Lord Ratner

So does childhood.

Dude, thank you, that's the best way I've seen it described. Libertarianism is the conservative version of a girl being "bi" in college, or a high-schooler wearing a Che Guevara t shirt, or a soccer mom getting a tramp stamp. Also that article is hilarious

Individual liberty is *one* factor in the creation of a nation. If it was the only factor, there would be no nation in the first place. You determine which individual liberties you violate by measuring how they allow for the exercise of freedom by others. The simple example is laws against murder. Your individual liberty to kill who you want infringes on the victim's right to life as they see fit (or at all). We, as a society, decided that police are the mechanism for enforcing laws, and that requires money, which requires taxation. Your freedom to not pay taxes is infringed because the police must exist to enforce your many other freedoms. Obviously there are plenty of laws and regulations that fail this balancing test, but that does not nullify the concept. "Taxation is theft" is some truly Simple Jack political reasoning. Once again, name a single functional society in all of human existence that persisted without conscription or taxation. Until then it's no more a valid political construct than communism. Atlas Shrugged was a fictional love story, not a handbook for running a nation.

As I said, there are simply realities of being human. One of them is that you are stuck on a giant ball full of other people. You have to be born to people who you have no control over their beliefs or ideologies. Just like your children will be. It is impossible to exist in a society that does not place obligations on you, because the very existence of that society required obligations of others. Libertarianism is arguing for something that cannot exist. Also, taxation is not theft. Taxation is taxation. It's just another thing that you don't have to do. Don't work, there is absolutely no forcing function for work, and you can live your whole life without paying any taxes. Of course if you want any of the luxuries provided for in a modern society, especially one that is heavily capitalist (as the libertarians so dearly love), then you have to make some sacrifices to get what you want, because you expect to get those things from other people. Those other people have formed a society that has things like taxation and conscription. Like Lawman, just vote. The libertarians have quite consistently gotten dog shit results in every election, which means people simply don't agree with them. But those majorities are supposed to adapt to the desires of the libertarians? There is a lot of very good foundational theory in libertarianism. But when you get to the practical level it's almost always a bunch of well-off intelligent people with limited experience dealing with the weakest/dumbest/most psychotic in our population. The libertarian stance on drug policy is a perfect example.

You do enter with consent. As an adult you can fuck off to somewhere else if you don't like it. You just can't wait until your number is called to suddenly want to leave the country. No other better options? Welcome to reality. This is like complaining that it's oppressive to be born as a male or female. I guess, but those are the options. There are biological realities to being human, and there are social realities to being human. The United States has done a better job than any state in history at mitigating the social downsides of humanity while still maintaining a system that functions across multiple generations/centuries. That doesn't mean every draft is just; Vietnam was a joke. But WWII was not. As I said, libertarianism as a practical ideology is great until you actually need to run a society. It's a solid starting point for any political conversation, but the absolutism inherent in the ideology is why it can never actually work.

Isn't he the JQP guy? He's gotten even wordier, and that says a lot coming from me 🤣😂

Gotcha. No example. Humans are messy. I 100% agree with you that our debt will be a huge problem. But it's a predictable, historically common, and inescapable problem. And ours is not remotely the worst. Huge problems are just a part of the species.

No they don't. You are conflating politics with the citizenship. Abortion is another example where "we the people" sit in the sane middle between two insane political positions. Your average Democrat didn't vote for Biden because they believe in giving puberty blockers to children. I await your example of a single society that was formed and survived through the ideals you are currently promoting. I used to think I was a Libertarian until I realized it's the same as a Progressive at the functional level. Ideologies that require a history they abhor to create a safe society that allows them to hold impractical absolutist ideals.

The fact they have cheese already makes it better than half the Air Force Burger Burns I've been to. Every single outdoor event has a grill and you'd swear no one in the military heard that you can put stuff on a burger. Cheese, ketchup, mustard... And the shittiest patties you can get from services. Not a tomato or pickle for miles.

No, I absolutely do not think that. In fact I think we are at a point in the cycle where we have the dumbest possible leaders. That will revert in due time, but for now, it's a clown show. I also never said I thought the NFA was constitutional. I suspect it is not, especially under the bruen decision. That doesn't change the fact that I lean towards automatic weapons being too dangerous to simply buy the gun store. The right way to do that very well might be a constitutional amendment, and that should happen. Let's not forget that slavery was permissible under the Constitution and it took an amendment to fix it. There were lots of things the framers either couldn't foresee or couldn't get through based on the societal reality of the time. That's why they created a process to update the Constitution. It is, by design, a living document. And the First amendment is affected by technology, that's why we are still having the debate societally and in Congress over what aspects of social media fall under publishing and what aspects fall under distribution. I've said this in this forum before, but the second amendment is not a method of being able to overpower the standing army of the federal government. That's an irrational and unnecessary interpretation. Hell, the South tried and failed to overcome the federal government. The more practical application of the second amendment is that when you have an unarmed populace, government order reach can exceed the point where a person is willing to lose their life in support of the cause, and it is for nothing. Without a sufficiently asymmetric weapon, two dozen feds can simply walk into your house and drag you out of it, no one dies, no one even bleeds. That simply won't get the public's attention. But when you have an AR-15, either the cops die or you die if it matters enough to you. That blood forces a conversation. This happened in Waco, and it happened with the bundys grazing land. Anyways, automatic weapons are not necessary to elicit that effect. Edit to clarify: so the second amendment, and primarily the focus on a regulated militia, was absolutely a method of countering a standing army. In fact the second amendment was a watered-down version of the Virginia amendment, which explicitly opposed a standing army. That became impractical after the revolutionary war, so that language was watered down and we got the somewhat ambiguous second amendment we have today. But technology and the military evolved to a point where the standing military is absolutely more dominant than any militia is going to be. It also doesn't matter as much I suspect due to the distributed nature of our military. I simply don't believe the airmen and soldiers stationed in Texas are going to go door-to-door collecting weapons or shooting Texans for refusing to surrender their arms. The concerns of the 1700s are very different from the concerns today. Therefore the effective mechanism of the second amendment is also different. But no less important.

Ah yes, only those who agree with me are principled. Cute. The same arrogance of those who are sure they wouldn't have been Nazis, slavers, confederates, communists, etc, because they are enlightened and principled, it's just a coincidence that their righteous views align with the society they were born into.

That's all well and good, but to pretend the founders were able to consider modern weaponry is farce. It's also irrelevant. What matters is what you can do in a large society, not what a simplistic principal dictates. If you fuck up and allow the ownership of a weapon that gets used to slaughter too many children, you will lose it entirely, and a while lot of weapons that weren't directly related. This is why there are, 100%, limitations on the freedom of speech. No where in the first amendment does it say "unless your speech is inviting violence against others." Or "unless your speech is defamatory or libelous." Yet we have those restrictions because without them the people will lose faith in their government and take matters into their own hands. Dueling was exactly the problem with this. Many laws are a balance between what sounds good on paper and what large groups of people will actually tolerate. Fuck up on either side of the line and you get mobs, something of great concern to the founders. And of course "that's the same argument against AR-15s." That's how arguments work. The hard part isn't making the argument, it's rationalizing it against the costs and benefits to the society. Semi-automatic rifles are used in very few shootings while providing a meaningful defence against tyrannical government action, as well as providing for self defense. If you accept that civilians shouldn't have nukes, you've already conceded that there is a line *somewhere.* If you think civilians should have nukes, you're a fool.

Look I know from your posts that nuance isn't exactly in your wheelhouse, But even in your simplistic perspective there are lines. Now if you believe that nukes aren't permissible for civilians to own, and you are simply drawing your own arbitrary line at select fire weapons. Which makes you about as pro second amendment as I am. And if you do believe civilians should own nukes, you're just an idiot.

Because the ability of a single person to disproportionately infringe on the right to life of many others must be measured against the constitutional need for the assortment freedom. What do automatic weapons actually provide the citizen that justifies the cost? With semi-automatic weapons the math is easy. Government overreach and tyranny is greatly curtailed when the cost of government overreach is blood and lives. Do fully-automatic weapons meaningful increase that deterrent? I don't believe it does, because the deterrent was *never* about being able to out-gun the feds, it was about the public outcry associated with the bloodshed. No automatic weapons required. As far as defending against foreign or domestic threats, full auto isn't exactly the default mode of the world's most effective military forces. The Vegas shooter had the money to buy an M-134. How many more would be dead if he had? And what freedom (natural right, not just "I want it") are you losing by *not* having an M-134?

Wait a sec. No limit, but not tanks? Where is the line? I agree that registries are bad, but so are deranged/evil/retarded people with disproportional force. I do not believe the gun laws in the US should be *more* restrictive, but I find the conversation about what existing restrictions we should abolish much harder. Silencers and SBR/SBS seem like easy ones to me. Automatic weapons not so much. Usually my philosophy is to only support a restriction if there is a real-world example of the threat. Hypothetical dangers do not justify laws as far as I'm concerned. But with the Glock switches quickly showing up on the streets, there's more than just a hypothetical threat to the legalization of full-auto weapons under the 2A.

Yeah dude, I know your thoughts. Boring. Libertarians get to shout their absolutist nonsense at the sky while everyone else has to create a functional society. Got it. We should have muskets, and we shouldn't have nukes. Where the dividing line is in the middle is the hard part.

You know, I have a hard time justifying the legalization of full auto. I'm open to the idea of approvals for post 1984 automatic weapons, but under the same process. The Glock switches have shown that full-auto has a criminal market where most gun crime happens (inner city gang activity), and I'm just not convinced the gain for 2A purposes outweighs the downside the law enforcement would have to deal with. The NFA at least introduces a tracking element that almost entirely squashes the training of those weapons. I'm a bit wishy washy on this one, and I'm not sure how well it holds under Bruen, but the difference between a 16" AR-15 and a 7" AR-15 as far threat to social order is miniscule. With full-auto I think it's a more difficult conversation.

I think there's a good chance that happens in the next few years. But it'll be piece by piece. Silencers will probably be first. *Maybe* barrel length. Automatic weapons, probably never.

Not really. The difference is that it's your turn now. Political incompetence has led to hyperinflationary spikes many times. They are usually brutal then followed by decades of stability. We are not unique.

I joked with my wife that every generation officially becomes old when they go through their inflation era. Because they will spend the rest of their lives reminding everybody who will listen how cheap stuff used to be "when I was young." Everyone born after about 1970 is finally going through their inflation era. Inflation will go away eventually (years), but it's not going to be deflation in any meaningful sense. It is unlikely you will pay less than $9 for that loaf of bread ever again, and it's probably not done going up.

I have yet to meet someone who uses the term "cuck" as a pejorative who can reliably make a woman cum. Your internet troll persona is weak and frightened, but now you're venturing into the 14-year-old with an internet connection territory. Relax a little.

I agree they should choose the least risky option. They did not do that here. But, the police absolutely assume guilt before a trial, and have to. Explain how you have an authority to arrest, under any circumstances, if the police must assume innocence. It falls apart. That doesn't mean they take on the role of sentencing, but it would be insane if the police weren't using an assumption of guilt as the filter by which they decide whether or not to arrest someone. Arrest everyone? The presumption of Innocence is a judicial concept. And it applies to the jury and the judge, not the officers investigating or the prosecutors. The officers and the prosecutor are not supposed to assume anything, they are supposed to gather all evidence and make a rational decision. That decision is whether there is enough evidence to believe in guilt, at which point it becomes their job to convince a jury of the same belief, up to whatever standard is required for that particular crime. Obviously you have prosecutors who are after a conviction record rather than the truth, and you have officers who are jaded, or racist, or otherwise mentally unfit for the job. But those are the outliers, and incidentally the ones we hear most about in the news. I agree with what you wrote after "aside" emphatically. It's been discussed elsewhere: But again, this case is not that. Still a problem, but not the same. Edit to add: If there is any evidence that someone or someones in the chain of command set up the raid with the desired outcome of the death of the suspect, they should spend forever in jail. Currently no such evidence exists.

By the way, separate of the gun-trafficking, this is why the second amendment is so important. Again, ignore the gun-running for a moment. This guy had guns, which allowed him to resist the ATF in a way that "forced" them to use deadly force. Same with Waco. Same with the Airman in Florida (not resisting at all, but 2A still escalated a situation). It is the police failing that is lighting a fire politically to rein in this type of behavior. Blood is almost always the price of freedom, and the 2A escalates government overreach to the level of bloodshed. Without guns, these types of raids would never garner enough attention to stoke public outrage.

This is hyper-libertarian fever-dream stuff. A background check is not asking permission because there is not an authority position that makes a subjective decision. It is to verify that you are not already precluded from exercising that right. Your example is more accurate if your are trying to get a CCW permit somewhere like CA, where the Sheriff can arbitrarily decide to deny the application. When you go the the DMV and they ask for proof of insurance, the deck-jockey doesn't then decide if you are qualified to drive. You either check the boxes or you don't. Verification vs Permission. If you buy a bunch of legal chemicals (your property), convert them into methamphetamine, then sell them to "whomever I want," then I wholeheartedly endorse your imprisonment. If you buy a gun for the purpose of bypassing the FFL system (your property) and sell it to a Mexican cartel member, same applies. If that's not what you meant, be more precise in your post. Externalities matter, and your claim is absurd to anyone who has any sort of grasp of human nature or experience with drug addicts, criminals, or other desperate demographics. He didn't need to assist anyone in a crime, because he committed the crime himself. You may not purchase firearms for the purpose of reselling them, thus bypassing the FFL process. He did that. Again if this was just a conversation about the method of arrest, I'm with you guys, but y'all are making some claims that are simply unrealistic. I have never once met a stupid libertarian. Every single one has been of above average intelligence, most of them substantially so. The biggest failing of the intelligent has been their complete unfamiliarity with, and thus complete inability to govern, below-average and psychopathic people. The Socialists always underestimate the human desire for choice. The Libertarians always underestimate the human capacity for self-destruction. I don't disagree with this, and I'm thrilled to see the Supreme Court unwinding a lot of the madness. But society does evolve, and changes are needed. The trick is always moderation. As an example, there wasn't much need for restrictions on speech in 1880. With social media causing the youth suicide rate to skyrocket, now there is for targeted restrictions. Similarly there wasn't much need for anti-trade restrictions in 1820. But with countries like China willing to exploit our social contract with the expressed purpose of destabilizing and eventually overcoming our society, now there is a need. These restrictions need to be clearly defined and strictly limited, something that our current crop of politicians can't seem to do. That doesn't diminish their need or utility.

The presumption of innocence is for the purposes of litigation. Not police arresting action. If the assumption of innocence was absolute then there would be no arrests in the first place. You are assuming, from the same data sources I have, that the ATF went there with the goal of killing him. Murder. That is a wild claim, especially considering the conversation we are having about the presumption of innocence. He fired first. Whether the ATF should have chosen this method of arrest is secondary unless you can prove they did so for the expressed purpose of goading him into a shootout. You obviously can't do that, so lets apply the same presumption of innocence to the non-criminal ATF agents who raided his house. He was the bad guy, by his own actions and by conscious choice. Does that merit execution? Nope. But there is no such thing as an accidental execution or unintentional, so this was not that. I agree with this. He absolutely should have been taken in his office. However, equating what happened to him to "many instances of these no knock warrants being served to the wrong address," is false equivalence. It was the right address. He was (allegedly) the criminal they were after. But all of these permutations are different things with different moral implications: Raiding the wrong house and killing an innocent defending their home Raiding the correct house, but doing it instead of a less-risky arrest option resulting in a dead criminal Raiding the correct house, but accidentally killing a bystander you didn't know was there Raiding the correct house, but some cops are killed in the shootout when they could have chosen a better arrest method All of those are tragic, but they are not all immoral or murder. Proportional force is not binary. It's literally a ratio. And his ratio was shittier because he was (allegedly) a criminal gun trafficker. Your right to do a lot of things vanishes when you break the social contract. Depending on how badly you break it determines how much you lose. Losing the right to credibly defend your home against unannounced invaders when your actions set the stage for having your home invaded is not a travesty of constitutional magnitude.