Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Congress woman Gabby Giifords has been shot.

I'm going to cross my fingers and hope you get a very special wee hours in the morning visit from some totally humorless men, who without fanfare, introduce you to a pair of shiny bracelets, and are dragged, kicking and screaming, to some Godforsaken underground hole somewhere. I also hope someone 'forgets' standard protocol, and you are left with only your delusions and a belt for company in the quiet of the night.

There is a line, and you have crossed it.

Laughing at a funny post--one intended to be funny--is what? An insult to your sense of humor? And insulting your sense of humor is less than loving? Is that how you're thinking?

Did you read alpinecrick's post?

Hate to dig up this toxic thread but...

Barak, ya asked my opinion.

Your assertion that all government figures are corrupt and worse than armed robber and perhaps even rapists is absurd.

Your belief is that innate human goodness or Christian values whatever would prevent people from committing abuses upon others or upon their own children

A nicely idealized world perhaps. Except that innumerable examples past and present, show that left unchecked, all sorts of perversions and violence can become the norm and yet those communities persist indefinitely.

In short, experience has shown that a rule of law, as imposed by a government, is a necessary adjunct.

No government is perfect, ours ain't bad, especially considering the alternatives.

Where it becomes more than just a difference of opinion is your lunatic assertion that anyone in government is necessarily corrupt and fundamentally evil.

IN this Tuscon case most of us see a tragedy involving an insane person inflicting horrible losses on decent people, you see a young man carrying out an act of public good.

Even more lunatic, you go on to aver that the children of politicians are themselves deficient, by genetics one presumes.

'Oh the shooter ain't a hero' you say 'because he also shot the general public, and a kid'. Leaving us with the implication that if he had just murdered or maimed the politician and the judge, then his act would have been virtuous in your eyes.

I think you would have made a very fervent Islamic radical, the logic and assumptions being very similar.

You should be jailed and the key tossed for posting words like that.

It's your cold calused heart that preaches hate. That is not of Christ, and you know it. You sir are an anti-Christ.

Sorry--I didn't know you had responded, so I didn't look here for awhile.


I don't think I said politicians are worse than rapists; I just compared the professions of politician and rapist to say that one can be morally condemned for being a politician according to the same mechanism by which one can be morally condemned for being a rapist, without reference to individual nuances. In order to qualify as either a politician or a rapist, you have to hurt people; therefore being a politician or a rapist is always bad, period.


There may be an ancap somewhere who believes in innate human goodness, but the overwhelming majority of us believe just the opposite: in innate human depravity, corruption, and wickedness.

If people were basically good, any kind of government would work swimmingly. It's the fact that people are basically evil that makes government dangerous, in that its coercive power amplifies the innate evil of those in the ruling class so that it can devastate the lives of hundreds or millions of people, rather than just a handful. Because people are basically evil, all forms of human government are also basically evil.


It'd be an interesting debate to have, and maybe we should have it at some point; but as I said before, I'm a moralist, not a utilitarian. Utilitarianism has led to some of the greatest atrocities in human history.


What experience has shown is that no entity in human history is as prolific in torture, murder, and wholesale destruction as a government. Last century, as I'm sure you've heard me say before, governments murdered between 160 and 200 million of their own innocent subjects--not criminals, not foreign soldiers, but just regular folks. I suspect that in this century, with technology advancing, unless governments soon become obsolete, the government murder toll may exceed a billion.

No private entity has ever achieved anything within orders of magnitude of those numbers; it's inconceivable that any private entity could. Keeping in mind my disavowal of utilitarianism above, it still seems clear that however bad a free society could be, it couldn't be nearly as bad as a government.


Everyone's entitled to an opinion.


Politicians hurt people. They have to, in order to be politicians. A person who doesn't hurt people can't be a politician, any more than he can be a rapist. I posted the beginnings of a list of the ways in which we know Gabbie Giffords in particular hurt people.

You're free to consider it lunatic if you like; but in my world, people who make a living by hurting other people are necessarily corrupt and fundamentally evil.


Normally I don't bother to defend myself against false accusations like this, because in most cases if people don't bother to read carefully the first time they're not going to bother to read carefully a second or third time either, and experience shows that you-show-me-where-I-said-that flame wars are almost universally unprofitable and ineffectual.

But I have the impression that you're a little smarter than the average bear, so with you I'll go this far: I never said any such thing.


What makes the child of a politician become a politician? Is it nature or nurture? If it's nature, then it'd be difficult to argue that the child wasn't just as deficient as his parent. If it's nurture, then the degradation and corruption of the child can be laid on the account of the parent. Either way, it's not pretty.


You're of course free to draw whatever implication you like; but given that I pointed out several times that I thought shooting the politicians was wrong, just not as wrong as shooting the innocents, hanging on to that implication seems a little disingenuous.


Similar in what way?

Yes it was and so was Ted Kaczynski's!

Sorry--I didn't know you had responded, so I didn't look here for awhile.


I don't think I said politicians are worse than rapists; I just compared the professions of politician and rapist to say that one can be morally condemned for being a politician according to the same mechanism by which one can be morally condemned for being a rapist, without reference to individual nuances. In order to qualify as either a politician or a rapist, you have to hurt people; therefore being a politician or a rapist is always bad, period.


There may be an ancap somewhere who believes in innate human goodness, but the overwhelming majority of us believe just the opposite: in innate human depravity, corruption, and wickedness.

If people were basically good, any kind of government would work swimmingly. It's the fact that people are basically evil that makes government dangerous, in that its coercive power amplifies the innate evil of those in the ruling class so that it can devastate the lives of hundreds or millions of people, rather than just a handful. Because people are basically evil, all forms of human government are also basically evil.


It'd be an interesting debate to have, and maybe we should have it at some point; but as I said before, I'm a moralist, not a utilitarian. Utilitarianism has led to some of the greatest atrocities in human history.


What experience has shown is that no entity in human history is as prolific in torture, murder, and wholesale destruction as a government. Last century, as I'm sure you've heard me say before, governments murdered between 160 and 200 million of their own innocent subjects--not criminals, not foreign soldiers, but just regular folks. I suspect that in this century, with technology advancing, unless governments soon become obsolete, the government murder toll may exceed a billion.

No private entity has ever achieved anything within orders of magnitude of those numbers; it's inconceivable that any private entity could. Keeping in mind my disavowal of utilitarianism above, it still seems clear that however bad a free society could be, it couldn't be nearly as bad as a government.


Everyone's entitled to an opinion.


Politicians hurt people. They have to, in order to be politicians. A person who doesn't hurt people can't be a politician, any more than he can be a rapist. I posted the beginnings of a list of the ways in which we know Gabbie Giffords in particular hurt people.

You're free to consider it lunatic if you like; but in my world, people who make a living by hurting other people are necessarily corrupt and fundamentally evil.


Normally I don't bother to defend myself against false accusations like this, because in most cases if people don't bother to read carefully the first time they're not going to bother to read carefully a second or third time either, and experience shows that you-show-me-where-I-said-that flame wars are almost universally unprofitable and ineffectual.

But I have the impression that you're a little smarter than the average bear, so with you I'll go this far: I never said any such thing.


What makes the child of a politician become a politician? Is it nature or nurture? If it's nature, then it'd be difficult to argue that the child wasn't just as deficient as his parent. If it's nurture, then the degradation and corruption of the child can be laid on the account of the parent. Either way, it's not pretty.


You're of course free to draw whatever implication you like; but given that I pointed out several times that I thought shooting the politicians was wrong, just not as wrong as shooting the innocents, hanging on to that implication seems a little disingenuous.


Similar in what way?

I thought Barak's defense was rational and well reasoned.