Of course people are the problem. One reason I support a smaller government is because government in and of itself will always be bad and wasteful.
Absurd. Government is not a monster under the bed. If you get rid of or weaken one government, groups of people will develop other government-like power structures to compensate even if they call it something else. This type of commentary also improperly insists on treating "government" as a monolith that is all the same internally.
We don't have a deficit problem, we have a governmental waste problem. The governments goal is to serve the people, but the goal of people that run the government is to increase in size because that means more money, for their department and themselves.
Nice marketing, though our problems are not so simple.
This comment is arbitrarily amplifying the importance of the waste issue and plus, have you seen Americans? We are wasteful. HOWEVER, what you call government waste some powerful "non-government" entity calls a payday. A weak government doesn't weaken that entity, it mostly gets rid of the good things government can do. The relationship between government and it's people is highly similar to the relationship amongst the citizenry. These relationships are also symbiotic. People's habits and moral/ ethical maturity do not get better by simply joining or leaving a governing body.
We spend a hell of a lot of money on defense. The GAO audited the defense department and found $200 billion in waste. They found that less than half of the defense budget goes to non fighting areas. Not troops, not feeding the troops, not weapons. Mostly it was admins. Of course, the report was spiked. This is a recent report, not past history. Hell, look at the DMV, look at the federal education system, look at the healthcare system.
I am going to momentarily assume everything in this paragraph is perfectly accurate, including the implications at the end.
Government, when that word is used properly, is fundamentally a social structure that derives power from the collective organization of the governed. Broadly and purely speaking, when a community recognizes some wrong within its sphere of influence it activates "social mechanisms" that empower a fix or some pressure towards a fix. This empowerment can be connected to a sub-group or individual within the community. This empowerment can be mis-directed to serve a different purpose, by misusing moral/ ethical concepts or deliberately misidentifying a problem or its cause. Promoting ignorance is a common way to do this.
The US government and the people have real problems. The desire to fix them is routinely misused to attack and pressure improper targets or in improper ways. It's also very useful in hiding the real reason for an attack.
Even with the assumption of truth, this paragraph does not support the comment's conclusion. It merely tries to justify it.
I support less federal government and giving the power back to the states.
So, take power from a government and give it to... a different government (I suspect this was the purpose of the entire comment).
The governor of my state is more responsive to me than the president is. My mayor and town council is more responsive to me than the governor is. My local school board is more responsive to me than the department of education is. My police chief is more responsive to me than the Justice Department is.
Responsiveness to a specific individual is not a good basis for an assessment. Too often responsiveness to one comes at the expense of others.
Why anyone would want to involve feds is amazing.
The "feds" are involved due to their responsibilities, as it should be.
Everyone knows the intent of the two orders was to ban Muslims. I'm concerned that an order can be drafted with tricky enough language to avoid being stopped by the courts but is still clearly discriminatory.
Perhaps, I combined a sequence of thoughts and prior experience into a single statement.
1: Were the people "turned" into criminals or were they already criminals encouraged to commit more crimes?
This process seems similar to NYPD's stop & frisk in NY. Supposedly, since black & hispanics, they randomly searched TONS of minorities. The tiny percentage of the arrested can help pad minority crime statistics, so the next "crime fighting" techniques can be justified.
Why is it illogical to concoct situations that make it easier to catch criminals? Ineffective maybe, a waste of resources, maybe, but not illogical.
The point I was failing to make was that logic is absolute, therefore must be used in the correct contexts (discipline). Illogic is often used as a reason for an act when it is really a justification for an act. Lawful actions should be reasonable not based on plausible sounding justification which are usually excuses or lies.
3 It is not something only the powerful do, as our society is based on this. Our laws are written (or should be) to benefit society. I agree, it can and is subverted, but a zeal for justice is a good thing and benefits society.
Zeal when connected to justice will easily overshoot the mark. One should struggle with and for justice. Gung-ho justice is routinely intemperate.
4 The government that touches all aspects of your life assumes that people are dumb or incapable of making good decisions, and it is better to leave decisions up to the government. That is fascism.
Clearly, I did not describe this well at all. Thinking of government and the people governed as separate entities is a common and very understandable and complex error. Governments, practically speaking, routinely engage in bad behavior. The problem is not "government" it's people. If you suppress a symptom without addressing the real problem you just make things worse.
"Someone asks me to rob a stash house and i say no. The government can't make me into a criminal.
You have to be willing to commit the crime. I don't have a lot of pity for anyone willing to commit the crime even if it is a set up."
This "First Word" seems logical, but it's, at minimum, based on ignorance. This is a sort of zero tolerance thinking (ZTT) (all problems and solutions are simple).
One can't guarantee that a specific person can be turned into a criminal. However, given enough of the right power, one can turn a significant portion of ANY population into criminals.
One of the hallmarks of ZTT is that it doesn't try to fix, address or identify the cause of a problem. In every situation I have analyzed, it, instead, tries to suppress a particular symptom while gaining benefits from other symptoms. In doing so, it actually nurtures and supports the problem, if not outright creating it. This article describes another logical step. Undisciplined use of logic is an attribute of ZTT.
Whenever there is a zeal for "justice", the powerful (with the help of the foolish), will arbitrarily define only some actions as bad/ wrong/ evil/ criminal and make punishment increasingly severe. Meanwhile, other actions are proportionately minimized, some of which are far worse and make those who commit them immune to justice. Like the stories where some tyrant wants to create "law and order"... by subjugating everyone. This is actual self-righteousness, btw, the kind that undermines moral/ethical reasoning and distorts historical assessment. Real justice is a balanced ideal, involving struggle. There is no such thing as aggressive, enthusiastic or simple justice.
Let's say you join a club. The general benefit is that the club's power derived from the collective organization of it's members helps you as an individual. The club gains from you and benefits from "whole-greater-than-parts" phenomena. You also have some (small) influence over the club. "Government" or whatever name is used is similar except that it touches, by necessity, all aspects of your life. That touch is light or heavy depending on circumstance. Government can become adept at sucking benefits from individuals while providing less and less benefits to those individuals yet a lot more to others. This incident along with others is part of this visible trend.
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On the post: Research Shows ATF's Bogus Stash House Stings Target Poor Minorities, Do Almost Nothing To Slow Flow Of Drugs And Guns
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Absurd. Government is not a monster under the bed. If you get rid of or weaken one government, groups of people will develop other government-like power structures to compensate even if they call it something else. This type of commentary also improperly insists on treating "government" as a monolith that is all the same internally.
Nice marketing, though our problems are not so simple.
This comment is arbitrarily amplifying the importance of the waste issue and plus, have you seen Americans? We are wasteful. HOWEVER, what you call government waste some powerful "non-government" entity calls a payday. A weak government doesn't weaken that entity, it mostly gets rid of the good things government can do. The relationship between government and it's people is highly similar to the relationship amongst the citizenry. These relationships are also symbiotic. People's habits and moral/ ethical maturity do not get better by simply joining or leaving a governing body.
I am going to momentarily assume everything in this paragraph is perfectly accurate, including the implications at the end.
Government, when that word is used properly, is fundamentally a social structure that derives power from the collective organization of the governed. Broadly and purely speaking, when a community recognizes some wrong within its sphere of influence it activates "social mechanisms" that empower a fix or some pressure towards a fix. This empowerment can be connected to a sub-group or individual within the community. This empowerment can be mis-directed to serve a different purpose, by misusing moral/ ethical concepts or deliberately misidentifying a problem or its cause. Promoting ignorance is a common way to do this.
The US government and the people have real problems. The desire to fix them is routinely misused to attack and pressure improper targets or in improper ways. It's also very useful in hiding the real reason for an attack.
Even with the assumption of truth, this paragraph does not support the comment's conclusion. It merely tries to justify it.
So, take power from a government and give it to... a different government (I suspect this was the purpose of the entire comment).
Responsiveness to a specific individual is not a good basis for an assessment. Too often responsiveness to one comes at the expense of others.
The "feds" are involved due to their responsibilities, as it should be.
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Re: Why
On the post: Research Shows ATF's Bogus Stash House Stings Target Poor Minorities, Do Almost Nothing To Slow Flow Of Drugs And Guns
Re: Re:
Perhaps, I combined a sequence of thoughts and prior experience into a single statement.
This process seems similar to NYPD's stop & frisk in NY. Supposedly, since black & hispanics, they randomly searched TONS of minorities. The tiny percentage of the arrested can help pad minority crime statistics, so the next "crime fighting" techniques can be justified.
The point I was failing to make was that logic is absolute, therefore must be used in the correct contexts (discipline). Illogic is often used as a reason for an act when it is really a justification for an act. Lawful actions should be reasonable not based on plausible sounding justification which are usually excuses or lies.
Zeal when connected to justice will easily overshoot the mark. One should struggle with and for justice. Gung-ho justice is routinely intemperate.
Clearly, I did not describe this well at all. Thinking of government and the people governed as separate entities is a common and very understandable and complex error. Governments, practically speaking, routinely engage in bad behavior. The problem is not "government" it's people. If you suppress a symptom without addressing the real problem you just make things worse.
Thanks for the response. No more time now.
On the post: Research Shows ATF's Bogus Stash House Stings Target Poor Minorities, Do Almost Nothing To Slow Flow Of Drugs And Guns
"Someone asks me to rob a stash house and i say no. The government can't make me into a criminal.
You have to be willing to commit the crime. I don't have a lot of pity for anyone willing to commit the crime even if it is a set up."
This "First Word" seems logical, but it's, at minimum, based on ignorance. This is a sort of zero tolerance thinking (ZTT) (all problems and solutions are simple).
One can't guarantee that a specific person can be turned into a criminal. However, given enough of the right power, one can turn a significant portion of ANY population into criminals.
One of the hallmarks of ZTT is that it doesn't try to fix, address or identify the cause of a problem. In every situation I have analyzed, it, instead, tries to suppress a particular symptom while gaining benefits from other symptoms. In doing so, it actually nurtures and supports the problem, if not outright creating it. This article describes another logical step. Undisciplined use of logic is an attribute of ZTT.
Whenever there is a zeal for "justice", the powerful (with the help of the foolish), will arbitrarily define only some actions as bad/ wrong/ evil/ criminal and make punishment increasingly severe. Meanwhile, other actions are proportionately minimized, some of which are far worse and make those who commit them immune to justice. Like the stories where some tyrant wants to create "law and order"... by subjugating everyone. This is actual self-righteousness, btw, the kind that undermines moral/ethical reasoning and distorts historical assessment. Real justice is a balanced ideal, involving struggle. There is no such thing as aggressive, enthusiastic or simple justice.
Let's say you join a club. The general benefit is that the club's power derived from the collective organization of it's members helps you as an individual. The club gains from you and benefits from "whole-greater-than-parts" phenomena. You also have some (small) influence over the club. "Government" or whatever name is used is similar except that it touches, by necessity, all aspects of your life. That touch is light or heavy depending on circumstance. Government can become adept at sucking benefits from individuals while providing less and less benefits to those individuals yet a lot more to others. This incident along with others is part of this visible trend.
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