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Showing content with the highest reputation on 09/07/19 in all areas

  1. I don't see the difference. Some people argue that UBI is socialistic, so if I actively promote UBI, then I'm necessarily promoting socialism, even if I say that isn't my goal. You already said you don't care what the person believes in their heart, only if they are being activist. What's the line across to become a socialist activist, from a mistaken capitalist? I don't think there is any line for determining when it becomes a threat or not. There is no method to do so, unless you start calculating the probabilities of a given person from becoming a socialist revolutionary. If you start to think In probabilities, that is pre-crime in the PKD sense: things reach a violence probability threshold determined by computers or conscious robots. The reason I propose more stringent standards for citizenship is to maintain your legitimate concern (true socialists, not neoliberals), such that no one who intends to implement socialism would really manage to become a citizen and therefore attain political power. It wouldn't be criminal to be a socialist activist, and you don't need to give ideological screening tests. Citizenship can be a screening test.
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  2. The importance of "UN"-open immigration lies in the screening/vetting/checking, of what can be known about what an individual has DONE. Not what and how he ~supposedly~ thinks. A mind is the unknown, anyway prone to subterfuge and fakery by some. And anyhow, eliciting one's ideas, ethics and character is not what the govt. officials ought to be involved in. A socialist college professor? Approved. (Do your damndest, we already have plenty of your type). Someone who has a record of inciting and/or committing violence? Rejected. The concept of social/ideological engineering is anathema to a free nation. No one knows how individuals are going to turn out, often not they themselves. I've enough basic confidence in most human beings, the diversity of individuals, and in the USA's "melting pot" of ideas, cultures, (etc.) (While not quite trusting enough to sanction illegal migrants as some O'ists do).
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  3. So like, not only is this wrong, but wrong according to just about every moral theory I know of, except maybe Hobbesian absolutism (where the dictator or sovereign establishes right or wrong by its will.) Wrong according to utilitarianism, deontology, virtue ethics, liberalism, Randianism, Marxism, nationalism, whatever. And that's because most theories require that you actually have to have done something wrong, or met some probable cause standard of doing something wrong before the police can accost you. Almost every moral theory thinks that pre-crime is wrong. Moreover, if you can restrict someone for what "some dude might" do, it can't be denied that some babies being born might go on to commit crimes. All childbirthing must be restricted on those grounds. Or someone might be moving from the Bronx to Brooklyn, and this dude might have a bomb that no one can see. All movement from the Bronx to Brooklyn might be restricted on those grounds. Etc. Why is it that these arguments are so bad? It seems like every time some argument is made, and shot down, another one pops up. First it was the old "clubhouse" argument, or the US as some collectively owned entity, then it's pre-crime, next it's going to be "because foreigners don't have the same rights," or something else. We've already seen the "culture argument," the "they're going to vote wrong" argument, the welfare argument. Why do the goalposts keep shifting? Once these arguments are shown to fail, if you keep believing in them, you're being dogmatic. The Simpsons character Nelson punches Ralph. "Why are you hitting me?!" exclaims Ralph. "You're breathing my air!" answers Nelson. This "you're breathing my air" is really what the argument boils down to, and why the every shifting goalposts never seem to land on a coherent argument that doesn't beg the question. There is widespread anti-immigrant bias. Whether that bias is racism, xenophobia, or just dislike of different people, some people just have a priori decided they don't like immigrants, and they have bad arguments.
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  5. SABATON - Winged Hussars (Official Lyric Video)
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