Fundamentalist Mormons and individual rights

[Selene]

Selene, you might think that I not know how to be politically-correct polite. I do. There are contexts where pointing out someone's wrongness is pointless at best and more often than not, rude and inappropriate. I don't do it in those contexts. But I don't count an *Objectivist* forum as one of these. I figure I should speak my mind about what's what. The minute I figure I should not speak my mind here, I won't post here.

I'm sure you perceive what I do as "hostile" or "ad hominem". I can see why an Objectivist, who deems himself an adherent of individual rights, would take it as "hostile" if I call him a "statist". But if he actually is one, it's his problem, and he ought to at least know about it. I'm doing him a favor by telling him what he is and why. It's not an insult, it's an identification. If he takes it as an insult, then perhaps he should stop being a statist. I won't refrain from informing him of his status, and I reject your categorization of it as "ad hominem", as well as the appropriateness of the genuinely rude and hostile remarks directed at me.

Shayne

But Shayne I am not an "OBJECTIVIST"

:no:

Adam

[Laure]

I agree with Brant's last post. Shayne, if you think someone is an idiot/evader/statist/irrationalist/pragmatist/cultist or whatever, it is not dishonest to refrain from calling them that. What's more, ask yourself if it accomplishes anything to publicly put a label on someone. Does it encourage them to change their minds?

[sjw]

I agree with Brant's last post. Shayne, if you think someone is an idiot/evader/statist/irrationalist/pragmatist/cultist or whatever, it is not dishonest to refrain from calling them that. What's more, ask yourself if it accomplishes anything to publicly put a label on someone. Does it encourage them to change their minds?

You've missed the point. And it's not that I don't believe in refraining from calling people things. I am at this very moment, refraining from calling you something. Does that make you pleased?

Shayne

[tjohnson]

Initiation of physical force is for me. You need that for any rights' violation.

--Brant

What about emotional abuse? Why do you restrict this to physical abuse?

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Has it occurred to everybody that the topic of this thread is fundamentalist Mormons and individual rights?

We keep coming back to the garbage, some of which I hauled out, i.e., what Shayne thinks of this person or that, what other people think of Shayne, why Shayne calls people bad names, why other people call Shayne bad names.

It just doesn't end.

It always goes there.

That is neurotic. And I mean IRRATIONAL!!!

This is the very worst an Objectivist forum has to offer the reading public. The topic, the ideas and philosophy, always gets buried under this garbage. It always happens. It's irritating. I feel like opening an OL kindergarten thread.

What a load of horseshit.

Michael

[Alfonso Jones]

Has it occurred to everybody that the topic of this thread is fundamentalist Mormons and individual rights?

We keep coming back to the garbage, some of which I hauled out, i.e., what Shayne thinks of this person or that, what other people think of Shayne, why Shayne calls people bad names, why other people call Shayne bad names.

It just doesn't end.

It always goes there.

That is neurotic. And I mean IRRATIONAL!!!

This is the very worst an Objectivist forum has to offer the reading public. The topic, the ideas and philosophy, always gets buried under this garbage. It always happens. It's irritating. I feel like opening an OL kindergarten thread.

What a load of horseshit.

Michael

Michael -

That's a better spin that I would have put on it.

Alfonso

[Brant Gaede]

Brant,

It's not that I don't appreciate what you are saying. It's that GS is positively and absolutely a diehard statist. I don't see him changing his view for anything, or if he does, it will be years later after having undergone some sort of radical reformation. If I say what you said, then it's a lie. It's me pretending to mean one thing, when I really think something else, and on rational grounds. Now I don't object to that kind of lying from an irrationalist whose thoughts bear no relation to reality. But from someone who honestly tries to adhere to it, they should say what they think.

Not that there aren't times when the sort of lying you are calling for isn't appropriate. I just don't think it's appropriate here.

Shayne

It's not lying if you don't tell people you think are statists that they are statists. Did they ask you? You might as well stand on a street corner and tell one and all they are statists or damned if not saved, etc.

You are right about GS in that he won't be changing his mind about anything significant. His big problem, though, is not statism but substituting epistemology for metaphysics. But calling such a person a statist is an attempt to hound him off the premises so we can all talk to each other without the presence of any sophisticated trollism.

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

Initiation of physical force is for me. You need that for any rights' violation.

--Brant

What about emotional abuse? Why do you restrict this to physical abuse?

You can only do so much with law. Emotional abuse can't be objectified. One child, for instance, might be abused emotionally re one type of emotional assault but another not. An outside observer might not even be aware any assault/abuse is going on. This doesn't mean that a child cannot be removed from a destructive environment by an agent of the government only that a crime need not necessarily be alleged. (I hope Shayne doesn't call me a statist.) If a parent has legal custody of a ward (child) he has legal responsibilities to her. To abandon a child in the wilderness means a gross assault on her right to life. To come across such and not to help if one can is only more of the same. It's at least de facto complicity in an attempted murder might become a murder. For sure it's something not good. It's not that I can reconcile my position on this with Objectivism, it's that I won't even try.

--Brant

[Selene]

Has it occurred to everybody that the topic of this thread is fundamentalist Mormons and individual rights?

We keep coming back to the garbage, some of which I hauled out, i.e., what Shayne thinks of this person or that, what other people think of Shayne, why Shayne calls people bad names, why other people call Shayne bad names.

It just doesn't end.

It always goes there.

That is neurotic. And I mean IRRATIONAL!!!

This is the very worst an Objectivist forum has to offer the reading public. The topic, the ideas and philosophy, always gets buried under this garbage. It always happens. It's irritating. I feel like opening an OL kindergarten thread.

What a load of horseshit.

Michael

b-( >-

[sjw]

Brant, in retrospect, it's silly to talk about my allegedly bad manners while we ignore the antics of Laure, Bob_Mac, and Selene. I recognize that there may be something to talk about, in a different thread. I don't recognize that I've done anything nearly as bad as they have.

Shayne

Edited April 25, 2008 by sjw

[Selene]

Initiation of physical force is for me. You need that for any rights' violation.

--Brant

What about emotional abuse? Why do you restrict this to physical abuse?

You can only do so much with law. Emotional abuse can't be objectified. One child, for instance, might be abused emotionally re one type of emotional assault but another not. An outside observer might not even be aware any assault/abuse is going on. This doesn't mean that a child cannot be removed from a destructive environment by an agent of the government only that a crime need not necessarily be alleged. (I hope Shayne doesn't call me a statist.) If a parent has legal custody of a ward (child) he has legal responsibilities to her. To abandon a child in the wilderness means a gross assault on her right to life. To come across such and not to help if one can is only more of the same. It's at least de facto complicity in an attempted murder might become a murder. For sure it's something not good. It's not that I can reconcile my position on this with Objectivism, it's that I won't even try.

--Brant

Excellent. I agree completely. However there is a critical theory in our ++== common law. It is called malum in se which means "A wrong in itself; an act or case involving illegality from the very nature of the transaction, upon principles of natural, moral, and public law." Blacks pg. 865. Your example of the child fits. It is one of my major problems with a group like N.A.M.B.L.A.. I do not have any problem with the B.D.S.M. and D/s communities because their "protocols" self police under 18 and the other protocols are "safe, sane and consensual".

One of my questions is that this one is close at some levels, not en toto. In fact, it appears, on the surface to have produced a community wherein a very small percentage [unknown] through how many years and what total amount people, seemed to live in a relatively peaceful community.

At some very primary visceral male levels I am furious at the state, but if my runaway daughter was the 15 yr. old....

So after my : - @ long winded reply. My question is does this community fall into that wrong, in and of itself?

Adam

[Brant Gaede]

Brant, in retrospect, it's silly to talk about my allegedly bad manners while we ignore the antics of Laure, Bob_Mac, and Selene. I recognize that there may be something to talk about, in a different thread. I don't recognize that I've done anything nearly as bad as they have.

Shayne

It's not about who done whom wrong. It's about ideas. Sometimes it's just best to clear the decks and start over.

--Brant

[Laure]

All of us think it would be horrible for the government to take people's children away because of odd beliefs of the parents. Most of us think the government should take people's children away if the parents are engaging in ritual human sacrifice of their young.

Could it be that the disagreement is just due to where on the spectrum we see the FLDS as being?

Are those who are outraged at the government's heavy-handed reaction really OK with the idea of 14-year-old girls being made to "marry" 50-year-old men?

You might answer that it hasn't been proven that this is going on. But that's what they're trying to figure out. Are there any better ways of handling it than just carting off all the kids and sorting it out in front of a judge? What should they have done, dropped educational leaflets on the compound? I don't mean these questions to be rhetorical. Does anyone see a better way of handling it?

[sjw]

Could it be that the disagreement is just due to where on the spectrum we see the FLDS as being?

No. There was no due process, and they just piled everyone in the whole compound into busses regardless of any evidence that any particular person/family had done anything wrong.

Are those who are outraged at the government's heavy-handed reaction really OK with the idea of 14-year-old girls being made to "marry" 50-year-old men?

No. Are the statists here really OK with stripping children from mothers because of an unverified prank call?

You might answer that it hasn't been proven that this is going on. But that's what they're trying to figure out. Are there any better ways of handling it than just carting off all the kids and sorting it out in front of a judge? What should they have done, dropped educational leaflets on the compound? I don't mean these questions to be rhetorical. Does anyone see a better way of handling it?

It is a statist premise to believe that more and more government intrusion should be added until there is zero crime. That is tantamount to creating even more crime, but by an all-powerful state you can't protect yourself from rather than random criminals, allegedly to eliminate crime. Statists don't get that, because somewhere deep in their minds, the state functions as a kind of god for them. It is exactly analogous to the literal concept of an all-powerful God.

The question should not be "but how do you suggest we prevent all crime", it should be "what are the moral boundaries the state should not be permitted to cross?"

Shayne

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Are there any better ways of handling it than just carting off all the kids and sorting it out in front of a judge?

Laure,

I personally am OK with this so long as it is temporary.

I always sit back in wonder when complex issues receive heated either-or treatment in discussions, expecially when you are accused of supporting something absurd because you are against something equally absurd.

For instance, just because a person is opposed to young girls being forced into polygamous marriages and says so, he is accused of being an instrument of statist enslavement. Ditto for the person against brainwashing. And just because a person recognizes that a good person has suffered from cult brainwashing, so he should not be punished in the same manner as a hardened criminal but educated and deprogrammed instead, he is accused of supporting pedophilia. That also applies (in the present discussion) for those who oppose abuse of government power.

Why can't a person look at both ends, reject the false dichotomy and use the standard of reason on both? That is what Objectivism is supposed to be for.

The issue isn't force versus education in a situation like this—except it might be for those who are interested in only one or the other to the exclusion of the rest of existence. The real solution lies in using both force and education with a high degree of common sense so that the rights of all citizens, and that means men, women and children, are assured to the best extent possible.

Michael

[sjw]

For instance, just because a person is opposed to young girls being forced into polygamous marriages and says so, he is accused of being an instrument of statist enslavement.

That is absurd. You act like you're wise in taking a middle road and then just totally distort and misrepresent. No one did any such thing. And I had just barely made it clear that the argument isn't about whether 14-year-old marriages should be illegal, it's about what methods the state should be free to use to pursue criminal activity.

Incredible.

Shayne

[Laure]

Are there any better ways of handling it than just carting off all the kids and sorting it out in front of a judge?

Laure,

I personally am OK with this so long as it is temporary.

I always sit back in wonder when complex issues receive heated either-or treatment in discussions, expecially when you are accused of supporting something absurd because you are against something equally absurd.

For instance, just because a person is opposed to young girls being forced into polygamous marriages and says so, he is accused of being an instrument of statist enslavement. Ditto for the person against brainwashing. And just because a person recognizes that a good person has suffered from cult brainwashing, so he should not be punished in the same manner as a hardened criminal but educated and deprogrammed instead, he is accused of supporting pedophilia. That also applies (in the present discussion) for those who oppose abuse of government power.

Why can't a person look at both ends, reject the false dichotomy and use the standard of reason on both? That is what Objectivism is supposed to be for.

The issue isn't force versus education in a situation like this—except it might be for those who are interested in only one or the other to the exclusion of the rest of existence. The real solution lies in using both force and education with a high degree of common sense so that the rights of all citizens, and that means men, women and children, are assured to the best extent possible.

Michael

Michael, I agree.

It is a statist premise to believe that more and more government intrusion should be added until there is zero crime.

Shayne, I agree. Did you think that I said that more and more government intrusion should be added until there is zero crime? I don't think I said that anywhere.

[Laure]

For instance, just because a person is opposed to young girls being forced into polygamous marriages and says so, he is accused of being an instrument of statist enslavement.

That is absurd. You act like you're wise in taking a middle road and then just totally distort and misrepresent. No one did any such thing. And I had just barely made it clear that the argument isn't about whether 14-year-old marriages should be illegal, it's about what methods the state should be free to use to pursue criminal activity.

Incredible.

Shayne

*ahem* Shayne, here's your post where you accused William of being an instrument of statist enslavement. :logik:

William, you do not understand the first thing about the way income tax works. I am not going to explain it to you either, because you are just a cultist, a zealot who worships the State. People like you are far more dangerous than those Mormon folks your fellow cultists rounded up. You people wield the guns, indoctrinate far more children in your dangerous philosophy, don't worry a bit about due process or probable cause, and leave us sane people nowhere on Earth to even get away from you.

[Brant Gaede]

All of us think it would be horrible for the government to take people's children away because of odd beliefs of the parents. Most of us think the government should take people's children away if the parents are engaging in ritual human sacrifice of their young.

Could it be that the disagreement is just due to where on the spectrum we see the FLDS as being?

Are those who are outraged at the government's heavy-handed reaction really OK with the idea of 14-year-old girls being made to "marry" 50-year-old men?

You might answer that it hasn't been proven that this is going on. But that's what they're trying to figure out. Are there any better ways of handling it than just carting off all the kids and sorting it out in front of a judge? What should they have done, dropped educational leaflets on the compound? I don't mean these questions to be rhetorical. Does anyone see a better way of handling it?

I'm not sure there was an "it" to be handled. It's government warfare against a cult. How does DNA testing find the girl and man? We also have government warfare against drugs and drug users. People who don't file their tax returns. People who want to practice a profession without a government license. Etc.

This cult, of course, is pretty stupid. The government has only one head to cut off.

--Brant

[sjw]

Shayne, I agree. Did you think that I said that more and more government intrusion should be added until there is zero crime? I don't think I said that anywhere.

The question you asked presumed "there oughta be a law to prevent this". No law should violate due process. Involuntary search and seizure should be based on probable cause--there was none. No law should treat a group of people like a herd of cattle, ignoring whether or not certain individuals might have done something wrong and targeting them if there is evidence that they did but leaving the others free.

This issue is not complex at all, it is black and white simple: All citizens have the right of due process. There's no gray area where they don't.

Shayne

[sjw]

For instance, just because a person is opposed to young girls being forced into polygamous marriages and says so, he is accused of being an instrument of statist enslavement.

That is absurd. You act like you're wise in taking a middle road and then just totally distort and misrepresent. No one did any such thing. And I had just barely made it clear that the argument isn't about whether 14-year-old marriages should be illegal, it's about what methods the state should be free to use to pursue criminal activity.

Incredible.

Shayne

*ahem* Shayne, here's your post where you accused William of being an instrument of statist enslavement. :logik:

William, you do not understand the first thing about the way income tax works. I am not going to explain it to you either, because you are just a cultist, a zealot who worships the State. People like you are far more dangerous than those Mormon folks your fellow cultists rounded up. You people wield the guns, indoctrinate far more children in your dangerous philosophy, don't worry a bit about due process or probable cause, and leave us sane people nowhere on Earth to even get away from you.

See, now this is why I say things that piss people off. Because the only thing that should be said in response to this is uncivil. Laure has just totally, grossly, egregiously misrepresented me. Willfully? Don't know. Does it matter? Not really. There's nothing to say in response to the above except an insult.

Shayne

[Brant Gaede]

For instance, just because a person is opposed to young girls being forced into polygamous marriages and says so, he is accused of being an instrument of statist enslavement.

That is absurd. You act like you're wise in taking a middle road and then just totally distort and misrepresent. No one did any such thing. And I had just barely made it clear that the argument isn't about whether 14-year-old marriages should be illegal, it's about what methods the state should be free to use to pursue criminal activity.

Incredible.

Shayne

*ahem* Shayne, here's your post where you accused William of being an instrument of statist enslavement. :logik:

William, you do not understand the first thing about the way income tax works. I am not going to explain it to you either, because you are just a cultist, a zealot who worships the State. People like you are far more dangerous than those Mormon folks your fellow cultists rounded up. You people wield the guns, indoctrinate far more children in your dangerous philosophy, don't worry a bit about due process or probable cause, and leave us sane people nowhere on Earth to even get away from you.

See, now this is why I say things that piss people off. Because the only thing that should be said in response to this is uncivil. Laure has just totally, grossly, egregiously misrepresented me. Willfully? Don't know. Does it matter? Not really. There's nothing to say in response to the above except an insult.

Or what you just said? Plus a little more flesh out?

--Brant

[sjw]

Or what you just said? Plus a little more flesh out?

It was already too much flesh out. Anyone who reads the actual words is going to see the ridiculous distortions, the clear failure of due diligence.

I for the life of me do not understand why people do as Laure (and Michael) just did. It pisses me off that I have to waste my time reading it and responding to it. It's total BS.

Shayne

[sjw]

EDIT BY ADMINISTRATOR: Deleted.

[Laure]

... Laure has just totally, grossly, egregiously misrepresented me....

Huh? How so?