s, both Koreas were in about the same condition with the North having more industry from before the war. Then the South tried a bit of economic freedom. Which, in time, grew into policial freedom.
    While they still have a way to go, they’re one of the strongest and wealthiest democracies in Asia. Strong enough to survive a decade of bad government. And wealthy enough to provide me with thousands of hours of good quality entertainment. 🙂

  74. Edward Gibbon wrote of Rome, William Shirer of the Third Reich, Demothenes on the rot of Greece, many others eloquently of the fall of entire civilizations.
    Who shall hold forth for the ages on the practical joke of pigfuck stupid America?
    https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/8/12/1787723/-Open-thread-for-night-owls-Bikers-for-Trump-selling-imported-Trump-shirts-US-companies-gouge-you
    Soupy Sales? Carrot Top?
    Huntz Hall?
    Who is low but ironic enough to write the accurate memoir of this bullshit puppet show?
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IL357BrwK7c

  78. Up until about the ’60s, both Koreas were in about the same condition with the North having more industry from before the war. Then the South tried a bit of economic freedom. Which, in time, grew into policial freedom.
    1960 – Syngman Ree resigns 2nd Republic begins
    1961 – Military coup
    1963 – Third Republic, declared by the person who led the coup, declared
    1972 – Martial law again and increase of power by Park
    1979 – Park assassinated by KCIA head
    1980 – Gwangju massacre, martial law reinstated
    1981 – Martial law ends
    1986 – Constitution is changed to allow direct election of the president
    1987 – Now on Sixth(!) Republic
    1993 – First free elections for parliament and first civilian president
    1997 – Past president Chun Doo-hwan sentenced to death but pardoned on the advice of incoming president Kim Dae-jung. Kim was sentenced to death 20 years earlier
    Yes, just a few tweaks for those economic freedoms and they were off to the races! Who knew it was that easy?
    I don’t like pointing out that people are deficient in their knowledge of history because I know I have gaping holes in my own knowledge, and complaining that someone doesn’t know what you happen to know is unfair. But I have to say that it seems like you really don’t care about the history as long as the anecdote can prove some libertarian nostrum.

  79. Libertarianism is an example of how you can take a good idea to an extreme to create a bad one.
    Total government control of every aspect of life is a bad thing — I’m pretty sure everybody here would agree with that. But it doesn’t follow that the ideal is no government control of anything — which is the Randian/Libertarian view.
    Reasonable people can, and do, disagree about just how much control and of what is desirable. But that control is sometimes necessary for civilized life isn’t really arguable . . . except to (most?) libertarians.

  80. I don’t like pointing out that people are deficient in their knowledge of history because I know I have gaping holes in my own knowledge, and complaining that someone doesn’t know what you happen to know is unfair.
    I don’t know much at all about (North or South) Korean history. That’s why I don’t comment on it (other than to say I don’t know much about it, or maybe to ask questions if the mood strikes). I’ll just leave it at that, assuming my point is made.

  81. An economic and policial history overview of the two Koreas in the modern era from a not necessarily libertarian point of view:
    “Economists have debated for years why it is that some nations prosper while others do not. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea, DPRK) and the Republic of Korea (South Korea, ROK), for example, started out as poor nations after World War II. Now, South Korea has the same wealth as Western European nations, on average, yet North Korea firmly remains at the bottom of the world’s development ladder. This article suggests that institutions matter and that key institutions are fundamental to economic success.”
    Why Do Some Nations Prosper? The Case of North and South Korea (pdf)

  82. But it doesn’t follow that the ideal is no government control of anything — which is the Randian/Libertarian view.
    For most libertarians, no government is aspirational, not obtainable or desired. A goal to pursue, not to obtain.

  84. For most libertarians, no government is aspirational, not obtainable or desired.
    If it’s not desired, why is it an aspiration? Why would anyone pursue a goal which they did not desire to achieve?
    Guess I’m just slow this morning, but I can’t see it.

  85. Sounds a bit like communism, Charles.
    It actually is like communism in that it is a theory of how society should operate that is based on fantastical ideas about society, human nature, and economic behavior.

  88. It’s just ever so much easier to design a model society or economy if you aren’t constrained by the pesky realities of human nature.

  89. Taking a different angle, one problem I have with the more devout libertarians is that they make the idea seem foolish. I think there is a lot to be said for libertarian viewpoints in many areas, and they should be heard.
    But when those viewpoints come along with a a total contempt for government, wild claims about economics, Randism, etc. they are hard to credit.

  90. It actually is like communism in that it is a theory of how society should operate that is based on fantastical ideas about society, human nature, and economic behavior…
    That was indeed what I meant.
    A utopian theory which, when pursued with sufficient enthusiasm by its true believers, can lead to untold damage.

  91. It’s just ever so much easier to design a model society or economy if you aren’t constrained by the pesky realities of human nature.
    “Design” implies a top-down approach. Libertarians favor a bottom-up emergent order approach.

  94. “emergent order?” That’s a means to the end, perhaps. But the end is still a design.
    So is evolution, in the end, also a design?

  96. Either we got where we are because of “emergent” properties of the process of humans trying to get along together on this planet, or the term makes no sense as applied to this question.
    I go with the latter.
    Otherwise, I suppose, only things libertarians approve of can be considered “emergent”? Like, if the idea emerges in a village that no one should be allowed to pour poison into the village water supply, and there’s consensus on the subject, then……well, that involves some kind of collective action and probably some top-down coercion (or punishment), so obviously it’s not “emergent.”
    Back to doing something arguably useful……

  97. No. But then, evolution doesn’t have a goal or an aspiration.
    Neighter does free markets, free-market capitalism, etc. Abstractions don’t have aspirations. Only people do.
    Generalizing, social conservatives don’t believe in evolution. Economic liberals don’t believe in the hidden hand. But the two concepts are related. Darwin was aware of and drew inspiration from Adam Smith.

  98. Neighter does free markets, free-market capitalism, etc. Abstractions don’t have aspirations. Only people do.
    evolution exists and functions without humans. there is no ‘hidden hand’ or markets without humans. that tells us a lot about what the hand actually is.

  99. Economic liberals don’t believe in the hidden hand.
    “Economic liberals” often refers to those who are laissez faire in their views, at least among those who are more prone to discussing the intersections of economics and politics. But it’s pretty clear that you mean something more like the American leftward sense of “liberal,” which might lean toward socialism.
    In any case, speaking just for myself, I don’t really deny the existence of the invisible hand. I just don’t think it makes everything work optimally all by itself.
    When I start advocating for, just as an example, the federal government determining how many smartphones should be produced in a given year and at what price they should be sold, you can accuse me of denying the existence of the invisible hand.

  100. there is no ‘hidden hand’ or markets without humans.
    So the world, as it is, was designed in detail by human intention? What about all those unintended consequences everyone’s always talking about?
    Unless you’re a conspiracy theorist that believes there’s a hidden cabal controlling everything, the state of the world caused by human actions seems to include a lot of things that no one expected or intended.
    We are much better off than ants who have no awareness or understanding of what an ant colony is. But there’re severe limits on what individuals and institutions can know and understand about the world’s complexities caused by human behavior.

  101. “Generalizing, social conservatives don’t believe in evolution. Economic liberals don’t believe in the hidden hand. But the two concepts are related. Darwin was aware of and drew inspiration from Adam Smith.”
    Um, you know about the discussion of levels of selection in evolutionary theory, right? What benefits the individual may not benefit the group to which the individual belongs.

  102. When I start advocating for, just as an example, the federal government determining how many smartphones should be produced in a given year and at what price they should be sold, you can accuse me of denying the existence of the invisible hand.
    Too bad you don’t feel the same way about healthcare and education. 🙂

  103. To raise things above the level of saying that Darwin was heavily influenced by Smith and Malthus and therefore since evolution is true we should be libertarians, I thought Iwould just cut and paste from my link above—
    “But Clark’s piece also fails to grasp one of Polanyi’s most important distinctions. According to Clark: “Indeed, the more we learn of history, the more evident it is that the free market was not an 18th century innovation, but one of mankind’s oldest social institutions.” Clark’s insertion of the four letter word “free” into that sentence is the issue. In fact, Polanyi spent years documenting that markets are indeed one of humankind’s oldest institutions, but markets thrived historically because they were controlled by social institutions such as kinship, religion, and politics. What was novel at the beginning of the 19th century was the invention of the “free market”–the idea popularized by Malthus and Ricardo that human society should be organized around an integrated system of self regulating markets … free of any kind of social control. …
    History in fact has shown us again and again that market-based societies only work because markets are embedded within legal and political rules that prevent opportunistic and predatory behaviors… According to the Polanyian view,… the last two hundred years has involved systematically increasing the state’s economic role in order to make markets work. …
    But Clark … insists that:
    “Free-market capitalism is a resilient and stable system in much of the world–particularly in English-speaking countries. It is the policy of world bodies such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. It is conquering vast new domains in places such as China, Eastern Europe, and India.”
    In short, Clark’s definition of “free-market capitalism” is so broad and undifferentiated that it includes China under the dictatorship of the Communist Party. Whether he wants the role or not, Clark effectively becomes an apologist for the most reactionary global interest groups that routinely use the ideology of the free market to resist and oppose necessary regulatory measures. Both hedge fund managers and big oil companies insist that any increase in government regulation violates the logic of “free-market capitalism”…. It is puzzling– at this late date–that Clark can not understand that the mindless celebration of the free market comes with huge costs in economic dislocation and environmental degradation.

  104. So the world, as it is, was designed in detail by human intention?
    no, not consciously, intentionally designed. but it (the human world, society, etc) is obviously a product of human behavior.
    likewise, ‘the hand’. but it is a metaphor, a just-so story for something we think we see when we step back and look at this thing we’ve grown around us. and we can’t separate the ‘hand’ from the humans from which it emerges because it can’t exist without us. and so it must have aspirations – the aspirations of the people who create it.
    But there’re severe limits on what individuals and institutions can know and understand about the world’s complexities caused by human behavior.
    yes indeed.

  105. The concept of free markets doesn’t imply the absence of the rule of law. Markets are free when transactions can be freely entered into without a third party dictating to the participants what can and can not be traded and what the price should be. Rule of law is needed to enforce contracts and punish theft, fraud, and aggression against property and persons.

  106. The formulation I’ve always heard is “invisible hand”, which is subtly different from a “hidden hand”. But let that pass; it may just be sloppy usage rather than Freudian slip.
    The judgement that “we are much better off than ants” is questionable on several levels, starting with the obvious fact that human beings evaluate “better off” by human standards. Had Dr. Pangloss been an ant, he might have doubted that we humans live in the best of all possible worlds.
    A True Libertarian would be just as annoyed by laws forbidding him to walk down the street naked as by laws forbidding him to walk down the street armed. I have never met a True Libertarian.
    Every decision, every action, like every non-decision and every non-action, has unintended consequences. That’s why once-for-all-time decisions and designed-to-be-irreversible actions are dangerous. Fixed ideologies are problematic on that account.
    –TP

  107. Too bad you don’t feel the same way about healthcare and education.
    Perhaps I just haven’t been paying attention. But I haven’t noticed anyone here arguing for federal government control of education.
    Federal requirements that local governments provide the same quality of education to everyone in their jurisdiction? Sure. Federal minimums for what information is imparted? Maybe. But Federal control? Must have missed that.
    With respect to medical care, I have seen some support (only relatively recently) for “single payer” health care. But at least as much support for less pervasive solutions to a perceived problem with access to health care.

  108. But let that pass; it may just be sloppy usage rather than Freudian slip.
    Yes, I intended “invisible hand” the times I wrote “hidden hand.”
    “In addition, Nozick contrasts invisible-hand theories with so-called “hidden-hand explanations.” According to Nozick, a hidden hand theory explains unrelated events that are intentionally orchestrated by a single individual or group, while an invisible hand theory, by contrast, explains unrelated events in terms of some spontaneous mechanism lacking any pre-planning or pre-design.”
    Invisible hand theories
    A True Libertarian would be just as annoyed by laws forbidding him to walk down the street naked as by laws forbidding him to walk down the street armed.
    The non-aggression principle would forbid trespassing upon someone’s eyeballs. 🙂

  109. But I haven’t noticed anyone here arguing for federal government control of education.
    70 billion or so dollars seems a lot to spend and not be in control of anything.

  110. I guess 4 trillion or so dollars seems like a lot to spend an not be in control of everything.

  111. Libertarians favor a bottom-up emergent order approach.
    How did governments come to be? Were they imposed on human societies from above? Who exactly are these beings who are “above”, who are doing this imposing?
    Or are they a form of ordering human society that emerged, bottom-up, over millenia?
    If you want to talk about specific areas where our actual federal (or other) government exerts an undesirable level of control over individuals, IMO that’s great.
    Talking about government intervening in people’s lives as if it is inherently bad and/or unnatural ignores all of the reasons – the very beneficial reasons – that it exists in the first place.

  112. How did governments come to be?
    When bandits realized that everyone would be better off if they became tax farmers instead?

  113. CharlesWT,
    “Design” implies a top-down approach. Libertarians favor a bottom-up emergent order approach.
    But the design is there. “We will have no economic regulation,” is still a design.
    Economic liberals don’t believe in the hidden hand
    This is simply not true. I certainly believe in it, but my faith is not unlimited. That libertarians’ faith is unlimited is one of the problems of extremism I mentioned.
    Go read some posts by DeLong or Krugman, then come back and tell us that liberals don’t believe that markets in general function well.
    What we, (Brad, Paul, and I) further believe is that the market doesn’t solve all economic and social problems. Sometimes it simply doesn’t work – think externalities like environmental damage to take a major instance. It fails there for a simple reason – those who use resources are not required to pay for them, which defeats the logic of the market.
    It fails in the case of public goods.
    It fails where there is market power. (By “fails” here I mean that it does not produce the efficient economic outcome.) Adam Smith knew that, even if some of his worshippers don’t.
    It often fails where there is asymmetric information – think of adverse selection in insurance markets. This is a major problem with health care policy. Markets can completely disappear in some circumstances.
    It fails when information is hard to come by. Think about worker safety. The committed libertarian wants no OSHA. Workers will get higher wages, they say, in exchange for accepting more dangerous conditions. Do you believe that? How safe is the building you work in? Do the sprinklers work? Are the fire exits clear? Is the electrical system safe?
    No USDA. Has the food you buy been properly processed and handled? No licensing. What do all those certificates on the wall in your doctor’s office mean?
    This all leaves out social services like education, care for the disabled, elderly, unemployed, etc., lots of other things.

  117. When bandits realized that everyone would be better off if they became tax farmers instead?
    and “everyone else” had no agency in any of this? the “bandits” told them what to do, and they just did it?
    because, why?
    and yes, what bernie said at 5:24.
    what i’ll add to bernie’s comment is that there needs to be a crisp definition of what it means for a market to “function well”.
    optimal return on capital?
    meeting the basic needs of the people who participate in it?
    addressing and accounting for externalities, and for the interests of people not yet born?
    sometimes markets “function well”, even perfectly, and the result is simply not something people want to live with.
    a perfectly functioning market – transparent, low barriers to entry, etc – might result in some folks not having what they need to live, full stop. that would be a market that “functions well”, and that creates very bad outcomes.
    should outcomes matter?
    if they should, and a market economy that “functions well” does not create outcomes that people want, what mechanism is available to them to insure that the outcomes are what is desired?

  118. Feel the Bern!!! (Sorry, sapient. Couldn’t help myself.)
    Kind of a pleasant sunBern, in the case of byomtov. As opposed to the red hot poker Bern It Down kind of Bern.

  121. “and “everyone else” had no agency in any of this? the “bandits” told them what to do, and they just did it?
    because, why?”
    Because the gains are highly concentrated, and the costs are diffused. So in many cases (see especially farm subsidies), even though the subsidies are net negative for the country (producing no net good effect), they persist because the people who receive them are willing to fight for their millions of dollars, while the people getting ripped off don’t want to spend time fighting for the 5 cents per year they are individually getting ripped off. This is why so many of the benefits end up going to the super rich–they have the time and the money to fight the government for big gains, while the rest of us don’t have the time and the energy to fight all the thousand tiny losses.
    See extra especially ethanol/gas subsidies–bad for the environment, bad for the cost of gas, bad for the price of corn worldwide, but great for a dozen farming conglomerates.

  122. I think a lot of common ground can be found between those who don’t like crony capitalism and those who aren’t sure they like capitalism at all.

  123. Feel the Bern!!!
    I actually took advantage of the Sanders campaign to order a number of “Bernie for President” coffee cups and some other paraphernalia.
    Who knows when an opportunity like that will come around again.

  124. I think a lot of common ground can be found between those who don’t like crony capitalism and those who aren’t sure they like capitalism at all.
    I agree. and Charles says lots of things I agree with.
    and, imo, as an ideology or basic principle, libertarianism is not rooted in actual human experience.
    governments exist because human beings create them. they *are* forms of emergent order.

  126. My two cents, support for libertarianism seems to be a reaction to onerous overreach by government, thus emergent and rooted in human experience. As in many situations, the reaction can also go too far. And the level of support certainly depends on what law is being objected to.
    While I agree with much of Bernard’s list, the challenge is which of those things rightly belong at a federal level. If there is a reasonable generalization,imo, it is that federal government is a more popular solution for the left, although not exclusively as the right is happy to use the federal level in inappropriate ways (DOMA comes to mind).

  127. that’s all good.
    my point here is that human beings appear to naturally live in social forms that include governments. government, as a human institution, is not something opposed to, to use Charles’ words, “bottom-up emergent order”. it is the product of bottom-up emergent order.
    we made it up, nobody imposed it on us.
    I have no argument with the claim that government can be dysfunctional, can overreach its rightful scope of authority, can be abused by bad actors.
    every one of those things can also be said of market economies or any of the other things that libertarians cite in their list of ideals.
    it can be said of the principle that everything which is not forbidden is allowed, and it can be said of the 10th Amendment to the US Constitution.
    because humans are complicated, short-sighted, frequently selfish beings.
    if you were to take 100 dyed-in-the-wool libertarians, drop them someplace free from the demands of the dreaded oppressive hand of the state, and leave them to sort things out for themselves, in about a week they would begin to elaborate rules for how they were all going to get along. and folks who chose to not abide by those rules would be subject to some kind of sanction.
    they would have a government. a bottom-up emergent government. with rules and penalties for violating them. the voluntary surrender of liberty, in the interest of common co-existence.
    if instead of 100 libertarians, you conducted the same exercise with 1000, or 10,000, or 100,000 of them, the government they would elaborate, via bottom-up emergent order, would be relatively more complex and prone to distortion and error.
    if you let all of that play out for a few decades, even more so. what started out as bottom-up emergent order, fresh as the morning dew, would become The Way Things Are. within a generation.
    it’s what we do.
    if folks want to talk about biofuel subsidies, or whether the regulations introduced in the ACA are overly intrusive into doctor-patient interactions, or whether a nationwide speed limit is really productive, i’m all for it.
    if your opening argument is that government should be assumed to be bad unless demonstrated otherwise, i think you’re ignoring the nature of human beings.

  128. libertarianism seems to be a reaction to onerous overreach by government
    what is onerous overreach to one person, is plain common sense to another.

  129. “we made it up, nobody imposed it on us.”
    I think this is not completely accurate. “We” is a pretty small group of people who made it up, then convinced people it was good. At least every level above the town meeting.

  130. It is not the reasonable purpose of government to define or enforce common sense, there should be a higher bar than that.

  131. “We” is a pretty small group of people who made it up, then convinced people it was good.
    the alternative is a general vote on everything.
    but if you’ve ever done anything with more than a couple of people, you know that people will often defer decision-making to others just so things can get done.
    “you guys choose the wine. whatever you want.”
    “i’m fine with any of the things you just listed. you decide.”
    “i’ve never had Himalayan food before. but you know what i like. you pick.”
    representative democracy happens because most people can’t be bothered to decide everything. they don’t care to decide, have other things to do, don’t understand what they’re deciding on, would rather not slow things down by adding more options, etc..

  132. I started this off (prompted by the mention of Michelle Malkin, who makes me angry enough to drown puppies) complaining about libertarianism as a cover for covert right wingers. And I’m not the only one who noticed this
    https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-insidious-libertarian-to-alt-right-pipeline?source=twitter&via=mobile
    Lewis also notes that
    Despite the negative stereotypes, casting yourself as libertarian still has some cache. Celebrities like Bill Maher and Vince Vaughn have identified with the label—which seems to be a way of expressing some conservative viewpoints while still supporting the decriminalization of marijuana and distancing yourself from social conservatism.
    So I’m going to assume that CharlesWT likes the cachet of being edgy, but has the good sense not to be scared of other sexualities and doesn’t hate minorities. Good on ya, and I’m happy to acknowledge that there are some points made by libertarians that are good about specific contexts, and that’s wonderful.
    I don’t know if anyone remembers or even cares about Saparmurat Niyazov, who was basically the previous despot in Turkmenistan.
    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/dec/21/1
    From the article
    · As one of a series of measures to establish a personality cult, Saparmurat Niyazov had a gold statue of himself put on top of a building in the capital, Ashgabat. The statue revolves so it always faces the sun.
    Niyazov, who was appointed president for life in 1999, changed the names of the months in honour of members of his own family. His father died in the second world war and the rest of his family was killed in an earthquake that levelled Ashgabat in 1948. Niyazov was raised in an orphanage and later in the home of distant relatives.
    Dissidents are sent into internal exile, forced out of their homes or detained in psychiatric hospitals. Torture is common. The media are tightly controlled, the state keeping a firm grip on access to the internet.
    However, he also ruled plain salt illegal in 1996 and ordered shops to give each citizen 11 pounds of iodized salt a year at state expense. The lack of iodine is the leading preventable cause of intellectual and developmental disabilities.
    Now, I don’t have much of a brief for the former president for life of Turkmenistan, but I can see that ordering that all salt be iodized can be a good thing. However, that doesn’t mean I have to applaud everything else he did. Why do so many libertarians make essentially the same argument? Why does it have to be a blanket application rather than case by case? And because it is a blanket application, that’s why the Libertarian movement is basically a stalking horse for wacky right-wingers.
    The other thing that I think is off about libertarianism is that it seems, imho, that arguments are always rooted in privilege. I’d be much more inclined if it didn’t seem like it was always white, mostly males who got their start arguing for weed legalization. Maybe there is a huge people of color community arguing about reducing the burden of government flying the libertarian flag, and I’d be happy to be informed about them if I missed them, but my impression is that it is overwhelmingly white upper middle class and male (with Michelle Malkin an exception), and they are probably going to ignore benefits they receive when making their arguments cause it never occurs to them. That’s why I’m willing to consider libertarian arguments when applied to a particular case, but when I hear it presented as an over-arching philosophy, I reach for my delete key.

  133. Marty,
    My two cents, support for libertarianism seems to be a reaction to onerous overreach by government, thus emergent and rooted in human experience. As in many situations, the reaction can also go too far.
    So it’s sort of an auto-immune disease. 🙂
    if folks want to talk about biofuel subsidies, or whether the regulations introduced in the ACA are overly intrusive into doctor-patient interactions, or whether a nationwide speed limit is really productive, i’m all for it.
    I agree. I think we, by which I mean human beings, are too eager to look for broad general rules, and too unwilling to recognize that a case-by-case analysis, or at least a fairly complex set of principles, is needed.
    Theory is fun, and it saves a lot of thinking, but the results are often not great. Human society does not work the same way as Euclidean geometry.

  134. “We don’t need no stinking know-it-all mincing wine sommelier.”
    “What pencil-headed, over-educated elitist made THIS list?”
    “Himal…. what? How did those yak merchants and their food get in the country? Bring me something American, like a slice of pizza.”
    Thought I’d include the assholes and jagoffs who are now ascendant so they can be understood and coddled.

  135. lj’s 9:55am is precisely my thinking.
    We can acknowledge the importance of individual case-by-case preferences as granularly as possible.
    But we may also require best practices from on high, even if they originated from down low or God forbid, deep in the state.
    Conservatives and libertarians often speak of the laboratories of the states, as if an imaginary border line makes two guys standing on either side of it somehow two different species, but what happens when one state comes up with a near-perfect approach to insuring the entire population medically, for instance, and Texas balks at adopting these life-saving measures while pronouncing that their approach to saving lives medically is to provide funny hats at cost but not FORCE people to wear them.
    And then one guy from Jersey moves there to get away from the Atlantic Coast winters and because the hats in Texas are funnier than the ones in Jersey, and the Governor of Texas points at him and says, “See?”
    See what? This way to egress?
    I’ve never heard a libertarian think tank (why is there thinking involved if everyone working there is self-selected as libertarian; a plus is that the memos and meetings must be short) propose allowing me to steer with my bare feet from the back seat of my car on the interstate, or allowing great swathes of the population to speak a gibberish language in the public square made up on the spot, although sometimes they suggest that we “say it in our own words”.
    That said, I agree with some of Charles’ pronouncements as well.

  136. I’d be happy to be informed about them if I missed them, but my impression is that it is overwhelmingly white upper middle class and male…
    Based on various surveys, self-identifying libertarians are about 71% white, 63% male. But millennial libertarians are only 56% white.
    “Libertarianism is frequently accused of only appealing to white men, but data on American political identification finds the philosophy has much broader appeal—especially among millennials. Only slightly more than half of self-identified libertarians in the 18- to 29-year-old age range are white,…”
    Millennials Bringing More Racial Diversity to Libertarianism: Just over half of self-identified libertarians in the 18- to 29-year-old age range are white.

  137. the challenge is which of those things rightly belong at a federal level.
    The thing is, what we actually see is objection also to government even at the state level — at least when the state government is not controlled by them. All the same arguments about government being the problem, overreaching, etc. get made.
    If there is a reasonable generalization,imo, it is that federal government is a more popular solution for the left, although not exclusively as the right is happy to use the federal level in inappropriate ways
    I think the more precise generalization is that the left believes (sometimes excessively IMO) that the Federal government is the correct venue for lots of issues, even when they dislike the precise direction that the right is taking it. Whereas the right claims to dislike the Federal government as a solution . . . even when they are enthusiastically using it for their own purposes.

  138. lj: The other thing that I think is off about libertarianism is that it seems, imho, that arguments are always rooted in privilege
    The thing is, it’s far easier to believe in libertarian approaches if you’ve always had the power or the money to control what happens to you and yours. For example, if you personally can afford great private schools for your kids, being taxed to pay for public schools can be seen as government overreach. The same phenomena are seen in most things dedicated libertarians argue against.

  139. I think the more precise generalization is that the left believes (sometimes excessively IMO) that the Federal government is the correct venue for lots of issues,
    this reminds me of a story…
    Once upon a time, there was a large and prosperous city called Schmarlotte in a state called Shmorth Shmarolina. That city decided, by the actions of its duly-elected representatives, to allow people to use any toilet, regardless of the sign on the toilet’s door. This cleared up difficulties some people were having because they couldn’t figure out which of the standard signs on toilet doors applied to them. They city said “use whatever you want.” And nobody much cared.
    But the Republicans in the State, however, grew furious at this. They think people who can’t figure out which toilet door sign they should open are moral and cultural and biological failures of the lowest sort. Being experts in all things moral and biological and cultural, they know which door each person must use. The idea that someone could choose for themselves, and that some would use an incorrect door to shit behind was an affront. And so the Republicans could not tolerate letting a city decide for itself how to handle such a situation. And they swiftly banned what the city tried to do. They banned it all across the state.
    And at the same time they did that, they banned letting any town or city setting its own minimum wage. Because it would be chaos if one town had to do something the next town over didn’t.
    Such is the strong commitment to local rule and self-governance that one can expect to find on “the right”.

  140. Like a lot of things the libertarian critique is pretty powerful, but libertarianism as a free standing philosophy is taking a good thing too far.
    Every time you look at government action (or even powerful corporate action) you are going to be better informed and get better policy by using libertarian oriented questions like “can this be done with less infringement on liberty?”, “are the side effects as bad or worse than what you are trying to fix?”, “are you comparing the real world with side effects to imaginary perfect government action instead of taking into account real world government action?”, “does this law assume perfectly good administrators, or can it survive being implemented by medium-venal administrators?”
    As a refining critique it’s great.

  141. As a refining critique it’s great.
    I don’t know why anyone wouldn’t (or at least shouldn’t) be asking the questions you posed as being libertarian oriented.

  142. So, if millennias are bringing diversity to libertarianism, it stands to reason that libertarianism had some problems with being a white majority, which would encourage even closer examination of first principles to make sure that they weren’t taking things for granted.
    One of those unexamined principles is that libertarian principles are correct and it just requires more people of color to get behind them. The link is from Reason, but the data is from the Cato Institute, which we have already talked about.
    and from the link
    When it comes to sex, men dominated among both millennial libertarians and libertarians of all ages, though women still make up a substantial share of the liberty movement. According to Ekins’ poll averaging, 63 percent of all self-identified libertarians were male and 37 percent were female. Among millennials, 68 percent were male and 32 percent were female.
    Surprise, surprise, surprise…

  143. Wj, I apologize for my nature. Your point on privilege is something I agree with, but I can’t help myself in pointing out that your example doesn’t support your point. The majority was fine with the state of public schools because they were able to exile black kids to the terrible inner city schools while safely putting their own kids in much better but usually also public schools which screened out black families through housing prices and racially motivated government line drawing. This government failure led to the libertarian aligned charter school movement being very popular with black and other inner city voters in the 90s as a counter movement to the way the white privileged had manipulated the government situation.
    Your point in general is probably more right than not about libertarians in general. But on schools not as much.

  144. Sebastian, no doubt I suffer from mostly seeing the kinds of libertarians who exist in the upper middle class suburbs around where I live. The area is racially integrated; at least in this case that’s not what was the issue. And the public schools are still top notch. But that doesn’t keep the libertarians from kvetching about “unnecessary government programs” — “unnecessary” meaning ones which don’t happen to benefit them personally.

  145. So it seems there’s a third secret recording, this one of Trump campaign staff discussing how to spin the alleged tape of Trump using the N-word, should it be released. Trump and Darwin!

  146. “We” is a pretty small group of people who made it up, then convinced people it was good.
    and the people who were so convinced are mindless sheep, devoid of agency?
    and this small group of people were so persuasive that their argument has prevailed for, like, 10 thousand years?

  147. Libertarian arguments are at their strongest when they oppose our military interventions and for a very obvious reason— the people in the country we bomb or invade don’t have the vote in our country and can only express their opposition through violence. And when we supposedly try to remake their country, we don’t know what we are doing and again opposition tends to be expressed by shooting at whatever Americans are handy.
    In a domestic context people can express their discontent over government policies via voting and libertarianism amounts to saying that rich people should have the most power and there should be no countervailing government policies because freedom.

  148. this one of Trump campaign staff discussing how to spin the alleged tape of Trump using the N-word, should it be released.
    this timing sucks.

  150. Libertarian arguments are at their strongest when they oppose our military interventions
    If nobody else was opposing our military interventions, you might have a point.

  152. Matt Taibbi on censorship by corporations. He thinks it is a problem and isn’t talking about Infowars. Or rather, he starts off with it because it got all the attention, but that isn’t his focus.
    https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/facebook-censorship-alex-jones-710497/
    I tend to agree. When a few companies dominate how most people get their news from the Internet, it does matter if they decide what is allowed inside the Overton Window. And why trust the Atlantic Councl to help make the decisions?

  153. So is the problem censorship by corporations? Or is it that insufficient attention has been paid to monopolies in the high tech sector? (Should they get hit with anti-trust actions? Or should they be regulated as public utilities?)

  154. “and this These small group(s) of people were so persuasive that their argument,and the thousands of small groups who wanted power along the way, have prevailed for, like, 10 thousand years?
    yes

  155. Should they get hit with anti-trust actions? Or should they be regulated as public utilities?
    and when does this regulation start? if i create a messaging app, does it become a ‘public utility’ at 5 users? 50? 5,000? 500,000?
    if/when usage declines (MySpace, CompuServe, Yahoo) does my app become exempt?
    if the app is an offering by a very powerful company, is it automatically a public utility (Google+)? even if it fails to attract a large user base (Google+) ?
    i’m sure all applicable laws will get it all just right.

  156. when does this regulation start? if i create a messaging app, does it become a ‘public utility’ at 5 users? 50? 5,000? 500,000?
    Hey, if I had all the answers I’d go into politics. 😉
    But it does seem like it’s a conversation worth having. For openers, we might look at market share (rather than absolute numbers of users).
    That’s what happened, as I recall, with the original trusts (railroads): when a small number of them controlled “too much” of the market, they got regulated. I like the analogy because, like railroads, high tech has significant network effects/benefits to the controlling platforms.

  166. For anyone interested, an interview with Taibbi. The text of the interview starts on page two.
    “Few journalists have tossed more hand grenades or built more of a reputation for themselves than Matt Taibbi, who covers politics and culture for Rolling Stone when not writing bestselling books, such as Griftopia, Insane Clown President, and most recently I Can’t Breathe: A Killing on Bay Street, a powerful account of the death of Eric Garner, who died in police custody after being arrested for selling loose cigarettes in Staten Island. In 2008, Taibbi won a National Magazine Award for his columns and commentary at Rolling Stone.”
    Matt Taibbi on Misogyny, the Left vs. Free Speech, and the Killing of Eric Garner: “I’m just sort of accidental collateral damage to a larger thing that’s going on.”

  167. Matt Taibbi is an “animal” because he stands accused of misogyny in his youth.
    He, Trump commits misogyny (not to mention racism) during his entire adult life but he is “President of the United States”.
    Those must be some goooood tax cuts.
    –TP

  168. The rise and fall and rise of Matt Taibbi, all in six comments and three cites on a blog.
    He’s up! He’s Down! He’s Up?
    The mild-mannered skeletons in my closet rattle like the catarrh in Marley’s Ghost’s throat.
    Hillary Clinton should be so lucky.

  169. Of course the possibly false allegations about Taibbi had nothing at all to do with whether it is a good idea to have government funded think tanks working with giant corporations to determine what is or isn’t worth reading.
    And no, cleek, this isn’t about the Infowars creeps. Infowars wasn’t his concern.
    “So is the problem censorship by corporations? Or is it that insufficient attention has been paid to monopolies in the high tech sector? (Should they get hit with anti-trust actions? Or should they be regulated as public utilities?)”
    Those are good questions. I think the answer to the first one is “yes”, given that a tiny number of corporations have so much power. I don’t know what the solution should be.

  170. I agree with libertarians that governments should not interfere beyond their competence, that governments often overestimate their competence, and that they need to be discouraged from doing so.
    I profoundly disagree with libertarians that governments should not redistribute wealth and income.
    Concentration of wealth arises mainly from government action – from IP laws, from limited liability, from government spending. It’s an artifact, not the only possible just distribution. And a dollar spent by a poor person does more good for the person and more good for the economy than a dollar accumulated by a rich person.

  171. Also, of course the direct answer to sapient’s question is that neither the Atlantic Council nor Taibbi ( whichever version of him exists in this universe) should be trusted to decide what out of mainstream views need to be censored.

  172. I’ll ask again:
    When should Hitler have been censored … by edict or by bullet?
    1945 is not fucking soon enough.

  175. About Taibbi, the allegations aren’t false; they’re based on what he has written. To quote Rebecca Traister:

    The progressive journalist Matt Taibbi recently published a lengthy apology/explanation in which he despaired that the public reappraisal of the work that established him (in particular, a book about Russia that he now says is satirical and includes accounts of pushing women under the table for blow jobs, of telling them to lighten up when they object to such high jinks) is coinciding with the publication of his book about the death of Eric Garner. It’s the kind of important book that he’s been working toward writing for 30 years, he laments. Reading this, I couldn’t help but think of all the women who’ve wanted to be writers for 30 years, who’ve yearned to make the world a better place by telling stories of injustice, but who haven’t had the opportunity in part because so much journalistic space is occupied by men like Taibbi: dudes who in some measure gained their professional footholds by objectifying women — and not just in big, bad Russia. Take the piece Taibbi wrote in 2009 about athletes’ wives. “The problem with the Smoking-Hot Skank as a permanent life choice,” he opined, “is that she eventually gets bored and starts calling up reporters to share her Important Political Opinions.” Taibbi may feel demoralized because the hilarious misogynistic stylings of his youth are now interfering with his grown-up career, but lots of women never even got their careers off the ground because the men in their fields saw them as Smoking-Hot Skanks whose claim to having a thought in their heads was no more than a punch line.

    For the record, I think Taibbi has the right to write whatever he wants, but I’m allowed to evaluate him on the basis of what he writes.
    Social media is particular publishing platform owned by private corporations which is being used to facilitate targeted disinformation campaigns by foreign governments and other extremely wealthy entities. These private corporations are making money from this.
    Figuring out how to manage disinformation is a difficult problem, but I’m not interested in Matt Taibbi’s views on how not to do it.

  176. Matt Taibbi is an “animal” because he stands accused of misogyny in his youth.
    One would, of course, prefer that 20 year old guys not behave like this. (Of course, if they didn’t, college fraternities as we know them would be defunct.)
    But, it seems to me, the critical question is whether they grow up and learn better. We need to recognize that people can learn from past mistakes. (Although, as Trump demonstrates, some prove incapable of doing so.) So what matters is whether Taibbi has done so.

  177. wj’s point about figuring out whether people learn is an important one. HSH’s link is interesting and Taibbi is smart enough to know that claiming it is satire isn’t going to fly in the current age of metoo (and I don’t think this is a bad thing) Also to note is that Taibbi has done better than his co-author, Mark Ames, with his facebook apologies. I don’t think he’s out of the woods, but it’s a start. This, from Taibbi’s apology (via sapient’s link) is interesting
    I know the list of revealed harassers is growing, but I am not on that list, nor should I be. I belong to a much bigger group. I was young once, and a jerk. And I am sorry for that.
    You could read that as ‘I’m not a Weinstein or a Cosby!’, but if there any guys here who can claim to not thinking it was oh so fun to push the envelope, well, we probably wouldn’t have been friends when I was in college, I am very sad and embarrassed to say. I was trying to find something to illustrate this and came upon this link
    https://nypost.com/2018/01/25/the-tragic-life-and-death-of-a-national-lampoon-legend/
    with the trailer to A Stupid and Futile Gesture. Sad to say, but you are talking about my generation.
    I suppose one could say character is destiny, and where Taibbi’s piece falls down is the same place where I think (but I would think this) libertarians fall down. Just like libertarians who engage in these counterfactual reasoning to suddenly dazzle and amaze you with how we really don’t need any laws, Taibbi wants to grab the attention by starting off with Alex Jones and then try and frame the issue. Rebecca Traister’s point is right, that while Taibbi is lamenting that his frat boy writing caught up with him, preventing him from being one of the adults in the room, how many women were prevented? But, accepting that Traister’s point is correct, it seems like kicking Taibbi for doing what he did which he seems to sincerely regret, and was what a lot of guys did and still do, doesn’t really move the ball downfield much. Taibbi is presented as some outlier and the general system is still intact and in place, the cautionary tale being don’t put your name on anything. And there are certainly people learning the lesson.
    https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/08/stephen-miller-refugees-state-department

  178. One would, of course, prefer that 20 year old guys not behave like this.
    Looking it up, Taibbi was around 27 when he joined Ames in Russia, and Ames 32.
    I take lj’s point, but I’m as old as Ames, so not exactly the MeToo generation, and the story about the 15 year old girl would not have amused me back in college.

  179. it’s entirely possible that tabibi is, or at least was, a total misogynistic predatory asshole, and also that Goldman Sachs is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity. and, for that matter, that we currently are governed by an insane clown POTUS.
    it’s entirely possible that tabibi richly deserves to be called out for his earlier writing and/or behavior, satirical or not, and also that his reporting on matters political and financial are right on the money.
    as it turns out, eric garner actually is dead.

  180. Taibbi was almost 40 when he wrote the Hot Smoking Skank comment.
    I don’t think that Taibbi’s attitude towards women necessarily has anything to do with Eric Garner. I do think that it shows that he makes sweeping and ugly generalizations about certain groups of people (especially women) that are demeaning, so I don’t trust him to be discerning or nuanced about how to rein in political disinformation campaigns on Facebook.
    Censorship isn’t something I believe in. I grew up in the age when people bought newspapers, magazines and journals in order to read in-depth articles about political matters, or because they favored a certain point of view, perhaps after getting a half-hour news summary on television in the evening which was controlled by the “fairness doctrine”. Censorship? Why? Sure, plenty of people were persuaded by propaganda even then, but had to work at it.
    The First Amendment protects freedom of speech. However, defamation has always been a tort. NYT v Sullivan made it difficult to win an action against a public figure. I thought the reasoning was solid, but have begun to question some of it, especially since Citizens United says that money is speech.
    One thing that isn’t barred by the First Amendment is our right to choose to pay less attention to writers who have shown that they are racist, homophobic, or misogynistic. As it stands, every “jerk” has a right to publish their views to as many people who will read them. We’re really in trouble if we have to take them all seriously.

  181. I take lj’s point, but I’m as old as Ames, so not exactly the MeToo generation, and the story about the 15 year old girl would not have amused me back in college.
    if you haven’t, you may want to take a look at hsh’s link. From that
    Multiple former staffers we spoke to told us that Ames did have a young girlfriend named Natasha, but none believed she was 15. The common explanation we heard was that her age had been lowered to satirize the fact that in 1998, Russia changed its age of consent from 16 to 14.
    I’m not sure if the article works too hard at getting Ames and Taibbi off the hook, but it certainly doesn’t look as open and shut as it seems.

  182. NYT v Sullivan made it difficult to win an action against a public figure.
    Shouldn’t that be reversed? It makes it more difficult for a public figure to win an action against someone for libel.

  183. NYT v Sullivan made it difficult to win an action against a public figure.
    This is backwards. NYT v Sullivan made it difficult for a public figure to win a defamation action.
    The point is that disinformation campaigns against public figures (and that term has gotten more expansive) are now not only free speech, but are monetized, and have been turned into millions of dollars of propaganda campaigns. Democracy is losing. Millionaires (including private tech platforms) are winning.

  185. “I do think that it shows that he makes sweeping and ugly generalizations about certain groups of people (especially women) that are demeaning, so I don’t trust him to be discerning or nuanced about how to rein in political disinformation campaigns on Facebook.”
    The original accusation was that he was a harasser. Now it turns out he and Ames were ridiculing the Americans who were acting like pigs and supporting the raping of Russia during its worst days since the death of Stalin— you know, when Time magazine openly gloated over America interfering in Russia’s elections while the society was in free fall.
    He and his co- author should not have used misogynistic language in their satire. People who do that often seem to think that satire is an all- excusing thing. (This, btw, is my problem with a certain French magazine which ridiculed Muslim protestors gunned down by the Egyptian security forces. Haha. Satire.)
    But anyway, your logic is backwards. Nobody can be trusted to rein in disinformation campaigns on Facebook or anywhere else, not if it involves censorship. The amount of lying Americans do to each other on politics vastly outweighs what the Russians did and I think I could mention other countries that try to influence our policies in ways that are lethal to others, the Saudis currently at the top. If we are that fragile the problem is that many people believe what they want to believe, follow only the sources that tell them what they want and will swallow anything.
    I am going to drag the other thread over here because it fits. The definition of antisemitism adopted by our State Department includes calling Israel a racist state.
    https://www.state.gov/s/rga/resources/267538.htm
    The controversy about Labour is in large part about that piece of the definition which people wanted Labour to adopt wholesale which comes from the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. So wouldn’t it be reasonable for Facebook or Google to start censoring based on that definition? If you are censoring people saying horrible things, antisemitism is surely at the top of the list. So who gets to define that borderline between Nazi advocacy and advocacy of human rights for Palestinians, because it is crystal clear that some people criticizing Labour can’t tell the fracking difference?

  186. The original accusation was that he was a harasser.
    Whose original accusation? My original accusation is that he’s a misogynist, and I’m not going to pay much attention to him. You think his book was valuable satire, and you’re entitled to that opinion.
    I am going to drag the other thread over here because it fits. The definition of antisemitism adopted by our State Department includes calling Israel a racist state.
    It’s not a surprise that you’re turning yet another discussion towards the only issue you seem to care much about.
    It’s difficult to figure out what to do about millionaires waging highly effective disinformation campaigns that [further] distort our political process in their favor, while further enriching other millionaires. The degree to which Facebook, Twitter, etc., should excise certain people or behaviors from their platforms is not an easy thing to resolve, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t happen at all. It will certainly require some discussion to figure out what’s right.
    I do know that paying attention to every “voice,” including misogynists, isn’t the way I intend to think about issues. You posted a link to a Taibbi piece.
    I pointed out that he seems to engage in seriously warped evaluations of certain groups of people. I think that speaks to his reliability as a journalist.

  187. Nobody can be trusted to rein in disinformation campaigns on Facebook or anywhere else, not if it involves censorship.
    censorship is something a government does.
    The amount of lying Americans do to each other on politics vastly outweighs what the Russians did
    probably. but that’s irrelevant. what people accept from within their group is generally quite different from what people accept from outside their group. and America didn’t invent that.

  188. An example Taibbi gives involve Venezuela. I haven’t folllowed that situation closely enough to have a view about the mainstream Western press vs. those who say the mainstream press is giving a distorted view. But Facebook shoulldn’t be protecting its poor innocent readers from propaganda on that subject even if it is propaganda.

  189. If you’re sorry afterwards, that makes it ok. That accounts for Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd. Ted never actually apologized, IIRC. Is National Review off the hook then. William F Buckley?

  190. The definition of antisemitism adopted by our State Department includes calling Israel a racist state.
    No, I don’t think it does.
    The cause you refer to says this:
    Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.

  191. If you’re sorry afterwards, that makes it ok.
    Depending on what “it” is and how you define “okay” … maybe. Is that a satisfying answer? (If not, I’m sorry. Does sincerity matter?)

  193. I’m sorry for everything going forward because I do nothing in the prescribed order.
    Ted Kennedy, sorry or not should have been tried for vehicular manslaughter while under the influence, and if convicted, jailed.
    William F. Buckley’s contribution to the ruination of millions of American lives via his wholly owned publication’s racist editorial policy should have resulted in his death by gunshot and the firebombing of the NR offices, sorry or not.
    William Byrd, when he was with the KKK, should have been shot dead as well at the time for the ruination of the same lives, but a different generation, Buckley piled on later.
    But there is no justice. None. So fuck it.
    Sorry later is good enough in America, but only for certain people. If you are Emmett Till, for whom even “I didn’t do it” wasn’t good enough, or Eric Garner, for whom “This isn’t really about cigarettes, is it?” might have been the words he croaked out before being suffocated for absolutely nothing, you are shit out of luck.
    At this very minute, as sapient points out, there is a White House and a Congress full of corrupt, traitorous motherfuckers, many now uncloseted racists and tens of millions of their supporters in full supporting cry, who might as well be William Byrd in 1935 or William F. Buckley in 1954.
    Right now.
    Decades from now, some will say they are sorry.
    Fuck them.
    Do something now.

  194. William Byrd, the English Renaissance composer may well have done something he needs to apologize for, but Robert Byrd … now THAT guy should have been shot dead in 1935.
    What’s a little mistaken identity when retro justice is being doled out, hanh?
    You know why neither were punished?
    You know why Emmett Till was lynched even after pleading that “you cracker cocksuckers have the wrong guy!”?

  195. TYRANNYYYYYYYYY!!!!!

    In a signing statement that the White House quietly issued after 9 p.m. on Monday — about six hours after Mr. Trump signed the bill in a televised ceremony at Fort Drum in New York — Mr. Trump deemed about 50 of its statutes to be unconstitutional intrusions on his presidential powers, meaning that the executive branch need not enforce or obey them as written.
    Among them was a ban on spending military funds on “any activity that recognizes the sovereignty of the Russian Federation over Crimea,” the Ukrainian region annexed by Moscow in 2014 in an incursion considered illegal by the United States. He said he would treat the provision and similar ones as “consistent with the president’s exclusive constitutional authorities as commander in chief and as the sole representative of the nation in foreign affairs.”

    no puppet. no puppet.
    the GOP is a cult.

  196. My personal opinion is that sapient is up in arms because it was Donald who posted the Taibbi piece and McT dropped in because of what I wrote. Don’t think it really has anything to do with Taibbi, sad to say.

  197. My personal opinion is that sapient is up in arms because it was Donald who posted the Taibbi piece and McT dropped in because of what I wrote. Don’t think it really has anything to do with Taibbi, sad to say.
    Actually, “no” as to me. I read Sapient’s link and concluded he’s an animal. I was having coffee and my morning read at the house. I did read your post and I take your points. Just as a broken watch is right twice a day, so too can a despicable person get something right. That doesn’t make them less despicable. It just seems odd to me how some get a pass, or seem to, while others don’t and I’m having a hard time finding any one-size-fits-all principle other than “but we agree on other stuff”. Our beloved president is as a good an example as any of people overlooking his nearly infinite number of flaws because he manages to get other stuff right, as they see it.

  198. If you’re sorry afterwards, that makes it ok.
    It doesn’t, which I suppose is your point.
    What makes it OK is a direct apology and request for forgiveness from your victim, which request is preceded by or accompanied with atonement, wherever at all possible. Absence of such atonement makes the apology meaningless, as a huge percentage of apologies by public figures caught in various transgressions are.

  199. By “direct” I mean an apology addressed individually to the victim of the wrongdoing, rather than announced via a press release.

  200. Whatever. Reading what I wrote as ‘giving a pass’ (which would mean ignoring what he did rather than taking into account what they wrote in apology) is a pretty big comprehension fail. And quite an impressive act of mind reading as well, so don’t wear out that mind reading cap of yours.
    As for ‘things that seem odd to McT’, it seems interesting that what seems odd to you overlaps pretty extensively with whatever I observe. Coincidence, I’m sure.

  201. If you’re sorry afterwards, that makes it ok
    There’s a lot of room between contending that being sorry afterwards gets a complete get-out-of-jail-free card for anything, and refusing to let anyone learn from their mistakes but holding those mistakes over them forever.
    Ted Kennedy, sorry or not should have been tried for vehicular manslaughter while under the influence, and if convicted, jailed.
    Second.

  202. Ted Kennedy, sorry or not should have been tried for vehicular manslaughter while under the influence, and if convicted, jailed.
    Second.
    Thirded. Not to mention, there’s good reason to think he should have been tried for rape, and if convicted jailed likewise.

  204. Whatever. Reading what I wrote as ‘giving a pass’ (which would mean ignoring what he did rather than taking into account what they wrote in apology) is a pretty big comprehension fail. And quite an impressive act of mind reading as well, so don’t wear out that mind reading cap of yours.
    As for ‘things that seem odd to McT’, it seems interesting that what seems odd to you overlaps pretty extensively with whatever I observe. Coincidence, I’m sure.
    Actually, except for the part expressly addressed to you, nothing I wrote embraced your comment. It did embrace others and it did embrace a number of the links. I’m with Sapient on this, and I think efforts to rehab or contextualize Tabbi are problematic. Those are the only points I intended to make, other than my broader comment that picking out who to excuse based on common viewpoints is a universal flaw.
    But, to address your 12:33, I’m not looking for trouble with anyone these days. Conversations, yes, trouble, no. If and when you make a particular observation that I have the time and inclination to discuss, I will do so and will endeavor to do so civilly and without regard for the shots we’ve exchanged in the past. Time will be the primary determining factor, not inclination. You make a lot of comments that I would like to visit about on the merits in the context of an exchange of views and not in the context of getting into an argument. Time permitting, I’d engage with you and others here daily. In three years or so, if all goes well, I hope to do just that and on a daily basis. Right now, I’m more swamped with work than I’ve ever been, which is actually getting quite old.
    So, sincerely and genuinely, time permitting, I would like to reset with you and others and see what can be done about testing one another’s views without drawing knives. This was a forum, back in the day, when that was pretty much what we did.

  205. There’s a lot of room between contending that being sorry afterwards gets a complete get-out-of-jail-free card for anything, and refusing to let anyone learn from their mistakes but holding those mistakes over them forever.
    Yes, of course. And there are matters of degree, kind, context, time, sincerity, etc. that inform each individual case. Sapient’s link didn’t refer to a one-off, drunk/stoned act of stupidity. It described an approach to life and to females. So, that person is an animal until it is shown otherwise, convincingly. I am generally not on board with hounding people out of the public square for past bad acts if, as Byomtov says, they really did try to make it right. If all we get is a modified, limited hang out, to harken back to the days of yore, then leave them out in the cold. Just my personal view.

  206. Sapient’s link didn’t refer to a one-off, drunk/stoned act of stupidity. It described an approach to life and to females. So, that person is an animal until it is shown otherwise, convincingly.
    I’m curious to know if you read the link I found after reading sapient’s. I wouldn’t say it exonerates Taibbi of any and all wrongdoing, but I would say it calls into serious question some of the worst things he was accused of.
    Please note that I don’t really care that much what anyone thinks of Taibbi, per se. I’m more interested, for the moment, in what different presentations of information people find compelling and why. I was sort of flabbergasted by what I read at sapient’s link and surprised that I hadn’t heard about it sooner. I then found the Paste Magazine article. So I went from “Holy sh1t!” to “Hmmm….” in a matter of minutes.

  207. I guess I’m unclear about how Tabibi is being “given a pass”.
    I’m also unclear about how NR and Buckley come into it.
    I need to improve my reading comprehension.
    Also, my comment upthread about Tabibi was actually not really on topic – i.e., had nothing to do with why Tabibi was under discussion.
    I have no issue with sapient’s comments about Tabibi, FWIW.
    I need to improve my reading comprehension, and also remember to read the whole thread.
    Fail better!
    As far as censorship goes, my understanding is that Jones violated various terms of service wrt the channels he has been banned from.
    Sucks to be him.
    William Byrd, the English Renaissance composer may well have done something he needs to apologize for
    Not so. The man composed like an angel.

  208. I’m curious to know if you read the link I found after reading sapient’s. I wouldn’t say it exonerates Taibbi of any and all wrongdoing, but I would say it calls into serious question some of the worst things he was accused of.
    Unless I misread–which I often due in haste–he and his colleague wrote, as men in their mid 20’s, enthusiastically of sex with a 15 year old, among other things. Even if it was hyperbole, made-up, whatever, it is all-world, animal-level activity that no amount of contextualizing–in my view–will serve to correct.
    I guess I’m unclear about how Tabibi is being “given a pass”.
    I’m also unclear about how NR and Buckley come into it.
    I need to improve my reading comprehension.
    On the general topic of making past mistakes, acknowledging and trying to do better, NR took some problematic stances in the 50’s and early 60’s. I read it regularly and see an entirely different point of view. Others still hold viewpoints written 50 years ago against NR. If we are going to forgive and, if not forget, at least overlook, I think ideology ought not to be a factor. That was the point I was trying to make. It is fine to address an ideology on its merits, but not to make it a condition of leniency.

  209. So, sincerely and genuinely, time permitting, I would like to reset with you and others and see what can be done about testing one another’s views without drawing knives.
    A consummation devoutly to be wished, for all of us.

  210. Even if it was hyperbole, made-up, whatever, it is all-world, animal-level activity that no amount of contextualizing–in my view–will serve to correct.
    Taibbi didn’t write that. That was the Ames guy (if I remember his name, since I don’t feel like going back to find it). But the most serious charges weren’t writing awful things (whether in satirizing awful people actually doing awful things or not). The worst charges were that they – Taibbi and Ames (if that’s his name) – actually did the awful things they wrote about doing.
    I have to assume that, regardless of context, actually having sex with a 15-year-old (among other awful things they wrote about) is worse than just writing about it. (And maybe writing about it satirically in a country that just lowered the age of consent from 16 to 14 isn’t as bad as writing about it with genuine enthusiasm, even if it’s still far from good.)

  211. Nigel wrote—
    “No, I don’t think it does.
    The cause you refer to says this:
    Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.”
    That is a fine distinction. Fine to the point of being meaningless, IMO. However, probably the other thread would be the place to go further with that argument. My point here is that on highly emotional issues like whether some criticism of Israel is antisemitic, or whether such claims themselves are racist, I don’t want governments or corporations making these decisions. This has practical consequences. There are legal battles in the US involving BDS and whether laws saying that a state or local government can boycott businesses (or individuals?) which boycott Israel. The laws are contested on free speech grounds.
    Free speech used to be pretty close to a moral absolute in the US. I can understand a place like Germany where it isn’t, given the very recent history, but except in the most extreme cases, like people plotting violence, I just don’t see any reason why we need protection from internet liars, except for the traditional ones involving lawsuits for slander or libel ( I can never remember the difference).
    On Taibbi, he apparently wasn’t the monster portrayed in sapient’s link. There is no evidence he was a harasser or the original claims have evaporated on further investigation. He was someone who used crude insulting language about women, but has apologized. Not the same thing as Teddy Kennedy or for that matter Bill Clinton’ s behavior with Monica.

  212. I just don’t see any reason why we need protection from internet liars
    https://forward.com/news/national/387185/how-jewish-family-of-sandy-hook-victim-was-driven-out-of-boca-raton/

    Almost immediately after Noah’s death, the Pozners began to receive threatening messages and to find their names in posts on social media from self-styled “truthers”: people who thought the Pozners were part of a massive government conspiracy to convince the world that a lone gunman had killed 20 children. They accused the Pozners — and their son, Noah — of being actors in an elaborate scheme orchestrated to help take away America’s guns.
    That theory reaches from Twitter trolls all the way to Alex Jones, anchor of the conspiracy theory program “Infowars.”

    https://forward.com/news/national/387185/how-jewish-family-of-sandy-hook-victim-was-driven-out-of-boca-raton/

  214. “It’s not a surprise that you’re turning yet another discussion towards the only issue you seem to care much about.”
    Half true. It is what I comment on most of the time. American war crimes or support for war crimes is the issue where I probably know more than the average political obsessive on the internet. Psychologically I think this goes back to my Memphis childhood, where it was hard to miss the difference between what white people said in public in the newspaper about, for example, why they opposed busing for racial desegregation and what their children were saying every day. Polite stuff in public, the n word with the children who obviously got this from the parents.
    We live in a country where both parties to some degree are guilty of supporting war crimes, so the issue is mostly ignored. Obama’s role in Yemen is fading into history and so most Democrats and some Republicans now oppose helping the Saudis bomb school buses. Good. But that wasn’t the case when Obama was in power. This doesn’t interest the politically engaged types nearly as much as Russiagate. I think this is backward. Palestine is a lesser issue— it isnt mass slaughter—but the hypocrisy on that subject is similar.
    Most issues, as I have said, other people cover better than I would and usually don’t see the point in saying things other people say better. But on this social media thing, people who follow our foreign policy with a jaundiced eye will be instantly mistrustful of corporations and governments and think tanks deciding who the respectable sources of information are. They can take their imprimaturs and stick them someplace inappropriate.
    American human rights violations ( or the violations of our allies) are an obsession because they are ongoing and people regularly ignore them ( most often) or lie about them, or excuse them, or say despicable racist things about them. They only become of interest to the mainstream on the same level as, say Russiagate, if there is a partisan point to be scored. Since usually both parties are involved, it puts a damper on the discussion. As Trump continues to excuse the bombers of school buses and as Obama’s support fades into prehistory, most Democratic politicians and a handful of Republicans are on the right side. But one doesn’t see almost daily commentary on it in mainstream circles. If you look at what interests politically engaged people it seems bizarre.
    Palestine is a lesser crime, but similar on the hypocrisy scale.

  217. On Taibbi, he apparently wasn’t the monster portrayed in sapient’s link
    Since my good faith is being questioned by responding to Donald, I’ll just ask what in the links I provided is false?
    A couple of other things:
    I appreciate cleek’s example of what can come of orchestrated Internet lying. See also Pizzagate.
    I would like to reset with you and others and see what can be done about testing one another’s views without drawing knives.
    I will try.

  219. Free speech used to be pretty close to a moral absolute in the US. I can understand a place like Germany where it isn’t, given the very recent history, but except in the most extreme cases, like people plotting violence, I just don’t see any reason why we need protection from internet liars
    Our (US’s) own history wrt black people, specifically, is one of enslaving them for hundreds of years, then subjecting them to systematic denial of basic rights and in many places an organized campaign of terroristic violence.
    We have a similar history wrt indigenous people, and horrible histories albeit of less extreme abuse wrt Asians and a variety of other people of distinguishable ethnicity.
    If it’s OK for Germans to censor Nazi propaganda, why is it not OK for Americans to censor white supremacist dogma?
    I’m not saying we should or shouldn’t, I just fail to see how the analogy backs up your point. It seems, to me, to do the opposite.
    Not to mention the fact that no small number of people actually do plot violence, and more than plot it.

  220. When your lies – and the real-world, dangerous consequences of those lies – are demonstrable, I think you’re no longer in censorship/free-speech space (if we’re talking about Alex Jones, certainly).
    What liability should a social-media platform have to take on in knowingly allowing dangerous and blatant lies to spread through their services? When do we reach the point of “it’s good to keep an open mind, but not so open that your brain falls out”?

  221. What liability should a social-media platform have to take on in knowingly allowing dangerous and blatant lies to spread through their services?
    Just out of curiosity, what legal liability do those (like Jones) who create and/or spread the lies have for the consequences?
    That is, can the guy who created the pizzagate myth be charged — maybe as an accomplice? After all, some of these nuts have gotten rich off their bull. Getting hit for millions in damages might at least provide some inhibition. As might prison time.

  222. When your lies – and the real-world, dangerous consequences of those lies – are demonstrable, I think you’re no longer in censorship/free-speech space (if we’re talking about Alex Jones, certainly).
    Who gets to decide what is true and what is not? Would Al Sharpton or Louis Farrakhan be subject to prior restraint? I agree that Alex Jones is 100% crazy, if not a disordered paranoiac. If the test is that we suppress speech that might inspire others to violence, there won’t be much left of the 1st Amendment. I have a hard time being on board with any kind of prior restraint.

  223. Just out of curiosity, what legal liability do those (like Jones) who create and/or spread the lies have for the consequences?
    None. There was a movie back in the day, Natural Born Killers or something like that, that prompted some copy cat, real-life murders. Suits were filed but dismissed on motion. Incitement is still a crime–I think, it’s really not my area of the law–and ‘fighting words’ can be punished after the fact (I think). I think others have tried to link porn to specific sex crimes and whatnot, but no case has allowed it.
    Now, it’s different, though. Twitter mobs and real life mobs following people around, yelling and screaming, fully intending to intimidate, approaches assaultive behavior. I’ll grant we are in uncharted territory. Putting the government in charge of deciding what is true, however, is way more than a bridge too far for me. Of course, we could call it the Ministry of Truth. That might make it better.

  224. I would think that Natural Born Killers, as a clear work of fiction, wouldn’t be faulted for someone copying it. Whereas someone putting a fiction out as fact would be more clearly inciting, not copying but action based on the supposed fact. It seems (IANAL) like quite different circumstances.

  225. When your lies – and the real-world, dangerous consequences of those lies – are demonstrable, I think you’re no longer in censorship/free-speech space
    Newtown families are suing Alex Jones for defamation. I hope they win a large sum of money, and that this will dissuade perpetrators of this garbage.
    As to public figures who are defamed by conspiracy theorists, NYT v. Sullivan perhaps needs to be reconsidered.
    Putting the government in charge of deciding what is true, however, is way more than a bridge too far for me.
    Yes, but juries can do that.

  226. I would think that Natural Born Killers, as a clear work of fiction, wouldn’t be faulted for someone copying it. Whereas someone putting a fiction out as fact would be more clearly inciting, not copying but action based on the supposed fact. It seems (IANAL) like quite different circumstances.
    This is a distinction that makes sense to rational people who don’t hear or see something and go out and commit murder. It doesn’t matter to the violent actor and it doesn’t matter to the victim whether the person making the statement believed in what was being said or intended to make a fictional statement. Up to this point, the law focuses on the person actually committing the act. We should distinguish cases in which someone manipulates or goads a mentally incapacitated or marginally capable person into committing a criminal act.

  227. Newtown families are suing Alex Jones for defamation. I hope they win a large sum of money, and that this will dissuade perpetrators of this garbage.
    Yep, all the best to them. Hope he doesn’t do to them what Al Sharpton did to his judgment creditors.
    As to public figures who are defamed by conspiracy theorists, NYT v. Sullivan perhaps needs to be reconsidered.
    Can’t agree. The cure is worse than the disease.
    Putting the government in charge of deciding what is true, however, is way more than a bridge too far for me.
    Yes, but juries can do that.
    In defamation cases, yes. But Russell and HSH are hinting at–I think and stand to be corrected–at some kind of prior restraint on speech. If I’m misreading them, consider this a retraction. And even in defamation cases, Anti-Slap statutes are putting those out of business. I don’t know if you’ve had to screw around with that nightmare, but I have. It adds 15K minimum–and my rates are relatively low–to any lawsuit. I’m all about giving fact issues to juries. I’ve litigated probably a dozen or so defamation cases (and been the plaintiff in one too! That was a shitty two weeks in the courtroom even though I won). That said, I think defamation law is pretty well-settled and making changes in well-settled law due to new phenomena without first exploring all other reasonable options *and* waiting to see if the new phenomena really is as compelling as it was at first blush, runs counter to the stability we need in the law. IMO.

  228. Russell—
    I am not really concerned with the banning of Jones or Infowars. Haven’t read it firsthand, but understand he is filth. I assume he probably violated his terms of service agreement.
    And look, I am going to post a link to a twitter thread where someone criticizes Greenwald and I agree. Alex Jones is not a hill to die defending.
    https://mobile.twitter.com/adamjohnsonNYC/status/1029565006453645312
    I think one could probably ban Infowars without raising any serious issues. But there are other people and groups who are also being taken down for what appear to be political reasons.
    Though come to think of it, what about people who defend the war in Yemen? Can we ban State Department flunkies? They incite violence. How about people who say BDS is antisemitic? Hate speech, imo.

  229. What liability should a social-media platform have to take on in knowingly allowing dangerous and blatant lies to spread through their services? When do we reach the point of “it’s good to keep an open mind, but not so open that your brain falls out”?
    Who gets to decide when something is too blatant or too dangerous? Some people think ‘medicare for all’ will be the death of the country. Others think capitalism should be stamped out by force if necessary. If the goal is to limit harm caused by reaction to speech, why limit the speech we are concerned with to “dangerous, blatant lies.” Seems to me, any real harm that can be avoided by censorship, if we are OK with censorship in principle, should be enough. We can just decide as a society that any and all speech that might cause a deranged person to perform a deranged act should be suppressed.
    The prior restraint to prevent harm argument has been tried before. It was litigated a lot starting in the 40’s up through the 70’s. A somewhat related, semi-corollary also lurks in the nether regions of criminal jurisprudence, that being preventative detention, i.e. locking someone up before he/she can commit a crime. On a macro basis, it will prevent some crime. The trade off is pretty horrendous to old style civil libertarians, but a lot of stuff discussed today seems to fall in that category.

  230. If the test is that we suppress speech that might inspire others to violence, there won’t be much left of the 1st Amendment.
    Might? What about did? I used the word “demonstrable” for a reason.
    Who gets to decide what is true and what is not?
    It depends on the situation, but there are cases where no reasonable person should have reason to believe something is true. Once again, demonstrable, not to mention brains falling out of excessively open minds. Ultimately, as sapient mentioned, it might come down to a jury. People are suing Alex Jones. Maybe Jones will take a shot at suing facebook and twitter.

  231. McKinney,
    Please elaborate on the jury point. Never mind defamation cases. Do judges (agents of The Government) ever impose “prior restraint” on lawyers to limit what the jury is allowed to see or hear? If yes, would either justice or the law be better-served without such rules?
    –TP

  232. Sapient, the link you posted gave the impression that Taibbi actually did those things. Not saying you lied. I don’t even say the Jezebel writer lied. The link hsh posted said that those stories were satirizing a type of American that was running wild in Russia then, a time when our country cheered on the sorts of horrific economic policies that set the stage for Putin the savior.
    I don’t like that kind of satire precisely because it is offensive not only to its target, but also others. There might be a context, but that isn’t a good enough reason for using it. It is like Charlie Hebdo which we were told was funny given the context. I could condemn the terrorism and still think the magazine was crap. And Taibbi admits he used to be very crass and used misogynistic language and apologized to one specific target. Is that enough? Not for me to say. But no, he wasn’t doing those things, which is the impression the Jezebel link gave.
    The MeToo movement changed a lot of attitudes. Bill Clinton isn’t quite as popular with centrist liberals as he used to be.
    I suppose Mark Twain’s use of the n word and the depiction of racism is a counterexample, but that is Mark Twain being realistic about how white people talked then.

  233. Seems to me, any real harm that can be avoided by censorship, if we are OK with censorship in principle, should be enough.
    So, once you can’t yell “fire!” in a crowded theater, anything goes (or, really, doesn’t go).

  234. Who gets to decide what is true and what is not?
    Sometimes there is such a thing as objective reality. If you say human trafficing is occuring in the basement of a building which has no basement, that’s simply untrue.
    Of course, if you want to argue that everything is a matter of belief and there is no objective reality, that’s a different discussion. But I don’t think you are going there.

  235. A current First Amendment prior restraint issue is court injunctions to prevent websites from providing weapons printing and milling files for download.

  236. I don’t even know how prior restraint has anything to do with what I wrote. I’m talking about subsequent restraint. People go around doing crazy sh1t based on conspiracy theories someone is spreading – conspiracy theories identifying specific people who then become targets.

  237. Who gets to decide when something is too blatant or too dangerous?
    Who decides when something is assault, or just some loudmouth being obnoxious?
    We draw lines. That’s what the law is.
    But Russell and HSH are hinting at…
    No.
    Donald stated that he could see a rationale for censoring hate speech in Germany, given their history. But not here.
    We actually have a history of singling out people of particular ethnic heritages for horrific abuse, as a matter of law and practice. Perhaps not as dramatic as Nazi-era stuff, but then again maybe it is. And it went on for a hell of a lot longer.
    I’m just asking Donald what the difference is. Censoring Nazis in Germany OK, censoring white supremacists in the US not OK.
    Personally I think it’s fine to boot Jones and Infowars from privately owned and operated channels if he violates their terms of service.
    I also think it’s fine if people are held criminally liable if their calls for other people to be assaulted or killed actually results in those people being harmed or killed. But that’s just me.
    Watch out, count! 🙂
    We protect hate speech in this country. And we live with the result of that. It’s a choice, with its up and downsides, like every choice.
    People say hateful incendiary stuff all the time. Like, all the time, morning noon and night. Sometimes it ends up harming other people. We consider that a fair price to pay.
    You pay your money, and you take your chances. Right?
    Natural Born Killers is a work of fiction. It’s not an exhortation to go kill anybody.

  239. Sapient, the link you posted gave the impression that Taibbi actually did those things.
    I honestly did not read the article that way. If anyone gave the impression that the authors actually did the things described, it was the authors themselves, by using the first person, and by marketing the book as nonfiction. As far as I know, the disclaimers were made only recently. That said, I’m perfectly willing to believe their disclaimers, and the article was based on the writing, not the acts themselves (although validating the behavior seemed indicated by the writing).
    I agree regarding with you regarding the satire. I don’t like it. I didn’t like the Charlie Hebdo satire either, but there are cultural aspects to humor and satire, and I’m not French. Ugly satire never justifies violence and murder.
    The #metoo movement is a continuing conversation. The fact that Taibbi’s writing is degrading to women is not a revelation of the #metoo movement. It’s not just the book; it’s Taibbi’s subsequent writing that betrays his view of women, as McKinney observed.
    Clinton’s relationship with Monica Lewinsky is not comparable.

  240. there are cases where no reasonable person should have reason to believe something is true.
    The operative word here is ‘reasonable’. Which is subjective. Are Trump supporters ‘reasonable’? Should their speech, then, be subject to suppression? To litigation if it causes mental harm? Or a twitter mob and the loss of a job?
    Please elaborate on the jury point. Never mind defamation cases. Do judges (agents of The Government) ever impose “prior restraint” on lawyers to limit what the jury is allowed to see or hear? If yes, would either justice or the law be better-served without such rules?
    Applying the Rules of Evidence in a court of law is not prior restraint or censorship. I could fill pages with examples. Generally, hearsay that does not. fall with within a recognized exception is excluded from the jury’s consideration. “Relevance” comes into play. The fact that a party to a contract dispute likes pornography is not relevant and it is prejudicial. Trial by law has almost nothing to do with free speech. The exceptions revolve around free trial v free press and other constitutional clashes. We aren’t talking about that kind of stuff here.
    People go around doing crazy sh1t based on conspiracy theories someone is spreading – conspiracy theories identifying specific people who then become targets.
    What about people doing crazy shit in response to hearing something that doesn’t rise to the Alex Jones level of insanity? No one wants crazy shit, but we get that from all kinds of sources. Why be so particular about that one? Forex, what about religious websites that call generally for jihad and acts of terror against infidels? There is a sizeable faction on the right that would have no problem with editing them out of reality. What about people who read the Bible, the Koran or Das Kapital and do crazy shit? Crazy pre-exists the stimulus.
    Natural Born Killers is a work of fiction. It’s not an exhortation to go kill anybody.
    Understood. But my point is that while rational people get this, they aren’t the ones loading up for the next big civil war, and worse, the ones who act of external stimuli. For them, the whole truth vs fiction thing is lost. They just know their righteous buttons have been pushed and now it’s time to defend the faith or whatever.
    I get the sentiment. It isn’t knew and every past effort to find the sweet spot that prevents idiots from being idiots while preserving fundamental freedoms has failed. The internet makes failure more likely not less.

  242. Nabokov’s “Lolita” was not an exhortation for middle aged men to physically molest underaged girls either, but rather a beautiful piece of writing read secretly by all-female books clubs in Iran, where it was banned.
    I chose it as my book to present at a book club years ago and nothing was banned, but there was some squirming. I think one couple never showed up again.
    Awww, Americans are so cute, you can get recipes now along with your fascist QAnon right wing propaganda:
    https://www.thedailybeast.com/pinterest-moms-share-parfait-recipes-next-to-qanon-memes?via=newsletter&source=DDMorning
    I recommend cream with the strudel:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eJPgA9wECU
    It was OK at that point in the movie to shoot Hans Landa in the head at that table. It would have better to have shot him, oh, say, in 1935.
    Then we could skip this movie exhorting us to kill Nazis as nearly every World War II movie about the European Theater has, since “Casablanca”.
    If the White House begins ordering the arrest and detention of its political enemies … the Mueller team, liberals, Hispanic immigrants and activists, Black Lives Matter football players, and say, Mattis, supposedly a man of honor, though I doubt it, given the length of his tenure among those animals, does not start killing those around him perpetrating the outrage, who should start the killing?
    “The Birth of A Nation” in fact exhorted the KKK to murder blacks.
    Nothing is clear.
    Here’s mud in your eye.

  243. The operative word here is ‘reasonable’. Which is subjective.
    Sure. It’s an imperfect world. Maybe we should just wait for God to come down from the sky to tell us what to do so we can avoid this messy subjectivity.

  244. I’m not suggesting censorship. Where would it end?
    But I am compelled to threaten Jones, for example and the rest of the right wing movement, including Putin’s NRA, in the same exact violent terms they threaten our fellow Americans.
    Thank you for allowing me the loose leash to do it.
    I delete plenty of comments before they reach OBWI, if you can believe it.

  245. “I’m just asking Donald what the difference is. Censoring Nazis in Germany OK, censoring white supremacists in the US not OK.”
    I am not sure. Go back not terribly far and most whites were white supremacists. Millions still are. IMO, with respect to Palestinians a fair number of liberals subconsciously think like white supremacists. Who gets to decide that one? I have a friend and regularly see people online who are Nakba deniers. Not as severe as the Holocaust, not by orders of magnitude, but it is still dishonest racist bullshit with real world consequences.
    I think the rationale in Germany is that there were or might still be enough Nazis around to try to stage a comeback, so they don’t allow Holocaust denial as we do. But I am guessing. Hartmut might be around.
    I don’t think I am being obsessive though in asking why the same rationale wouldn’t apply to our foreign policy. Under both Obama and Trump you have State department apparatchiks pretending to believe the Saudis do good faith investigations when they kill civilians with American bombs. Americans might be present in the targeting rooms. Heather Nauert ( sp?) did this just recently after the bombing of the school bus. If it hasn’t been taken down, I could find a Russia Today YouTube clip of John Kirby doing the same under Obama. He objected to a comparison of Saudi bombing with Russian and/ or Syrian bombing, saying the latter was deliberate bombing of civilians but the former was targeting imprecision. In both cases, by continuing the aid and making these excuses and pretending that Saudi killing is accidental, they were giving permission for it to continue. They were lying and there are real world deadly consequences for innocent people because of these lies. The victims aren’t any less people just because there are basically no consequences whatsoever for Americans who participate in these policies.
    We let this happen or it wouldn’t keep happening. So maybe before tinkering with the 1st Amendment, we could do something about actually punishing or at least ostracizing people who knowingly participate in or lie about actual cases of mass murder. Make it something like the MeToo movement, where since forever powerful men treated subordinate women in the workplace as sex toys and then almost overnight it became an issue where famous people lost their careers because of it. And where the political party of the person involved isn’t supposed to matter.

  246. “Maybe we should just wait for God to come down from the sky to tell us what to do so we can avoid this messy subjectivity.”
    HE doesn’t talk to us.
    But he’s come down and talked at length to every conservative in the country, save a few of the barbarians 😉 who fraternize here with us and they know exactly what to do in every instance, and they are doing it.
    Thar’s the rub.

  247. Someone is going to point out that Trump himself is immune, so far, to the MeToo movement. So far Trump is immune to every norm. I don’t think he could shoot someone in the street and get away with it, but am not completely sure about that.

  248. It isn’t knew and every past effort to find the sweet spot that prevents idiots from being idiots while preserving fundamental freedoms has failed. The internet makes failure more likely not less.
    How so? Failure can go in either direction. Does the internet favor one over the other?

  249. Morning McT,
    To respond to your question about a reset, a first point is that 9 times out of 10, if you respond with something like the Ted Kennedy/Robert Byrd comment, it’s not going to go well, not in a ‘this sort of thing isn’t done here’, but because of the difference in timezones, which means that I will either try to make it clear why I don’t think such a response is helpful before going to bed, or I will reply at length when I wake up like I am now. It was good to read that you misread and responded too quickly and I appreciate that. Making statements like that would go a long way to resetting things, at least as far as I am concerned.
    The second thing is I’d suggest is know your audience. When you were referencing Kennedy, Byrd and Buckley, did you just choose them because they were the only examples who could make your point? If you honestly thought this, I suggest that you recalibrate.
    It’s always tricky to suggest that someone should write something else rather than what they did, but if you really wanted to discuss the question of what makes an apology something to take as a change of heart, but don’t have time to write a long comment, you could have said ‘what if Weinstein had written a facebook apology? What about Cosby?’ Or even simply said “I really don’t think that an apology on facebook cuts it”, which is what Bernard gently pointed out. While that might have not had the zing of your comment, it would have gotten a lot closer to what you say is why you were posting.
    I also don’t expect you to read every link, especially if you are writing from your phone as you often do, but I think it is important to attend what the people here (including myself) are writing in the comments. Here’s what I said:
    Also to note is that Taibbi has done better than his co-author, Mark Ames, with his facebook apologies. I don’t think he’s out of the woods, but it’s a start.
    You said (which may or may not have been in reply to me) that ‘If you’re sorry afterwards, that makes it ok.’ not only confuses Taibbi and his co-author Ames, it also pretty much ignores what I wrote. Again, maybe what I wrote didn’t even enter your mind, but if you look at the timing of the comments from my position, I hope you can understand why I might think that. I’d also note that I didn’t say that people who had lower opinions of Taibbi (as you did in your first comment) were in any way wrong, but that they might reconsider after reading some of the other links provided. So I hope you can see why your observation about Kennedy et al seems a lot like a first punch, regardless of your actual intention.
    Beyond any conflation of what I said with ‘giving a pass’, the next point I would make is that I’m probably going to react if I sense someone is picking a fight on the list. I’m not saying that I’m always right about my sense, but if I do feel it, I’m probably going to say something. If you were taking issue with what I wrote, take a look at Nigel’s 04:35 AM comment to see how that can be done. If you didn’t even consider my comments, but were responding to everyone else, I hope you can see why raising Kennedy, Byrd and Buckley is precisely why I wrote what I wrote. I could have written ‘trolls gotta fish, but we don’t have to bite’, but that would have provided you with no opportunity to reply, so I gave my personal opinion, clearly marked it, so you could address me rather than claim that the whole list was the audience and I am grateful that you did take up what I said and asked about a reset.
    I certainly don’t claim that I keep all my anima and bile out of my comments. I also think that everyone, including me, has tics and habits in their writing that can be annoying, and that can lead to friction. But I want to emphasize that I try to comment on interaction on this blog when I think it can be changed, not when I think there is no hope of change so I hope that could be a starting point. thanks.

  251. I honestly did not read the article that way.
    I did the first time, but not so much after a re-read, following some of the back-and-forth here. The biggest problem I had on the second read, which didn’t come through as much the first time, was that the bulk of the piece discussed things almost exclusively written by Ames rather than Taibbi. That’s kind of a quibble. I don’t disagree with the thrust of it.
    I think the Paste article reinforced my impression that the Jezebel piece implied or stated outright that Taibbi and Ames did the things they wrote about, only because the Paste piece discussed various other sources that did.

  254. I think most people here are opposed to censorship and prefer that even obnoxious points of view be allowed expression.
    What concerns me about the present moment is basically the Karl Popper paradox of tolerance thing. How far can the resilience of a tolerant society be stretched by intolerant views and behaviors, before it breaks. And, what happens when it breaks.
    And by “intolerance” I’m not talking about Alan Dershowitz having to eat his lunch all by himself on Martha’s Vineyard, or conservative Hollywood actors not being invited to the cool parties. Or even Huckabee Sanders being asked to leave a restaurant.
    I’m talking about folks who think that people who aren’t like them are unwelcome, not just in their home or restaurant or party, but in the country, or even on the planet. Or even simply alive.
    At a certain point, things break down. We’re not at that point, but the trend is not favorable.
    Is there a point at which speech that quite plainly advocates for denying others their fundamental rights, as citizens and simply as human beings, forfeits its own protected status?
    If not, then how much of that can an open society absorb without breaking?

  255. “FB is still not actually the government.
    FB is not the US government anyway….:
    Rereading Thomas Frank’s “One Market Under God” just now, and he lists one conservative after another and libertarians who extoll exactly the opposite, if by FB we mean social media, the internet, and corporations.
    “Is there a point at which speech that quite plainly advocates for denying others their fundamental rights, as citizens and simply as human beings, forfeits its own protected status?”
    Yeah, say, in some bar or perhaps the street when such advocating happens and fists intervene for a few minutes until the one doing the advocating and the spitting out of teeth finally discovers a purpose for government … to protect his freedumb ass.

  256. Facebook is the government of facebook, I suppose. I’m the king of my toothbrush, come to think of it, but only my teeth could give a crap.

  258. Just a short response for the moment on the German legal situation.
    Things like the Holocaust denial law were and are contentious and the high courts had to weigh in on them. It’s in the German constitution that there is no censorship but there are a number of laws and regulations that de facto censor certain things and COULD be abused. As a general rule those laws only pass court review if the are effect-based. You may write and say anything in private*. For legal sanctions applying to you, the words and deeds must be public in the widest sense and a court has to decide whether they had a public effect or were intended to create one (and the burden of proof is quite high).
    Sorry, I have to leave now but will expand on the topic later, if this is of interest.
    *if the police bugs your home and tapes you singing Nazi songs or the like that is no legal reason to charge you with anything unless they can prove that you deliberately left the window open and are aiming those songs at your Jewish neighbours.

  259. Marital vows .. what?
    https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/conway-on-husband-tweets-disrespectful-violation-of-basic-decency-if-not-marital-vows
    One, or two, perchance three, long(s) for the days of Mary Matalin and James Carville like the reminiscence of a previous but not metastasizing bout of malignant cancer.
    Help Wanted: Hiring the Stupidest Pigfuckers on Planet Earth To Run America. A facility with Russian helpful but not required. Just bring your dumbass republican conservative self down to Pennsylvania Avenue and start taking a shit on the country immediately.
    Executions first.
    Then, free elections.

  261. Marital vows .. what?
    “With this Ring I thee wed, with my body I thee worship, and with all my worldly goods [including tweets] I thee endow”.
    Gotta read the fine print before you sign.

  262. Such a deal!
    Bigly transactional (the only trans with its own bathroom and solid gold crapper), no?
    https://www.marketwatch.com/story/cost-estimate-for-trumps-military-parade-raised-to-92-million-report-2018-08-16?siteid=bigcharts&dist=bigcharts
    Will North Korea have a float in this boondoggle?
    Surely, a Soviet aircraft carrier can be towed down Pennsylvania Avenue with Russian sailors rogering that with all hands on deck.
    Raise my taxes if you want a parade.
    I guess China’s going to pay for it since cuck republicans have laundered all of their fucking cash flow on the spin cycle.

  263. Harmut–
    I am interested in how Germany handles Holocaust denial and censorship and so forth, if you want to go into the details.

  264. Re: censorship, 1A, etc.
    Are we, with Jones and his ilk, getting close to “Radio Rwanda” territory? If so, should anything be done?
    As for blatant violations of the 1st Amendment, the USSC has already shown the way: Since Money=Speech, then Speech=Money, and what you say can be prosecuted as “material support of terrorism”. At least one guy convicted on that basis.
    Might try getting Jones on that. The shoe fits.

  265. I just don’t see any reason why we need protection from internet liars
    I do. It’s damaging to us all when large numbers of people believe political lies. The internet makes it possible to promote lies to large numbers of people.
    We need a law against publishing falsehoods. It should be illegal to publish as true something which can be proved beyond reasonable doubt to be false.
    This would not apply to anything labelled by the publisher as fiction or parody, or which was obviously fiction or parody.
    Enforcement would be mainly by take-down notices. Criminal sanctions would apply only to the knowing republication of statements which had already been proven false.
    This would not stop people arguing for any proposition however mad so long as they don’t assert that the proposition is true. “The earth is flat” is a lie. “These are reasons to think the earth is flat…” need not be. And, because freedom of speech is important, the law would not apply to bad arguments, only clearly dishonest ones.

  266. One problem with explaining the legal situation in Germany is that German law loves to use ultra-oldfashioned terms* that have a very precise meaning but no direct equivalents in other languages.
    There is no meaningful ‘Holocaust denial law’ by itself. It exists only as an act modifying the penal code in a few places and its main purpose is not to create new law but to fill a perceived gap that many experts deny existed in the first place. These are of the opinion that all aspects were already covered by the paragraphs before modification, just not spelled out explicitly. And they fear that the modifications reintroduce something that was eliminated in the long process of the development of the German penal code. The German supreme court even agreed and had to impose a very narrow reading, a closely defined exception of the general principle in order to let it pass. That general principle is that a law may not criminalize or punish beliefs or thought or opinion but only (potentially) their effect on the public peace and order when introduced in the public sphere. That’s what I called ‘effect-based’ in my earlier post.
    An older contentious case is the former blasphemy paragraph in the penal code. It once punished words and deeds against religion per se. Today it punishes (extremly rarely btw) the effect on public peace and order of speech or deeds in the context of religion. So, if I would hand out Martin Luther’s anti-Jewish writings in front of a synagogue and loudly proclaim that we should follow his advice, then I could get arrested since this could cause a riot and endanger Jews and their place of religious assembly NOT because I insulted the Abrahamic religion.
    In the case of the Holocaust, almost all cases of legal prosecution are based on ‘neutral’ law that has nothing to do with this specific part of German history, like the paragraph against defamation of the deceased**, incitement of hatred against a specific sub-group of the population*** etc.
    The specific Holocaust case serves as a legal shortcut to deal with those that again and again clog the courts with variants of the ‘just asking questions’ strategy where the purpose is obvious but the precise link between those ‘questions’ and the non-specific parts of the penal code had to be established every time anew (in essence having to prove the reality of the Holocaust in every trial). The modified law allows the courts to state the Holocaust as an established fact and bad faith on the part of the deniers as default. So, the deniers have to prove lack of evil intent.
    The impression I get is that this ‘censorship’ is not used as a clandestine reintroduction of Gesinnungsstrafrecht (punishment of thought crime) but as a measure of last resort to go after notorious dogwhistlers that try to use the courts to gain publicity for their ‘case’ (in the double sense of criminal case and political goal). The potential for censorial abuse by the state is seen as lower than the damage caused by the very real abuse of the non-specificity of the penal code. The high courts were very clear in their review of the changes to the code that they will step in, if the state tries to abuse this tool.
    Ironically, the quite old law against the use of Nazi symbols**** causes far more trouble because it does not specify the purpose. As a result the state has formally to prosecute cases of their use in unmistakably anti-Nazi contexts (e.g. a sticker depicting a swastika thrown into a trash can). There are plans to modify the law to avoid that.
    One important thing is that all penal code paragraphs in this context require the aggrieved party to go to court. The state cannot act in these cases by itself unless violence is committed (or imminent violence has to be suppressed in advance).
    I think I will stop here for the moment.
    *no new-fangled stuff like ‘collusion’ or ’emoluments’ 😉
    **Verunglimpfung des Andenkens Verstorbener
    ***Volksverhetzung (ironically it is perfectly legal to insult all Germans together because they are not a specific subgroup).
    ****formally a general law against the use of symbols of organisations officially declared hostile to the constitution (only the highest court is allowed to do that). But I can’t remember any prominent case not involving Nazis.

  267. It can still get a bit dicey. For example:

    The earth is flat. Here are the reasons to think so:

    Is that substantively different from “Here are the reasons to think the earth is flat….”?
    Not disagreeing that something needs to be done. Just wondering whether this is the right approach. Or even a viable one.

  269. Thanks Hartmut.
    On Pro Bono’s suggestion—
    “It’s damaging to us all when large numbers of people believe political lies. The internet makes it possible to promote lies to large numbers of people.
    We need a law against publishing falsehoods”
    This seems like the standard thing I have always heard, which is that when shown a copy of the Bill of Rights without being told what it is, many Americans are opposed to it.
    So we outlaw political lies. Great. First, what are we going to do during election years? I assume we all know our own candidates and their supporters are paragons of truthfulness, but the irrational ninnies on the other side, both during primaries and in the general election, wouldn’t know the truth if it was delivered to them on a subpoena.
    Who gets to be the arbiter of truth? Okay, sure, I know who you’re gonna say, but seriously, people, I got better things to do than read the New Yorker or the NYT all the time just to make sure they aren’t pushing us into another war.
    I assume this would also apply to government officials covering up war crimes? See earlier rant. I think we already have laws about complicity and arming countries that we know will use the weapons to commit human rights violations and they aren’t enforced, so presumably this anti- lying statute isn’t going to be applied to the biggest and most consequential liars.
    Or we could just save time, end the whole democratic experiment thingey and hand the country over to some philosopher king or queen. No, no, not volunteering.
    Joking aside, in practice this means that the government decides what is true. No thanks.

  270. Mark this day (or really, yesterday): I agree with McKinneyTexas.
    And with Donald, though that’s not so unusual.
    I can’t think of anything more apt to be abused than the power to censor words. I don’t have a good answer for the destructiveness (as McK says) new phase we’re in, facilitated by the WWW, but putting the government in charge of the truth would be a disaster.
    How many people here would want Donald Trump running that machinery? And don’t tell me that with someone responsible running that machinery he would never have been elected; that machinery would be as ripe for abuse as all the other features of US government that have been twisted by various people over the years. Obama’s Supreme Court appointee? Oh, wait……
    We need a law against publishing falsehoods. It should be illegal to publish as true something which can be proved beyond reasonable doubt to be false.
    If I were in charge of the machinery, here are some falsehoods I would immediately censor:
    Jesus died for our sins.
    God loves me.
    Etc.
    Who gets to define “reasonable doubt”?
    It’s turtles all the way down.

  271. Just as a side comment, I want to say (which I very often think) how valuable and interesting I almost always find Hartmut’s explanations and descriptions. Thank you for taking the trouble, Hartmut, you shed a great deal of light.

  272. there are already, and always have been, restrictions on speech. the right to say what you want isn’t absolute.

  273. We need a law against publishing falsehoods.
    I agree with what seems to be the sense of the room that this is not a good idea.
    I think we need to make some distinctions.
    Speech is a really broad concept. “The earth is flat” is, as far as we can tell, false. But it’s also harmless.
    “Jesus died for our sins” is beyond the scope of what can be shown to be true, or not, for purposes of law.
    “Muslims are all terrorists” is obnoxious, but in and of itself is not harmful.
    “Muslims are all terrorists so they should be rounded up and held in camps” is a different kettle of fish, because it advocates for denying the civil rights of a protected class of people, e.g. people who adhere to a particular religion.
    Should statements like that be protected speech?
    “Muslims are all terrorists so any time you encounter a Muslim you should give that person a beating” is a *really* different kettle of fish, because it advocates doing actual physical harm to other people. The question of whether they belong to a “protected class” here seems, to me, moot, the right to not be beaten up by random strangers seems, to me, to not require justification.
    Should statements like that be protected speech?
    “Muslims are all terrorists, and there’s one right over there, let’s go beat him or her up” should, IMO, unambiguously be beyond the protection of the 1st A. It is explicitly a provocation to assault.
    I’m open to the idea that speech that clearly calls for doing harm to other people should be excluded from 1st A protection. Not things like “we don’t like them”, or “they’re bad”, but things like “we should kill them / beat them / round them up and imprison them / throw them out of the country”.
    By “excluded from 1st A protection” I don’t mean that nobody can say them, ever, in any context. I mean that laws can be passed regulating whether, and under what conditions, that kind of speech is allowable. And I mean that if that kind of speech arguably leads to someone being harmed, then the person harmed can have legal recourse and “my right to free speech” can not be presented as a defense.
    If you blab away on your TV or radio show, calling for people to go beat up Muslims, or immigrants, or left-handed accountants named Ed, and somebody hears you and goes out and beats up any of those people, I don’t have a problem if the law allows those people to come after you, the speaker.
    Not “come after” as in “come after with a bat”, I mean “come after” as in “come after with a lawsuit”.
    And by “law allows”, I mean you, the speaker, can not hide behind the 1st A as your defense.
    Everyone’s entitled to have, and express, their opinion. Everyone’s not entitled to call for other people to be harmed.
    I’m curious to know what the state of the law currently is wrt this, and also what anyone else thinks about it.
    “Swedish Lutherans are an alien reptile race sent here to take over the world and subject us to a thousand years of slavery”. Rave on buddy.
    “Swedish Lutherans are an alien reptile race sent here to take over the world and subject us to a thousand years of slavery, so they must all be killed”. Not protected, and if anyone comes to harm as a result, you’re liable.
    Thoughts?

  274. Disputed old saying, origin apparently unknown: “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth can put its boots on.”
    Even if there were reasonable laws and responsible officials in charge of enforcing them, the internet has put that saying on steroids. As much as 300-400 hours’ worth of content is uploaded to YouTube every minute (and that’s as of 2015). Who is going to police that? And who is going to prevent the policing from being misused? No link, but I heard a radio report on this issue a while back and one of the little impossible knots was activists from one side of the conflict in (IIRC) Ukraine reporting YouTube content from their enemies, the activists on the other side, as objectionable. Even if the reporting side doesn’t succeed in getting its enemies’ content taken down (which I think it did in that case), there’s a cost just to processing the request.
    [I wrote this without seeing russell’s, so I’ll put it up regardless and then try to catch up.]

  276. Just following up on my conversation with McKinney about NYT v Sullivan, I would recommend this law”>https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=2295&context=journal_articles”>law review article, which takes the decision to task.
    I’m not in favor of criminalizing everyday casual lying (although it’s great to try to tell the truth! Plugging for that!). I’m not in favor of a government sponsored truth commission. Social media platforms, owned by private companies, do and should have terms of service that prohibit certain behavior. I think those terms should always be under scrutiny by people who use the platforms.
    Anyway, the article is worth reading. Let me state again: I think NYT v. Sullivan should get another look. I think Citizens United took the First Amendment in a place it was never intended to be. (Also, this.)

  277. It can be useful to look at specific local cases when evaluating a proposal. So I would observe that Russell’s criteria would leave much of what the Count posts here right out.

  278. Sorry. I can’t seem to imbed the link. I seem to be able to google it with the citation: Richard A. Epstein, “Was New York Times v. Sullivan Wrong?,” 53 University of Chicago Law Review 782 (1986).

  279. Just a very short, probably unworkable observation. It seems that the first question in these debates is ‘is it true?’ and the second question is ‘does it harm?’. We would probably be a lot better off if we reversed the order of those questions. I realize that this makes the argument that the truth is a(n absolute?) defense [for defamation]. There is also the problem that is one of human nature, in that we dismiss (or at least tend to underestimate) suffering of others if we haven’t experienced it ourselves.

  280. I guess the reason I posted the link to the article is that, not only do I agree with it for the most part, but this is, by far, not an original question. It’s possible that received wisdom is the answer here.

  282. I’m not a lawyer, but I think the laws we have now are fine. The current problem IMO is not fake news, but the willingness of people to believe nonsense because they want to believe it. Outlaw nonsense and it just shows the government is suppressing the “ truth”. (It probably is on some subjects, but never mind). I have conservative friends in real life. One of them at times seems willing to believe almost any amount of nonsense if it comes from his tribe. I could go down a list. In this case ( I have been disagreeing with a few people here lately) I suspect all of the liberals here would agree with me about the issues on the list— human caused global warming, for instance, is in his view ( last year anyway) a plot by scientists to gain grant money. He used to be a rational conservative in the 90’s ( we go way back). I think Fox News and Regnery Press and various Islamophobic writers gave him a bubble in which he could find factoids that confirmed all his prejudices. He doesn’t listen to rightwing talk radio, but for some that has been another source of comforting bull crap.
    To be fair, liberals and various types of lefties can and do put themselves in their own bubbles, but I don’t think the left is as bad.
    There are also corporations and think tanks that work very hard to propagandize people. The fossil fuel companies did this with global warming. There has been a many decades long campaign to persuade people that the market always does things better and more efficiently than the government.
    I think all of this stuff has had far more effect on our political culture than “ fake news” on the internet. It set the stage so that now people will believe or pretend to believe any nonsense they see on the Internet if it supports their tribe, but blaming things on fake news gets the causation backwards. The problem goes back decades, so now our various political factions live in separate universes. ( That has always been true on some issues, of course.).
    I don’t think the mainstream liberal press has been the entirely innocent victim in all this either. But I will stop while I probably still have most or all the liberal/ lefties agreeing with me.

  283. There are also corporations and think tanks that work very hard to propagandize people. The fossil fuel companies did this with global warming…
    …and tobacco, and acid rain, and the ozone hole, and who knows what else. And to some extent it was the same core group of experts contributing the fodder.
    See Merchants of Doubt, by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway. (Disclaimer: I own it, I’ve skimmed around in it a bit, but it’s one of those books that makes me too angry, so I haven’t managed to actually read it.)
    The current problem IMO is not fake news, but the willingness of people to believe nonsense because they want to believe it.
    In my more foolish moments I lose my head and imagine that better education in skepticism, and in evaluating evidence and sources, is the remedy to this. But the whole thing is vicious circle, and anyhow, every time I get to the point where I imagine we could educate people out of the tendency to believe nonsense, I remember religion. (Speaking of which, this BJ post about the Roman Catholic Church’s clandestine mission as a hiring and cover-up agency for abusive pedophiles has me thinking that about other institutions besides the current administration that need to be burnt to the ground and the ashes scattered in some other galaxy.)

  284. Posted too soon. I didn’t mean to suggest that the fossil fuel companies tackled all those subjects, but rather that apparently some of the same “experts” did, working for the fossil fuel companies, the tobacco companies, etc.

  285. I am a Christian, so that would apply to me too. I am not offended or anything. I occasionally try to read people who try to give philosophical arguments for the existence of God, but they aren’t all that convincing. Maybe I don’t understand them well enough, or maybe they suck as arguments.
    For me the strongest arguments against Christianity are the behavior of Christians. The vast majority of white evangelicals are Trump supporters. I know a Catholic woman who supports Trump, but despises him personally. But she is an active anti abortion person, so given her conviction on that there is a lesser evil argument from her POV. But some Christians support him enthusiastically precisely for his bigotry as best I can tell.

  286. And no comment on the Catholic Church. Well, I guess I will. I don’t understand it. I can understand power corrupting and how pretending to a call for celibacy which you don’t feel would lead to surreptitious affairs with either men or women, depending on one’s inclinations , but the predatory viciousness of some of what happened goes way beyond some priests having secret love affairs with consenting adults.

  287. Donald, I thought I remembered that you were a Christian, and I’m sure there are other people reading who are religious in one way or another. I meant to offer an apology/disclaimer earlier, but then thought to heck with it. Now I’ll offer it.
    I myself was raised Catholic and turned my back on the church almost as soon as I left home. I am not religious in any conventional way, but I don’t want to go into that right now, I just want to say that my comments probably come across as far more hostile to religion than I actually am.
    I think anyone who thinks they’ve “proven” that there is a deity, or heaven, or an afterlife, is delusional. That includes some people I know personally who are otherwise very intelligent and whom I like a lot anyhow :-).
    But the near-universality among humans of belief in some kind of mythological system involving a deity or deities, and/or an afterlife, or reincarnation, etc., makes it a little harder for me to hope — even in my fantasies — that there’s any way to educate people out of believing other stuff that (what I would consider to be) clear-headed people recognize as unprovable, possibly counterfactual, maybe nonsense.
    For me the strongest arguments against Christianity are the behavior of Christians.
    Yes…and I’ve heard the Buddhists aren’t perfect either. 😉

  288. And no comment on the Catholic Church. Well, I guess I will. I don’t understand it. I can understand power corrupting and how pretending to a call for celibacy which you don’t feel would lead to surreptitious affairs with either men or women, depending on one’s inclinations , but the predatory viciousness of some of what happened goes way beyond some priests having secret love affairs with consenting adults.
    Think of it as the market at work. On one side you have perdators, who need on-going access to potential victims (specifically children). And protection when they were reported.
    On the other side, you have an organization which is having serious problems attracting sufficient staff (i.e. priests). It has the size and the clout to shuffle staff around and otherwise conceal misbehavior. And the standing to help persuade even the families of victims that the reports just couldn’t be true.
    Both could supply something that the other needed and wanted. At a price the other was willing to pay. So they did . . . for decades (if not longer).
    For what it’s worth, I think the only impact that celibacy had was in limiting the pool of non-predatory recruits. It didn’t cause the predatory behavior. It (or at least lip service to it) was simply part of the price they were willing to pay to get what they wanted.

  289. No need for an apology. I don’t think it is reasonable to be offended because someone thinks religion is unreasonable. I just thought I ought to say something in case my beliefs came out later and you felt embarrassed.

  291. For me the strongest arguments against Christianity are the behavior of Christians.
    One could argue the same about Marxism.
    The unchecked bad behaviour of people tends rather to be an argument against systems of unchecked power, whether legal, physical, moral or whatever.

  292. “Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It’s them twisting it that ruins it for me.” –
    Record and book burnings ensued among the usual suspects and the Beatle plane landed once with bullet holes in its fuselage.
    God, the cosmic gunsmith, bequeathed Americans the Second Amendment, and sent one of his assassins to put Lennon right. Four bullets in the back, God being sort of a right wing fucking cop mistaking Lennon for a black kid, I spose.
    Cue some dumb cuck or other to point out that, yeah but, George was stabbed, so there.
    The thick and ordinary now run the show.
    Show’s over and dead.

  293. “To be fair, liberals and various types of lefties can and do put themselves in their own bubbles, but I don’t think the left is as bad.”
    Yeah, our side isn’t perfedict but we’re not as bad as the other side says Every.Human.Being.

  294. current Trump approval rating among Republicans: 82%
    we can talk about the liberal bubble when that number falls below 60%.

  297. The Count mentioned George Harrison, and I remembered Eric Idle writing about this. He probably has heard this, but I paste it below for everyone else.
    When George was stabbed by an intruder in early 2000 the first I knew he was going to survive that terrible experience was the quote displayed on the BBC Web site. When the police asked him about the intent of the intruder he said, “Well, we wasn’t auditioning for the Traveling Wilburys…”. “Why doesn’t this kind of thing happen to the Rolling Stones?” he asked me wryly on the phone with that brave Liverpuddlian humor. “Would you like me to come?” “Yes, please, Eric.”
    Tania and I immediately jumped on a plane and flew to stay with him and Olivia at their home in Oxfordshire. We were relieved to find them both home, battered and bruised, but alive. We could so easily have been flying for their funeral. George proudly showed me his seven stab wounds. Some were both entry and exit wounds where the kitchen knife had gone right through him. One had punctured and collapsed his lung, leaving George dangerously short of breath, with his lung filling up with blood as he lay on the floor, chanting. “I thought I was dead, Eric,” he said. Carried out to the ambulance, covered in blood, he said to his appalled house managers, who had just started working for him, “So what do you think of the job so far?”.

  299. “Yeah, our side isn’t perfedict but we’re not as bad as the other side says Every.Human.Being.”
    Sure, but not every faction is exactly as bad as every other faction. If you want to list some liberal or left sins, go ahead. I might agree with some and might even bring up my usual topics.

  300. Just quick sidetrack here. I briefly saw an Onion headline about Fox News using a photo of Patti LaBelle on a tribute to Aretha Franklin. I thought it was a joke, which I guess it sort of was, but it was also true.
    Parody is redundant.

  301. MCCraven sad that Brennan’s integrity has never been questioned by people who know him. Sounds like a bubble to me.
    https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/12/a-brief-history-of-the-cias-unpunished-spying-on-the-senate/384003/
    Brennan is also the man who said that in some given year—I forget which one—drone strikes hadn’t killed a single civilian. Sure.
    There are innumerable reasons for despising Trump, but the way Brennan’s record has gone down the memory hole on the liberal side is almost a textbook case of a bubble. What is even funnier is that the National Review site put up a piece reminding people of Brennan’s lies. I don’t follow NR much, but doubt they cared that the CIA was spying on the Democrats in Congress when they were investigating the CIA’s use of torture.

  303. Maybe the liberal bubble is believing that number will fall below 60%
    Oh I’m sure it won’t.
    The gop is a cult.

  304. Oh I’m sure it won’t.
    Then maybe the liberal bubble is thinking there’s no chance it’ll go below 60%. But, if you even entertain the idea the you are, yourself, in a bubble, you’re probably in less of a bubble than someone who is utterly convinced that they can’t possibly be in a bubble. That’s kind of what makes it a bubble, or at least a really well-sealed one.

  305. For every bubble there is a corresponding anti- bubble. Except perhaps for the bubble which includes all other bubbles.

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