Ok, look, I’m really not interested in getting into these weeds. My point was just that human rights, whether one believes they are divinely given or inherent to some part of our being, are, for all practical purposes, useless without some means of enforcement. Do you dispute that?

Philosophy can be tested

Like, through repeatable experimentation and observation and study of natural phenomena?

It’s not supernatural, it’s philosophical.

What’s the difference?

And it’s the foundation for most, if not all, liberal democracies.

I’m aware. That doesn’t mean it’s above reproach or critical examination/reexamination.

I don’t see any material difference between divine rights and “natural” rights. Both seem to be supernatural or metaphysical, to me, so I don’t think it matters if you believe that these rights come from a god or something else. Either way they are meaningless without some means of enforcement.

You can certainly say that you have rights and that those rights emanate from some inherent part of your human being, but without a means of enforcement, it’s immaterial.

“[Progressivism] holds that our rights and our dignities come not from God, but from government,” he said.

Because it’s unequivocally true. Even if you believe your rights originate from God, unless or until God comes down and forms a state capable of enforcing those rights, they’re meaningless.

“It requires of the people a subservience and weakness incompatible with a constitution premised on the transcendent origin of our rights.”

What a stupid thing to say. He’s the one advocating for subservience, that is subservience to the supposed God who is supposedly the originator of our supposed rights.

That being said, I agree that we should not be subservient to the government. The government should be subservient to we, the people.

I think many of them are left libertarians, like libertarian socialists and anarchists. It seems to me that libertarianism, whether left or right, is just liberalism taken to its logical extreme. Libertarians do seem to be focused primarily on individual rights, liberties and freedoms. I think that focus on individual freedom can impede their ability to really organize with a lot of other working class people, because it seems to me that often working class people tend to be more “conservative,” as in they have a less, let’s say, permissive attitude about individual expression.

Not bad enough.

Playing Monday morning quarterback is so much easier and less risky than suiting up and actually tossing around the pigskin yourself.

I think most people don’t want the responsibility of power. But, somebody’s gotta lead. And what usually ends up happening is power goes to be people who want it, but those people often want it for the wrong reasons.

Edit: my brother and I have been working on a project for better leadership. We’re hoping it will be a resource for anyone looking to build better, more resilient communities, as doing so will require quality leadership. We call it the Sane Leadership Circle. It’s going to be a comprehensive guide on leadership, based on actual research. Right now we just have the substack, but we’re going to be building a website soon. It will be like a leadership wiki.

So, what, if we’re all going to be assholes, some of us should at least be rich? Ok, well, chances are it ain’t gonna be you or me who are the rich assholes, so what’s the point? For everyone to be miserable, but a few people get to be rich and miserable?

No.

You’re better off. Rich kids grow up to be assholes.

Edit:

Everybody thinks becoming rich will solve all of their problems. But even if it does solve some of your problems, it’ll just create new ones. Money is not a panacea that fixes everything. I mean, you look at the richest people and they’re not just assholes, their fucking psychopaths. That’s what you want? You wanna be a fucking psychopath? Oh, but, I know, it won’t be you. You won’t fall into the same trap as them. You’ll be one of the good ones. Money won’t corrupt you like it has them. Bullshit.

And what about everyone else? Not everyone can get rich. There are only so many resources on the planet and the more you have the less everyone else can have. It’s a zero sum arrangement. But, who cares about them, I got mine. Right? Congratulations, you’re well on your way to being a rich psychopath.

A monument to stupidity.

They are stupid people. That’s true. But they’re not wrong about this.

“It’s breaking me. And there’s nothing that can be done for it, unless the president does something,”

This is a huge part of our problems right now. A lot of people look to the president to fix everything. The president is powerful, but they’re not that powerful. And thank god for that. If the entire US relied on just one person to fix everything, that would be absolutely terrible, and that’s even if that person were super smart and ethical, which of course our current president is not.

The people we should be looking to, at the Federal level, are Congress. But of course we all know how ineffectual they are. Feels like they might as well not even exist, sometimes. Though, there are some real structural reasons for their ineffectiveness: the incredible influence is moneyed interests in our politics, for instance, and the fact that a representative in the House represents over 700,000 people! For comparison, each member of the Canadian parliament represents about 120,000. Even that’s high compared to a lot of European democracies. Each seat in Norway’s parliament represents about 33,000 people.

But, the people of West Virginia have another representative body they can look to: their state legislature. Each seat in West Virginia’s House of Delegates represents about 17,000 people. You don’t have much of a voice at the Federal level, but you have much, much more of a voice at the state level. The people who can best help West Virginia are West Virginians.

That could be, but the sub-heading makes me question that.

Brenda Shaffer, whoever she is, is clearly an idiot.

When a political movement believes that ignorance is strength

We’re in a timeline where Ogre from Revenge Of The Nerds has taken power over the country.

Might does NOT make right. You’re ability to beat somebody up or otherwise dominate them physically does not determine the validity of your beliefs. You can think the moon is made of cheese, and you might be able to beat into submission anyone who disagrees with you, but it won’t change the fact that the MOON ISN’T MADE OF FUCKING CHEESE!

Ignorance is NOT strength. Ignorance does NOT make you stronger, it makes you WEAKER.

I just don’t know how we get them to understand this. Somehow we have to get through to them, before they wreck everything.

Trump’s insanity is kind of like the US gun violence epidemic. Most reasonable people know it’s an extremely fucked up and unacceptable situation, but no one’s really sure what to do about it, so we’re just gonna kind of ignore it and become desensitized to it. I mean, most decent people thought Sandy Hook would be the turning point. That had to be a red line, right? Nope. Similarly, Trump threatens the existence of an entire civilization. That has to be it, right? Like, that’s gotta a red line, right? Probably not.

I hate this country so much. I just hate it. I hate my country.

Lol, yeah he’s quite the prognosticator. He also seems to be getting pretty popular, which I think is a little concerning.