The mouth breathing youtube media uh stars own crappy thread

[Burgey]

Following on from esteemed poster spikey's eloquent views expressed as follows in the American Politics Thread:

i swear to god if you mother****ers are gonna pass up THE MOOCH and go back to talking about dumb youtube debaters or whatever

I just wanna laugh at the dumb **** that happens and read articles regarding news and policy and ****, the mouth breathing youtube media uh stars belong in their own crappy thread

and this fine rejoinder from esteemed (in as much as a Right Winger can ever be esteemed) poster Ausage:

Sorry, I refuse to consume information if it's not in my preferred medium of delivery. The embedded youtube video.

and endorsement from profound and reasonable moderator Spark:

yeah i do kind of wish that stuff would go in its own thread sometimes tbh

here is a thread where people can embed their YouTube videos to their hearts' (assuming any Libertarian/ Tory/ Right Winger in general has one) desire.

Thank me later.

 

[GIMH]

No video in the OP, wtf

 

[Burgey]

I've built it. The videos will come.

 

[Ausage]

Leftist in attempting to control communication shocker.

 

[Burgey]

Good from Ausage here. He's in better form than his beloved Panthers atm.

 

[Ausage]

Good from Ausage here. He's in better form than his beloved Panthers atm.

I identify as a fan for whom the first 9.5 rounds of the season didn't happen.

 

[straw man]

I know this is playing into the silliness whereby wannabe-public-intellectuals get talked about in much greater quantity than their pronouncements deserve, but after all that discussion in the American Politics thread here are some quotes from right wing poster boy Ben Shapiro. This thread seems the appropriate place for it.

While I don't doubt that he is more earnest and vastly less cynical than nearly all of his peers, his arguments are a mix of the extremely self-serving generalisations 'Leftists do ....', he is all in on the magic of the free market and that money is virtue (and the inverse), a massive amount of casting his side as the victims, and there's a lot of religious certainty that on second thoughts I probably should have expected. Here are some of the ones that I think are the most deeply wrong, or are particularly illuminating.

Socialism violates at least three of the Ten Commandments: It turns government into God, it legalizes thievery and it elevates covetousness. Discussions of income inequality, after all, aren't about prosperity but about petty spite. Why should you care how much money I make, so long as you are happy?

The greatest obstacle to the welfare state is not greed but private charity that makes the welfare state irrelevant; the greatest obstacle to re-education of children in the name of the collective is allegiance to a higher power. More than that, the greatest obstacle to the state as god is an actual God above the state.

Selective Biblical quotation is a favorite of leftists who interpret the Bible the same way they do the Constitution: as a Chinese menu designed to allow picking and choosing. That's because when many Democrats take the Bible as a whole, they realize how much they despise it.

Matt Damon's anti-fracking diatribe was funded by the royal family of the United Arab Emirates.

The greatest bulwark against an overreaching government, as tyrants know, is a religious population. That is because religious people form communities of interest adverse to government control of their lives; religious communities rely on their families and each other rather than an overarching government utilizing force.

When we say 'less fortunate,' we generally mean the poor rather than the disabled, who actually are less fortunate. In truth, the poor are generally 'less fortunate' only in terms of genetics. They are certainly not less fortunate in the amount of help they receive.

Same-*** marriage is not the final nail in the coffin for traditional marriage. It is just another road sign toward the substitution of government for God. Every moral discussion now pits the wisest moral arbiters among us - the Supreme Court, President Obama - against traditional religion.

When people are desperate or wealthy, they turn to socialism; only when they have no other alternative do they embrace the free market. After all, lies about guaranteed security are far more seductive than lectures about personal responsibility.

The Obamacare contraception mandate was never about freedom. It was always about pitting secularism against religion, and using the power of government to sponsor secularism.

Feel free to be less sucked-in than me and not respond to this .

 

[Ausage]

I agree with probably 2/3s of that, the government into god theme in particular. I probably wouldn't class it as a disaster of the same scale as Shapiro would, but I'm not of the opinion that the puritanical left is any better than the religious right. In fact I'd say it's a lot more dangerous in a lot of respects.

FTR Shapiro has on plenty of occasions made the distinction between a liberal and a leftist. When he says leftist he's talking about the hard left & SJWs.

 

[Burgey]

Is he a God Botherer as well as a #freedom warrior?

 

[Anil]

looks like he is clearly a god botherer..., have heard these kinds of rubbish arguments about religion having a monopoly on morality...this guy is the leading light of the conservative intellectual movement?!

 

[Burgey]

I just had a little mouth vommie reading the first paragraph of that article.

 

[Ausage]

I just had a little mouth vommie reading the first paragraph of that article.

For this?

If you walk around Washington, D.C., on a regular basis, youre likely to see some rather peculiar posters. But you wont see any more peculiar than the ads put out by the American Humanist Association. Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness sake, say the signs, in Christmas-colored red and green.

You might need to grab a somac.

Look the title is inflammatory, but the main thrust of the article is saying that there's no inherent morality built into our biology and that society needs some sort of moral framework to function. Good for goodness sake is a meaningless term. Throw in the case that our consciousness is more than a set of chemicals reacting to stimuli and that's basically the article. There's no conflation of religion and politics, there's no demonisation of individual atheists (he expressly atheism is fine for individuals). Why that would get anyone worked up is beyond me.

I think it's stupid that so many in the US think that an atheist politician is not able to be trusted, it's equally stupid to think the same about a religious person.

 

[Ausage]

Fine. I'll post the first youtube video

Interesting debate. Prager is a bit too dominant for my tastes but both of them get some decent points in.

The nature of reality is far from settled, not even close. A little less fundamentalism from the anti religious would go a long way.

 

[straw man]

I agree with probably 2/3s of that, the government into god theme in particular.

I completely disagree with it, or more accurately think it's a null or not applicable argument - there's nothing to grasp onto there because the things he's pulling together are unrelated. Is Government religion. Umm no. Next question.

I mean come on:

More than that, the greatest obstacle to the state as god is an actual God above the state.

'an actual God', oh yeah, that one up there in the clouds that we can all see and speaks unequivocally to all of us. Oh no, since that doesn't exist, I assume he means his particular God, not other peoples', and unsurprisingly that God holds the same morality that he does. Fancy that. And that should sit above the state which I would interpret as meaning he thinks his God's morality gets written into the law. It could mean he just thinks individuals can feel their God is a higher morality than the government, which is of course fine, however I don't think that's what he means and that he's launching a more a general attack on the idea that Church should keep its dirty mitts off of State.

This can be seen with the same *** marriage thing. Suddenly the #freedom thing is out the window, but he convinces himself this is ok with a common trick. Instead of representing the argument as it is, which is that religious conservatives, via the government, are the ones reaching into peoples' lives and #freedoms to legally prevent them doing something they want to do (and doesn't hurt anyone else), he instead tries to convince us that those wanting to open up the definition of marriage i.e. remove restrictions are the ones pushing into lives and making moral judgements. This is not much more than a straight up lie. In the case of gay marriage the Supreme Court and Obama are precisely the ones not making moral judgement. That's the whole point. Meanwhile he wants to continue to get the government to impose his morality on people because God.

Same-*** marriage is not the final nail in the coffin for traditional marriage. It is just another road sign toward the substitution of government for God. Every moral discussion now pits the wisest moral arbiters among us - the Supreme Court, President Obama - against traditional religion.

 

[Burgey]

I think this^ is straw man's best ever post tbh

 

[straw man]

Thanks

now give me a Like dammit

 

[Prince EWS]

 

[Ausage]

I completely disagree with it, or more accurately think it's a null or not applicable argument - there's nothing to grasp onto there because the things he's pulling together are unrelated. Is Government religion. Umm no. Next question.

I mean come on:

'an actual God', oh yeah, that one up there in the clouds that we can all see and speaks unequivocally to all of us. Oh no, since that doesn't exist, I assume he means his particular God, not other peoples', and unsurprisingly that God holds the same morality that he does. Fancy that. And that should sit above the state which I would interpret as meaning he thinks his God's morality gets written into the law. It could mean he just thinks individuals can feel their God is a higher morality than the government, which is of course fine, however I don't think that's what he means and that he's launching a more a general attack on the idea that Church should keep its dirty mitts off of State.

This can be seen with the same *** marriage thing. Suddenly the #freedom thing is out the window, but he convinces himself this is ok with a common trick. Instead of representing the argument as it is, which is that religious conservatives, via the government, are the ones reaching into peoples' lives and #freedoms to legally prevent them doing something they want to do (and doesn't hurt anyone else), he instead tries to convince us that those wanting to open up the definition of marriage i.e. remove restrictions are the ones pushing into lives and making moral judgements. This is not much more than a straight up lie. In the case of gay marriage the Supreme Court and Obama are precisely the ones not making moral judgement. That's the whole point. Meanwhile he wants to continue to get the government to impose his morality on people because God.

That first quote is part of the 1/3 I don't agree with ftr.

The god/government thing depends on how you've constructed god. If you're looking at god as the literal, white bearded spiritual being who sent his son to be crucified a couple of thousand years ago then there's very little resemblance. If you're looking at god as the moral arbiter of society, the monolith that bestows providence alongside human free will, the defender of the weak and smiter of the unjust then it's extremely similar. Having to explain to people that there's a difference between legality and morality is a good example of the phenomenon. To the question of whether I'd prefer a government or a god to be these things, I'd answer neither.

The same *** marriage is actually a perfect example. Shapiro has stated many times that the same *** marriage issue for him is that religious institutions shouldn't be forced to marry gay couples if they chose not to. I completely agree with him. People should also be free to tell those institutions where they can shove it if they're of the view that they're irrelevant fossils. I'd love the for conversation to be about why the government is in ANY way involved in telling adults who they can or can not make a life commitment to. That's not a point of view I've heard expressed (almost) anywhere. We implicitly accept that the government has the right to tell people who they can marry as much as they can tell priests who they'll accept at the altar. Obama and the SC are making a moral judgement (homosexuality is ok), it's just the side that you agree with. So what you get is a debate framed by both sides as a pseudo referendum on whether homosexuality is ok. It becomes less a question of why government should be involved in the most intensely personal parts of our lives and more a question of our collective moral conscience. Again, God = Government.

"Representing the argument as it really is" is frankly a really dangerous reduction of what is an extremely complex issue. You're projecting your own prejudice on to the argument (ie. the only reason to oppose SSM is if you're a fundamentalist idiot) to dismiss a much more complex point (the government shouldn't be involved in dictating religious practice).

Lastly I think you're wrong about him wanting the morality of his God written into law (to the extent that it's not already). He didn't mention politics in that article and I can recall very little (if any) conflation of church and state in his speeches.

 

[Spark]

That first quote is part of the 1/3 I don't agree with ftr.

The god/government thing depends on how you've constructed god. If you're looking at god as the literal, white bearded spiritual being who sent his son to be crucified a couple of thousand years ago then there's very little resemblance. If you're looking at god as the moral arbiter of society, the monolith that bestows providence alongside human free will, the defender of the weak and smiter of the unjust then it's extremely similar. Having to explain to people that there's a difference between legality and morality is a good example of the phenomenon. To the question of whether I'd prefer a government or a god to be these things, I'd answer neither.

The same *** marriage is actually a perfect example. Shapiro has stated many times that the same *** marriage issue for him is that religious institutions shouldn't be forced to marry gay couples if they chose not to. I completely agree with him. People should also be free to tell those institutions where they can shove it if they're of the view that they're irrelevant fossils. I'd love the for conversation to be about why the government is in ANY way involved in telling adults who they can or can not make a life commitment to. That's not a point of view I've heard expressed (almost) anywhere. We implicitly accept that the government has the right to tell people who they can marry as much as they can tell priests who they'll accept at the altar. Obama and the SC are making a moral judgement (homosexuality is ok), it's just the side that you agree with. So what you get is a debate framed by both sides as a pseudo referendum on whether homosexuality is ok. It becomes less a question of why government should be involved in the most intensely personal parts of our lives and more a question of our collective moral conscience. Again, God = Government.

"Representing the argument as it really is" is frankly a really dangerous reduction of what is an extremely complex issue. You're projecting your own prejudice on to the argument (ie. the only reason to oppose SSM is if you're a fundamentalist idiot) to dismiss a much more complex point (the government shouldn't be involved in dictating religious practice).

Lastly I think you're wrong about him wanting the morality of his God written into law (to the extent that it's not already). He didn't mention politics in that article and I can recall very little (if any) conflation of church and state in his speeches.

This is literally what society is for, no?

 

[Magrat Garlick]

I mean this whole thesis of religion being the only possible saviour against strong government is just not supported by evidence. There are tons of very religious societies in the world which do tend towards either outright tyranny (Saudi Arabia, Iran), incompetent governance (hey, at least the reverend believes in the right deity, who cares if he siphons off a bit of the church coffers)., or sectarian violence and cycles of terror from either side (Latin America, Africa). He might be talking about the evangelical tradition of settler churches, but the problem with that model is that it often fails to last more than a generation - because guess what people get influence from outside their little settler towns and see that there is more to life than finding a girl in high school and sticking with banging her missionary for the rest of your life. And the post-communist experience hardly seems to have a clear distinction between religious and non-religious countries when it comes to the size of the state and role of big government.

I would argue that the industrial decline and the commodification of labour is far more important when trying to find reasons for the decline of religious mores in America (Geert Mak's In America is good on this). And these are inescapable consequences of economic and technological freedom: capital will always be more mobile than labor, so the manufacturing can go at any moment, and you can't put the drugs back in the bottle.