Fuck the Libertarians Episode Three: Freedumb

This episode of Fuck The Libertarians is going to be a short one, but I feel like the argument needs to be addressed. It's just so exquisitely stupid. Let's get right to it.

Basically, the rational person will claim that free market capitalism is deeply flawed, in part because it allows corporations to employ workers in unsafe conditions that might be hazardous to their health. Further, it opens up the door for slave wages that no human being could ever hope to live on. Essentially, an unregulated capitalist system fucks over a lot of people, and that's not okay. We need strong regulations to protect the rights of workers, so that nobody, you know, fucking dies.

The fuckwit libertarians will then assert that there is no need to regulate how companies can treat workers, because the workers have the freedom to leave the position. If a business mistreats its employers, no one will apply for jobs there, and the business will go under. See? The system works!

Well, sure, the system works, but only if you're a childish asshole who is allergic to nuance. To further illustrate my objection with the argument, I want to look at a little thought experiment. Libertarians have concocted a fantasy world in their heads already, so it shouldn't be too hard for them to do this with me.

Let's imagine a small child in South America. He workers in a sweatshop for seventeen hours a day, making computer parts for a giant corporation which shall remain nameless. *Cough-Apple-Cough.* Conditions in his factory are hellish, and he only makes about sixteen cents a day. With that money, he can buy a single rotten apple. It isn't much, but it keeps him alive.

The alternative is to starve completely and eventually die.

Do you see what I'm getting at here? Anybody will work a shitty job if they have no other way to survive. And yes, you have the theoretically option to leave, but if that will result in your death, then it isn't really a choice at all. You are effectively trapped in Hell if you work in an area with a low number of job openings.

Fuck that argument, and fuck the libertarians.

Fuck the Libertarians Episode Two: Biological Determinism

I know I said that episode two of this series wouldn't go up until next Monday, but I recently encountered a self-described libertarian who spewed fourth so much bullshit that I just had to write about it. Consider this a bonus episode of the series. I am so fucking generous, you guys!

Anyway, this stupid asshole was again pushing that dumb narrative that their are certain people, in this case whites, that are just better than others, in this case blacks, at occupying leadership roles. Therefore, it's totally fine that most of Congress and the Supreme Court is white, because that's the natural way of things! Changing the status quo is for faggots!

Now, I like to think of myself as at least somewhat intelligent, so naturally I disagree with this point. I believe that the reason most powerful people in America are white is because black people have not been afforded the same opportunities as their Caucasian counterparts. I mean, the Civil Rights act was only passed in 1965. That means that, even on paper, black people have only been equal for about fifty years. Contrast this with the hundreds and hundreds of years of white people being on top.

But even if you assert, as this fellow did, that racial inequality is a thing of the past, well, you're still wrong. I could go into why for hours on end, but luckily, someone already did that for me! I'll just leave this here. http://www.thecoli.com/threads/cracked-5-studies-that-prove-racism-is-still-way-worse-than-we-think.274657/ Give that article a look, then reconsider your position.

What really baffled me about that guy is that he does nothing to fix the problem he pointed out. Like, if there is a group of people that is just naturally dumber than another, which is what you believe, shouldn't we spend more time educating them and taking steps to mitigate that natural disability? By your logic, we should get rid of all wheelchair ramps, because people who cannot walk are just naturally worse than those who can. Obviously they don't deserve access to buildings.

Now, if there really is a natural disability inherent in being black, or female, or whatever, the way you fix that is to fund universal education. You would give impoverished an easy way out of their predicaments, and the idiots could improve their minds.

But that would require government intervention, which is tyranny, of course.

Fuck this guy, and fuck the libertarians.

Fuck the Libertarians Episode One: Taxation

Hey, all, this is the first in a new series, which will probably last for three episodes! The title says it all, really. Libertarians are fucking stupid, and I'm not going to sugarcoat it. If you really subscribe to the genuine free-market capitalist ideology, you're an idiot. It's jut that simple.

But as much as I'd love to just dump on libertarians in this angry, vague way, I think it behooves me to tackle some of the actual arguments. Here we go.

Firstly, taxation is not theft. This seems to be the cornerstone of the philosophy held by those antigovernment types. They claim that because the definition of 'govern' is 'to control by force,' that means that the process of collecting taxes is a violent one. They also state that because taxation is never truly voluntary at all times, so therefore it's theft.

The above argument seems to be predicated on not knowing what the word 'theft' means. Theft implies that someone takes something from you without offering something else in return. Theft is not mutually beneficial. But taxation helps to pay for things like roads and public schools. You could argue that these things are underfunded and that our tax dollars are misused, sure. But even then, the fact remains that you're still getting something back. Thus, it isn't theft.

That's basically all I have to say on that issue. Episodes of this series will go up every Monday until I have systematically eviscerated every Libertarian wingnut out there. See you next time.

My Rant About Conservative Talk Radio

He’s angry again. I don’t know why, but I’m almost positive it’s misguided. None of his rants make any sense these days, and he fumbles the facts like a quarterback with anxiety. It’s a mystery. Last week he was pissed about somebody on TV taking the Lord’s name in vain. Before that it was the EPA, then the Department of Education. He stands up there on his podium, screaming his ass off about big government interfering with hard working job creators. He talks about limiting their power, then votes against gay marriage. I guess he wants the government to stay out of your way, but only if you’re exactly like him.

I don’t think he really believes in any of the stuff he says. I think he just likes to hear himself talk. This whole thing is just an excuse for him to get his ego stroked. Well, who can blame him? We all want to feel important, we all want to be remembered. But what he doesn’t realize is that history only smiles upon the intelligent ones. He’s already out of luck.

Humanists Behind Bars

Recently, an inmate in a correctional facility in Oregon sued the prison for the right to practice his 'religion of humanism.' The Federal Bureau of Prisons recognized his plea. This means that, for the purpose of the prison system, humanism is considered a religion. This new designation affords humanist prisoners the right to form study groups, hire chaplains, and speak to philosophers.much in the same way that Christian inmates would be allowed to hire priests.

This seems to be following the US Army's example of recognizing humanism as a 'religious choice.'

Now, many atheists, most of whom refer to themselves as secular humanists, take this as a mixed blessing. And, honestly, I can sort of see where they're coming from. After all, humanism is not a religion, and recognizing it a such might contribute to the collapse of the already tumultuous relationship between outspoken atheists and conservative Christians. After all, we've spent years correctly denying the claim that atheism is a religion, and now it is being recognized as such. At least it is in one specific context.

So, doesn't this designation sort of undermine our push for scientific literacy and reason? We claim that said push is not about furthering a religious agenda, and this law seems to be in direct opposition to that claim.

In this context, I don't think it does. See, this isn't really about the classification of humanism. It isn't a religion, but I don't think designating it as such here will actually contribute to misinformation among theists. At least, not among those theists who still have functioning brains. There aren't many, but they're out there. My point here is that calling humanism a religion is a means to an end. If there were a way to get around that, I'm sure prison officials would have taken that path. But I don't know. Maybe I'm giving these people too much credit.

Or rather I would be, were it not for the fact that this case does not designate humanism as a religion. It explicitly calls it a religious choice, as the US Army did. This is not the same as a religion. I think it can best be summed it with a quote from Bill Maher. "Atheism is religion like abstinence is a sex position." Yes, these two things are very different, but they're on the same spectrum. Opposite ends of it, sure, but the same spectrum nonetheless.

This case is not about religion. It's about whether or not secular humanists are entitled to the same protections under law as religious folks. Quite simply, this is a matter of human rights. The FBP was sued by the American Humanist Association, and they agreed to acknowledge humanism as a worldview, rather than a religion. So, really, the argument against this is meaningless.

This decision allows humanists in prison to request time and space for activities, the right to form study and debate groups, and many other things. Before, only theists had these rights. This breaks down the barrier between special religious rights and opens the door for debate and discussion. This is about equality. We have to focus on that, rather than the technical label.

Just something to think about.

Was Reagan Crazy?

Was Reagan Crazy?

Yes. This is clear. He advocated for an economic policy that, objectively, cannot work. Trickle-down economics states that granting tax cuts to the wealthiest corporate magnates will eventually lead to greater wealth for the workers employed by said corporations, and indeed all workers. This is provably false, as when you give the rich more money, it will invariably go towards lining their own pockets. Further, economist Steven Zydar conducted a study that showed that tax cuts for the wealthy do not create jobs. So, Reagan was quite clearly politically insane. He didn't care about facts, and neither do his disciples in the modern Republican party.

But that's not what I wanted to talk about today. Ronald Reagan, who ran our country for four years, was goddamned obsessed with the concept of an alien invasion. In an infamous speech to the UN, he hypothesized that an extraterrestrial threat would help to unify the world. He claimed that the invasion would force us to put aside our differences as we worked to save the entirety of the human race.

The speech can be found, in video form, here.

For the purposes of this examination, we're going to ignore the implausibility of there ever being intelligent life outside of Earth, let alone life that represents a significant threat to the human race. Let's assume that aliens are a known quantity. The invasion is inevitable.

So, the question remains. Is this an accurate statement? Does Reagan's idea about the invasion make any sense?

I think it does. Sure, in the beginning, mass panic would cause people to revert back to their primal, animalistic states. It would most likely be every man for himself for some amount of time. Society would, in all likelihood, devolve into loosely-connected bands of roving looters, struggling to survive and doing so by any means necessary.

But, eventually, we would all realize that a lawless, purely individual societies are doomed to fail, In fact, they aren't societies at all. In the wake of the invasion, amid the death and destruction, humanity would have to come together on a larger scale, and rebuild civilization itself from the ground up. In that scenario, there's no place for bigotry of any kind. Everyone must pitch in, so exclusion of any group spells death. Humanity will need all the help it can get, and the unity that arises will be unparalleled.

That's assuming that things like race, gender, and sexual orientation are even on people's minds after the fall of civilization. Nobody gives a shit about your politics when there are giant green men coming to eat everyone. When survival is not a guarantee, there simply isn't enough room left in your brain to think about such trivial things.

All of this is a long-winded way of saying that, no, Reagan was not talking out of his ass in that video. That's surprising, I know, but there's a first time for everything, I suppose.

Then again, maybe I'm an idiot. Perhaps my idealistic optimism is clouding my judgement about human nature. Perhaps, in the aftermath of the invasion, our dividing factors would be more important than ever. Maybe, without the glue of compulsory participation in society holding us together, each group would split into their own separate nation-states. Societies then would only be made up of like-minded people who banded together out of choice, rather than necessity. Then all the groups would wage perpetual war with one another over the planet's scant natural resources. Maybe I'm giving the human race too much credit.

Just something to think about.

The Lesser of Two Evils

I've heard a lot of people, particularly on the left, who have become disillusioned by the political process, and thus have ceased the practice of voting. I think there are a host of legitimate reasons to take  this position. However, the most common one I hear is not. I'd like to talk about that today.

The way I hear this point summed up most commonly is that the political candidates are all the same. the Democratic party has become conservative. they're center-left, of course, but they exhibit the same kind of corporatism that their opposition in the Republican party does. This is true to some extent. After all, President Obama made ninety percent of the Bush tax cuts permanent. This is a profoundly conservative move, proof of which can be found here.

Events like these will often lead the above disenfranchised people to say something along the lines of, "That's why I stopped voting. I didn't want to keep electing the lesser of two evils."

Do I even need to explain the problem with this argument? It's the fucking lesser of two evils. Someone is going to be elected no matter what happens. One person not voting isn't going to change that. In fact, not voting is probably the worst thing you can do if you want to send a message. The whole point of democracy is that the people must have a way to send a message to their elected representative. You know how we send those messages? We fucking vote. That's how you affect change, by electing candidates who have views that will better the nation. But sometimes boring establishment people win the nomination. Sometimes the choices aren't radical enough. You know what we do then? We vote for the lesser of two evils. As I said, someone's gonna get elected either way, it might as well be the person closest to the correct one, especially if the precisely correct one is nowhere to be found.

Just something to think about.

Drugs

There's been something of a shift among progressive circles recently, and now many popular figures on the left are advocating for the abolition of prohibition. That is to say, they are in favor of the legalization, or at least the decriminalization, of all drugs. Their primary argument is that the cost of prohibition is exceedingly expensive, and that the sentencing laws for nonviolent drug offenses are so long as to ruin people's lives. And, near as I can tell, both of those things are objectively factual. Further, anti-prohibitionists claim that, by legalizing, taxing, and regulating substances, we would take power away from violent cartels and ensure that the substances circulating are safe and nonfatal.

Here  is a Web site which contains data about the drug war and determines that a progressive drug policy is the best fix for the problems outlined above.

The argument against is that drugs are not good for you. At least, that's one argument I hear from both the opposing left as well as the right. This is a bullshit argument, of course. Hamburgers are not good for you, should we criminalize those? If you want to criminalize something, you must take into account a whole lot more than whether it is or is not 'good for you,' whatever the fuck that even means. Snatching away and criminalizing everything that might possibly be bad for some segment of the population is, as outlined above, expensive as hell. It also needlessly ruins people's lives, and often ends up causing way more harm than it prevents.

Are there some drugs that are so harmful that they are worth the cost, both monetarily and otherwise, of criminalization? Perhaps. But the mere fact that something is unhealthy is not enough reason to ban it entirely.

Just something to think about.

The Reagan Question

"Sometimes when I'm faced with an unbeliever, an atheist, I like to take him to the most delicious gourmet dinner I have ever served, and then when he's done, ask him if he believes there's a cook."

That's aQUOTE concerning God from president Ronald Reagan, or at least it's been attributed to him. Whether or not that is really the case remains to be seen. I don't want to spend too much time on who actually said this, though. Frankly, it's irrelevant to what I want to talk about right now. I'm far more interested in addressing the substance of the argument. Yes, trust me. There isn't a lot of substance to this, but it is there. Just squint and look real close, you'll find it.

This is essentially another way of wording the Argument from Design. That is to say, the world looks so complex, it must have a creator. Reagan uses a cooking metaphor to drive this pointHOME. Every meal has a cook, so every universe has to have a designer. God must exist, or the universe would not.

This is a fallacious assertion for a number of reasons. The first is that a meal and a universe are not one and the same. That's shocking, I know, but just bear with me for a moment. This will all make sense in time. See, the universe is essentially a series of naturalPROCESSES working in tandem with one another, whereas a meal is guided by a human hand. I am not aware of an natural processes that can create a gourmet dinner. If you are, let me know. That sounds tasty as fuck. Anyway, because there are no natural processes that are known to result in a meal, the only reasonable assumption one can make is that it was created by a human.

Conversely, we know of nothing that can create a universe other than the natural processes that science has observed. There is no evidence of an ethereal sky-daddy, whether you like it or not. Because there are natural processes in place, the existence of the universe just isn't enough to reliably say that a deity exists. If we could not observe evolution, for instance, then you might be able to say that there is a god. But we already know how the universe functions, for the most part. Therefore, the god claim holds no water.

The above refutation is not an endorsement of the God of the Gaps argument, however. That, too, isINCORRECT. The God of the Gaps assertion, for the uninitiated, goes something like this: "You cannot explain everything about how the universe works, so there must be a god." I have seen this defense used in almost every context imaginable, including the existence of hummingbirds. No, seriously. According to the theist in question, hummingbirds are too small to be able to fly under their own power, therefore God must have created them.

This is bullshit as well, and here's why. InORDER to make a positive claim about anything, you must be able to provide positive proof. Not knowing the cause of something doesn't mean you can just plug God into the equation and be done with it. That's not the way these things work. When you don't know something, you must work harder to find the answer. That's the only intellectually honest course of action.

Just something to think about.

Planned Parenthood

Today I'd like to talk about Planned Parenthood. I've done so a little before, mostly on Twitter. But there have recently been some false accusations leveled against them, through the use of heavily edited videos. Through these videos, the world was given a completely false impression of the organization. This makes me angry, so I'm going to write about it. Here we go.

The video in question is propaganda. There's no point in sugarcoating it. Social conservatives, in yet another of their despicable bids to regain the power they held in the fabled 'Good Old Days', essentially took an actual interview and contorted it into a lie. Their stated goal was to harm the reputation of Planned Parenthood, and it has unfortunately been rather successful. Through this, the world was given a completely false impression of the organization. I'm here to do my small part in rectifying that falsehood.

To do so, I'd like to look at the name. Planned Parenthood. When you plan something, it is a deliberate action, carried out with forethought. There is a process involved when you are planning or have planned something. Planning something ensures that you will accomplish your goal in the manner you want to, and the manner that makes the most sense. As opposed to, say, just doing it in the spur of the moment and hoping everything works out. I think we can all agree that, in most cases, planning something is a good thing.

Then, you have 'Parenthood.' The process of becoming a parent. If you have a planned parenthood, that means you intend to become a parent, as opposed to most people who end up as parents, who do so accidentally. It's fairly easy to end up a parent when you do not wish to. Put Tab A into Slot B and repeat as necessary. It's not rocket surgery, which is probably why it happens so often.

As I said, planning is a good thing. So it follows that if you plan you parenthood, things will go more smoothly than they would've otherwise. It means you're ready to take on that responsibility and you are doing so deliberately. That's what Planned Parenthood does. It makes sure that women have the ability to plan their pregnancy and decide to become pregnant when it suits them and fits into their lives. They do this through birth control and sex education.

Notice I didn't say abortion there. That's a part of it, sure, but it's a very small part. Not all Planned Parenthood facilities perform abortions. All of them provide birth control, they teach people about their bodies, and, hell, they even treat STDs and yeast infections. They do cancer screenings, for cervical cancer and breast cancer. I could go on, but the point is, they provide valuable resources for low-income women and middle class women. In some cases, they provide the only resources these women have available.

Abortions comprise only three percent of what Planned Parenthood does. And some branches that do perform them allow women to voluntarily donate their fetal tissue to things like stem cell research. The key word there is donate. These women are not making money off this practice. There is no incentive to get an abortion. Defunding Planned Parenthood is just another tactic in the GOPs war on women, and their war on the poor. They are vile, and disgusting, and the people who vote for them need to wake up.

Just something to think about.

Fuck The Libertarians Episode Four: Frozen Peaches

Okay, you guys. We have to talk about freedom of speech. I've written about censorship twice before, both in the context of comedy and games. You can read those posts here and here, but I don't think the points I made there have really sunk in yet. So here is my rant about the broader concept of freedom of speech. Put another way, you dumb fuckers don't know what freedom of speech actually means, and so I'm going to beat the real answer into your skull right now. Buckle the fuck up, assholes.

Freedom of speech does not mean freedom of consequence. Nor does it mean that you have the right to an audience. I'll explain what those statements mean in a moment, after I tell you what the idea of freedom of speech is really about. Freedom of speech only applies to the government. Your freedom of speech only guarantees that the government cannot literally put you behind bars for saying something that the regime disagrees with. That is it. Freedom of speech says nothing about criticism leveled against you by private citizens. If someone has a legitimate criticism of your ideas, or they ask you not to say something, they are not infringing upon your freedom of speech. Like, if you call me a faggot, and I tell you to stop doing that, I am not censoring you. Only the government can censor you. That's what the word censorship fucking means.

And, as I said on twitter some time ago, "Freedom of speech means you can say whatever the fuck you want, it doesn't mean I have to listen." That goes back to the bit about right to an audience I talked about earlier. You can say anything you like, but you are not entitled to an audience. If you are sending somebody death threats, they can report you to the police. Like I said, that does not curtail your freedom of speech. If that person decides not to listen to you, if they block you or whatever, that's also okay. Freedom of speech only says you are guaranteed a platform to express your ideas. Nobody has to listen to those ideas. That's not part of the first amendment, all right? Good.

This is not just something to think about. This is not just my opinion, and it isn't up for debate. This is fact. I hope I made you realize that today.