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You gave me examples of your pompous drivel. You’ve never read anything I’ve ever said without manipulating it to fit me into one your little boxes. The patriotism discussion is perfect example of that.

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And this whole authoritarian bullshit is just your excuse to accuse people you don’t agree with of being fascists.

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Originally posted by SignyM:
Did you ask what I meant? No? Are you once again putting words in my mouth? It's all about "us" and "them", isn't it, Finn?

For someone who cries a buckets of tears about being misunderstood you spend an awful lot of time misrepresenting others!

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Cry all you want, Signym. I’ve been listening to you misrepresent me and manipulate the argument for years.

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Who do you think you’re fooling with this one-side authoritarian crap? If you want to discuss authoritarianism, that’s fine, but that’s not what you want. It really doesn’t surprise a lot people on this board that you were the first one to start throwing out names of people you wanted to accuse of being “authoritarian.”

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You’ve never tried to understand anything I’ve said. You’ve never for one minute cared what I think.

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I’m sorry you’re having trouble defining me in the simplest possible terms. Actually I don’t really give a shit. You can define me in any terms you want, but don’t expect me to do tricks for you.

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Originally posted by Geezer:

I'd be interested in seeing a LWA score system with questions like:

"The government should use any means necessary to reduce carbon emmisions and repair the damage to nature caused by man-made global warming."

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"To protect society, the government should be required to sieze all private firearmes, and be allowed to conduct warrantless searches to find them."

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"Economically successful people and businesses gain their wealth only by exploiting individuals and society, so thay should be required to pay a majority of their income to the government for use in programs to help the less fortunate."

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"Government officials who do not perform to our standards should be immediately fired and imprisoned, without the requirements of inditement, trial, or conviction."

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"In our multi-cultural nation, freedom of speech does not apply to racist, sexist, xenophobic, homophobic, or religiously intolerant speech, and people who use it should be jailed."

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Celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay says British restaurants should be fined if they serve fruit and vegetables which are not in season.

He told the BBC that fruit and vegetables should be locally-sourced and only on menus when in season.

Mr Ramsay said he had already spoken to Prime Minister Gordon Brown about outlawing out-of-season produce.

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Take the patriotism discussion that you brought up.

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You asked me what I thought about patriotism and I naively thought you wanted an honest answer so I attempted to define how I saw patriotism, which by definition is love for one’s country. But you’re take on that discussion was that you were a model American, a lover of Republicanism, and I hated the founding fathers. That was essentially your conclusion

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Originally posted by SergeantX:
I see about as many LWAs as RWAs. And it's sad, 'cause most of them don't even know it.

That's why I have so little patience with the left vs. right discussions. As far as I see, there are the jerkoffs that want to get into everyone elses business, and there are the people content to live and let live. Left and Right don't enter into it.


SergeantX

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Originally posted by SignyM:
Now, I re-read that and nowhere did I conclude anything like you claim. All I did was ask questions and give my opinion.

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Originally posted by SignyM:
But it seems you have a signifcicant problem with questions particularly since you can't seem to answer them, and then you get all pissed and attack me and accuse me of "manipulating" the conversation. Well I'm sorry that your logic skills are so weak that you think a few straightforward questions are "manipulation" but that's your problem, not mine.

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As far as I see, there are the jerkoffs that want to get into everyone elses business, and there are the people content to live and let live. Left and Right don't enter into it.

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You're not looking at followers here (well, maybe AUraptor and Jack) you are looking at frustrated leader types.

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Originally posted by Kwicko:
And, of course, you have schools of thought on when the Roman Empire started and when it officially ended. Constantine was a Holy Roman Emporer, as was Napoleon, and I believe Carolus Magnus was in there as well (better known as Charlemagne).

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We can't agree on how long it lasted, or when the end began - was it the beginning of the end, or the end of the beginning? - but we can agree that the Empire didn't just skulk off into the night and disappear in a sudden "poof" and flash of light. It took a long time for the Roman Empire to fall - in fact, it took it the rest of its life!

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Originally posted by Fletch2:
Nah you're wrong. What you see here are frustrated wannabe "Elite's" folks that either think the world would be better if they were running it or fantasise that they lived in a world that appreciated their own extremely limited skill set.

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That's why I have so little patience with the left vs. right discussions. As far as I see, there are the jerkoffs that want to get into everyone elses business, and there are the people content to live and let live. Left and Right don't enter into it.

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The crucial thing is where we're being led.

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Seems to me that I answer a lot of your questions. In fact, reading through that thread again, I can’t believe I let it go on that long. I must have not had anything to do that day, but I can’t imagine how. Nonetheless, these kinds of third degrees are tiresome, especially when you don’t appreciate the discussion, you just get frustrated and snarky wtih me for not giving you the answers you want to hear.

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It’s possible I’m mistaken or thinking of a different thread. On the off chance I was mistaken, please accept my apologies.

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Originally posted by SignyM:
Have you read the book? It appears not. The critical distinction that you seem to be missing is that authoritarians are willing to apply violence to get their way. So they applaud tasing people who're guilty of mouthing off, for example, or invading a nation that posed no conceivable threat, or support the death penalty

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Try being more tolerant of people who aren't EXACTLY on your point in the spectrum, you'll be a better Libertarian that way.

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Originally posted by SergeantX:

But I gather you were somewhat more interested in making a tongue-in-cheek jab at the inflated egos that our board inspires.

SergeantX

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Originally posted by Fletch2:
One of the points Altemeyer makes is that it isn't authoritarian leaders you have to worry about, because in the main they are ineffectual and in competition with each other for converts. It's the followers that are the problem because they provide the leader with willing storm troopers.

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Originally posted by SergeantX:
I started to, but those "take a quiz to find out what you are" things grew tedious for me long ago. A while back we were giving people a similar test to see if people were 'libertarians'. Results showed that 60-70 percent of us are secretly libertarian. That was obvious bullshit, even though it told me what I wanted to hear. Point being, these tests may be nice entertainment, but they tell us nothing worthwhile.

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...I gave the inferences test that Mary Wegmann had used to two large samples of students at my university. In both studies high RWAs (that is, people who scored high on that questionnaire--people, by the way, who scored a good deal higher than either Geezer or Finn) went down in flames more than others did. They particularly had trouble figuring out that an inference or deduction was wrong.

To illustrate, suppose they had gotten the following syllogism:

All fish live in the sea.
Sharks live in the sea..
Therefore, sharks are fish.

The conclusion does not follow, but high RWAs would be more likely to say the reasoning is correct than most people would. If you ask them why it seems right, they would likely tell you, “Because sharks are fish.” In other words, they thought the reasoning was sound because they agreed with the last statement. If the conclusion is right, they figure, then the reasoning must have been right. Or to put it another way, they don’t “get it” that the reasoning matters--especially on a reasoning test.

This is not only “Illogical, Captain,” as Mr. Spock would say, it’s quite dangerous, because it shows that if authoritarian followers like the conclusion, the logic involved is pretty irrelevant. The reasoning should justify the conclusion, but for a lot of high RWAs, the conclusion validates the reasoning. Such is the basis of many a prejudice, and many a Big Lie that comes to be accepted. Now one can easily overstate this finding. A lot of people have trouble with syllogistic reasoning, and high RWAs are only slightly more likely to make such mistakes than low RWAs are. But in general high RWAs seem to have more trouble than most people do realizing that a conclusion is false.

Deductive logic aside, authoritarians also have trouble deciding whether empirical evidence proves, or does not prove, something. They will often think some thoroughly ambiguous fact verifies something they already believe in. So if you tell them that archaeologists have discovered a fallen wall at ancient Jericho, they are more likely than most people to infer that this proves the Biblical story of Joshua and the horns is true--when the wall could have been knocked over by lots of other groups, or an earthquake, and be from an entirely different era (which it is).

High RWAs similarly think the fact that many religions in the world have accounts of a big flood proves that the story of Noah is true--when the accounts vary enormously, big floods hardly mean the story of the ark, etcetera also occurred, and the tale of Noah was likely adapted from an earlier Sumerian myth. They are sure that accounts of near-death experiences in which people say they traveled through a dark tunnel toward a Being of Light prove the teachings of Christianity are true--even though these stories also vary enormously, the “Being” is usually interpreted according to whom one expects to meet at death, and the vision could just be an hallucination produced by an oxygen-depleted brain.

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Originally posted by SignyM:
The critical distinction that you seem to be missing is that authoritarians are willing to apply violence to get their way.

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Originally posted by SergeantX:
Now, I'm not saying the whole book is bullshit - I haven't read it yet. But if the point is to paint authoritarianism as an exclusively right-wing thing, it seems a stretch. Statist liberal ambitions, from nationalizing industry all the way down to banning public smoking, are every bit as much about violence as their right-wing parallels.

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Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
Strip them of their stormtroopers, and they're just another loudmouth.

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I think the thing you're missing is that violence and force are the same thing.

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Originally posted by SignyM:

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I think the thing you're missing is that violence and force are the same thing.

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One can be forceful without being violent.
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Originally posted by SignyM:
One can be forceful without being violent.

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But that relies on the other person being cooperative and reacting to you being "forceful" in the way you desire. A more jaundiced view is that you being "forceful" is really you being coersive ie backed by the threat of violence.

Bare in mind also that you are talking to someone that believes mailing out a tax demand is a violent act, or is at least backed by the threat of violence. The force continum you work with and the one CTS uses have very different scales.

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Originally posted by SignyM:
Forceful: strong, emphatic, and confident; effective

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Originally posted by rue:
Sometimes legislation is - if you need medical care we can provide it. If you need R&D we can do that. If your children need an education we have schools and teachers...
Not every bit of legislation ends up at the point of a gun, as you seem to imply.

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Originally posted by SignyM:
This kind of conflation is just... silly... and something that I expect to hear from the right wing but not from you.

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Frem, for example, seems to think that ALL governments are bad.

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But there are governments... and then there governments. George Bush's government is not the same as Olafur Grimssons'.

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SOME governments actually work with a minimum of violence because they do what people want them to do.

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Not every bit of legislation ends up at the point of a gun, as you seem to imply.

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To equate statism with violence might be historically useful, but I'm not sure it's a bona fide link. And if statism and violence are decoupled... or can be decoupled... where does that leave libertarians and anarchists?

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In these three cases you left out the implied "...and we'll force other people to pay for it". Pretty much anything the government does relies on tax dollars to fund it, and making sure that people pay does sometimes end up coming at the point of a gun.

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Because that is how it is enforced, with the threat of violence.

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Originally posted by SignyM:
What if the government simply garnishes your paycheck, or confiscates what it deems to be its share? Or what if you're punished by having a couple of very large men show up (no guns) and simply hustle you way to some very boring place?

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What if the government simply garnishes your paycheck, or confiscates what it deems to be its share?- Signy
You don't see any of these scenarios as violent?-CTS

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What if the government simply garnishes your paycheck, or confiscates what it deems to be its share?

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Originally posted by SignyM:
Let's put it another way...


Let's say someone has agreed to pay you a certain amount for a car but then they welch on the deal and drive off w/o paying. So you get the broker/ bank through whom you've arranged the payment to take the money directly out of his account and give it to you w/o his express order. Alternatively, you and a couple of buddies go to his house and tow the car away.

Is that violent?

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Originally posted by Fletch2:
Also by their rules once you initiate violence they have the right to respond accordingly. So garnish her wages and she may shoot you, because ya-know you started on the violence thing.

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