Time to put up or shut up

[zsdersw]

I think you should start a thread about it where you tell everyone to post something about their own party they do not like, but refuse to post something about your own party you do not like.

That will show em!

Because I'm in a good mood today, I'll entertain cybrsage's idiocy by calling his bluff.

What am I against that's critical of "my side"?

Easy... I'm against 'hate crime' designations.

Very often members of the GLBT community refer to things as a hate crime; bullying, assault, murder of GLBT people is often assumed and prosecuted in various jurisdictions as a hate crime.

I find the whole idea of "hate crimes" absurd. Murder is murder. Assault is assault. Harassment is harassment. The motivations for any of them are not something which the government, at any level, has the authority or the mandate to use to punish one criminal more and, tacitly, another criminal less.

Of what relevance in determining punishment length/severity is the victim's race, gender, sexual orientation, religious affiliation, or socio-economic status? People are people... crimes against people are crimes against people and should be punished equitably, not harsher for some and more lenient for others simply because of the motivations of the attacker.

So, then, what criticisms of "your side" do you have?

 

[SirStev0]

I tend to be more socially liberal and I think that for the most part Demo's are completely incompetent when it comes to enacting any legislation.
Honestly, the only reason to support them is to keep away Repubs who are very good at getting exactly what they want in bills and laws.
Demo's are also spineless.

 

[werepossum]

To the extent that the Pubbies are my side, which by default they are, I hate that they insist on trying to use government to enforce discrimination. This isn't the 1950s where everyone is straight and happily married. In that respect, the 1950s weren't even the 1950s for a lot of people. Government can never be small or limited if it holds the power to tell you whom you may or may not marry. The Dems also try to use government to enforce discrimination. But at least they try to use government to right perceived wrongs, not to try to force underground behavior they don't like to see. Or at least, not only to try to force underground behavior they don't like to see.

I also think the Republicans usually suck on environmental issues. The heart of conservatism is conservation. Things like Bush I's plan to clear cut over half of our national forests for the lumber are the antithesis of conservation.

And I hate that Republicans talk a good game on fiscal conservatism, but give 90% of them six years in D.C. and they are indistinguishable from Democrats except for the directions of the pork flinging.

 

[Atreus21]

Because I'm in a good mood today, I'll entertain cybrsage's idiocy by calling his bluff.

What am I against that's critical of "my side"?

Easy... I'm against 'hate crime' designations.

Very often members of the GLBT community refer to things as a hate crime; bullying, assault, murder of GLBT people is often assumed and prosecuted in various jurisdictions as a hate crime.

I find the whole idea of "hate crimes" absurd. Murder is murder. Assault is assault. Harassment is harassment. The motivations for any of them are not something which the government, at any level, has the authority or the mandate to use to punish one criminal more and, tacitly, another criminal less.

Of what relevance in determining punishment length/severity is the victim's race, gender, sexual orientation, religious affiliation, or socio-economic status? People are people... crimes against people are crimes against people and should be punished equitably, not harsher for some and more lenient for others simply because of the motivations of the attacker.

So, then, what criticisms of "your side" do you have?

I'm impressed. This is one issue I didn't expect you to oppose.

On hate crimes, I'm a little tongue in cheek about them. If motivation for the crime is not to be considered, then there's no way to tell the difference between a terrorist act which kills people and first degree murder. Or for that matter, there's no difference between genocide and murder. Not sure if I like that.

You know what I notice about these threads? They don't usually constitute people making honest criticisms about their party or ideology in which the opposing party is right (such as saying I'm a republican, but on a particular issue republicans are wrong and democrats right), but rather they make sort-of fake criticisms, saying that their party isn't warlike enough with the opposing party.

It seems to me the aim of threads like this is to find some tone of moderation and compromise, and yet people use it in an effort to further radicalize, ironically under the pretense of finding fault with their own position. Everyone, for example, always seems to think their party is "spineless," which by implication means their party should have no compromise with the opposition.

This only serves to make me a greater cynic about politics. Even attempts to find common ground and say, "for five seconds, let's act like reasonable adults" are met with, "Okay, this is me an adult finding criticism with my party because my party doesn't do enough to wipe the opposition from the face of the planet."

It's like I said. Politics. It's awful.

 

[xBiffx]

Challenge accepted.

I can't stand religious fanatics, especially on issues like abortion. No business deciding for a woman one way or the other. Please just abstain from opening your mouth. Saying I'm pro choice is as bad as pro life but the pro lifers are the ones that really set me off.

 

[Ninjahedge]

I hate both parties.

I hate the dems for being splintered and special interest obsessed, focusing too much on the small rather than a set of cohesive legislation that will help rebuild our financial base (not one financial leaf at a time).

I hate the Repubs for doing almost the opposite. Becoming a cabal that does not allow independent thinking. I saw it back in 2000 when the Daily Show used to talk to McCain about a lot of things. the man was definitely a republican, but he halled BS on what was BS.

Then re ran for president at a time when the Republican party was all in lock-step (regardless of how that actually reflected their own electorate).

Add to it the undue attention being paid to tea-Party activists anxious to get government out of THEIR lives, but more into everyone elses.

What we are seeing is a decay of our rather resilient system. One whose representatives really do not "represent" anymore. We are more ruled by what we, and in turn they, purchase than what we vote on or desire to be done in government.

I hate everyone.

 

[ky54]

I consider myself a conservative and I don't belong to any party. Where I have a problem with other conservatives is their support for the death penalty which I utterly despise. Any state that can take your life, will. Each passing year we lower the bar for execution and I don't believe our governments have the constitutional power to kill it's citizens. Trust me, you can't say anything or call me any name I haven't already been called by my fellow conservatives.

 

[Lemon law]

As a democrat, zsdersw states he is against hate crimes designations. As a democrat, I can only partially agree because the stench of Jim Crow should still be fresh in our nostrils.

In the days of Jim Crow a "white" man could basically murder a black man for virtually any reason with almost total impunity. . Cases like Emmett Till were almost typical. That and the fact that crimes like murder were state matters, meant all white juries would simply vote to acquit which was the almost 100% local custom. And when the freedom bus riders came along, there was not a Federal statute in the books to protect their civil rights.

After all what prevents any local community from passing laws like rape females legally on Wednesday, beat up gay men on Friday, as for blacks and Hispanics, that should every day of the week except alternating Sundays.

After all Federal hate crimes laws are not often used or asserted, but anyone rational then knows, if they are going to engage in a hate crime, local jury nullification is not their only hurtle. After all, you can serve as much time for violating the civil rights of some one compared to actually murdering them.

 

[Atreus21]

As a democrat, zsdersw states he is against hate crimes designations. As a democrat, I can only partially agree because the stench of Jim Crow should still be fresh in our nostrils.

In the days of Jim Crow a "white" man could basically murder a black man for virtually any reason with almost total impunity. . Cases like Emmett Till were almost typical. That and the fact that crimes like murder were state matters, meant all white juries would simply vote to acquit which was the almost 100% local custom. And when the freedom bus riders came along, there was not a Federal statute in the books to protect their civil rights.

After all what prevents any local community from passing laws like rape females legally on Wednesday, beat up gay men on Friday, as for blacks and Hispanics, that should every day of the week except alternating Sundays.

After all Federal hate crimes laws are not often used or asserted, but anyone rational then knows, if they are going to engage in a hate crime, local jury nullification is not their only hurtle. After all, you can serve as much time for violating the civil rights of some one compared to actually murdering them.

Don't think z is a democrat.

After all what prevents any local community from passing laws like rape females legally on Wednesday, beat up gay men on Friday, as for blacks and Hispanics, that should every day of the week except alternating Sundays?

Laws against rape, murder, and assault.

 

[crashtestdummy]

Haven't we been here before?

As I said in the other thread, Liberals are right when they say that there are a lot of serious environmental issues on the horizon, but wrong in their solutions.

Humans are not going to reduce their aggregate energy output in the foreseeable future, and wind and solar are not going to make up the bulk of the power supply anytime soon. That leaves nuclear power as the only viable carbon-free alternative for the majority of our power uptake. Bad incidents are scarey, but are actually smaller in their total destruction than fossil fuels.

Second, there's this funny idea that we can somehow live in perfect harmony with wilderness and that our farms will be like untouched plains. This is inherently contradictory and will cause farms to require more land than is readily available while also pushing out natural ecosystems. If you want to preserve wilderness, reduce our footprint. That means industrialized farming, genetic engineering, fertilizer and yes, even responsible use of pesticides. If you do everything you can to increase yields, you'll minimize the amount of ecosystem you affect.

Lastly, there seems to be this idea among the left that all ideas are equal when it comes to treating illness. That herbal medicine is just as effective as modern medicine by the simple effect that people have perpetuated the myth for so long. It drives me crazy when people say "I was feeling bad, took x, and got better two days later. Therefore, x works!" That's just nonsense. Did the extra glass of water in the morning cure you, too?

I'd also like to take a moment to compliment the "other side". I think that we need to enforce immigration laws more tightly, though I also feel that we need to drastically increase our quotas, especially for lower income workers. Making illegal immigration easy creates incentives for those willing to break the law, rather than those who will go from inside the system. We need to much more strongly discourage the hiring of illegal immigrants while drastically expanding the guest worker system.

 

[zsdersw]

Haven't we been here before?

Given the ubiquity of precisely what this thread is the opposite of, I don't think two threads about it is too many.

 

[Munky]

I hate both sides equally. The Dems are pandering to big government, The Repubs are pandering to big business.

 

[woolfe9999]

Because I'm in a good mood today, I'll entertain cybrsage's idiocy by calling his bluff.

What am I against that's critical of "my side"?

Easy... I'm against 'hate crime' designations.

Very often members of the GLBT community refer to things as a hate crime; bullying, assault, murder of GLBT people is often assumed and prosecuted in various jurisdictions as a hate crime.

I find the whole idea of "hate crimes" absurd. Murder is murder. Assault is assault. Harassment is harassment. The motivations for any of them are not something which the government, at any level, has the authority or the mandate to use to punish one criminal more and, tacitly, another criminal less.

Of what relevance in determining punishment length/severity is the victim's race, gender, sexual orientation, religious affiliation, or socio-economic status? People are people... crimes against people are crimes against people and should be punished equitably, not harsher for some and more lenient for others simply because of the motivations of the attacker.

So, then, what criticisms of "your side" do you have?

You've already created a thread on this exact premise IIRC, so I don't know why you needed to take it up again as a challenge.

A hate crime is not one where the victim is of a certain class. The "hate" element depends on the motive for committing the crime. You can kill a gay person in order to steal his car and that isn't a hate crime if your motive had nothing to do with him being gay.

Motives do matter under the law. Killing someone because they slept with your spouse is almost always treated differently than killing someone for the fun of it, for example. The law carries with it an implicit moral judgment regarding one's motives. A crime consists of more than just the physical act. Those concepts pre-existed the establishment of hate crimes.

 

[zsdersw]

You've already created a thread on this exact premise IIRC, so I don't know why you needed to take it up again as a challenge.

Given the ubiquity of precisely what this thread is the opposite of, I don't think two threads about it is out of line.

 

[zsdersw]

A hate crime is not one where the victim is of a certain class. The "hate" element depends on the motive for committing the crime. You can kill a gay person in order to steal his car and that isn't a hate crime if your motive had nothing to do with him being gay.

Motives do matter under the law. Killing someone because they slept with your spouse is almost always treated differently than killing someone for the fun of it, for example. The law carries with it an implicit moral judgment regarding one's motives. A crime consists of more than just the physical act. Those concepts pre-existed the establishment of hate crimes.

I don't really care about moral judgments or concepts that pre-existed the establishment of hate crimes... they're all absurd, IMO.

Crimes committed for a reason other than self-defense are not deserving of differentiated punishment on the basis of motive, IMO.

 

[woolfe9999]

What I don't like about democrats in general is broadly true of the entire political spectrum: they consist largely of people who will say or do anything to get elected or re-elected.

If you're looking for some policy position, there are many. I don't support banning guns, which the left wing of the dem party tends to support. I also dislike talk of censoring violence on television or video games. Other things I don't like have to do more with complicity with policies of the right, particularly in the areas of foreign policy, civil liberties, the "war on terrorism," and the Iraq war.

 

[woolfe9999]

I don't really care about moral judgments or concepts that pre-existed the establishment of hate crimes... they're all absurd, IMO.

Really? You don't think it matters if someone stole food to feed their starving kids or stole a television set to turn around and sell it? Not for purposes of guilt or innocence, but for purposes of sentencing.

The idea that motives do not matter in a crime is actually quite unusual. They have always mattered, particularly at the penalty stage, in basically every legal system since time immemorial.

As for the state judging morality, the very idea that anything is deemed a crime by the state carries with it the notion that the state makes moral judgments.

 

[zsdersw]

Really? You don't think it matters if someone stole food to feed their starving kids or stole a television set to turn around and sell it? Not for purposes of guilt or innocence, but for purposes of sentencing.

The idea that motives do not matter in a crime is actually quite unusual. They have always mattered, particularly at the penalty stage, in basically every legal system since time immemorial.

I never claimed to possess only "usual" beliefs.

As for the state judging morality, the very idea that anything is deemed a crime by the state carries with it the notion that the state makes moral judgments.

Deeming something a crime is not a moral judgment as much as it is enforcing the constitutional guarantee of the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; the constitutional guarantee that each of us are free so long as we don't intrude upon the freedom of someone else.

 

[woolfe9999]

I never claimed to possess only "usual" beliefs.



Deeming something a crime is not a moral judgment as much as it is enforcing the constitutional guarantee of the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; the constitutional guarantee that each of us are free so long as we don't intrude upon the freedom of someone else.

The constitutional guarantees are themselves moral judgments. We morally judge those who violate the rights of others, as we have chosen to define those rights.

Every society has a basic criminal code, whether they have anything like our Constitution or not. Not only that, WE had the same basic criminal code, in the colonies, and various states under the Articles of Confederation, before the Constitution.

If the state can judge people for their acts against others, they can judge people for why they commit those acts. The only real question is does a crime motivated by class animus deserve the heightened judgment that we place on other motives. For example, many states will enhance the sentence if the crime is "gang related" e.g. you assaulted someone to get into a gang. That example is useful here because the logic is parallel.

 

[crashtestdummy]

I don't really care about moral judgments or concepts that pre-existed the establishment of hate crimes... they're all absurd, IMO.

I agree with you on this. I don't like the idea of using punishment as a kind of retribution for crimes. The primary goal of the judicial system should be to protect the innocent, in part by not convicting the wrong people, but primarily by reducing the number of crimes committed in the first place. What would be interesting to me (and I'm sure someone has studied it) is whether stronger punishments work to curb hate crimes. They do not, for example, significantly curb gang violence, since your life expectancy on death row is better than that as a drug dealer.

 

[Atomic Playboy]

I'm liberal, particularly for social issues, which makes me a de facto Democrat when it comes to voting. I absolutely hate what the Democrats are doing with social welfare programs. I think it needs a complete overhaul. I understand the need for social programs to help out people in the event of economic hardship that's not of their own doing, but literally every single person I've ever known on welfare (food stamps or unemployment insurance) has abused the system, often for years at a time. I like to have faith in the overall goodness of people, but, let's face it, people are going to do what's in their best interest (not that there's anything wrong with that). Welfare needs to be retooled so that it is economically advantageous for someone to actually find a job and not just live off unemployment for years because unemployment pays more than the work they'd be able to find. We need to stop rewarding people for having children they can't afford. We need to stop giving food stamps to drug addicts so they can use their money to support their drug habit and the taxpayer can buy them lunch.

How do you retool welfare so it works? I have no idea; it's incredibly invasive into people's privacy to demand to know what they're doing with the money or why they can't seem to make their own. But at the same time, given just how widespread abuse of welfare is, I have a very hard time supporting it, and that's not fair to the people who legitimately need it. We shouldn't legislate morality, but people also should take more responsibility for their own lives and not rely on a public safety net to keep them afloat forever.

Voicing these concerns in a room full of Democrats generally gets me yelled at.

 

[zsdersw]

The constitutional guarantees are themselves moral judgments. We morally judge those who violate the rights of others, as we have chosen to define those rights.

Every society has a basic criminal code, whether they have anything like our Constitution or not. Not only that, WE had the same basic criminal code, in the colonies, and various states under the Articles of Confederation, before the Constitution.

If the state can judge people for their acts against others, they can judge people for why they commit those acts. The only real question is does a crime motivated by class animus deserve the heightened judgment that we place on other motives. For example, many states will enhance the sentence if the crime is "gang related" e.g. you assaulted someone to get into a gang. That example is useful here because the logic is parallel.

I do not agree. The act against another is the crime, not the thought or the belief.

 

[Jaskalas]

And I hate that Republicans talk a good game on fiscal conservatism, but give 90% of them six years in D.C. and they are indistinguishable from Democrats except for the directions of the pork flinging.

Yes, the problem is that they're not "Republican" enough. They not conservative. They talk a good game just to buy votes, the same way they buy even more votes by spending tax dollars.

I'm quite sick of the GOP not living up to its own rhetoric. Then who do they want us to get behind in 2012? Mr. Massachusetts UHC. He's unapologetic, they are unapologetic, and we're supposed to bend over and take another eight years of Bush and big spending Republicans.

If I want to complain about the GOP I've ample opportunity every time they offer us a Presidential candidate be it Bush, McCain, or Romney. They keep on trucking down the same road year after year... after year...

Then as if to remind us that we need big spenders, the opposition rallies behind religion incarnate. Sigh...

Yeah, thanks guys. I really wanted to choose to rally behind either Jesus or Bush. Such a great choice, why don't I just go and vote for Obama while I'm at it?

My 'party' is doomed. All people have to do is wake up and smell the BS and it'll all be over, they'd have nothing left.

 

[woolfe9999]

I agree with you on this. I don't like the idea of using punishment as a kind of retribution for crimes. The primary goal of the judicial system should be to protect the innocent, in part by not convicting the wrong people, but primarily by reducing the number of crimes committed in the first place. What would be interesting to me (and I'm sure someone has studied it) is whether stronger punishments work to curb hate crimes. They do not, for example, significantly curb gang violence, since your life expectancy on death row is better than that as a drug dealer.

Hate crime enhancements serve the dual purpose of expressing societies moral disapproval of bigotry while also protecting the targeted class, and protecting society from general decline. The trouble with inter-class violence is unlike individual common crimes motivated by individuals desires, these crimes are a function of groupthink. Because of that, they tend to feed off of themselves and escalate. You can take Europe and its treatment of Jews long prior to the Holocaust as an example.

 

[woolfe9999]

I do not agree. The act against another is the crime, not the thought or the belief.

So you think the person who stole food to feed his starving kids should get the same sentence as the person who stole for personal greed? What about the person who kills someone who molested her child after he got off on a technicality versus the person who killed because he enjoys killing people? Note that I'm not arguing that any of these people are innocent, only that the motive can be a mitigating or aggravating factor in the penalty. It's OK if you think otherwise. I just want to clarify what your position is here.