Mass shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh today.

Politics and religion
41

This is a good encapsulation of the conservative view on liberty, which I as a liberal disagree with quite strongly.

In the conservative POV (and I’m referring to “true” conservatism, not the authoritarian greed/hate mess of the current GOP), freedom can only be gained by limiting the government, not individuals. When individuals oppress you, that’s not a loss of freedom, that’s just “consequence” and you are “free” to counter that. Of course, if you are way out numbered, out moneyed, out influenced, out gunned, etc., your “freedom” from individual hatred means sweet fuck all.

This is IMO a blindspot in the conservative viewpoint and a clear conceptual difference between someone like me and someone like ShivaX. In my view, private individuals can limit your freedom just as much (if not more so) than government. If private individuals won’t hire you b/c of intrinsic traits, what freedom of employment do you really have? Same goes for housing, education, walking down the street and every damn thing, basically.

In my view, government is not the only cause of restricting freedom; private individuals are, also. In fact, in my view, government can expand individual liberty overall by restricting individual liberty in some cases. For example, almost all governments prohibit murder by individuals b/c without that, society would not have a basic level of safety and stability.

And, IMO, we’ve reached a point where the threat of guns is having an impact on the freedom of a lot of people and we need to treat guns like every other instrumentality with the potential for great force or violence (cars, explosives, planes, heavy equipment, you name it): we need to regulate them. The current NRA idea that guns cannot be regulated at all (unless, for historical reasons they are full auto), is not just a terrible idea and bad policy, it’s also taking away the freedom to speak, protest, and live safely, of millions of people.

Conservatives just ignore this of course, using the concept of “negative liberty vs positive liberty” to treat this issue like it doesn’t exist. IMO, that’s just… Man, I don’t know. How does a person come to believe that private people can’t limit your freedom? I suspect a person like that has to have suffered very little negative attitude or acts by the majority of the population. Anyone who’s ever been in a fringe group will laugh madly at the whole “negative liberty / positive liberty” BS. Liberty is liberty and it can be impinged many different ways.

42

Mass murder has been normalized in the USA.

I’m not sure I want to live in these times anymore

43
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This is peak USA, when your relatives die in a mass shooting and you need a gofundme to pay for their burial costs.

45

No one said anything about victim families needing the funds for burial costs. It’s just a nice gesture.

46

To be fair, I agree on the intrinsic traits aspect. I have no problem with protected classes or the like.

Also you forgot I’m a raving libtard communist. /s

47

The make difference being ignored is that the government controls everything. Another private individual or corporation does not.

48
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Wrong attack thread.

51

What about communities setting social norms. Isnt the point of social norms is to curtail extremists and white supremist from being ‘normal’. Its the this is unacceptable by the majority of Americans that determines social norms.

Should it be government that manages and sets those norms? Just curious.

52

Miscegenation laws say hi.

53

The internet has kind of changed the definition of communities though, in that anyways can trivially find their own echo chamber. Pre-internet your community was the people you interacted with face to face and while it wasn’t perfect (see racism) it did give a lot of checks and balances against extreme pockets that went against social norms (which unfortunately racism was a social norm for the time). Now that doesn’t work because if your view is outside the social norm of one community you can trivially find another community that agrees with you.

54

I thought everyone agreed these were a bad thing. It was the mistakes we’ve spent 100 years unwinding. So if that is the case, are we wanting to go back.

55

We do. Or at least, non-racist everyones of us do.

Oh, longer than that, but since 1789 when the Constitution was ratified at least.

We’re not wishing to go back. But Telefrog is pointing out that miscegenation laws were overwhelmingly “community” laws, laws that required the federal government to step in and say “Let’s not.”

56

The internet did change things, and as a result our society has fundamentally broke. We are in age we people of the same nation cannot develop a consensus using the same baseline, because everyone is free to build their own.

I don’t agree we should legislate a fix to this, this is something we are going to have societally to fix. We have to come to terms with our neighbors we share a community and nation with and develop methodologies and practices that allow us to cohabitate. Trying to legislate broken is a waste of time, and sets us on another path toward a outside controller to social norms rather than the one we collectively choose for ourselves.

57

I get that point, but a side note, wasn’t the federal government stepping in the result of the majority of America agreeing it was the right ting to do, and the minority of the communities within holding out, often angrily.

Its imperfect but it reflects the intent of the founding fathers to allow us as a community to have agency of our lives and define it collectively.

58

I have been too disturbed by this horrific mass murder to say anything until now. Reading the brief biographies of the victims in today’s Washington Post, I feel a combination of sadness and rage. The Squirrel Hill Jewish community is exactly like my own Montreal suburb, and this synagogue is almost a perfect match for the one I attend. Reading about their lives of worship and service to this shul, I recognize similarities to people I see at my own synagogue, and can picture them as the victims if this had happened here. It’s frightening that we live in a world where the hate is still so very real and consequential.

I don’t want the death penalty for the shooter, even though I know that’s what the federal prosecutors have planned. I’d rather he be forced to live the rest of his life out in a SuperMax somewhere, away from any white power prison support system. Then, all he should have access to are Spielberg’s filmed first-person re-tellings of Holocaust experiences from the victims. That’s all he gets to watch, all day long. Elderly survivors, who look just like the victims he killed, telling their stories of survival and triumph over hatred. That would be a measure of justice.

59

No.

Loving was in 1967. Approval was under 20%.

17% for whites in 1968.

60

I lot of people don’t understand there are several pivotal moments in history where the majority was just… wrong.

61

It’s actually almost always the case. There is a reason tyranny of the majority was mentioned by the Founders.