Join the political memorists on the political front opposing the political oblivescence! Let’s get political!
I shouldn’t have only mentioned unions. A better way to put it is that I take issue with education when it isn’t oriented to serve the consumer (i.e., the parent or student). I would oppose eliminating unions, as I actually like many of them; I just don’t like closed-shop unions. I also like worker cooperatives, but I don’t support mandating them.
The conservative goal would be for schooling to be as affordable as possible, without artificial barriers restricting supply for the benefit of unions rather than students. I can’t really speak for all conservatives because, first, I’m not one, & second, there’s a huge diversity of thought within conservatism. For example, some conservatives support Israel’s genocidal actions in Gaza, while others oppose them, so there are obvious huge differences of opinion within the tent that is ‘conservatism’.
I would agree with you in opposing the wars & Israel’s actions. I also think that is the main concern. Social democratic policies, especially those backed by the world’s reserve currency (2030s social security is projected to have issues), would likely take a while to cause damage similar to what a war or the risk of nuclear proliferation could. (Social democratic policies mostly cause a removal of future growth, i.e., a higher future poverty rate.) I think Israel’s genocidal actions are horrible, & America’s evident limitations are exposed when it engages in wars with huge geographical disadvantages & not enough technological advantages. If America had to declare war on someone (to prop up its wartime economy), it should be Israel. Fighting giant empires like Iran, China, & Russia is strategically stupid; at the very least, pit them against each other rather than trying to fight them all at once. However, obviously I oppose warmongering, but it’s also frustrating how bad they’re at warmongering too.
I don’t really care about those statistics. I was just mentioning a notable mislabeling case. I don’t like racism, & I think we should move beyond the tribal battle stuff. If you want to call me racist, you can call me racist for supporting “freedom of association,” which would allow people to discriminate for arbitrary & goofy reasons. I support the coffee shop that didn’t want to serve the Israeli guy & the Christian baker who didn’t want to make a gay wedding cake.
While it is true that certain races currently commit more crimes per capita, these are trends subject to change; I doubt they are inherent to ethnicity. This is likely caused by cultural factors, learned helplessness, Marxism (which teaches an ‘us versus them’ mentality), ingrained persecution complexes, & other whatnot.
I also disagree with those who believe women shouldn’t vote simply because they currently lean toward social democrats. While I agree that social democracy leads to poverty and stagnation, I don’t think it’s inevitable that women will always vote for social democratic candidates.
We both (probably) view ourselves as good people (or at least as people who strive for that). However, I believe your policies cause people to suffer from a lack of food, shelter, & healthcare (e.g., whether you are a Republican, Democratic Socialist, MAGA, Democrat, etc.). Your politics drive up the cost of supplying these necessities by creating barriers to entry for those who provide them, dictating how and to what extent they can operate. While I think many of the founders were excellent architects of a governance system, I do not view them as saints or possess any sort of hagiomania toward them.
The main point is that flawed data collection is skewing the results. I don’t remember where to find the one with the mugshots to be honest.
“In response to a directive by the U.S. Government’s Office of Management and Budget, the national UCR Program has expanded its data collection categories for race from four (White, Black, American Indian or Alaska Native, and Asian or Other Pacific Islander) to five (White, Black, American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, and Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander). Also, the ethnicity categories have changed from “Hispanic” to “Hispanic or Latino Origin” and from “Non-Hispanic” to “Not of Hispanic or Latino Origin.” These changes will be reflected in data presented for 2013.”
https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2011/resources/about-the-uniform-crime-reporting-ucr-program
Hierarchy is simply a reality. Believing in hierarchy is like believing in reality itself (i.e. someone is going to be better than me at weaving baskets voilà you have a hierarchy: simple as). But “conservative” is too broad a label, because neoconservatives & paleoconservatives disagree dramatically. More right-liberal or libertarian-leaning conservatives generally do not oppose voluntary associations. That is their thing. They love open-source, volunteering, agorism, & so on. I do not know enough about neoconservatives to comment extensively, but they seem probably so obsessively pro-Israel & would likely change their views to anything if it helped Israel.
There is no obvious limit to what can be considered “charity.” So, if the government takes responsibility for providing charity instead of leaving it to individuals and communities, it can use that as a reason to keep expanding its power and responsibilities.
Thomas Jefferson in 1817. He penned, “Our tenet ever was that Congress had not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but were restrained to those specifically enumerated so it could not have been meant they should raise money for purposes which the enumeration did not place under their action.
In 1794, James Madison stood on the House floor and objected, “I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents…Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.”
I don’t understand. The idea that inadequate border control policies & immigration policies can lead to mass migration into a country seems quite objective to me. I’d say I’d be making an empirical claim thingo there, no? Did I mess up some phrasing or something earlier?
Honestly, this comment of yours is probably more a reflection of your own values than of reality.
It is possible that right-wing sources, or particular types of right-wing sources, have a greater tendency to create disinformation or fabricate facts than left-wing sources. However, the opposite could also be true in some cases; left-wing sources may sometimes be more likely to label their opposition’s claims as misinformation rather than recognizing them as competing interpretations or arguments.
For example, some sources labeled certain claims about natural immunity after exposure to the virus, including claims that it could provide stronger protection than boosters in some circumstances, as misinformation. However, certainty in any broad generalization, such as the idea that natural immunity is always better, hybrid immunity is always better, or mRNA vaccines are always better, would be inaccurate. The reality is that the effectiveness of different forms of immunity depends on many factors, & people continue to study how these factors interact. Outcomes can vary depending on individual circumstances, such as age, comorbidities, immune status, prior exposure, and other whatnot.
It’s one of those terms that means different things to different people, which can cause problems when discussing policy, similar to how people use the term “democratic socialism.” The literal definition of “open borders” would be an anarchic policy. The context in which I used the term, which you probably didn’t understand, perhaps due to a poor explanation on my part, was referring to open borders as a lack of adequate enforcement or supervision of the border (which, in effect, is an open border), with enough immigration to shift electoral outcomes or to supplant a native population’s norms, culture, etc.
Honestly, I’m under the impression that building a building requires scarce resources and labor, which have opportunity costs reflected in market prices, and maintaining a building likewise requires ongoing expenditures. I would agree that, when someone becomes a landlord, the goal is generally to earn a return on the capital they risk, while facing uncertainties such as tenants not paying rent, changes in government policy, and other market risks. Whether any particular landlord is a good or bad person is something I can’t really speak to.
It’s probably the wrong example to bring up, even if it is true, since it’s likely to elicit an emotional response that undermines the delivery of the original intent of my point: that data collection is a point where the statistics people rely on are often skewed.
Honestly, white populations are being replaced through open-border policies. I’m not really a tribal person, so I don’t particularly care about maintaining a population with any specific demographic makeup. I also wouldn’t say that ideas about population replacement are necessarily fake or something like that. I do currently support controlled borders for a nation-state, but not because I want to control the ethnic composition of the population. In my opinion, that kind of thinking is strange and overly tribal.
If Trump goes to war with Iran, the price of oil goes up. Since you’re restricting supply, things like airfare also go up because they rely on jet fuel to provide their service. It’s the same with housing. It’s all supply & demand.
I wouldn’t say that; sometimes statistics, like crime statistics, are distorted at the point of collection. The misclassification of non-white offenders as “white” in crime statistics leads to an overrepresentation of white crime in the USA, which racist people could probably use as fuel for their perceived persecution.
In the UK, you’ll see Pakistanis being labeled as Asian, which would lead people to joke that Japanese people are doing X or Y crimes. In the USA, you’ll see Arabic or other non-stereotypical white names, and pictures of people obviously not white, being labeled as white.
P.S. I don’t support any racist whatnot; it’s just a notable example of data collection skewing a statistic and causing an overrepresentation of crimes committed by so-called white people.
The FBI’s White Crime Numbers Count More Than White Americans
I wouldn’t say everything Mamdani does is bad. I would support his opposition to Israel, & I would be happy if he could somehow arrest Netanyahu.
That said, I think his rent freeze policy is a bad idea. A rent freeze is just the government forcing landlords not to be able to raise rents when a tenant leaves, even if the cost of providing the good has gone up.
I don’t think the government should make it harder for private businesses to provide goods & services. Rent freezes hurt smaller landlords, leaving only the biggest companies able to afford staying in the market. They also lead to rundown buildings, which the government could then use as an excuse to step in and take over those properties. That is probably Mamdani’s intent & goal, since undermining the effectiveness of capitalism could popularize socialism.
What do you believe the reality is, & what do you consider to be the facts? What do you assume my ideological beliefs are, that would lead you to claim my ideology is based on my imagination?
To fairly debate this, one would need to address your sweeping generalizations point by point. More importantly, right-wing sources aren’t a monolith. For example, Fox News largely supports Israel, while the Mises Institute opposes foreign intervention & Israel. Reducing such a broad spectrum of thought into a single monolith is inaccurate. It might evince how left-wing people, when tendentious (like right-wing people can be too, since we’re all flawed humans, including myself), can distort their political opposition’s perspective out of convenience or rational ignorance, i.e., they don’t have time to investigate what their opposition thinks.
Here’s a direct source for Wikipedia’s own position on source reliability. I could send you someone’s interpretation of it, but those interpretations would introduce another layer of bias, so it’s better to look at the source itself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Perennial_sources
Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger have both criticized Wikipedia in ways similar to my own criticisms, but they share some of my biases, which might cause you to dismiss their views as well if you already have a strong opinion on the matter.
Larry Sanger bias drama discussed from a perspective likely closer to your own bias. - https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/25/business/media/wikipedia-larry-sanger-barred.html
https://wiki.encyclosphere.org/WikiProject_Intellectual_Diversity
Larry Sanger - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Sanger Jimmy Wales - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Wales
P.S. It’s possible to dislike right-wingers and still acknowledge that Wikipedia has a bias problem.
I tell people to try to take the GED & graduate high school early (since it’s a waste of time & full of propaganda), then save money on their first year of college by taking CLEP exams using vouchers provided through completing Modern States courses.