Speaking for myself it is much more about welcoming other points of view, especially popular ones, to learn why they carry so much weight and find out if there is anything to them. Much earlier, we had someone ITT in Jman who I believe was a prosecting attorney with quite a bit if knowledge and familiarity with these issues and was willing to argue from the point of view of law enforcement among an unsurprisingly hostile crowd. He was banned for racism. Now we have a guy who obviously has his finger on the pulse of a large, conservative portion of this country and I think he even works in politics. Banned for racism.

Luckily, we have a forum thread where this is on topic!

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/21...-time-1519464/

Pipes doesn't work in politics, and his arguments are neither unique nor novel. No one has been able to argue that they have value or even that they make any sense. So why do we care again?

lol

That his ideas aren't unique or novel has been my point, they are widely held. You guys have been trolling him about his job. I thought it was some kind of politcal consultant, or something. What is it?

If only the reason he was being mocked was mentioned multiple times right in this very thread.

He claims to be a consultant. If it's true, and we all doubt it is, he's the worst consultant I have ever seen.

Based on what?

Isn't "consultant" the 21st Century word for "working at whatever 3-6 month, benefit-free gig I can find"?

So to get this straight, you don't think pipes arguments are representative of much of the hard, fiscally conservative community and resonate with much of the country at large, and likewise you don't think the same of Jman's arguments with regard to law enforcement?

I think pipes has common ideas. That doesn't mean his ideas are not racist or deplorable. There are a lot of racist and deplorable people out there.

Are you ever going to get to a point or policy position or are we just going to muse wistfully about moderation outside of the designated thread all day? .

I know your one feeble attempt at doing so today got slapped down, but read a book for me one time and try again.

There's a lot of dumb racists out there, many are likely fiscally conservative, pipes' bull**** probably does resonate with other piles of crap. That has nothing to do with their fiscal point of view.

(def.) A racist is any person who thinks blacks need special treatment to get ahead in America.
Black Reparations are a species of special treatment for blacks.
Therefore, any advocates for Black Reparations are racists and should be banned.

Lol "fiscally conservative community". That breed of people does indeed exist, but I don't think there are enough of them to actually call it a community. It certainly isn't a major constituency of either party.

Please note that I'm talking about people who are actually fiscally conservative. Not those who want to cut welfare, but keep military and Medicare spending the same or growing.

Ayn Rand and her followers would disagree with you, and they probably think you and your ideas are a pile of crap. On that, I disagree with you both.

More people in this country identify themselves as fiscally conservative (44%) than fically liberal (13%). There are hard liners on each end of the spectrum.

http://m.rasmussenreports.com/public...y_conservative

Fly in racist threads is like the $60/shot barrel-aged, single-sourced, super-primo fly.

Lots of people self identify as lots of things. Fiscal conservativism is a myth from a policy stand point, and if you start digging into those self identified fiscal conservatives you will find that they are actually not. Fiscal conservatives only like budget cuts to a tiny tiny portion of the budget. You start talking about cutting the military, SS, and Medicare and these fiscal conservatives freak the hell out.

My policy positions have been stated throughout this thread, and you'll be sorry to hear, I'm sure, that they align very closely with yours. Feel free to read up. Apologies if I'm not arrogant enough to believe they alone will solve our problems or that they won't need to be sold to my community and the rest of the country before having much chance of making a difference.

True. It all depends on what you think government should be used for. Hard core Randians think the military and law enforcement is about all it's good for.

Some liberal attitudes are racist imo in that they are condescending in that they refuse to hold Blacks to the same standards. Or at least they sound like it.

Reparations though are rightful returning of stolen labor. Just like when Nazis took art away from Jews and people try to go back and find the rightful owners. It doesn't matter if someone else "bought" the art in the mean time. If the profiteers of slavery can be directly traced they should lose that profit and it should go to the rightful heirs. Anyone who "inherited" a plantation or stock in RJ Reynolds, received stolen property to some extent. That's really simple and obvious imo.

On a practical level, that might not be practical, and some general reparations taken from society at large might be the only reasonable way to handle it.

FoldN man I think you would be enormously less confused at how often people say **** that seems out of nowhere if you gave other people the tiniest, tiniest amount of credit. Like this whole pipes thing... we know. Everyone reading this thread is aware of the concept of fiscal conservatism and the basic outline of Ayn Rand's philosophy.

Now, given that we all knew that BEFORE reading pipes' post, why do you think telling us "I'm pretty sure fiscal conservatives are for small government" is adding to the discussion?




microbet- I don't know if you were keeping up on the BruceZ thread, but you know your boy FoldN here is a Holocaust revionist, right?

Got a citation for that definition?

Great, give us a trip report about how whining about moderation helps to accomplish any of those goals.