Those who want a sense of what the self-described pedophile blogger's site has looked like in the past can see archived pages here. The blogger is obviously a disturbed and disturbing man -- at best someone who has fun scaring the wits out of parents, and at worst a child molester -- but I think it's necessary to see his work to get a sense of what legal responses would be permissible or impermissible.
Most of the pictures aren't included in the archive, which is good for the pictures' subjects but makes it a little harder to evaluate. The one picture I saw, which was purportedly taken in South America, does fit with the media reports that the pictures on his sites have not themselves been pornographic (though obviously they are disturbing and menacing in context).
Related Posts (on one page):
- Restraining Order Issued Against Pedophile Blogger:
- More on the Pedophile Blogger:
- The Pedophile Blogger:
Password protected user files created a reasonable expectation of privacy
Defendant lived with his mother, and they shared a computer. There were two user profiles on the computer and both were password protected. Defendant's child's mother called her and told her that she found child porn on her computer after the defendant stayed there. His mother tried to get into his user files and could not. She then consented to delivering the computer to the police and to searching it. He had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the password protect files. She consented to a search of the computer because she owned it and could deliver it to the police, but the court requires a hearing on whether the expectation of privacy in the password protected files protects the defendant's files from her consent. United States v. Robson, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 53627 (E.D. Mich. July 24, 2007).
from FA.com
Two, his statement that he has “embraced [children] in a nonsexual way, mostly in Latin American countries” is chilling in itself, and more so when combined with EV's finding of the pic taken in South America.
Three, I wonder what the heck kind of public assistance he is somehow managing to live off of.
Frankly, if his website is taken down by whiners, I hope he does molest a child. People need to learn to think about cause and effect before they legislate something away that bothers them.
It just makes sense to put more scrutiny on a man with fantasies of committing heinous crimes. He doesn't deserve to be locked up but he also shouldn't be hanging around the playground.
This is why I think banning mere possession of kiddie porn is bad public policy. It's simply evidence of a crime. It's not illegal to possess pictures of murder victims, drugs, bank robbers, etc. Punish the people who take the pictures, not those who get off on it. If they can't masturbate to pictures of their fantasies, they're more likely to go out and act on their fantasies. Let all these creepy guys sit at home and collect all the kiddie porn pics they want. They will sit around eating pizza and masturbating to their 50 gigs of kiddie porn, and they are less likely to show up and get interviewed by Chris Hansen.
Perhaps some of the most disjointed logic I have ever seen on VC. Hoping that this person molests a child if his website is taken down?
We live in a society where our freedoms, liberties, and rights are valued based solely on how many dead children result from their exercise. We balance our right to do something based on its effect on The Precious Children. For example, the 2nd Amendment will go away soon because possession of guns costs the lives of too many children, and it's too hard for anyone to admit that it's worth those dead children to be allowed to possess firearms (I'll say it -- it is worth it). It would be worth 100,000 dead children per year to not have speed limits, as far as I'm concerned.
Anyway, I'm not even talking about a dead child, just a wrongly-touched one. Certainly worth it to force our society into having a long-overdue conversation and acknowledgment of cause and effect.
You can't be serious. This guy should be locked up/executed NOW.
However, isn't there the concept of a "threat to others", which would allow him to have to undergo Involuntary psychiatric evaluation?
Also to consider, is this a reasonably effective but sick hoax to gain attention?
In the meantime, we who are subsidizing their breeding have rights, whether the like it or not. It will be a cold day in hell that I give up the right to photograph, converse with and relate to ANY kid I meet in public.
I understand where you're coming from, but the problem arises when the abstract collides with the actual.
In other words, you may think the elimination of speed limits on US highways is worth 100,000 dead children--until YOUR child is number 52,341.
Many people see their child as potentially being one of the 100,000. That's why things probably won't change.
In addition, I feel compelled to point out that it's not "abstract" when all we hear about as justifications for all human (or at least, American) legislative, judicial, and executive action is "doing it for / to protect the children." If that's how we're going to value everything (I contend that it is) then quantifying it not only ceases to be abstract, it is the responsible thing to do. We do it with dollars every day - even if some of those dollars are yours. If we valued our freedoms based on the monetary price--rather than dead child price--they cost, it would not be abstract to say "freedom of speech costs society ten billion dollars a eyar." Hell I'm sure some gun control nut actually does have a figure like that for the 2nd Amendment (guns cost us 2.68 quadrillion dollars every week blah blah blah). But we as a society don't care about lost money. Hence the national debt. We only care about dead children, and that's the motivation behind everything our government does. We live in a nannyocracy.
This is especially true with drug prohibition, but that's another topic.
He isn't harming anyone, so his behavior is nobody elses business.
They are after us libertarians for hanging flags upside down, for masturbating in our prison cells, for photographing their kids in public parks, and so on.
I say, let's start the revolution. Let's ban all the breeding!
We're pretty much on the same page, especially re: the "War on Drugs," but...when you have a child, everything changes. For most people, the mere thought of their own child dying is almost unbearable (I have two children).
Therefore, when one does a cost/benefit analysis involving children, the cost is seen as infinite when one's own child is involved.
Believe me, I'm the last guy on the "it's for the children" bandwagon, and I'm also not pulling the "I've got kids and you don't" card. I don't think the childless have no legitimate input, I'm just trying to explain *why* things often go as they do, and why the "it's for the children" thing works as well as it does.
You're right that parents can be irrational when it comes to their kids, but if you want to set up an "Us vs. Them" battle, you'll lose it in a couple generations. It's better to work with the breeders... trust me.
Am I saying women should not be allowed to vote? No, too late for that. You can't take that away now. But knowing what I know now, if I could go back in time and fight against women's suffrage I would unhappily do so.
But you are absolutely right, those with children always say exactly what you are saying about how "everything changes" and how the cost is infinite when it's your child.
What I modestly propose is that people should only be allowed to vote until such time as they have children. Once you reproduce, your vote is tainted, as you readily concede. I'm sorry, but people with children are too biased in favor of protecting them at all cost, however unreasonable or unjustifiable, to be permitted to cast a vote for anything. An irrational vote, even moreso than an uninformed one, does no service to democracy.
So Mikey, I'm sorry, but I would not permit you and the "reproducers" like you to vote. And the world would instantly be a better place.
You need to get it right. We non-breeders who pay through the asss to support your offspring wish to be called "childfree" instead of "childless." We enjoy drinking our caipirinhas on the world's beaches but resent having to pay so much in taxes to miseducate your offspring and then live with the miserable results of the stupidity.
Chapman apparently thinks it's okay to take the wealth of the non-breeders and transfer it to the breeders. Of course that's not libertarian. As far as losing in a couple of generations to the breeders, wait until we non-breeders get so pissed off by the theft of our livelihoods that we let loose the NBCs that we develop while the breeders are changing the diapers.
Muahahah.
What's my "way of thinking"? Suggesting that we balance cost/benefit with the lives of children on one end of the scale and freedoms on the other? We already do. I'm just acknowledging that fact. Is the mere suggestion that some things are more important than the lives of (white, healthy, american) children that horribly offensive? Is it not true? Are there no ideas, values, or principles worth the life of an precious child? 10,000 precious children? 100,000 precious children? Your precious child?
I am completely aware of the fact that my "way of thinking" (whatever it is) will not gain political power. I'm also aware that I'm not the target audience for the Geico Caveman TV show comin' to a TV set near you this fall. So, you know, enjoy being in the majority. How does it smell?
What's the fixation on this TV show anyway? First I've heard of it, but it'd hardly be the worst thing on TV. Ever see "Flavor of Love?"
I hardly think, even with the view a parent has of the importance of their child, that reproducing automatically invalidates ALL said parent's political inputs.
And it's amusing to read someone who appears to be quite libertarian advocating the denial of a fundamental right, merely because those who wish to exercise that right have engaged in the human imperative of reproduction.
And just as you believe having children "taints" a parent's vote, some parents might believe NOT having children "taints" your vote (I am not one of those, but some others might believe that).
Although I do think you are correct re: the tremendous change in electoral politics engendered (pun!) by allowing women to vote.
And Zacharias is correct, you do.
I just heard of the Geico caveman TV show earlier today and didn't believe it was real until I check it out on tv.com and IMDB.com and I suddenly became quite saddened. I mean, imagine the meeting at the network over what to greenlight...
"geico caveman tv commercials are really popular"
"we should capitalize on the caveman market"
"yes, yes, we have a pilot for a TV show about a family of disgruntled cavemen, mad about being stereotyped as stupid."
"This will appeal to the 18-35 market demographic, because our studies show they all love the geico caveman and relate to his frustration."
"When can we get this in production?"
"We can shoot in Vancouver and have a 12 episode order shot by July."
"Consider it greenlighted, here's $20 million, get me 12 eps and if it get at least a 3 share we'll order a full season of 22."
"We can have it follow 'The Confession Beater' our most popular show, to give it an initial audience."
"Yes, yes, go for it. Make that $40 million, here is a check, let's get this thing going."
As for the converse of the situation, I and nonbreeders like me are not the ones saying we indulge in irrational choices due to our lack of children. It's the reproducers who say having a child "changes everything" and forces all reason, common sense, and accountability out the window in order to keep that one little lump of fat alive, breathing, and playing XBox 360.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the political opinions of every single person who has a child are automatically, per se, irrefutably invalidated. But the PWC (people with children) faction has proved over and over and over and over again that they are not reasonble, let alone responsible, voters and can be made to vote for anything, no matter how dumb and unamerican, merely by having their children threatened by that thing a priori. Especially women. Sorry.
Three brief points:
1. You can be "childfree" or whatever. There are days I wish I were "childfree," believe me...
2. I love capirinhas. In fact, there's a bottle of cachaca in my pantry, so I might go make myself one in a minute.
3. I'd be perfectly fine with exempting the "childfree" from whatever portion of taxes go to public schooling, or with eliminating the government-run schools altogether.
Diapers steal one's livelihood, so we're about even...
Everyone who votes is going to vote based on what they view as their own self-interest. It may be enlightened, or not so enlightened, self-interest, but they vote with it nonetheless. For parent's their self-interest also includes the interests of their children.
Now, if you can tell me how the self-interest of the "childfree" outweighs the self-interest of the "breeders" because the "breeders" include their children, *I'm* all ears.
You may advocate a Heinlein-ian scheme whereby only those who fulfill a certain set of conditions are permitted to vote. There are times I would agree. However, for better or worse, such is not the "American way."
I'm pretty libertarian myself, and generally able to approach political issues with a high level of reasoned thought, but I think it's ridiculous to suggest that: a) my having children eliminates my ability to be a "responsible" voter, and b) that I should not consider my childrens' interests when I go to the polls.
Now, if you can tell me how the self-interest of the "childfree" outweighs the self-interest of the "breeders" because the "breeders" include their children, *I'm* all ears.
You've got me completely wrong. I'm not saying the interests of the childfree outweigh the interests of the breeders one bit. Not at all. I'm saying those with children admit that "having a child changes everything" where "everything" is logic, reason, and accountability. If a candidate convices them that (1) their children are in danger [or more in danger than his/her opponent says] and (2) he/she will protect their children from said danger(s) [or at least do so better than his/her opponent] he/she will get the votes of the breeders, REGARDLESS OF how stupid the candidate's platform is, regardless of how non-existant the supposed "danger to the children" really is (viz. illegal immigration), regardless of how uneducated and unqualified the candidate is (Dubya), and regardless of how the candidate will resolve the danger or "protect your children."
This is why those with children should not be able to vote, or at least, should place their care of society above their care for their children and sometimes vote for someone who advocates NOT protecting their children, which is politically analagous to harming their children.
Getting rid of the 4th Amendment will allow unlimited searches and seizures and will certainly save lots of children from crime. I bet the 4th Amendment causes the deaths of at least 80,000 children per year. I am for the 4th Amendment. It is worth 80,000 dead children. If I had a child, it would be worth the life of my child. EXCEPT that "having a child changes everything" and I presumably would no longer believe that, and would be willing to vote for the first guy who said he'd get rid of the 4th Amendment (putting aside whether a president can do such a thing) to save the life of my precious child.
There is a conflict of interest between my rights and the lives of your children. I am a reasonable person and I am willing to give up a certain amount of rights to keep a reasonable amount of children alive. But I am NOT willing to give up all rights to keep as many children alive as is possible. That is where breeders and nonbreeders differ. Because at the end of the day, we're talking about YOUR children versus MY rights.
And I'm not even addressing the issue of nonbreeders being taxed to subsidize breeders' children. That's a different issue altogether. I do resent having to pay taxes so the government can do the breeders' job of looking after your little lumps of fat all the time because breeders are too busy watching American Idol and ... breeding. This thread is a perfect example of that. YOU should protect your children from this self-admitted pervert who dreams of molesting kids. It's not for my tax dollars to do. It's not for the government to "lock him up" or stick an FBI agent on his back 24/7. YOU watch over your kids. YOU protect them. I understand you can't do it 24/7, but you don't even want to do it one hour of the day. And when I say "you" in this paragraph I don't mean you, Mickey. I'm just saying breeders in general.
I hope that explains my nuanced position a bit more.
All people should be given a quality education, and that starts when they are children. Doesn't make sense to begin education at adult stage of life. But we have turned schools into places where protecting children is more important than educating them. Thus children get sent home for however long for possession of a butterknife for an Advil rather than educated. No tolerance of this, no tolerance of that. Couple that with religious nuts on schoolboards, and before you know it, public schools don't educate anyone at all. This is in large part due to breeders being convinced to vote to protect their children from nonexistant/minimal dangers (terrorism recently) instead of spending money on education. Remember, breeders vote to PROTECT their children from perceived danger, they don't vote to HELP their children by investing in their futures.
I do oppose spending money on a failed public education system, which has sadly become the status quo pretty much everywhere in the USA, and the reason why American kids are so damn stupid compared with the rest of the world. If this is the best we can do, screw public education. We'd be better of using those tax dollars to subsidize free abortion clinics on every streetcorner, where you can have a free abortion anytime up to the 72nd trimester (18 years old).
I think you breeders should just leave things up to all of us nonbreeders. Your children will actually benefit in the end from our ability to make rational decisions and not be swayed by the politics of protecting children from perceived dangers. I'd spend $100 billion on education before I'd spend $100 billion to protect 500 kids from being killed in a school shooting (the average dead kids from school shootings each year is quite small).
Right to free speech: 50,000,000 dead children
That's like 12 years worth of children.
Right to reasonable tax rate: 850,000 dead children
Air conditioning: 10,000,000 dead children
Right to read/possess porn: 1,000,000 dead children
Right to abortion on demand: 3,500,000 dead children
It's nice to know that "unfair" taxes aren't really that bad and will, at least, be used to fund A/C, porn and abortion on demand.
Now I wonder how anyone can be happy to die leaving nothing behind. I wrote dozens of books but they'll be obsolete before long. But he'll live on and maybe think of me sometime. Especially all the things I'm teaching him. And the box with fossils, and meteorites, and ancient coins and platinum, and other fun stuff. And tell his kids he had a nice dad...
You claim: "I bet the 4th Amendment causes the deaths of at least 80,000 children per year."
Less than 54,000 people under the age of 20 died in the US in 2003: CDC data.
In your livejournal post, you talk about completely genocidal levels of dead children. In 2000, there were only about 80 million people under the age of 20 in the US: Census data.
Truth Seeker: so you're saying you reproduced out of spite, so your sisters would not get as much money? Jeez. On behalf of humanity, thanks for bringing your spite-child into the world.
Why can't we live and die without "leaving stuff behind"? Most people will leave a lot of credit card debt behind, why is that not enough to satisfy the urge for immortaility? I think this world is such a horrible place that it's almost criminal to intentionally bring a child into it. It's so selfish, it's all about you. YOU want a child. What about the child? Does it want to be born? Chances are, probably not if it could have any say in the matter.
Can nobody look at themselves objectively and say "I'd be a horrible parent and if I had a child, he/she would have a miserable life with me being its parent"? The average person is a horrible parent, and the average child leads a miserable life. That means 50% are even worse than that. And that's just here in America....
People in 3rd world countries who reproduce, when their kids have nothing to look forward to but starvation, no air conditioning, and being eaten alive by tsetse flies, commit a crime against humanity as far as I'm concerned, one so horrendous that they should be dragged out into the street and shot in the head.
BruceM's 'modest proposal' is simply backwards: those without children have little or no interest in the continuity of society, civilization or political structure.
With no structure "to secure these rights", BruceM is advocating the end of freedom.
Anarco-hedonism? Dunno; but the position of the two childless commenters is certainly selfish and shortsighted; a characteristic of . . . children!
As Truth Seeker alludes, it is children that make adults.
As long as those of us without children live in this world, that makes no sense at all.
If you think I'm advocating "for the end of freedom" you need to re-read what I've written. There is no way you could possibly come to that conclusion if you've read what I've written.
In a democracy, an accurate election is, by definition, one that reflects the views of the populace.
Also, claiming to be a libertarian while espousing what is essentially fascism (or at least the standard "technocratic" view that the people are not fit to govern themselves) is absurd to the point of disbelief. Can you seriously be advocating a country of free men and women that aren't allowed to govern themselves? The inside of your mind must be a veritable war zone!
Thread...
Evar...
I think it jumped the shark when the post was made about time traveling to defeat the 19th Am. (women's suffrage) when the OP was about the 1st Am. and pedophilia. It's all gravy after that.
I've long believed that people who can't pass a simple 5 question knowledge test (incorporated into ballots) should have their votes disregarded. I mean questions like "who is the current vice president of the united states" and "what country is directly above America?" and "what is the capital of America?" It would be a multiple choice test so the same machines that count the ballots could confirm the answers to either count or not count the votes.
Having people vote just so they vote or because they can does no service to democracy. I don't believe in self-destructive governance. Anyone can vote, but in order to have their votes counted, they have to pass a simple, race-neutral test.
Likewise, anyone can vote until such time as they reproduce (in the system I espouse). Irrational votes are worse than uninformed ones. I'm not saying all of the people are not fit to govern themselves, just a vast majority of them, due to being too uninformed or too irational. Maybe if the breeders were not CONSTANTLY having the lives of their children threatened 24/7 by the media and by politicians the breeders would not act so irrationally. I understand why they are so scared about their kids being hurt. I really do. Turn on the news. Child murdered here and there and everywhere, predators at home, at school, at the playgrounds, terrorists after your children, danger here, danger there, kidnap here, lost kid there, plucked out of the sandbox, body of dead child found in locker at school, in dumpster behind store, in river, on parent's roof, yadda yadda yadda. It's nonstop. Parents are completely paranoid to the point that a random guy on the internet merely types something about wanting to molest a child and everyone goes nuts, lock him up and throw away the key, repeal the 1st amendment so he can't say these things, kill him!
I can't even imagine what it's like to be a parent in modern America. I'd either be an alcoholic or completely addicted to Valium.
Oren, I've never heard anyone say that putting any limits on who can vote is fascism. Have you looked up the definition of fascism anytime soon? The two things have nothing to do with each other. Voters elected Hitler, the de facto example of a fascist. I'm not even going to go into how I believe it was breeders who voted for Hitler because he said he found someone to blame (the jews) for the suffering of their children....
I mean, "breeders"? They're called parents.
The libertarians on this thread are characteristic of Robert Dahl's villains. Sheesh.
I may be wrong, but I believe "breeders" is a term used by gays to describe parents. And while it is certainly true that gays can be libertarians (some of my best friends, ahem...), it is not the case that all libertarians are gay, or childless, or use that term, understandably potentially offensive, to describe parents.
Those posters who wax eloquently on the right to vote and the importance of democracy for freedom should educate themselves on a wide literature in economics and political science, most recently Bryan Caplan's "The Myth of the Rational Voter". But Ilya's published much on this. Suffice to say that it is bizarre to consider the right to vote a "fundamental" right. Life and liberty are fundamental. A right to vote is merely a mechanism for instituting policy. Who among us feels our fundamental rights are being restricted because we cannot vote on who Daniel Chapman is allowed to marry or where he is allowed to work?
I am a fan of Swift and if you search this thread for the phrase "modestly propose" you will come to one of my posts. Not that I don't agree with what I'm saying.
I did not initiate the "breeders"/"nonbreeders" nomenclature here. I just picked up on it from other posters.
The pedophile blogger's First Amendment rights may be a moot question before too long, that is if he should happen to cross paths with bob mologna or others who think their Second Amendment rights trump his First Amendment ones ("But, is it OK with you all if I shoot his balls off...") and that 12 of their peers will not all say otherwise ("hope for jury nullification").
As I said in the prior thread, I don't think such an outcome all that unlikely, especially now that this story has been given so much attention and his picture has been published. If I were an insurance underwriter, I would recommend against issuing a policy on his life.
You might be a libertarian, but I'm afraid that this ferocious attack on "breeders" shows what your more important identity is. And therefore I'm not surprised that you have more problems with "breeders" than with pedophiles.
BruceM thinks that parents should be denied the right to vote because voting makes them act "irrationally," based on a primal impulse to protect their offspring. This puts him in the esteemed company of famed libertard Jacquline Mackey Paisely Passey, but whatever.
So what does BruceM want to vote to protect? His right to sit in air conditioning and spank the monkey to internet porn. Fine with me; I'm not going to deny him that right.
But what makes voting to protect the right to beat off to Blacks on Blondes in air-conditioned comfort "rational"? How is voting to protect the right to enjoy autoerotic orgasms at 68 climate-controlled degrees any less "irrational" than voting to protect children? Ultimately all of our desires are irrational.
What else does BruceM want to protect? Ah, I see: the right to trial by jury. One question, though: in what Bizarro universe is it "rational" to impanel twelve jurors, pay a public defender, prosecutor, bailiff, judge, and court reporter, and pay to keep the lights and heat on in a courtroom, all to try a guy for a $100 theft?
Human endeavors have a crisis of foundations. No matter how much logic and reason we pile on, at the bottom will be irrational impulses and desires. That goes for BruceM as well as anyone else.
Re: "Breeders"... this supposed insult never bothered me, mostly because it's unintentionally ironic. I love to hear it coming from gays, who simultaneously sneer at heteros with kids, then turn around and demand the legal right to marry and have kids.
I think he's deliberately confusing two points; the first is that people value children too highly (which, of course, you just answered) and the second is that people with children aren't rational *even by their own standards* about threats to them.
If you tell someone that civil liberties should be curtailed to stop pedophiles on the Internet, and they value children highly, and they're rational, they should examine the evidence and judge the effectiveness of the policy the same way they would anything else. Their high valuation of children should not lead them to shut down their brains when confronted with supposed threats to children. But somehow, in the real world, it often does.
Before I declare that people have "shut down their brains," I'd love to have a peek at their ultility functions. Like I said - and I think you agreed with me on this - there's no way to assign an universal objective value to the survival of a child. Parents value their children very highly for irrational reasons. Non-parents don't for equally irrational reasons. If parents plug in the probability of harm coming to their children, the loss of utility arising from that harm, and the cost of preventing that harm and the function says "pay for this percaution," they're being as rational as we can expect anyone to be.
I think what you're getting at is that parents might fall for slick marketing, and they thus incorrectly evaluate the probability of harm. To that extent, I agree: they're humans, and humans are suckers for slick marketing, and humans also have problems evaluating probabilities. A couple of things about that, though:
-I don't know if parents are necessarily suckers. When I heard Nancy Pelosi announce in a sea of moppets that "the gavel is now in the hands of America's children," my eyes almost rolled out of my head. But I'm not taking her at her word that the Democrats rode into Washington on a wave of won't-somebody-think-of-the-children sentiment.
-To the extent that parents are suckers, I don't know if they are any more than 4th Amendment voluptuaries are. BruceM really values the 4th Amendment, but the world wouldn't end if it were to be repealed. Its repeal wouldn't mean a government camera in every bedroom. It wouldn't mean random searches in everyone's home once a month. But to listen to certain people talk about, say, wiretapping international phone calls of suspected terrorists, you'd think that they had gone mad.
It is important not to confuse breeders with parents. It is more than self-evident that many good parents are not breeders (stepparents, foster parents and those who adopt), and many breeders are absent or lousy parents.
"Breeders" is a pejorative term for selfish folks who thoughtlessly pollute the world and release into the stream of commerce a bad or unneeded product at someone else's great expense in order to give themselves some imagined satisfaction, some heirs and a historical legacy. Such sentiments have nothing to do with parenting.
Furthermore, the fact that a non-breeder has breeders for parents is no fault of his own any more than an atheist is responsible for the religious superstitions of his parents.
This is the only reason we pass laws, or at least laws which restrict liberty (which are most).
If you have a child, would you trade your child's life to keep the 1st amendment? Would you give up freedom of religion or your child's life? Would you allow a government camera in your home to save your child's life?
Parents always say yes, anything to save their child. Politicians have picked up on this, and that's why they use threats against the lives of children to get elected and to get their laws passed.
I'm willing to balance my freedoms and liberties with the lives of children... in the end it's what we all do, whether we admit it or not. But I'm not willing to give up everything to save your child. How many children? At least I'm willing to answer that.
Drug prohibition is a great example. Let's focus on that, so we know what we're talking about. I should have the right to use whatever drug I want. Forget pot, I should have the right to inject all the heroin I want, so long as I don't hurt anyone other than myself. But freaked out parents, worried that their children will be raped by black people on cocaine, decided I should not have that right because it would endanger their children.
It is worth the deaths of a lot of children to not have drug prohibition (ironically, lots of children die as collateral damage due to prohibition). But those with children never think about collateral damage, because they're never threatened with it. Or if they are, it's by a guy like Al Gore and the threat is just not taken seriously as it's far too attenuated and nowhere near as direct as the threat made by the other guy who wins the election.
That's equivalent to saying "'Kikes' is a term which means 'those Jews who exploit the gentiles and cause trouble for the rest of us'. Jews who are not kikes shouldn't be offended."
Give me a break. Words have meanings that you can't disclaim by using them in nonstandard ways. "Breeder" is a slur hurled by gays against straight people, and specifically against parents.
(Besides, saying you only intended to slur genetic parents hardly makes it less offensive. You're also not using it the same way as BruceM.)
Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas. Too late, methinks.
Was the word "parents" unfamiliar to you? Or did you think the comparison of people to livestock wouldn't have an offensive sound to it?
I very, very much doubt that you didn't know full well that "breeders" is a gay insult for straight people.
Yeah, yeah, I saw your attempt to backtrack later. You obviously have no idea the damage that molestation often does to a kid. Let's try on this equally glib remark, "Killing a few million Jews is a good way to get people's attention about the dangerousness of Big Government." It's in about the same category of mindless idiocy.
An ounce of experience is worth a pound of theory. That may be why libertarians often age into conservatives.
At the risk of making your head explode: you might actually spend some time reading up on the subject by people who aren't suffering your ideological pursuit of fantasy. Attempts to regulate intoxicants have a long history; argue if you want that they are sometimes ineffective, and I'll agree. But the motivations for control of intoxicants are pretty simple. Intoxicated people do stupid and sometimes aggressive things: murder; rape; domestic violence; industrial accidents; child molestation. Even economic crimes, such as robbery and burglary, are often done by people who are drunk or on heroin (for both drugs, because it is an inhibition reducer).
Regulation of alcoholic beverages goes back into Colonial times because drunkenness had destructive effects on individuals who drank to excess, to their families, and to people that they got into fights with at the bar or on their way home. Some of the first of these laws prohibited selling alcohol in less than half-barrel containers; you could buy a half-barrel of beer to take home, but it was an attempt to shut down taverns, which produced their own set of problems. The early Republic was awash in concern about the destructive effects of alcohol, and a bit of the early case law related to the limits of the interstate commerce clause involve state regulation of alcohol sales across state lines.
I am disgusted at how effective libertarian ideologues have become at creating a false history of the U.S. I believed a lot of too, until I went back to school to get a BA and MA in History, and saw how grossly false most of it was. (The popular liberal view of American wasn't going to win too many awards for accuracy, either.)
I can only conclude that your experience concerning the usage of this word is incomplete.
No, wait. That would be stupid. You only have the one mouth ...
But seriously, people. Anyone who can't distinguish between an emotional response of revulsion and a defensible ethical proposition shouldn't be graduated from primary school. Self-knowledge is a prerequisite of democracy and freedom; to be surrounded by those who cannot tell their emotions apart from their judgment is to live under tyranny.
Those who are calling for the imprisonment and execution of writers who fantasize about taboo sexual acts are thereby demonstrating their own incapability of living in a free and adult society. It is persons such as they who have built our society into a terrifying prison, that systematically destroys both children and adults.
(After all, in the real world, the foremost molesters of children are not weirdo strangers. They're Officially Sanctioned Authority Figures: teachers, parents, stepparents, religious leaders, scoutmasters, politicians, police, and therapists.)
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Actually, all this off-topic zaniness does illustrate one big reason why libertarians have struggled in politics. Too many of us forget that persuasion is about more than just winning a rational debate. The sad truth is that even the soundest and most reasonable arguments for liberty often don't stand a chance against other people's deeply ingrained beliefs, fears and instincts - like those associated with parenting.
The mistake too many libertarians make is to underestimate the power of
the Dark Side of the Forceimmutable human irrationality, and the fierce resistance it engenders, for good or ill. Rationality can be defeated merely by knowing the right (or wrong, depending on your PoV) nerves to hit in people. Populo-socialist megalomaniacs like Chávez know this all too well, as do nanny-statists of all stripes here in the U.S. This McClellan guy obviously hit the critical nerves in the fearful parents who are now out to silence him. Until libertarians figure out how to overcome this "psych gap", it will continue to be a steep uphill climb.I honestly never heard it. I didn't even realize gay people had insults for straight people in general. I assume they have insults for the religious nuts who hate them. But I was unaware of gays disliking straights merely for having heterosexual, reproductive sex. In fact, I'm quite surprised by this.
Clayton, you should read Jacob Sullums "Saying Yes: In Defense of Drug Use" ... you might rethink some of the things you say about drugs and their effect on people, especially the voodoo pharmacology theory you clearly subscribe to.
Let me ask this question. Assume we could have the lives of 2,500 children per year by reducing speed limits to 20mph max, everywhere. Would it be worth it? I say absolutely not. To me, it is worth 2500 dead children to not have to drive 20mhp everywhere I go. How about you?
Of course I'm pulling the 2500 number out of my ass, but I'm sure everyone here would concede that limiting speed limits everywhere to 20mph would save the lives of more than a marginal amount of children. Could even be your child. So what about it? If we make it 20, should we then go for 10mph to save even more children? It will take an hour to drive down to the grocery store, and 5 hours to get to work in the morning, but children's lives will be saved. So how about it? My bet is you're just like me. Let the kids die, the alternative simply isn't worth it.
In that case, how many kids have to die before you would advocate changing speed limits to 20mph max?
Regarding the idea that parents should not be allowed to vote, does that mean people should only run for office if they're childless?
Lively: I don't think it matters. To the extent office-holders do things that endanger children in general, their own children will be exempted (you won't find a Bush child in Iraq). Since they know that their children are never in real danger, only other people's, they will act and thus are functionally the same as those of us without children.
"Assume we could save the lives of 2,500 children...."
I honestly never heard it.
Pretending to believe something in order to be sarcastic is a Swiftian modest proposal. But pretending to believe something in order to avoid making damaging admissions (such as that you're intentionally using slurs), is merely dishonesty.
There comes a point where the only sensible response is "I don't believe you."
Bruce claimed to have not heard of it at all. Not from gay people, not from people without children, not from anyone.
Movies aren't reality, you know. I rather doubt that you will find many movies made in the last 10 years that portray a homosexual character in a negative light. I guess that means that there are no evil homosexuals?
I completely agree. The creep in question has certainly done nothing that needs to be criminalized. (I would like to know why he is on public assistance, and see it cut off. If he has money for Internet service to produce pages like that, he has far more money than he needs.) But BruceM has demonstrated a profound inability to understand how to persuade people to his side with his hope that such a law would lead to child molestation.
You've just demonstrated what's wrong with libertarian ideologues. The evidence of what alcohol does to reduce inhibitions and increase various crimes of violence is well established. Anyone who has managed to outgrow acne, if they are not blinded by their ideology, has seen plenty of examples of how alcohol impairs the judgment of even pretty level headed people--sometimes with tragic results.
That's what I love about libertarian ideologues--the need to turn everything into polar opposites. The state in which I live sets the speed limit on city streets (unless otherwise posted) at 20 mph. Why? For exactly that reason. Business district and main arterials tend to be set to 35. A libertarian extremist (one that hasn't outgrown the acne) would argue that there should be no speed limits anywhere--leave it all to the good judgment of drivers, and hold them completely responsible for what happens when they drive 100 mph in a residential neighborhood and hit a child. Ditto, I've had one too many libertarians argue that laws against drunk driving should be repealed, and only hold someone responsible for the accident, regardless of whether they are drunk or not.
These are wonderful theories, but the real world is a bit more complex than that. Do law-abiiding adults have a right to carry a gun? Sure. Do they have a right to carry bottles of nitroglycerin around in their pocket when they go to the mall? A libertarian ideologue would insist that any laws that regulate what you can carry with you are unnecessary and contrary to the idea that an individual has the right to do whatever he wants right up to the point where he trips, and that bottle in his pocket blows up 30 people.
There's a lot of merit to libertarian critiques of our system. But they work better as thought experiments and tendencies than they do in their fully implemented form.
I never said driving while intoxicated laws were improper. I highly support them. It's the most common way someone's intoxication could effect other people or their property. But whether alcohol or heroin, that intoxication should be permitted so long as they don't hurt others. You should have the right to sit on your ass high on whatever drug you desire, but when you get behind the wheel of a car, that right ends.
Yes a lot of places have speed limits of 20 or 30mph in neighborhoods or city streets by default. I'm talking about making it 20mph everywhere, including on the freeways. Instead of going 70 or 55, you go 20. Or 10. Or even 5, to save all the children. I bet not a single child would die with speed limits of 5mph.
There are plenty of studies that show speed limits are always artificially low, the safest speed being that which 85% of the traffic drives. When some cars are going slow because of legal limits, other cars pass them. That's when it gets dangerous. You're better off having an audobon situation where there is no speed limit on most of the road (which is designed for it, not talking about neighborhood streets). Slow cars stay to the right. Fast cars go as fast as they want. Nobody is slowing anyone down, and nobody has to change lanes to get around them... that's when accidents happen, and that's when children die. But that takes explanation and thought. It's much easier to say "go slow." Either you go deathly slow, as in 10-20mph, or you go unrestricted. A middle ground of 45, 55, is more dangerous.
You could use the same reasoning to show that the f-word was never used in America before about 1970.
Why? After all, it just "could" affect other people or their property. Just like creeps writing about their interest in little girls "could" affect others.
Again: you aren't much of a libertarian with reasoning like that. If you want to make a pragmatic argument that being intoxicated in private is almost impossible to enforce, and thus trying to criminalize it is almost certainly going to produce more problems than it solves, I agree. But the same reasoning that justifies prohibiting drunk driving (what could happen--but isn't certain to happen) applies to intoxication.
And yet most states use the 85% rule (in the absence of hidden hazards) in setting speed limits. So your "always artificially low" statement is just more libertarian cant.
Autobahn? Or did you mean to treat the freeways as bird sanctuaries?
As usual, you are in love with your theories, but don't have much actual information. Parts of the German autobahns do have speed limits. The unregulated parts reflect not a libertarian principle (a very un-German concept) but a pragmatic decision about what achieves the greatest safety.
More libertarian ideology unrestrained by reality--all or nothing. There's a strong case for repealing speed limits on limited access, well-maintained roads that have no hidden hazards and with fencing to keep wildlife off the road. (You don't want to hit a deer at 140 mph, and you can't slow down enough to avoid it if you are going through a forest.) Montana had such a rule until recently for daytime driving on the Interstates, before they got tired of being ridiculed.
But on most highways, speed limits--set by the 85% rule--are a darn good idea. Why? Because while 85% of drivers have enough sense to know what is a safe speed, and perhaps another 5-10% are competent enough to drive faster without danger, there's perhaps 5% (usually cocky teenagers) who lack that much sense. Setting a maximum speed on a two lane road is effectively a way of saying, "You are being very, very stupid to drive faster."
No you can't. Movies prior to then hardly ever used any curse words. Movies today use them more pervasively than ever.
I never claimed to be the world's authority on libertarian thought. You're putting words into my mouth. Like where I stated some parts of the autobahn (yeh I misspelled it, so sue me) have speed limits. You then attack me for saying the whole thing is without speed limits.
Few states use the 85% rule, and the ones that do measure the average speeds with speed limits already in place. That makes the measurements meaningless, as they are measuring how many people are comfortable breaking the law, at to what extent, NOT the speed 85% of the drivers feel comfortable driving, when otherwise unrestricted. Taking that measurement with speed limits in place is utterly meaningless. Well over 85% of drivers on a straight, well-maintained freeway consider 55mph insanely slow. 75-80mph is the safest speed on such a road. It's also the range that 85% would travel if not concerned with speeding tickets.
"Asshat" has never been in a movie, to my knowledge. Does that mean it's not a slang term?
Why not try urbandictionary? http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=breeder
Speak to or approach one of my kids and you will be testing that temperature in a hurry.
You do no such thing.
It's clear, quite clear, that Zacharias is a homosexual with pedophillic urges.
It will be a cold day in hell that I give up the right to photograph, converse with and relate to ANY kid I meet in public.
Hopefully while engaging in this "right" you don't run into people like me.
Bingo.
And the idiot using it is obviously a homosexual that has some mental problems.
Not to berate BruceM but only to correct the general misperception of the 85 percent rule. Everyone (state etc) uses it but they don't use it to set the speed limit. They use it to set the upper limit in the design evaluation or as part of the investigation in a review of set speed limits. There are so many factors to be considered in the setting of the limit that the 85 Percent rule is not often the speed limit set.
Specifically, as for your assertion, BruceM, that 75-80 mph is the safest, is pure poppycock, as can be seen by your exclusive qualifications that it must be straight and well maintained. Stay away from engineering criteria, please, we engineers don't want to suffer the same fate as libertarians in the public eye.
No, my point was that speed limits have their place, and that's true for city streets—and even parts of the autobahn.
I understood that almost all states use the 85% rule. When I search for this with google, I find a surprising number of official state documents that reference it. Since speed limits are only so-so enforced, I would expect that it the 85% speed for a road was 80 mph, and the speed limit was set at 40 mph, over several traffic surveys, the speed limit would creep up. In California, for example, it used to be the law that radar could not be used to enforce speed limits unless a traffic survey had been done in the last five years.
Hmmm. Speed limits on Interstates where I live are typically 65 mph in town, and 75 mph in town. Most traffic east of Boise on I-84 travels 75-80 mph. The farther east you get, the faster the traffic goes. Shortly after I bought this little gem, I went for a long road trip. I was driving 85-90 most of the distance. I was passing more than passed me, but not by much.
My point remains: speed limits are often set with the 85% rule in mind (thanks to DustyR for the correction). But they are set exclusively by that rule, because there are so many roads that don't meet the requirements for that to be safe.
Where did I EVER say that?
Think first about traffic volumes, lane widths and shoulders, embankments and protection, vertical curve sight distances, nighttime sight distances, stopping distances, limitations to the range of traffic speed ... oh there are more, but that's a start. Think about them as all interrelated elements.
Wait, do it without regard to thinking only in terms of regional geography of flat terrain. Oh, one more ought to suffice with regard to what the great folks here at VC are intimately experienced in speaking to -- government liability for posting the speed limit in excess of the safe driving speeds based on design standards used in general practice.
Even that last one may not support continuing this OT subject in this post, but at least I won't feel so bad about hijacking this already hijacked thread and we can talk.
Your cavalier and juvenile suggestion that we can just kick up the speed by 15 to 25 mph to a speed not only exceeding the ones designed during the 20 years of the 55MPH speed limit law but pretty much all those ever designed, just because you have in mind straight, well-maintained roads means nothing to me. But that is the non-engineer in me talking.
The engineer in me, however, says 80 MPH and bring on the $$$$$$$.
'nuf said.
Nick
Wikipedia coincidently also has an entry on 'breeder' (slang).For contrast, BruceM writes:Damning, simply damning.
You can pay for that surveillance, about $1.2 million per year for each individual kept under surveillance.
Actual and abstract collide; and as usual reality smashes theory flat.
Others follow with, “He isn't harming anyone” (Potbelly); “I fully suport this fellow's right to post hi fantasies...” (bob mologna ). Frater Plotter sums it up with, “Those who are calling for the imprisonment and execution of writers who fantasize about taboo sexual acts are thereby demonstrating their own incapability of living in a free and adult society.”
To these writers it’s OK that one individual can speak, write about, illustrate and advocate acts that are criminal (and vile).
But to these same writers it’s not OK for other individuals to speak, write about, illustrate or advocate a position —a strictly political expression— in opposition to that crime.
That’s as hypocritical as anyone can get.