shirgall

I admit to having conversations in the FDR forum on Facebook that I wouldn't have in front of strangers, my putative "friends" list on Facebook, or even some of my family members, but I wouldn't be embarrassed by them or disavow them if confronted. What I don't invite is flame wars and concern trolling. Even so I post a bunch of stuff hear that's public, easily found, and it's trivial to figure out who I am in real life or if you know me in real life you could google what I post here. I guess this is the kind of anonymity one reasonably expects when having a conversation with someone in the Mall food court, not a secret bunker.

They feel legitimized by their paycheck. They don't check voting records or turnout reports before making an arrest.

It only legitimizes it being used on the voter who voted for the power, not those voted against it, or the non-voter. I've always maintained that taxes should only apply to those that vote for them.

To make things easier, please use the following definitions, or something similar: right: an activity upon which infringement is forbidden (usually in the context of government, but can be extended to other authorities) entitlement: a benefit earned by circumstances of social status, employment, locality, or citizenship power: the ability to perform an specific activity normally forbidden to others (again, usually in the context of government) The power to tax, the right to keep and bear arms, social security entitlements... these should make more sense now. "Right to work" is the freedom of seeking to offer labor in exchange for value, free of any entanglements from authorities in that pursuit, and the capacity to either leave or initiate a working arrangement voluntarily on all sides of the transaction). When one performs agreed work one is entitled to the offered value (the essence of contract).

Not all candidates are rapists. Not all government actions are rape. Calling them all equivalent to rape is hyperbole that obscures the real choices that people are making.

The bootable USB stick with carefully curated and managed code is the point of Tails, a Debian-based Linux distribution worth considering.

"Improving morality" is not he same as "more moral". Electing someone who will actively strive to stop immoral things has more value than electing someone who will strive to do more immoral things, no? I do not think it's immoral to vote for someone that is striving to improve government by curtailing its activities as much as possible for that person to do, and I don't think it's immoral to vote for someone that will do less immoral things than the other viable options. I admit this is the first time someone I voted for (for POTUS) won, even if that person did not win my state. So I'm still useless as a moral voter, even now. As for living morally no matter the cost, I'm talking about abstaining from voting no matter what, even when it is possible to change things (and I admit it's far more possible to change things at a local level). The people that voted for me to be a Ron Paul delegate may have had a subtle effect in my state. The people that voted for me as a libertarian in SW Portland may have had more of an effect even though I lost. You made the claim that the only moral choice is not to vote. I asked if that was therefore the only choice for a good life. I'm skeptical that it is. I offered alternatives. I'm sorry if that honest question ended up being a personal attack. It wasn't intended as one. I have some theories were some government actions can be consensual. I would vote for them. People who voted for them would not be immoral. I don't think anyone is claiming Trump is perfect. I think people are claiming voting for him was preferable to the other choices, including not voting.

I did not claim it was more moral, I claimed it was a net gain in value. Morality is bichromatic, it either is or isn't, but value is a continuum. Voting in self-defense is not mass hysteria, literally or figuratively. Unlike self-defense against immediate violence, it can be cautious and calculated, too. Is the good life for you living morally no matter what it costs? Or is it surviving? Or is it making your part of the world better than you found it?

The "immediate bloodshed" is you getting killed on the spot for resisting. Voting is like going to court. Yes, you are working within the system, but it won't get you killed, and you have a chance of reducing the moral problems in the system. Not-voting is not like not-paying your taxes. They may both be moral, but one will get you killed and one won't. You still have not proven that voting for a President is always immoral. If you vote for someone that improves the morality of the government that's a net gain.

I did address the point of contention. Repeatedly. In many threads. No choice (including abstention) solves the problem completely, so progress beats no progress, even if other distasteful aspects of the system remain. This is pretty much the same as my argument that one should never resist an arrest by the police in the street over a moral issue--one fights the arrest in court where it's less likely to end in immediate bloodshed. But one should contest the arrest in court rather than meekly accepting it and doing nothing. Using the court is not an endorsement of the court's authority and not fighting it in court will never improve a situation. There is no immediate bloodshed in voting, and there is a chance to improve the situation. There is absolutely no chance to improve the situation by not voting. No one invested in the system gives a crap about people who do not participate.

How has absolutism solved the problem here?

I've given the specifics before, but the summary that I ran for state legislature as a libertarian who actively promoted the idea of voluntarism and limited government. Voting for POTUS is not binding on anyone. The POTUS performing his (or her) job is. There is no difference between voting and not voting in this aspect. If you vote for someone that says they will raise taxes, and they do, I suppose there's an argument there. Voting for someone who says they will try to eliminate government programs and who proceeds to do so when they are in office is not "enslaving 300 million people". There is a difference in candidates. There is a difference in resulting policies. There is a material difference in how voting affects things the more local in scope the vote becomes.

And yet you didn't point out how voting for me when I ran for office was a vote for enslavement. Not all votes are votes for enslavement. In fact, if you ask everyone who votes very few votes are votes for enslavement. Still, when there's a chance of reducing harm versus no chance of reducing harm, the doctrine holds that voting to reduce harm is preferable.

No, violence in self-defense is still violence, but that doesn't make it wrong. I have not seen the self-defense argument debunked. For the sake of argument, if the self-defense is invalid, then we fall back to the doctrine of competing harms: It is permissible to do something wrong that risks or causes harm if, by doing so, greater harm is avoided.

Sneakernet lives!

And the ironic thing about that is that my job is all about working on Linux (at Microsoft!) and I cannot do my job without constantly available huge pipes to the Internet all day long...

Office and Photoshop constantly get updates for new features and fixing functionality these days. It's not like the old days where I had to walk to every desk with a floppy to do a rolling update.

Yes, but I suspect that the computers I have like this are not doing the sorts of things you probably want to do. Networking, both for computers and for people, is just so darned useful that it's usually worth the risk.

DVD and VOD expected early next year.

I specifically covered as much of this as time and lesson liability permitted when I taught Personal Protection and Judicious Use of Deadly Force.

Shoot to stop, not to kill. As for the rest, I refer you to Lind: https://www.amazon.com/Generation-Warfare-Handbook-William-Lind-ebook/dp/B017IP1JM2/

Certainly, and it doesn't help that Adam Curry, who broke out internationally before he was a MTV VJ by exposing Dutch pedophilia scandals, and has been watching these sorts of scandals like the ones in UK politics and media for a long time, doesn't think there's much real scandal to go on, Yeah, Abramovic does creepy art and hangs out with Lady Gaga, and Epstein provided underage teenage girls on his airplane and island, but the rest of it is unsubstantiated.