Thursday, August 21, 2014

THE WORLD IS SO FULL OF A NUMBER OF THINGS...

Since that Robert Tracinski column about Ayn Rand's heroes looking for love I've been checking out his venue, The Federalist, and I must say it's a treasure-trove of old-fashioned virtues-'n'-values nonsense, with titles like "If Millennials Want Liberty, They Need Virtue Too." (Author Rachel Lu promotes something called "virtue-interested libertarians," or as we call them around here "the worst of both worlds.")

I could go on about it all day, and I'll certainly have more later, but for the moment I'll just leave you with this wonderful passage by D.C. McAllister:
If we’re going to warn people of the perils of Big Gulps and French fries, shouldn’t we warn them of the dangers of sex?
The title of this essay is "Stop Pretending Sex Never Hurts." Amazingly, there's no cross-promotion with Astroglide.

I have to say I'm enjoying the conservative movement's Libertarian Moment much more than I expected.

129 comments:

  1. DocAmazing9:56 AM

    I think McAllister has started an important conversation. We need to promote safe snacks--a condiment every time, kids!

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  2. Hold the pickles
    Hold the lettuce
    Sex before marriage
    Really upsets us!
    ~

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  3. zencomix10:26 AM

    "If we’re going to warn people of the perils of Big Gulps and French fries, shouldn’t we warn them of the dangers of sex?"


    Isn't that what the Purity Balls were for?

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  4. This FundamentalistLibertarian Voltron is the latest evidence that everything the Republicans touch turns to shit, even if the thing in question already was pretty excremental to begin with.

    Even in the midst of selling the kids on Every-Man-for-Him-Selfishism, the disciples of Ron & Rand also want to assure vicious, bigoted and increasingly dead human beings that their ideology will still allow bedroom raids, homes for unwed mothers and stomping on the spooks and hippies. I have to wonder what heart and mind they're trying to capture here? Corporate pirates who want to smoke pot in public?

    Or maybe they're too fucking stupid to realize how laughably full of shit they are.

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  5. Jay B.10:27 AM

    Then, madam, this makes me a resolute Anti-Federalist [throws scarf over shoulder, turns, walks away with giant dildo cane].

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  6. Hur hur, you said hold the pickles.

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  7. PulletSurprise10:34 AM

    Given that Box Turtle Ben is the first glossy to grace the page when you click on "contributors," I'd say your latter notion is probably the more accurate.

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  8. NonyNony10:41 AM

    It's what comprehensive sex education is for. You know - that thing that conservatives have fought tooth-and-nail against for my entire lives.

    I swear to Grod - do these people ever listen to themselves?

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  9. edroso10:44 AM

    This gif I will swipe and use forever.

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  10. Ellis_Weiner10:50 AM

    D.C. McAllister is a *woman*, bitchez. And she has gifted us with rich, beautiful prose:

    "That’s because I’m picturing the girl walking home alone after having
    sex on the beer-drenched floor of a fraternity house with a guy too
    drunk to remember her name. The tears on her cheeks..."

    What she hasn't gifted us with is--go be shocked--a single example to establish her premise, which is that "we" are constantly bombarded with PSA's warning us of the dangers of fast food, smoking, sugary soft drinks, etc.

    Which, here on Earth, in fact, we're not. Talk about old-fashioned virtues--do these people *ever* stop after they type something and ask themselves, "Wait. Is this really true?" Oh well. Yesterday's "If it feels good, do it" is today's "If it feels true, write it." Jeez, Ayn Rand was right when she called libertarians "hippies of the right." Go figure.

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  11. tigrismus10:50 AM

    "If we’re going to warn people of the perils of Big Gulps and French fries, shouldn’t we warn them of the dangers of sex?"

    Indeed, it's called sex education, and I'll let you figure out which side is agin it.

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  12. But the best sex I ever had involved Big Gulps and French fries.

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  13. tigrismus10:53 AM

    DAMMIT.

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  14. calling all toasters11:02 AM

    "What kind of society celebrates, perpetuates, and capitalizes on a behavior that can hurt so deeply, that robs people of their innocence, their happiness, and even their lives?"

    Well, there goes the movie industry, children, and Easter.

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  15. FMguru11:05 AM

    "I have to wonder what heart and mind they're trying to capture here? Corporate pirates who want to smoke pot in public?"

    Considering that Libertarian activism is less about actually winning hearts and minds and moving the needle politically, and more about getting deep-pocketed assholes to fund your "journalism", targeting the weed-smoking corporate pirate demographic makes perfect sense.

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  16. I'm trying to imagine the person who'd a) voluntarily have sex on a floor awash with beer while b) still sober enough to walk away that evening and c) would cry because her partner didn't remember her name.

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  17. montag211:10 AM

    If they did listen to themselves, I suppose they'd be congratulating themselves on their perspicacity. Self-delusion is, pretty much, an all-encompassing attitude.

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  18. Ah, she recognizes the scourge of poorly restricted gun ownership!

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  19. Derelict11:15 AM

    "The dangers of sex . . ." "Stop Pretending Sex Never Hurts"

    For most Libertarians, I'm sure these are both very true. Sex is dangerous, and it almost always hurts. Women do tend to fight back against forcible rape ("Consent? I've never heard of that word.").

    And even when there's no woman involved (the usual Libertarian case), there's all that chafing, the calluses, the lubricant stains on the couch and rug, tripping over stiff gym socks.

    Yep. Painful and dangerous.

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  20. Bizarro Mike11:15 AM

    I think her vocabulary is too impoverished to include "date rape," you know, that thing that liberals are always getting in trouble for pretending it is a thing. You can still hear the echoing waaahs from the latest suggestion that affirmative consent would be a good policy.

    Really, McAllister is so shut up in her bubble, she can't imagine how a woman could have casual sex (or any sex, I'm guessing) and not feel ashamed by it. The same thing was on display with that Goldberg piece a while back, plus a date rape joke cherry on top.

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  21. BigHank5311:20 AM

    Hey, she's joining the IWW!

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  22. Adrian11:20 AM

    OT:

    Here's the latest tweet from Kathryn Jean Lopez:

    "What you write has no savour for me unless I have read Jesus in it"

    https://twitter.com/kathrynlopez?original_referer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nationalreview.com%2Ftweet&tw_i=502473965898461186&tw_p=embeddedtimeline&tw_w=350695773333254144

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  23. Hemidemisemiquaver11:35 AM

    So, every potential boyfriend has fallen short of the standard set by Jesus. What a sad, twisted, lonely, hate-filled life she leads. I wonder if she secretly blames Jesus for it.

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  24. "Dear Penthouse Forum,
    Jesus, I never thought this would happen to me..."

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  25. From the Lu column:


    "The war is lost, the libertarian moment will be no more than a flash in the pan, and we’re only a few inconsequential battles away from being blanketed by the pink police state. Soon you will be completely free to exercise your autonomy through exciting choices like: which kind of porn do you prefer? And shall we have geraniums or zinnias in the window boxes? Oh, sweet breath of liberty!"


    Now all I can thing about is the pink police state in my window box.

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  26. mortimer200011:52 AM

    The problem with these christianist libertarians (or whatever) is that, instead of common-sense awareness and precautions, their solution to HIV, STDs and unwanted pregnancy is to bypass anything else and go straight to abstinence. Birth control, contraception, safe sex -- none of these make an appearance in McAllister's piece, which is practically committing fraud in an article decrying how dangerous sex is.

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  27. tigrismus11:54 AM

    "JESUS are you dumb"

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  28. BigHank5312:00 PM

    Fraud? Did you read the bit about abortion, yanked directly from the Operation Rescue screeds:

    Women who abort
    are four times more likely to die within a year than women who don’t
    get an abortion. Women who aborted in the year before their death were
    60 percent more likely to die of natural causes, seven times more likely
    to die of suicide, and 14 times more likely to die from homicide.
    Abortion is linked to smoking, drug abuse, suicide, violent behavior,
    and eating disorders.


    There isn't a single word in there that isn't bullshit, including "and" and "the".

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  29. BigHank5312:04 PM

    For a group of people who decry the "nanny state", they sure do have a long list of things they want to scold us for doing.

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  30. GeniusLemur12:09 PM

    "If we’re going to warn people of the perils of Big Gulps and French fries, shouldn’t we warn them of the dangers of sex?"
    Uh, can anyone point me to a left-winger that denies VD exists? Cause I'm drawing a blank on that one.

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  31. lawrence09046912:12 PM

    I'm going to venture that 'Don't give sex to the frat assholes' could be a liberal policy position. Just one we don't think we need to enumerate because it is so obvious. Another trap that even liberals fall for is mistaking the thought 'I regret my choice to have sex with that person (a little or a lot) for 'I will never be whole again. I should not ever have had sex.'

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  32. gocart mozart12:46 PM

    A relatively superficial makeover may be enough to make old ideas seem exciting and new.

    Pope Paul IV "Humanae Vitae", techno dance remix

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  33. A relatively superficial makeover may be enough to make old ideas seem exciting and new.

    I've lost count of the number of times one of these yutzes has come right out and announced they're going to lie to someone in order to gain their support. But arguments that vice in the defense of virtue is no vice are kind of rare.

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  34. While denying them the Big Gulp they crave.

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  35. calling all toasters12:53 PM

    The gif that keeps on giffing.

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  36. RogerAiles12:55 PM

    Does Krispy Kreme make Long Johns with Bible verse icing?

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  37. susanoftexas12:55 PM

    She knows she can rebrand abstinence until the cows come home but sooner or later it will dawn on libertarians that she wants them to stop having sex, the reason they became libertarians in the first place. That must be why she did not give us an example of successful rebranding.

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  38. redoubtagain12:59 PM

    Yecch. Like a crack in a sidewalk after a rainstorm--narrow and shallow.

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  39. Weirdly enough, there is some similarity between libertarians and Dominionists/post-tribbers here. Libertarianism does have a moral ethos of sorts, which basically comes down to "Don't violate the rights of others." Of course, their definition of "violation of rights" is...different, but never mind - point is, that's what they believe. They also seem to believe that once all regulatory bodies are pulled, companies will follow this ethos on their own accord because that's what's needed to keep the system afloat. This is the point where you'd throw your arm around the guy's shoulder and say "So you're just visiting planet Earth, right?"


    But this is actually very similar to the Dominionist endgame - really, no different than that belief that putting the Ten Commandments in schools would end violence because any would-be shooter would say "Oh, that's right! It's bad to kill people!" and go on to become a pure soul. Both are based around the logically sound but practically preposterous notion that if everyone agreed to be good, we wouldn't need all this filthy government.


    Ironically, this used to be considered a radical left-wing view - this idea that we wouldn't need all this civil government if everyone would just get along. Hell, I read an article by one libertarian who did some soul-searching and concluded that in a different era, he'd be a communist - the endgame of the two philosophies (a stateless society) are actually very similar.

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  40. satch1:06 PM

    What really gets me about libertoonians is their inability to debate without first rigging the parameters by posing the most extreme positions:

    Either you want Freedom!, or you want the Nanny State controlling every aspect of your life.

    If you're OK with consensual sex, then you must be OK with being raped on a beer soaked frat house floor.

    This gem: "Progressives can form their free-love communes and have copious amounts of sterile sex, while conservative Catholics get married and have smaller amounts of procreative sex, and individuals can pay their own expenses and enjoy the fruits of the lives they have chosen."

    Or this: "Isn’t it enough to live in a world in which they are free to preach
    their conventional views on morality, and to impart them to their own
    children?" which, generally to them, means" "We have the right to preach at you, and you have the right to not only shut up and listen, but to take us seriously."


    These people are completely unable to frame an argument without the use of straw men.

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  41. Love the Pastor Swankish phrasing.

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  42. Guess someone needs to play a quick round of Correlation vs. Causation. Perhaps McAllister can explain how abortion causes you to get murdered?

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  43. satch1:11 PM

    Well, to be fair, I regret his abortion too...

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  44. satch1:13 PM

    Those are techniques, not products...

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  45. Our top story: in Ferguson, Missouri today, police struck back at protesters, deploying cannons loaded with rainbow-colored confetti.

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  46. One of many possible shorters: I'm going to assert something negative and dismissive about that particular group. Then I'm going to call them stupid. Then I'm going to ask them to join us.

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  47. susanoftexas1:26 PM

    Just like Mom and Dad!

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  48. There's got to be a "Cheap Trick" parody in there...

    The pink police are patrolling my bed.
    The pink police made some dude give me head.

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  49. M. Krebs1:53 PM

    This just in: Abortion linked to consumption of high-fructose corn syrup.

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  50. Gromet2:14 PM

    Forget it, Shakezula, it's Conservatown.

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  51. Gromet2:20 PM

    Obviously, God singles you out for Old Testament punishment. Remember: even though we're Christians and the whole premise of the New Testament is that God has replaced vengeance with love, we still believe in vengeance if you don't accept our love.

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  52. They consider comprehensive sex ed is not scary enough--it doesn't posit that you are going to hell with an STD, an unwanted pregnancy, and the murder of several fetuses on your conscience if you ever have sex outside of marriage. The ideal sex education course would do nothing but warn of the "dangers of sex." And it would include nothing about its pleasures or responsible relationships. In fact the entire thing would be conducted in one of those right wing evangelical "hell houses" in which the teachers would cross pornography and sadomasochism with religious hysteria and sexually active teens would be shown, in the last room, being dragged down to hell shrieking "if only I'd waited! He didn't put a ring on it!"

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  53. Libertarianism is indeed looking for love in all the wrong places. (With apologies to Johnny Lee and the tune's writers).

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  54. Knowing that Klo edited that, as well as wrote it, I presume she meant to type saviour.

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  55. That whole "multiple flavors of PopTarts means libertarianism is awesome!" meme didn't last long, did it.

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  56. Actually, I can imagine scenarios in which the kinds of women who can't afford to have a pregnancy, or who are in the middle of an unwanted pregnancy, are also more at risk than the general population of domestic violence from their partners and thus at increased risk of homicide not because of the abortion (of course) but because poverty, lack of control over your sexual partners, lack of social and financial support for the pregnancy may also go hand in hand with an abusive partner situation.

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  57. If they "became libertarians in order to have sex" then they seem to have made the wrong choice, if these here intertubes are any indication. I would love to see a study done of how much more likely a self proclaimed libertarian is to actually get laid than an ordinary human being who identifies more as a mensch. Maybe you once had to renounce g-d in order to feel free to boink without guilt but since feminism and the pill gave women free choice I can't see the advantage of declaring yourself free from all human, moral, and ethical responsibilities to your sexual partners.


    Old style "Hi! I believe in free love and equality between the sexes, also known as "the community of women."


    New Style "Hi, I like to fuck without consequences, responsibility, or any interest in you and your life. How's about it?"

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  58. Straw is, at least, a very cheap form of framing so you can knock together a bunch of argments very fast or absolutely no money down.

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  59. Gromet2:34 PM

    What really gets me about libertoonians is their inability to debate without first rigging the parameters by posing the most extreme positions



    You know, the libertarians I've met in real life really have what seems like a learning disability, in that their brain shoots automatically to extremes, and they show no interest in correcting when the extremes never happen. I've said, "Yeah, but in reality we're not gonna end up way out there, so the question is actually what works most sustainably in a middle kind of reality?" And I just get a blank look back, a pause, and then another insistence that you have to look at the extremes. "But, see, if the government regulates the environment, logically it ends with the government deciding how many resources you're permitted to use in your life, and reserving the right to terminate you when you reach your allotment." Haha, that will never happen, so it's not a basis for a decision about the clean water bill. "No -- think about it. You have to follow the logic all the way..." It's somewhere on the autism spectrum.

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  60. This is a great comment. I think this is called binary thinking and it reminds me of the kind of totalizing, "splitting" that goes on for some people when they can only think of things (relationships, people) as all good or all bad.

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  61. Both are based around the logically sound but practically preposterous notion that if everyone agreed to be good, we wouldn't need all this filthy government.Eh, sorta. Dominionists want to bring about a millenial state where everyone is Godly, but they need to "hold dominion" first to set up the initial conditions.
    Hell, I read an article by one libertarian who did some soul-searching and concluded that in a different era, he'd be a communist.This gets at the "catch" in Dominionism pretty well: the withering away of the state. Between today's god-hating society and the perfect Christian future lies the dictatorship of the proletariat phase, when the Elect seize control of government and reorder it along "Biblical" lines. As usual, this "temporary" state of affairs would turn out to have a long lifespan, as it would only be ended by the returned Christ becoming the direct ruler of the world.



    I mean, I've flirted with libertarian socialist leanings. so I could sympathize with a worldview in which virtue was more of a default condition. But Dominionists want to get to their own version of "virtue" by means of murderous theocratic totalitarianism. Which is why Dominionist-friendly politicians like Ted Cruz are a wee bit unsettling to me.

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  62. Gromet2:48 PM

    Aimai, you are talking in part about structural racism, and your tired old brand of race-hustling really disgusts me. America doesn't need it! Not in 2014. Now, can we for once please not politicize this discussion of abortion, please? And just rewrite all our laws so the conservatives aren't angry anymore? Thank you.

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  63. Ellis_Weiner2:50 PM

    ...failed as it was.

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  64. Ellis_Weiner2:53 PM

    Whatever I was tempted to write was trumped by this. Can I buy this comment a drink?

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  65. "Dear Christianity Today,
    I never thought this would happen to me, but after Wednesday night Bible study, the pastor's daughter took me up into the steeple to show me the Holy Ghost."

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  66. Adrian2:55 PM

    Jesus is coming!

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  67. I think its sex hustling, actually. An even older brand.

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  68. Ellis_Weiner2:57 PM

    Nanny State, no!
    Nanny Church, si!

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  69. Ellis_Weiner3:00 PM

    This is a symptom of the borderline personality. I was going to say that the libertoon intellectuals might justify it by invoking Kant and the categorical imperative--act as though your action were to become the norm for every person--but never mind. They should only live so long.

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  70. The good news is that Millennials, although largely dismissive of conventional morality, have only the vaguest notion of what they are rejecting.Given how many of them are from evangelical backgrounds, I'm guessing they actually have a pretty good idea what they're rejecting.

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  71. tigrismus3:02 PM

    Aw, man, I wanna live in your world.

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  72. So, just like their outreach to African Americans, Latinos, and women, then.

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  73. "Progressives can form their free-love communes and have copious amounts of sterile sex"We can? Woo-hoo!

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  74. It helps that her arguments are already pretty wobbly.

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  75. Jeebus, I don't. Imagine this asshole as a father? It would be like having Captain Queeg as your father--no accident or mishap would ever be forgotten or forgiven. He'd be sitting at the dinner table ranting about the strawberries you'd eaten when you were four years old when you were in your fifties.

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  76. And trying to think of her various attempts does provide some quiet amusement.
    "Don't let a moocher into your Galt's Gulch!"
    "Only little brains do it before they're married!"
    "Spice up your marriage with an affair, just like Ayn - "
    Whoops, how did that get in there?

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  77. I'd like to help this comment explore its subconscious.

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  78. tigrismus3:22 PM

    So what do they think if you point out that works both ways? "But, see, if the government doesn't regulate the environment at all, you end up drinking diseased cow urine until the diseased cow urine monopoly decides not to accept its own scrip anymore."

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  79. realinterrobang3:32 PM

    I'd like to hold this comment's pickle, IYKWIMAITYD...

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  80. tigrismus3:33 PM

    We need young conservatives to understand that liberty is meant to enable virtue, not vice

    This works for everything! We can't support environmental/worker safety/healthcare/etc legislation, because by removing the ability to choose to act virtuously it doesn't enable virtue. Also we must outlaw abortion because it enables vice.

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  81. Good grief, free-love communes. These people really are stuck in another century.

    And our only other choice is Catholicism. Sorry conservative Catholicism, eh? Dear me. How will the billions of people who have 0 interest in Christianity, much less one of the nastier flavors, ever decide?

    And if they chose not to decide, will they still have made a choice?

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  82. satch3:33 PM

    Except this is almost where things are in places like North Carolina, where the coffer dams built to hold the runoff from CAFOs are generally inadequate to keep the ground water from becoming polluted, and the state regulatory agencies show little interest in... you know... regulating.

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  83. tigrismus3:38 PM

    You'd think reality would make it easier to convince libertarians... yeah OK, I see the problem here.

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  84. Chairman Pao3:49 PM

    Having worked with an organization that concerns itself with sexual health issues -- and whose staff have a far more liberal worldview about sexual activity -- it's not as if there isn't common ground to be made with someone like McAllister. Say, reducing the incidences of unwanted pregnancies or the rates of STIs/STDs. The divide, sadly, is that the organization wants to cites stats in order to encourage dialogue whereas McAllister cites them in service of shutting it down and longing for some Virtuous Age that exists only in her mind. As a Christian, she should understand that condemning adultery in the Ten Commandments was a reaction, not a prediction.


    Working with this organization I heard the word "agency" used quite a bit, particularly when it came to teen sexuality. Perhaps if McAllister got out of her bubble and spent time with some sexual health organizations then she might learn that there are plenty of people engaging in non-politicized, nonjudgmental conversations about the cost and consequences of sexual activity, so that people have the agency they need and deserve to make sexual activity less dangerous and more fulfilling. But I guess "Let's Stop Pretending That All Premarital Sex Is As Damning As I Make It Out To Be" isn't the click bait she's after.


    Also, to who are what group of people does McAllister's use of the word "fornication" elicit gasps of horror? Perhaps the next time that happens, McAllister should take stock of those folks and ask herself if they are living in this world or their own bubbles.

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  85. Derelict3:56 PM

    At their best, they are indifferent to community and traditional morals. At their worst, they gleefully join forces with Progressives to tear these down.

    I keep wondering what "community and traditional morals" progressive are trying to tear down. Is it not shitting on poor people? Is it making sure children don't go hungry? Is it trying to get people access to healthcare?

    I suspect that what is really meant here is that we're not in favor of pinning scarlet letters on adulterers (which would replace lapel pins on probably half the Republican caucus), we're not in favor of enforced virginity testing or forced birth, and (perhaps most of all) we have this really bad tendency to demand that the Blacks, the Jews, the Hispanics, and everyone else be treated like actual human beings with the same rights as everyone else. It really undermines those "community and traditional morals" when you can't yell "Kike!", "Spic!", or "Nigger!" at "those people."

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  86. ohsopolite4:01 PM

    Straw-as-framing certainly worked out well for the First Little Pig.

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  87. Derelict4:03 PM

    If you haven't noticed, in the end all these abstinence groups really want is to feel morally superior. They have no real wish to engage with the problem except on terms that preserve their moral superiority.

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  88. I've seen this arguments across the political spectrum and I think you're seeing jackasses who don't know how to argue or shut up. They seize on some of the more ... flamboyant debate tactics in the same way someone might always grab the biggest hammer to drive a nail. I lump these people in with the ones who use slippery slope for everything.

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  89. FMguru4:10 PM

    Yeah, it shows up in a lot of their arguments (my favorite is how any discussion of the minimum wage automatically triggers a "so why don't we set the wage to $500/hour and make everyone rich, hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm?" response). It's also why every discussion with a Libertarian begins with their trying to move the playing field onto some sort of Platonic plane of abstracts and pure ideals and not the messy give-and-take of actual policy and real-world outcomes. Their philosophy is so ridiculous and threadbare that it can't stand up unless it's in the world of ridiculously excluded middles and abstract arguments from original principles.

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  90. Chairman Pao4:11 PM

    Agreed. She's grousing about being chased from the very public square she wants to impose moral absolutes on. Oy.

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  91. Good grief, free-love communes. These people really are stuck in another century.
    Why couldn't the fun political / religious movements of the 19th Century, like the free-love Christian socialists of the Oneida Society, have been the ones with staying power? But nooooo, we had to keep premillenial dispensationalism and its peers instead.

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  92. By VNV Nation (Virtue Not Vice).

    (With profuse apologies to the real VNV Nation.)

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  93. Gromet4:39 PM

    Oh that's easy. You won't have to drink diseased cow urine because it won't be in anyone's best interests to pollute.


    Nevermind that this is the case now, yet we have plenty of pollution. That must be because we're all helplessly under the thumb of Big Environment.

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  94. Gromet4:41 PM

    Let the record show my comment was made before your ETA. And yeah, all the things you said in the ETA.

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  95. I had a similar situation with a former friend who wanted bicycles banned from roads. "Well, what if a truck swerves to avoid a bicycle, jumps the curb and wipes out thirty people waiting at a bus stop, some of whom were mothers with children?"

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  96. "An embryo has no rights. Rights do not pertain to a potential, only to an actual being. A child cannot acquire any rights until it is born. The living take precedence over the not-yet-living (or the unborn).

    Abortion is a moral right—which should be left to the sole discretion of the woman involved; morally, nothing other than her wish in the matter is to be considered. Who can conceivably have the right to dictate to her what disposition she is to make of the functions of her own body?" - Guess Who

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  97. TGuerrant5:05 PM

    Just remember, children, always wash the slippery slope before cramming it down your throat.

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  98. BUT WHAT IF ONE OF THE CHILDREN WOULD HAVE GROWN UP TO BE THE NEXT ADOLPH HITLER. OR JIMMY CARTER. AND THE BICYCLIST WAS THE NEXT RON REAGAN OR ... RON REAGAN???

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  99. TGuerrant5:18 PM

    Rapunzel economics: The Mises Institute is so there.

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  100. TGuerrant5:20 PM

    You're baiting me, Jay. Don't think I can't tell you're baiting me.

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  101. That's a form of reproductive coercion. You also see men abusing women who use, suggest using or are suspected of using birth control. This is often accompanied by abuse when the woman does become pregnant.



    But if everyone accepts that birth control is bad, it isn't rape when a husband forces his wife to have sex and a husband won't beat a wife who behaves herself, then that just leaves the sluts who have sex outside of marriage and who cares what happens to them?

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  102. tigrismus5:45 PM

    there are plenty of people engaging in non-politicized, nonjudgmental conversations

    AND IT'S GOT TO STOP!

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  103. sharculese5:56 PM

    Oh yeah. Definitely. But with libertarians it's far more likely to happen for the simple fact that libertarianism is idiotic.

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  104. StringOnAStick6:34 PM

    I see you've met my father. Did you get the usual rant (still) about how great Reagan was to fire the air traffic controllers? That's one of his favorites to this day.

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  105. StringOnAStick6:35 PM

    Amongst a certain group, guilt and the stain of shame are forever, or at least they damn well should be.

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  106. StringOnAStick6:50 PM

    Yelp has yet to be much help on locating one of these, but I am looking.

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  107. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person7:26 PM

    I have a feeling nobody ever showed this Catholic girl the Rectory basement...

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  108. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person7:28 PM

    Terry Bozio, zatchoo?

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  109. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person7:28 PM

    Or just don't swallow...

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  110. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person7:30 PM

    Any man who can write an essay titled "Stop Pretending Sex Never Hurts" needs to see his Urologist, stat...

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  111. calling all toasters8:03 PM

    I am in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.

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  112. YNWA405158:53 PM

    I see what you did there. +1 for the "Freewill" shout-out.

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  113. Grousing about technocratic anything also makes it sound like she's threatening to take everyone's electronic gadgets away because back in the Good Old Days everyone was just fine with one rotary phone per household, so we're going back to that.

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  114. Tehanu10:20 PM

    "What really gets me about libertoonians is their inability to debate
    without first rigging the parameters by posing the most extreme
    positions:
    Either you want Freedom!, or you want the Nanny State controlling every aspect of your life.
    If you're OK with consensual sex, then you must be OK with being raped on a beer soaked frat house floor."


    This, about a zillion times. Not enough Like buttons here.

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  115. Derelict11:12 PM

    Most still believe in vengeance whether or not you accept their love. That's the whole waiting on Revelations thing, right there. They're praying for Jesus to return, but not because he'll usher in the Kingdom of Heaven. They want to see everyone else suffer as much as possible while they get prime sky-box seats from which to gloat.

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  116. Derelict11:14 PM

    That's NOT honey-dip icing!

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  117. sharculese11:15 PM

    I was going to go on a whole rant about comp. sex ed and the values thereof, but after this comment, I feel like it would be superfluous. Bravo.

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  118. M. Krebs11:38 PM

    I'd like to play a nice game of spin-the-pickle with this comment.

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  119. M. Krebs11:43 PM

    That the two copies are in synch with each other fills me with technocratic optimism.

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  120. M. Krebs11:57 PM

    Straw would make a very nice frame for one of those old rooster portraits made from various colorful types of dried beans glued to burlap. And I don't know what that has to do with anything either.

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  121. That's Jay B. and his giant dildo cane for you: a master baiter in action.

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  122. M. Krebs12:00 AM

    We can, but I don't know if we may.

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  123. M. Krebs12:01 AM

    Good grief, free-love communes. These people really are stuck in another century.


    Party pooper.

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  124. The Southern Baptist Convention, circa 1970?


    Roderick T. Long, notably rare libertarian supporter of abortion rights?


    Ayn Rand?

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  125. there is some similarity between libertarians and Dominionists/post-tribbers here

    Correct, they are both herds of extremist jerkwads who can't keep their authoritarian boners in their pants.

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  126. oh wow ANOTHER long lost twin of mine ! !

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  127. StringOnAStick4:50 PM

    Rupert Murdock sure knows how to create families!

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  128. freq flag10:44 PM

    ...yes, with our good friend, Mr. Rococo
    (just make sure you don't have a dime in your pocket).

    ReplyDelete