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Politics Discussion Thread (Heated Arguing Warning)

(July 11th, 2018, 11:00)Gavagai Wrote:
Quote:No-one's saying these are fundamental human rights or anything. What they are saying is that children - who bear no responsibility for the family they were born into - should be allowed a decent start in life.

Against that no one argues, the question is who is supposed to pay for this decent start. You claim that any moron can unilaterally impose obligations on his neighbors by forgetting to use a condom. Don't you see how ridiculous is this?

That's how cohesive communities work. If you do something really stupid and get yourself hurt and out of it for a while, you create a burden on your family to support you until you recover. Of course, in such a scenario there would be the other side of the coin, you would have a duty not to do such stupid things and there would be punishments for that, probably shaming.

Unfortunately the modern trend is towards demanding support as a given, but minimising the flip-side of the duties and the punishment. This leads to the ridiculous situation you protest where any moron can impose costs on his neighbours just like that.

(July 11th, 2018, 12:40)ipecac Wrote:
(July 11th, 2018, 12:07)TheHumanHydra Wrote: Ipecac, if you knew me, you would perceive me as almost the farthest thing from a fanatic. With regard to my political views, I have voted for each of Canada's three main federal parties once. I would probably be best described as a 'Red Tory', meaning that I am myself socially conservative and believe with Conservatives in minimizing state debt, but with Liberals believe in socioeconomic policies designed to assist the populace at large and the less advantaged. This is by definition a middle-ground position and not at all fanatical

This just means you're in the middle with respect to Canada, and not that you're not a fanatic.

Quote:As for your third and fourth paragraphs, I think you should realize that I appropriated a sentence of yours in the heart of what I said there and inverted it to apply to you -- so that any accusation of fanaticism should result in a look in the mirror.

I did wonder what that silly inversion was supposed to do. It doesn't work on me because I can say both with complete equanimity both that there's something in some of the left's ideas, and that they don't think about higher-order effects when they try to implement the policies (with bad consequences as can be expected). Bacchus' comment in the past about leftist wonks forgetting about the interpretation of policy is a good example.

It does work on you because your view is completely biased, as below.


Quote:As for the remark on Christian morality, it was intended to cut at the disturbing tendency observable in American conservatives (I believe you are American, please correct me if I'm off the mark), who correlate with evangelical Christians, of apathy toward the less fortunate around them. This could be expressed in words such as, 'each person has their own burdens to bear. It's their responsibility to deal with their own problems. It's an immoral imposition on my freedom to require me to help'.

Well, Canada is a pretty middle-of-the-road country when it comes to democracies, less 'progressive' than many European but much more so than the United States. So a Canadian moderate is pretty moderate. (In many areas, the United States seems to be the outlier among democracies.) However, it's interesting to me that you suggest that a moderate Canadian is fanatical. Do I come from a country of fanatics? I think that may suggest something about the way you view the world.

I am pleased to hear you say that my claim doesn't apply to you. I look forward to seeing you expound on some of your favourite left-wing ideas, for helping the disadvantaged, etc., and how you would prefer to see them implemented.

As for me, I have already established that I likewise favour both conservative and liberal policies in various realms or at various junctures. Furthermore (with nothing implied toward those like SevenSpirits who are arguing for a UBI), I should have thought my comment that I didn't want a UBI implemented until certain potential circumstances developed would have implied I was thinking beyond the effects on individuals.

As for my quote, did you mean to imply that you do not agree with the conservative sentiments I represented there, and that I've misjudged you? If so, I will be quite pleased to hear it.

(July 11th, 2018, 12:54)Gavagai Wrote:
(July 11th, 2018, 12:11)SevenSpirits Wrote: The concept of private property (combined with a free market, etc), while it has many benefits, has one major injustice, which is the baked-in assumption that those of us who are alive right now get to divvy up all the stuff in the world between us. That leaves nothing for people who arrive in the world in the future, i.e. babies.

Why do you think this is an injustice?

There's a large amount of preexisting stuff in the world that's not a product of anyone's labor (which is the typical moral justification for private property). Claiming this stuff as private property by existing people to the exclusion of the unborn is useful economically but not justified morally. See also Georgism.

I also claim that a lot of stuff is in the "wrong" hands, i.e. owned by people who got it by unscrupulous means, or inherited it after it was acquired by such means. In other words, much of what exists is to some extent tainted by injustices of the past. With the understanding that unwinding those injustices is impossible, I nevertheless think that throwing our hands up in the air is not the only other option, and that simply ensuring that claims over property decay naturally and over time revert to the public makes a good compromise.

(July 11th, 2018, 12:11)SevenSpirits Wrote: primarily directed at libertarians or other free market / private property champions, who I believe to be almost correct but not quite.
I guess that makes me a good person to respond.

Quote:The concept of private property (combined with a free market, etc), while it has many benefits, has one major injustice, which is the baked-in assumption that those of us who are alive right now get to divvy up all the stuff in the world between us. That leaves nothing for people who arrive in the world in the future, i.e. babies.

This works out to a rough approximation solely because when new people are born, there are usually people who feel personally responsible for them. Those people often effectively bequeath a large amount of their private property to the babies. In addition, many countries have state policies of giving some minimal amount of property to babies that don't have much. (I don't literally mean that they are giving babies the deeds to material wealth; rather they are allocating wealth for them and spending it on things they think the babies need, seeing as the babies are pretty bad at handling that themselves.).
I mostly agree; however I think this is also mostly already solved.  If you cause a particular new person to arrive in the world, you personally are liable for them.

Quote:The advantage of our system of private property is that it provides excellent incentives for behavior that leaves everyone better off. It is clearly better than even a functional system that redistributes wealth equitably, even discounting the fact that such a system would be ruined in practice by individuals cheating the system. But the fact that new people are at the mercy of charity is still an injustice inherent in our rules regarding private property.
It's not really a fact, though.  It might perhaps be a fact if we went all the way to anarcho-capitalism, or all the way back to Roman mores (where even the child itself was the property of its father, absolutely).

Quote:At the same time, we know the following:
1) Capital (/property) tends to concentrate over time in the hands of fewer and fewer entities. (In fact, war has been a mitigating factor here, and if we want to build a world without war we'd better have a substitute for its one beneficial effect.)
I don't think we know this at all.  It's pretty clearly false on a generational scale, except in the rare case of a strictly-enforced primogeniture system where the major landowners are also the government.  No matter how much you build your own fortune, splitting it among your wastrel heirs will dissipate it even faster.

Quote:2) To varying extents, distribution of property in the present is influenced by unjust actions in the part for which appropriate reparations are all but impossible to assess.
No argument here.  However, distribution of property is also influenced by work and sacrifice, and doing things for others.  If you look at the Forbes 500 list, you'll find many many who got their wealth by building it, and only a handful who inherited or stole their wealth.  So the problem is already 90% solved.
Quote:3) People change over time, and do not 100% deserve the consequences of their past selves' actions. (Our society acknowledges this in the concept of a statute of limitations, bankruptcy, letting criminals out of prison after a period of time, etc.)
Desert is one interpretation; practicality is another.  You can't have a meaningful criminal system that doesn't have graduated punishments without getting the Dazexiang uprising problem.  You can't practically get more money out of a debtor than they have.  A crime committed too long ago will have very little useful evidence, and therefore reflect politics rather than facts; in addition there's only so many resources worth spending on each crime.  You can easily justify these rules by saying practicality can sometimes overrule desert, rather than by claiming desert fades over time.

Quote:To me, all these factors point towards private property (and the 100% continuity thereof) being not quite correct. I think there is some rate at which we should (morally and practically) be redistributing wealth, so that new people who enter the world have some immediate concrete claim on it, and so that there is a natural defense against wealth concentrating indefinitely. That rate should still be a lot closer to 0% (libertarian utopia) than to 100% (communist utopia) - I'd say maybe a 5% annual tax on wealth that's redistributed equally to everyone.
I somewhat agree, except that I think there's no way to set a rate that is both meaningful and that doesn't have horrible consequences.  The wealth of the world doesn't just grow - it's the result of conscious steady investment in tools, at the expense of deferring consumption.  If you set up a system where it is worse for me to save money than to spend it, then we will stop having economic growth, as no one will build or maintain anything tangible.  Why build a factory or a granary?  You'll do better to just have a big party, storing up favors and friendships, which aren't taxed.  Tools and such that we already have won't cease to exist, but they will be worth something close to zero, so no one will have a reason to build any new ones.  Then in 20 years when everything has broken, we can all starve together.

If you set up a system that preserves the incentive to plan and produce for the future, then it will not have a meaningful effect on equality, nor will it produce enough revenue to matter.

Quote:(Wealth tax: I don't know of a great way to do this, but a decent way might be to make everyone declare the value of their stuff, and pay 5% of that. Your honest declaration is enforced by treating it as an offer to sell your stuff for that much money that anyone can accept.)

I used to like this for its cleverness, but not after reading a recent thread at another forum, where people pointed out all the flaws.  This becomes a tax on stability and on consumer surplus, just as much as it is a tax on wealth.  Part of the value of my home to me is the way I've customized it, and avoiding the complete disruption to my life that would be entailed by moving.  The data on my computer is worth much, much more than the hardware itself - to me - but it's practically worthless to someone who buys my computer from me.  My music collection is valuable because it fits my taste, not because you can actually sell CD's for anything notable anymore.  What about my wedding ring?  Can you buy that from me, in order to melt it down for gold?  My grandmother's ashes - to me, they're priceless, to the market they are a biohazard.  Therefore I would need to declare my stuff to be worth substantially more than its actual market value, in order to preserve stability and consumer surplus and sentimental value.  

It can be trivially avoided, too, with poison pill type contracts.  I don't own my home, Mardoc, Inc. owns it.  The firm paid for the house at market price, and then signed a contract with me where I have a perpetually-renewable (at renter's discretion but not owner's) rental contract for $1/month, and the firm is responsible for all maintenance requested by tenant.  That contract, of course, dropped the value of the house substantially, so it's listed for taxes at $500.  When I want to move, I first cancel that contract, wind up Mardoc, Inc, then place the home on the market.  If you buy the house from me against my will, the contract remains in effect.  If you would rather have a rule where purchases from corporations negate contracts, then you've destroyed basically all of capitalism, and most renter's rights.  

Further, much wealth has value only in combination with other things.  Does Coca-Cola need to declare the value of the total enterprise?  Or each factory, the brand, the secret recipe, etc?  Can I buy just 10 feet of your newly constructed railroad, and set up a tollbooth?  If I'm annoyed with you, can I buy just your toothbrush?  Market value...arguably negative, once you used it.

Also, this only works for wealth whose existence can't be hidden, so therefore it must be registered.  It works fine for houses and cars, but not for the gold buried in the backyard.  But we don't want wealth to be hidden, we want it to be invested in tools making us all better off.

And, it's not great for items whose value changes.  Do I need to update my wealth registry every minute, to account for the performance of my stocks on the stock market?  You might be creating a new breed of high-frequency traders, whose raison d'etre is to steal all the upside from any investment, but not the downside, by buying stuff the moment it increases in value then selling it for cash to repeat the process.

If you want to set up enforcement where these approaches are outlawed and I can set only reasonable values for things...well, you've just reinvented the tax assessor, why are you bothering with the 'must sell on demand' rule again?

This method might work for items which are only valued for their ability to produce a predictable income - bonds and investment properties, because they can't both be hidden and be valuable - but there isn't a lot of difficulty in putting a price on them.  Further, these are the items which we care most about not disrupting.  I could live with a wealth tax on my house, I sort of already pay one, only it's called 'property tax' and goes to the local school district instead of to all children everywhere.  Also my house is already falling apart every moment, and requires constant influx of money for maintenance.  A wealth tax on my retirement fund, though...that defeats the entire purpose of its existence.  I might as well enjoy my income while I have it, instead of investing it in productivity-growing companies which increase the world's wealth, and allow me to support myself when I am old.

Quote:Back to the children: I claim they deserve some fraction of the stuff in the world to be allocated to them, and the amount of value in the world is growing faster than the population. It makes perfect sense for the amount we consider children deserve to go up over time. The fact that this higher allocation is described in the form of concrete things rather than just a higher quantity of money is an artifact of humans thinking in human, not abstract terms.
We do enforce this, just not through generalized taxes.  If you have a child that you don't support, it will be taken from you and placed in someone else's care, and in addition your income will be garnished by an amount chosen by a family law judge, in a hearing.

In addition, there are all the investments in schools and similar, usually supported by property tax.

In addition to the amount a child deserves by right from those who caused it to exist, many many people are willing to donate to help the less-fortunate, anything from Christmas toy drives to scholarships to free medical treatment.  It's just that we consider this to be supererogatory.

I think your primary mistake is implied by your use of the passive voice here.  You claim that 'value is growing'.  I claim that people are investing in tools and knowledge to increase productivity, which enables us to consume more.  I might maybe be willing to accept your perspective on real estate only, where I can gain value by the mere fact of owning something near productive people.  But, well, anywhere with democracy, property taxes already exist; anywhere without democracy, there are bigger more urgent problems.

Edit: Also, honestly, land is about the only thing my ancestors could have stolen from your ancestors that doesn't fade to nothing on its own, given time. Anything made by peasants/slaves/etc was long since eaten or decayed into dust, with maybe the exception of things that were gold. If it hasn't decayed, that's because of the constant influx of additional maintenance work, which at some point because the majority of the value anyway.
EitB 25 - Perpentach
Occasional mapmaker


(July 11th, 2018, 14:10)SevenSpirits Wrote: There's a large amount of preexisting stuff in the world that's not a product of anyone's labor (which is the typical moral justification for private property). Claiming this stuff as private property by existing people to the exclusion of the unborn is useful economically but not justified morally. See also Georgism.

But it does not answer my question. I am asking why the unborn have a justified claim on "stuff" and you are answering why existing people do not have such claim. It's a non-sequitor.

Quote:simply ensuring that claims over property decay naturally and over time revert to the public makes a good compromise.

"Revert" implies that they were once held by the public and this is an assumption you need to prove. Also, if claims over property "decay", it means that an object, after a while, should become unowned by anyone, including "the public". Moving this object from the unowned state into the public domain is an additional logical step and you are skipping it.

(July 11th, 2018, 13:53)TheHumanHydra Wrote: Well, Canada is a pretty middle-of-the-road country when it comes to democracies, less 'progressive' than many European but much more so than the United States. So a Canadian moderate is pretty moderate. (In many areas, the United States seems to be the outlier among democracies.) However, it's interesting to me that you suggest that a moderate Canadian is fanatical. Do I come from a country of fanatics? I think that may suggest something about the way you view the world.
That's a very parochial view. Take a generation still partly alive today, that of your grandparents. What was the view of their generation in Canada, when they were of your age? Something you would consider much to the right, maybe even far right. And two generations earlier? Probably something considered so far from the norm that you would not be able to process it.

Therefore telling me that you're a moderate simply because you're at the centre of the current views in your country is saying that your perspective is very limited. This doesn't mean that your whole country is fanatical, but that your own personal wholesale condemnation of views that are actually more moderate than your own is.

Quote:I am pleased to hear you say that my claim doesn't apply to you. I look forward to seeing you expound on some of your favourite left-wing ideas, for helping the disadvantaged, etc., and how you would prefer to see them implemented.

I don't think this is at all worthwhile, see below.

Quote:As for my quote, did you mean to imply that you do not agree with the conservative sentiments I represented there, and that I've misjudged you? If so, I will be quite pleased to hear it.

I think you terribly misjudge the USA conservatives because of your very strong bias. At the current moment, you've given a blanket that their policies are completely immoral, I deny that, and unless you want to make some particular effort here why should I find it worthwhile to continue down this path?

You have objected to my claim that people on the left as a rule don't think through their policies. In this thread, people have touched on many consequences arising because of this lack of thinking, examples include DACA leading to a crisis of thousands of children being smuggled across US Borders, the open borders in Europe causing all sorts of problems, no-go zones, immigrants bringing their practice of polygamy, the disastrous effects on the working class because of mass migration and free trade, and welfare creating a dependent class. And there are no shortage of additional examples that can be brought up.

You're a newbie at all this, don't know much about the topics of discussion, haven't thought much about the issues, and aren't making a serious effort at meaningful discussion. So as of now I don't see much point conversing with you on such issues.

(July 11th, 2018, 14:10)SevenSpirits Wrote: Claiming this stuff as private property by existing people to the exclusion of the unborn is useful economically but not justified morally. See also Georgism.

(July 11th, 2018, 12:11)SevenSpirits Wrote: The concept of private property (combined with a free market, etc), while it has many benefits, has one major injustice, which is the baked-in assumption that those of us who are alive right now get to divvy up all the stuff in the world between us. That leaves nothing for people who arrive in the world in the future, i.e. babies.

I can't shake the impression that you describe an alternate reality. What still happens quite often is that elder members of families pass wealth and property down to junior ones. In addition, when younger generations grow up and work, they are able to trade their labour for property and wealth just like older generations did. So there isn't actually this bizarre division between the living and the unborn like you posit, where the unborn are excluded.

People just aren't as atomised as you and many other libertarians posit it to be.

(July 11th, 2018, 14:55)Mardoc Wrote:
Quote:(Wealth tax: I don't know of a great way to do this, but a decent way might be to make everyone declare the value of their stuff, and pay 5% of that. Your honest declaration is enforced by treating it as an offer to sell your stuff for that much money that anyone can accept.)

I used to like this for its cleverness, but not after reading a recent thread at another forum, where people pointed out all the flaws.

Something else I thought of overnight, that may be obvious from my previous examples or may not be obvious: the problems with this are largely with personal property, and hence the problems will apply much, much more strongly to poor people than to rich people.  It seems rather ironic to set up a wealth tax in a way that gives the rich a new way to bully the poor.

Suppose you're relatively poor/working class, at my factory, and you're causing me problems.  Maybe you're organizing a union.  I want to cause you problems.  Well, perfectly legally under the 'declare your wealth' regime, I can send someone down to the wealth registry office to look for the values you've placed on the following:
- Pets
- Mother's day gifts (and school projects, and etc)
- Correspondence
- Love letters and gifts from loved ones
- Photographs
- Unfinished manuscripts
- Address book
- Recipe files
- Instruction manuals
- Financial records
- Etc and so on

In today's world, the above items likely have a market value of...well, it may not even be positive, you may have to pay disposal fees.  It's the sort of thing that is probably leftover at an estate sale.  At the same time, these are the sorts of things that have enormous non-monetary value.  If you run back into your burning house to save something, it's probably something on that list - not something merely worth money.

I direct my agent to purchase it all, and immediately destroy it.  The pets may require a nominal fee to a vet for humane euthanasia, but the rest can be destroyed in a simple bonfire.  If you want to stop me...well, you've basically got to set a declared value for everything, high enough that it's not worth my trouble to spite you.  If you do find a value that works, then you're paying an enormous wealth tax on no real assets, so I've still managed to hurt you.  In that case I'm hurting you with only the threat, rather than actually having to spend any money.  Meanwhile, since I'm richer than you, I can easily bear to 'value' my personal property at a level that you can't hurt me by forced sale.  It turns into a combination of a wealth tax and a per capita tax, with the per capita value based on how much spite/trolling there is in the world.

The natural way to avoid this is to make an exception for non-investment property, stuff that you have only for its use-value, rather than for the ability to convert it into cash.  I have the feeling that the rules around what does and doesn't count as taxable property will have so many loopholes and require so much work from the government to enforce, that you have, again, defeated the supposed savings from the simple rule.  Again, you might as well simply use tax assessors from the start, if you're going to tax wealth.
EitB 25 - Perpentach
Occasional mapmaker


(July 12th, 2018, 06:39)ipecac Wrote:
(July 11th, 2018, 13:53)TheHumanHydra Wrote: Well, Canada is a pretty middle-of-the-road country when it comes to democracies, less 'progressive' than many European but much more so than the United States. So a Canadian moderate is pretty moderate. (In many areas, the United States seems to be the outlier among democracies.) However, it's interesting to me that you suggest that a moderate Canadian is fanatical. Do I come from a country of fanatics? I think that may suggest something about the way you view the world.
That's a very parochial view. Take a generation still partly alive today, that of your grandparents. What was the view of their generation in Canada, when they were of your age? Something you would consider much to the right, maybe even far right. And two generations earlier? Probably something considered so far from the norm that you would not be able to process it.

Therefore telling me that you're a moderate simply because you're at the centre of the current views in your country is saying that your perspective is very limited. This doesn't mean that your whole country is fanatical, but that your own personal wholesale condemnation of views that are actually more moderate than your own is.

Quote:I am pleased to hear you say that my claim doesn't apply to you. I look forward to seeing you expound on some of your favourite left-wing ideas, for helping the disadvantaged, etc., and how you would prefer to see them implemented.

I don't think this is at all worthwhile, see below.

Quote:As for my quote, did you mean to imply that you do not agree with the conservative sentiments I represented there, and that I've misjudged you? If so, I will be quite pleased to hear it.

I think you terribly misjudge the USA conservatives because of your very strong bias. At the current moment, you've given a blanket that their policies are completely immoral, I deny that, and unless you want to make some particular effort here why should I find it worthwhile to continue down this path?

You have objected to my claim that people on the left as a rule don't think through their policies. In this thread, people have touched on many consequences arising because of this lack of thinking, examples include DACA leading to a crisis of thousands of children being smuggled across US Borders, the open borders in Europe causing all sorts of problems, no-go zones, immigrants bringing their practice of polygamy, the disastrous effects on the working class because of mass migration and free trade, and welfare creating a dependent class. And there are no shortage of additional examples that can be brought up.

You're a newbie at all this, don't know much about the topics of discussion, haven't thought much about the issues, and aren't making a serious effort at meaningful discussion. So as of now I don't see much point conversing with you on such issues.

I agree that this discussion cannot profitably continue. I want to make some comments here, though.

First, I will trust the reader to observe the statements you've made and compare them to my claims.

Second, I will note that you declined the challenge to demonstrate the heart in your policies.

Third, you're right, I have less knowledge of U.S. politics than you do. You may also note that I have largely restricted my discussion with you in this thread to two areas. The first was the value of immigration. Here I brought the lived experience of a country different from yours that has benefited immensely from the phenomenon, an experience you might have added to your pool of knowledge. Second, when you were arguing against a policy I don't even at present support, UBI, I called out what I judged to be a bizarre argument founded on your biases. When you responded with a sweeping claim of left-wing incompetence, I resorted to the counterclaim of moral inconsistency I had left unspoken (in case the reader was confused, ipecac and I are coreligionists), which you have not substantially answered.

I have not to my recollection argued over child migration, problems in Europe, no-go zones, immigrant polygamy, globalization for the working class, or class dependency. I did make a sharp and imprudent comment about the situation with China, which I retracted on correction. Much earlier I posed a question for discussion on immigration and clarified it, beginning our short conversation. I dissented from a post by Gavagai without discussion. And I have had a little bit of discussion with Bacchus on health care, again bringing my Canadian perspective.

To this you have accused me of vast overreach and belittled me repeatedly. You have demeaned the broad swathe of left-wing thinkers, and have insulted the honour of my country. Now I have also, having held my peace with one lapse until the last moment, demeaned the broad swathe of American conservatives, that is true. I regret that that will be seen as unjust by conservatives and just by liberals without having had its edifying effect.

I'd like to conclude my involvement in our particular discussion, unless I am obliged to respond again, by reiterating one thought. The American experience is not the only experience. There is a world out there that has responded to the challenges of modernity differently from the United States, sometimes to their detriment, often to their profit. I am not a political scientist or an economist, nor do I pretend to be. But what I am is a man from a country that has responded to immigration and refugees with (comparatively) open arms, and has not collapsed, but waxed stronger. And to the problem of its citizens' health, it has responded with a communal effort that has not crippled it, but kept its people well. Canada is no utopia, even on these issues. But it is well, not sick -- and it is bringing the world with it.

I have often disparaged the parties in my own country as possessing either wisdom or compassion, never both. I would encourage you, on the basis of our shared principles, when faced with the problems of your country, not to stop with the one, but to press it to the service of the other. In your day, another American, another human, might benefit.

Philia et pax,

THH

(July 12th, 2018, 22:58)TheHumanHydra Wrote: Second, I will note that you declined the challenge to demonstrate the heart in your policies.

Is that an identification of 'left-wing' with 'having heart'? Amusing.

Quote:When you responded with a sweeping claim of left-wing incompetence, I resorted to the counterclaim of moral inconsistency

I had left unspoken (in case the reader was confused, ipecac and I are coreligionists), which you have not substantially answered.

There's nothing to be substantially answered, since there is nothing substantially questioned. You sweepingly claim that something is all morally bad but give no specifics, so what is there to answer? As far as I can tell, it's just an emotional outburst.

Quote:I have not to my recollection argued over child migration, problems in Europe, no-go zones, immigrant polygamy, globalization for the working class, or class dependency.

You have demeaned the broad swathe of left-wing thinkers

Unlike you, when I make sweeping condemnation of the thinkers and their policies I'm willing to back them up with specific examples.

Quote:Now I have also, having held my peace with one lapse until the last moment, demeaned the broad swathe of American conservatives, that is true. I regret that that will be seen as unjust by conservatives and just by liberals without having had its edifying effect.

You're trying to have it both ways, implying you didn't mean to demean and condemn and you only did it because of a lapse of control, but you're not retracting what you said, instead wanting me to refute it.

So what is it? Something you said in the heat of the moment, but don't actually believe? Or something you actually do believe and are half-happy that it was provoked from you, so that it can 'edify' others?



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