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Reblogged:DeSantis's Crime-Family 'Values'

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Ron DeSantis is proving to be such a lunatic that I might need to rename my blog, given that hardly a day goes by without his outdoing himself to appeal to the Trump base in the worst possible manner.

And lots of conservatives are lapping it up...

Today, we have Ed Morrissey of Hot Air approvingly reporting that the governor has openly speculated that Florida should perhaps build a prison next to Disney:
prison_sign.jpg
Image by Scazon, via Wikimedia Commons, license.
... DeSantis tossed some chin music at Disney by suggesting some novel uses for state lands in the district. How about a competing amusement park, or maybe even some badly needed added capacity for the state penal system?

A prison next to Disney World? That would be a case of cutting off one's nose to spite one's face if DeSantis took that suggestion seriously. That's more of a nice business ya got there, shame if something happened to it response. [Conservatives used to talk a good game about law and order. Didn't they? --ed]

However, DeSantis is likely a lot more serious about re-assessing the property value of the Reedy Creek district and Disney's land within it. DeSantis noted that the agreement that Disney created to evade the earlier legislative action would have allowed Disney to assess its own property value. That's absurd, DeSantis argued, noting that Disney would be the only corporation or individual property owner in Florida with that ability. [Bye-bye low taxes? --ed]

"The larger issue," DeSantis declared, "is ultimately who governs in a republic. And I think it's we the people under the Constitution," DeSantis concluded. "I think that's the only answer." [How, exectly, is Disney "ruling" us here? --ed]
No. The larger issue, of which DeSantis seem oblivious, is What is a government for?

News Flash: To deliver crime-boss-like threats -- idle or not -- to a private company is not in any way part of the answer.

As an added bonus, DeSantis displays both his contempt for the type of voter he panders to and an alarming myopia when it comes to fighting the left in that another of his threats was to subject such things as the park's monorail system to external inspections.

That's right: He threatened the park with both safety inspections and with something that would make the park much less safe, namely having a prison -- with its potential escapees -- nearby.

First off, the fact that Disney's monorail has a long record of safety shows that such inspections are superfluous to their traditional rationale, safety. On top of that, his threat shows that the governor is so blinded by -- rage? power-lust? -- that he fails to see the irony of grandstanding to "protect" families and children from "woke" while finishing the job of turning our government from our protector against criminals into the most powerful of many criminal enterprises.

Read the whole thing to get a bead on how degenerate the conservatives have gotten lately.

-- CAV

P.S. Some good news: DeSantis has lost the support of a prominent mega-donor over his abortion and book bans.

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Disney exercised political pull and corrupted Florida's politicians in the sixties in order to obtain special status and its own government. This was crony-statism as its worst. DeSantis is to be commended for his efforts at reversing this Cuffy Meigs abomination.

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21 hours ago, Jon Letendre said:

Disney exercised political pull and corrupted Florida's politicians in the sixties in order to obtain special status and its own government. . . .

So extend lower taxes to everyone. I've never visited such a place, but many have reported it runs well and underscore the cleanliness of its streets.

21 hours ago, Jon Letendre said:

. . . DeSantis is to be commended for his efforts at reversing this Cuffy Meigs abomination.

Continuation of the regulation and staffing the regulating committee with your political cronies is not genuine reversal.

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21 hours ago, Jon Letendre said:

Keeping books out of elementary schools which are not allowed to be read aloud into evidence at school board meetings for being too sexually explicit is not "book bans." . . .

too sexually explicit or honest about history and presence of racism in America 

Meanwhile, near Lebanon: 

“Take me with you, and we will run together;

bring me into your chamber, O king.

 

“Like an apricot-tree among the trees of wood,

so is my beloved among boys.

 

“I was faint with love.

His left arm was under my head, his right arm was round me.

 

“When my beloved slipped his hand through the latch-hole,

my bowels stirred within me.

“The liquid myrrh from my fingers ran over the knobs of the bolt.

 

“His legs are pillars of marble . . . .”

 

“How beautiful, how entrancing you are, my loved one, daughter of delights!

You are stately as a palm-tree, and your breasts are the clusters of dates.

. . . your whispers like spiced wine flowing smoothly to welcome my caresses,

gliding down through lips and teeth.”

 

—Glad tidings in print from God

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4 hours ago, Boydstun said:

So extend lower taxes to everyone. I've never visited such a place, but many have reported it runs well and underscore the cleanliness of its streets.

Continuation of the regulation and staffing the regulating committee with your political cronies is not genuine reversal.

And every corporation gets its own government, too?

I have never tried to dismantle a deeply entrenched corporate entity of political pull and special privilege. I imagine a variety of unorthodox tactics are required. I will support use of all of them.

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1 hour ago, Jon Letendre said:

too sexually explicit.

Do you know, Jon, if explicit was saying what sex means physically? My older brother was the one who informed me about the way things really are. He let me know there was no Santa Claus. It was several years later—maybe I was 10—when he let me know what the grownups were secretly doing. And all of them were doing it. At first I was incredulous, then shocked and appalled.

The grandson in our family is now 21. He loved to be read stories when a small child. I'm confident none of us read him stories about sex. Likewise at school or Sunday School. Except for that bit about the Virgin Mary. If any children pressed the adults about the meaning of virgin, I'd suspect some folk knowledge had already been passed down to a new generation of Americans. I know eventually the grandson got things figured out because he sometimes wears a T-shirt labeling himself as "God's gift to woman." 

When I was in high school, it was not easy to find out what was meant by the word homosexual. You could look it up in the dictionary or encyclopedia and take it in as something simply psychological. That there was something physical about it never occurred to me. My older brother never apprised me on the topic. I didn't find out until a couple of years into college, when my best friend, who adored me, let me know he wanted my body. I don't think there is really a need for children to know about sexual things from the older set. It all worked out fine.

Higher Education

Edited by Boydstun
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“I’m going to read a passage of a book that’s floating around in your schools that has been banned from many other schools,” said Jacob Engels, the speaker who was removed, according to Orange Observer. “As a member of the LGBT community, the fact that this is floating around for children as young as ninth grade is concerning.”

Engels read a scene from the book that described sexual acts using strap-on devices before Jacobs interjected.

“Sir,” she said. “Mr. Engels, you’re out of order. . . . Remove him from the chambers.”

https://districtadministration.com/speaker-kicked-out-of-florida-school-board-meeting-for-reading-from-sexually-explicit-school-library-book/

 

Got that?

Grounds for removal from a public meeting, and conveniently, keeping it out of evidence and public debate.

But perfectly fine for kids.

Edited by Jon Letendre
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"During the November 16, 2021, regular school board meeting, Kara Floyd, Chair of Moms for Liberty-Hernando Chapter, addressed the board with concerns over inappropriate content contained in books on the shelves of our school libraries. Floyd read a passage from a book, but the passage she read aloud was redacted for “language and content” from the school board’s streaming video meeting. 

"Later in the meeting, Wendy Porter of Spring Hill also read from “Looking for Alaska,” a book found at Fox Chapel Middle School that Chairman Gus Guadagnino later called “quite shocking.” Superintendent John Stratton’s final words on the matter were that the material was “alarming.” 

"Floyd mentioned two books by Alex Gino, and “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” (2007) by Sherman Alexie. According to her website, Gino is an “Award-winning author of queer and progressive middle-grade fiction.” Alexie’s book won a National Book Award for Young People’s Literature. 

"Floyd stated that Alexie’s book is currently on the shelf at Spring Hill Elementary, though at the conclusion of their comments, School District Attorney Dennis Alfonso stated that all of the books in question have been removed from shelves in each school’s library. 

"However, a search of Spring Hill Elementary’s library catalog shows that “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” is available as of Nov. 27, 2021."
 
 
 
This has been going on for years. They say don't worry, they've been removed, then they put them back. They deny. They lie. They redact board meeting notes and videos. They chalk it all up to prudish christian minorities hellbent on "book bans."
 
The inevitable backlash is going to be understandably brutal.
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The books I've noticed removed and then put back were about Roberto Clemente and about Hank Aaron. In the end, the authorities decided it was OK if youth learned about the racial discrimination in those days. That's a good put-back.

Ninth-graders reading of strap-on dildos—what on earth is wrong with that? I heard nowadays they've even legally prohibited high schoolers in some places from having sexual relations with each other. The State should butt out. 

PS – The mother of their Lord and Savior was about 14. That's about Eighth grade.

Edited by Boydstun
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What on earth is a broad qualifier , while I think children in ninth grade could be intellectually mature enough to handle exposure to descriptions of sexual hedonism  and even perversions as thy occur in culture in a more abstract presentation , I do wonder about those who produce fiction to facilitate the exposure.

 

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6 hours ago, Jon Letendre said:

They chalk it all up to prudish christian minorities hellbent on "book bans."

Such people do exist, and the Republican party does pander to them. I grew up with such people.

Don't make the mistake of thinking that religious fundamentalism isn't real or that it's a fringe thing. It's real.

Both political parties have "fundamentalists," and each party's fundamentalists say that freedom leads to the other political party's fundamentalism, and therefore should be blocked. Fundamentalists can't understand why a government should allow someone to make a "wrong" choice; they understand only dictatorship, and the way they see it, it's either their dictatorship, or someone else's, and they'd rather it be theirs.

Both kinds of fundamentalists want to ban "sins," whether they be abortions or gas stoves.

Even Ayn Rand observed that the two political parties only grant freedom in areas they don't care about. But when they realize that everything is interconnected, they reject freedom.

1 hour ago, tadmjones said:

I do wonder about those who produce fiction to facilitate the exposure.

That's like saying that the purpose of ARI's essay contest for The Fountainhead is to facilitate the exposure of high school students to the "rape scene."

There's a lot more in The Fountainhead than that, but for religious people, if they see one thing they object to, nothing else in the work exists. (And, yes, there are plenty of religious people who don't want their kids exposed to The Fountainhead, even if those kids are 16 or 17... or 18...)

Edited by necrovore
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1 hour ago, necrovore said:

Don't make the mistake of thinking that religious fundamentalism isn't real or that it's a fringe thing. It's real.

I don't make that mistake, of course it's real. And non-religious-based objections to the left's agenda of corrupting children at younger and younger ages is also real. People from all walks of life and all ideological persuasions are noticing it and objecting to it.

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7 hours ago, Jon Letendre said:

And non-religious-based objections to the left's agenda of corrupting children at younger and younger ages is also real. People from all walks of life and all ideological persuasions are noticing it and objecting to it.

There's a difference between whether you're talking about five-year-olds or sixteen-year-olds. The younger kids are more easily fooled because they have less experience and less conceptual knowledge.

But there's also a difference between mere speech and coercion (including fraud). The whole public school system is based around coercing the child -- compulsory attendance, compulsory learning. That's why it can do a lot of harm. (It seems to be based on the false notion that a child would never want to learn anything voluntarily.)

I don't think a child can be objectively harmed by mere speech, and if they are misled without any coercion, it's because the parents are negligent -- not in the sense of "failing to ban those horrible books from their kids" but in the sense of "not warning their kids about the bullshit out there and giving them tools to detect it and avoid falling for it." Even young kids can be given bullshit-detection tools that work at their level of understanding.

I don't remember if it was Bosch Fawstin or someone else, but someone once analyzed the reason why "moderate Muslims" can't really object to terrorism. They can't, because their principles really do lead to justification of terrorism. They just don't want to admit it, and they want to have it both ways. I think the same thing is why "moderate Christians" can't really object to censorship. The mainstream Christians won't be as vociferous about it as the fundamentalists; they'll say censorship is only justified in "egregious" cases, but then the bar for "egregious" has a way of gradually dropping lower and lower -- and it has.

Kids are pretty resilient if they are taught how to tell truth from bullshit. But that's precisely what Christians cannot teach, because it would implicate Christianity. Christians end up teaching only the argument from authority, which is open to having their authority usurped, which is the deep reason why they are afraid of all this.

I also think the left is provoking the Christians on purpose -- forcing them to come out of the woodwork and making the Republican party less attractive as an alternative to the Democrats. If the Republicans fall for it, as they seem to be doing, they will lose many independent voters.

Edited by necrovore
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8 hours ago, necrovore said:

 

That's like saying that the purpose of ARI's essay contest for The Fountainhead is to facilitate the exposure of high school students to the "rape scene."

There's a lot more in The Fountainhead than that, but for religious people, if they see one thing they object to, nothing else in the work exists. (And, yes, there are plenty of religious people who don't want their kids exposed to The Fountainhead, even if those kids are 16 or 17... or 18...)

Rape ? I always thought the scene describes masculine desire and feminine acquiescence , illustrating the physicality of how sometimes those desires are acted upon. Surely the broken marble needed to be replaced. :)

An essay contest is an actual invitation to an abstract discussion on the subject to children capable of 'handling' the matter in conceptual form. Which is quite different from individuals creating works of illustrated fiction intended for consumption by children that depict actions based in the 'pure' physical realm related to genital stimulation to achieve orgasm.

Officials who have accepted the responsibility to be able to distinguish the differences  among age groups and  comprehension levels , that equate discussions of literary import and child pornography need to be removed from the system, along with any such porn.  

 

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4 hours ago, necrovore said:

There's a difference between whether you're talking about five-year-olds or sixteen-year-olds. The younger kids are more easily fooled because they have less experience and less conceptual knowledge.

Sure. That ninth grade example was just one example of material (conveniently for decpetive school boards) kept out of the record of board meetings.

The earlier example I posted:

 “Every one of the kids in this book partakes in taking drugs, drinking alcohol, buying liquor with a fake ID, watching porn, having sex, and bullying other kids." The audiobook is available at Spring Hill Elementary library.

Oodles of examples like this exist around the country for anyone willing to research it a bit. But not if you close your eyes and chalk it all up to paranoid and pushy Christians.

4 hours ago, necrovore said:

I don't think a child can be objectively harmed by mere speech, and if they are misled without any coercion, it's because the parents are negligent -- not in the sense of "failing to ban those horrible books from their kids" but in the sense of "not warning their kids about the bullshit out there and giving them tools to detect it and avoid falling for it." Even young kids can be given bullshit-detection tools that work at their level of understanding.

By this logic there is no problem with public schools indoctrinating kids with marxist ideology, or anything else whatsoever, starting at any age -- and trying to stop it is misguided since parents can simply "give them tools."

If it is reasonable to say that nothing being taught at school is a problem since parents can give their kids tools, then is it also reasonable to say that the absence of any book from their school is no problem since parents can go on Amazon or to a municipal library?

Edited by Jon Letendre
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The shame is that while we argue about the appropriate age for schools to introduce kids to strap-ons and while we lament about books on systemic racism being taken away along with the strap-on instructionals, "half of U.S. adults can’t read a book written at the 8th-grade level." https://www.wyliecomm.com/2021/08/whats-the-latest-u-s-literacy-rate/

Schools should be about educational basics. Parents who can't fathom their kids not knowing about strap-ons can give their kids books about strap-ons. Parents who can't fathom their kids not knowing that the world is stacked against them can give their kids books that teach them the world is stacked against them. Maybe if all of that were banned in schools and there was nothing left but real education, then the kids might turn out able to read at all.

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There is a really long list of things that should be different in the world, and it is easy to evaluate a fact and see if it contradicts some rational moral principle. The problem is that tossing all moral knowledge into a single stew pot only ends up give you a knowledge of what should not. While we can presumably agree that the government should not tax, the government should not prohibit the expression of a political viewpoint, and children should not watch pornography, these are not unranked judgments (unless you adhere an absolutist stewpot theory of knowledge). How should we rank these three conclusions, and of course, from what does that ranking flow? All three are bad from the perspective of “man’s existence qua man”, but can we divide these concrete judgments and say that two are more important and one is less important?

Objectivism does actually speak of a hierarchy of values, the question that I ask is, what is the stance of Objectivism or of Objectivists on hierarchical knowledge in general, which would include ranking of moral principles. In the context of the Florida discussion, the various parties all have some moral flaw, doing something that they should not do. There should not be taxes, but there are!. Given that taxes are a fact, what then should we conclude about the use of those revenues for a “public purpose”? Of course, the immediate Objectivist answer is that that confiscated wealth should be immediately returned to their proper owners, but that ain’t gonna happen!. Since it is a fact that the government will redistribute wealth in some fashion, what is the morally least repugnant redistribution scheme? And, of course, what hierarchy of moral knowledge leads to that conclusion?

In light of the unquestionably immoral character of taxation, also the immoral character of pornography, there can be such a thing as a “moral relative absolutist” – identify some point in a hierarchy of values, and deem that immorality greater than that point is not to be tolerated. That would sort the moral conclusions so that taxation and governmental viewpoint suppression are not to be tolerated, and pornography is bad but permissible. In fact, since moral knowledge is not some kind of mystical Platonic form that exists independent of human cognition, we can even apply inductive methods to elementary observations of existence, such as that taxation is really bad and speech-suppression is really bad, and that pornography is not good, to induce principles and to discover the hierarchy of values that causes these specific facts.

So the question that I pose is, what is the hierarchy of values that leads to these conclusions? Given such a hierarchy of values, is there an identifiable point in the hierarchy where Objectivists should simply refuse to engage in discussion? Clear case, albeit not actually relevant to any contemporary political issue: a debate over which method of execution by torture should be used to suppress political opposition. Less clear case: which is worse, sales tax or income tax?

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1 hour ago, DavidOdden said:

There should not be taxes, but there are!. Given that taxes are a fact, what then should we conclude about the use of those revenues for a “public purpose”? Of course, the immediate Objectivist answer is that that confiscated wealth should be immediately returned to their proper owners, but that ain’t gonna happen!. Since it is a fact that the government will redistribute wealth in some fashion, what is the morally least repugnant redistribution scheme? And, of course, what hierarchy of moral knowledge leads to that conclusion?

Good point! The one I see most often is the issue of open immigration, disagreed to by Peikoff vs. Yaron. There seem to be two contexts that have to be put forth in discussion. 

1. Provided that corruption (evil) exists (or will exist), what is an improvement?

vs.

2. A world without corruption would be like X

#2 is the clear and easier case, but it has to be identified as "I am speaking in terms of a world without evil".

The one "hierarchical" issue I was very puzzled by was Ayn Rand saying "Don't vote for Reagan". 

 

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It needn’t be the most important, it simply needs to be “relatively important”. We have to identify an alternative. I can only conjecture as to an answer, but my first-pass guess relates to “living death” versus “Carter economics”, and, to quote a comment from Binswanger @ OCON 2016 about Hillary Clinton and the prospects for increased taxes – “What else is new?”. Reagan and Trump both appeared to offer something new and horrible, though the potential threat of a conservative abortion-opponent in 1980 did not materialize. There is a general principle to be derived here, that a candidate who threatens with a novel approach to rights-violation is more dangerous, and more in need of opposition, than a candidate who presents the same old program of rights-violation.

Without an actual argument showing why one should not vote for Reagan, we’d just be swinging at air trying to invent a line of logic and then discern two moral principles that yield different conclusions, where the proper hierarchy has “don’t vote for Reagan” as the moral conclusion. Reagan at least seemed more opposed to abortion (though he did sign the California law legalizing abortion). Carter’s economics and foreign policies were definitely worse compared to Reagan’s. Rand must have concluded that “living death” is a substantially worse (and realistic) outcome. I don’t disagree with that conclusion, except perhaps the question of likelihood. A related extremely valid concern is the threat of the religious right seizing political power, that is to say, the institution of a rigid doctrine of force and faith over a society of reason.

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