Rationalskepticism,lol part III.

[Brian Peacock]

The 'Taxation is theft' canard is most often deployed when money is spent on things the 'Taxation is theft' advocate doesn't personally approve of.

[JimC]

The 'Taxation is theft' canard is most often deployed when money is spent on things the 'Taxation is theft' advocate doesn't personally approve of.

[NineBerry]

"Property is Theft!!!"

[Scot Dutchy]

The one thing I will say about Seth he is consistent. He has been spouting the same bollocks for years.

[Brian Peacock]

[Seth]

The one thing I will say about Seth he is consistent. He has been spouting the same bollocks for years.

It's an eternal truth, so what else can be said?

[Seth]

Again, Seth, a meaningless irrelevant rant on your well-worn topic that taxation is theft. Simply, it is an economic reality, in all societies, whose details can (and should) be reviewed and optimised, but it will always be here. I don't need to morally justify the standard way our society is organised...

Simple answer - the rest of us don't agree with you, so suck it up, princess...

Once again you resort to evasion and appeals to common practice. As I have specified, not all taxation is theft, which you simply refuse to acknowledge. I suspect this is because you understand that this is true and that redistribution through taxation is immoral, but you don't care that it's immoral because you benefit from such theft.

Your opinion (a very isolated one) is that redistribution through taxation is immoral. It is not a fact, it is not rational, and it ignores the obvious - all government revenue and spending involves redistribution of some sort, like it or not...

Er, the point is that you refuse to debate the morality of redistributive taxation, you instead evade the debate by posting fallacious appeals to common practice. And in this case you post a simple fallacy of composition. Just because taxation type A has characteristics X, Y, and Z, this does not mean that all taxation has characteristics X, Y, and Z.

[Seth]

In the REAL human world, that applies, just the same.

Of course, I realise that you are unfamiliar with that world.

That it occurs does not make it either rational or moral.

And I'm intimately familiar with that world, I just don't accept that it is a moral or just world or that I am required to accept the status quo.

So you're arguing for rights that you think are reasonable and moral. Other people see it differently.

And the question presented here is WHY you see it differently and what your rational moral argument is supporting your opinion on the matter. Simply saying that other people see it differently is nothing more than an evasion.

But you have this delusion that the rights that YOU advocate, are somehow ordained from above, rather than out of your own head.

It ain't just me, Sparky,

My ideas of what should be rights clash with yours. But yours are somehow superior to anyone else's.

Of course they are because you are a socialist and therefore you are simply delusionally wrong about almost everything, as I have explained in long and painful detail many, many times, each and every one of which you have been utterly unable to rebut, which is why you always, without fail, resort to argumentum ad hominem. You have no rebuttal and you know it, so you hurl personal insults instead. It's classic Marxist Alinsky propaganda tactics.

Well, I've got news for you. They're not. Your ideas of rights are just that. Your ideas.

Not really. They are the ideas of the vast majority of Americans throughout the history of this nation and they are rationally, logically, morally and ethically supported, whereas Marxist socialism is entirely rationally, logically, morally and ethically unsupported and unsupportable. This is simply a fact, like gravity.

Of course, you have the "right" to disagree, and to fight the world when it tries to impose a different set of rights to yours.
Fight the world if you want. You seem to do it very quietly.

It may seem that way to you, but then what the fuck do you know about me? Nothing other than what I choose to allow you to know.

[mistermack]

Fight the world if you want. You seem to do it very quietly.

It may seem that way to you, but then what the fuck do you know about me? Nothing other than what I choose to allow you to know.

How touchy. And wrong. You can't post the sheer quantity of rubbish that you do, without telling a lot about yourself.
And one thing I do know, is that you are no kind of warrior who is going to take on a US government who encroached on your precious rights.
What you would do, is keep posting lots more bullshit.

[Seth]

Fight the world if you want. You seem to do it very quietly.

It may seem that way to you, but then what the fuck do you know about me? Nothing other than what I choose to allow you to know.

How touchy. And wrong. You can't post the sheer quantity of rubbish that you do, without telling a lot about yourself.

Such as?

And one thing I do know, is that you are no kind of warrior who is going to take on a US government who encroached on your precious rights.

I hope not. I'd prefer to prevent the necessity for such measures by engaging in rhetorical warfare to win the war of ideas.

What you would do, is keep posting lots more bullshit.

Taking a page out of the Marxist dialectic is all. Propaganda works both ways, don't you see. I've read "Rules for Radicals" too.

But, the salient difference between you and I is that if and when the war of ideas and rhetoric is over and the real war with guns begins, I'll be able to do something you won't be able to do because you don't have any guns.

[mistermack]

But, the salient difference between you and I is that if and when the war of ideas and rhetoric is over and the real war with guns begins, I'll be able to do something you won't be able to do because you don't have any guns.

No you won't. You wouldn't have the nerve. Because governments have MUCH bigger guns, and people who know how to use them. The only thing your little guns would be good for is to top yourself.
Like they found out in Waco, and everywhere else that it's been tried.

In fact it would be a thousand times worse, because in Waco, they cared about casualties.
Once the real shooting starts, they stop caring about any of that.

The US isn't Syria, and you wouldn't be getting help from outside. Nor is the population split along religious lines. Although that might change.

[Seth]

But, the salient difference between you and I is that if and when the war of ideas and rhetoric is over and the real war with guns begins, I'll be able to do something you won't be able to do because you don't have any guns.

No you won't. You wouldn't have the nerve.

I might, I might not, but in any event I'm armed and you aren't, which means that no matter what, you're fucked. Whether I'm fucked or not is up to me. Whether you're fucked or not is not in question, you're fucked.[/quote]

[mistermack]

But, the salient difference between you and I is that if and when the war of ideas and rhetoric is over and the real war with guns begins, I'll be able to do something you won't be able to do because you don't have any guns.

No you won't. You wouldn't have the nerve.

I might, I might not, but in any event I'm armed and you aren't, which means that no matter what, you're fucked. Whether I'm fucked or not is up to me. Whether you're fucked or not is not in question, you're fucked.

Ha ha.
I'm less fucked than you, because there is far less chance of a bunch of pathetic loonies trying to take on the government that we voted for, over here.

We have pathetic loonies, just like you, but ours don't have guns.

[Seth]

But, the salient difference between you and I is that if and when the war of ideas and rhetoric is over and the real war with guns begins, I'll be able to do something you won't be able to do because you don't have any guns.

No you won't. You wouldn't have the nerve.

I might, I might not, but in any event I'm armed and you aren't, which means that no matter what, you're fucked. Whether I'm fucked or not is up to me. Whether you're fucked or not is not in question, you're fucked.

Ha ha.
I'm less fucked than you, because there is far less chance of a bunch of pathetic loonies trying to take on the government that we voted for, over here.

We have pathetic loonies, just like you, but ours don't have guns.

Neither do the pathetic sheeple of your country, who will always be sheeple and slaves to whomever does have the guns.

[Brian Peacock]

And yet, curiously, we are governed by consent, not by force of arms, just like the US. This makes the US citizens every bit as much 'pathetic sheeple and slave' as Seth claims every non-US nation is.

If there is a genuine fear that the US government is but mere inches away from bringing down the iron jackboot of totalitarianism, and the only thing stopping it was the fact that some citizens had some guns and half a dozen boxes of cartridges, then it would suggest that the US's democratic institutions and processes were fundamentally flawed. If the Commander-in-Chief of the Federal Armed Forces can't be trusted not to direct the military to turn on the citizenry then 1) first-and-foremost don't vote for them, 2) make the military responsible to the citizenry not the government, and 3) change the nature in which the democratic process operates.