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Randazza: Damn right we should get rid of birthright citizenship

October 30, 2018 by Randazza

by Marc J. Randazza

American citizenship is one of the most coveted statuses that mankind has ever invented. A majority of the 7 billion people on this planet would gladly swap their passport for a nice blue one with a gold eagle on its cover. And how do you get it? For the most part, you get it by being born in the right place or to the right parents. Yeah, there's naturalization … but only about 20 million citizens, out of 350 million are naturalized. In other words, those who become “Americans by choice” are almost statistically insignificant. Even then, I think that the path to citizenship is nothing more than a bureaucratic game — and doesn’t really confer citizenship upon the “deserving.”

Therefore, I agree with President Trump — we should get rid of birthright citizenship. But, I believe we should get rid of it for EVERYONE. Open the gates of citizenship to everyone as well — even illegal immigrants — on the same terms as are offered to someone whose entire family tree grew from the planks of The Mayflower.

The problem in this country is not that Mexicans are streaming across the border to have anchor babies. The problem is that we have too many useless fucks here — whether they were born here or not.

We had a huge flood of immigration in the early 20th century, and but for that immigration, America wouldn’t be half the country it is today. Immigration is not the problem. The problem is that so many of our home-grown citizens are stagnant, lazy, and stupid (and yes, so are many of our new arrivals). So how do we separate the wheat from the chaff?

We should have a “point system” for how much citizenship you get, with completely open borders. This country is built on freedom and competition, right? Let’s inject competition into the citizenship market!

We would each earn between 0-100 citizenship points. 50 points, you’re a citizen. At 75 points, you get Bronze Citizenship, 85 points you get Silver Citizenship, and at 95 points you get Gold Citizenship. Anyone who hits 100 points even, gets Super Eagle Citizenship.

If you have one of the higher-status citizenship categories, you get certain privileges — maybe no TSA lines for you. You can carry a gun anywhere you want. You can cut in line at the DMV or other government agencies. All men will still be created equal, but some can earn status that makes them quantifiably superior — at least in terms of the rights they get.

You get 5 points for being born to an American parent, so there is a little bit of legacy preference, but not a lot.

You get a certain number of points for having a full time job, graduating from high school, for paying your taxes, etc. Essentially, a few points for doing the stuff that we expect all productive members of society to do. Certain crimes and assorted other fuckups can cost you points.

If you do absolutely everything that you’re supposed to do, but nothing special, you probably wind up somewhere in the neighborhood of 65 points. No special privileges, but a good padding above full citizenship so that one or two screw ups won’t cost you your citizenship.

You get a certain number of extra points for graduating from college, a masters program, or a PhD program. We could give more points for more useful degrees, so yeah, get that MA in Victim Studies, but don’t think that it is going to make you more valuable to us than a nursing degree or an engineering degree, because it ain’t. A law degree, sadly speaking, might not be worth a whole lot. But, remember, we need people in trades too – so I wouldn't want this to be an "only highly educated" people get points. Someone can clean toilets for a living and still make it to the top.

You get bonus points for truly kicking in to improve America. You author a book. You start a business that employs a certain number of people. You invent something useful. You cut a bad ass album. You fill in potholes. The details can be tweaked as much as we like – but the concept is the same. You get points for being worthwhile and making America greater. If you contribute to America sucking, then you lose points.

It wouldn’t be wholly economically based — as there are non-financial contributions that indicate a desirable citizen. You save a puppy from a burning building. You use that law degree to handle a meaningful pro bono case. Joining the military gets you some extra points. Medals get you points too. Congressional Medal of Honor gets you 10 points that you can’t ever lose. But, unlike Starship Troopers, service alone does not guarantee citizenship (but it helps).

You lose points by being convicted of crimes, but also by douchetastic behavior that we don’t necessarily criminalize. You hog the left hand lane on the highway, you lose a point every time you do that. Lie about who your kid's dad is, you don't go to jail, but you're not going toward higher status with that behavior, missy. Dude, you sexually assault someone, and we can't necessarily prove it sufficiently to put you in jail, we might still be able to dock you some points. If you have an "emotional support animal," you lose 5 points. (Edit – ok, a "bullshit ESA" – which I would guess is 95% of them) If you put a dog in a stroller, you lose 5 points. Because fuck you, you're fucking useless. Holy shit, if you incorrectly use the phrase "fire in a crowded theater," you're losing quite a few points, my friend. SO FUCKING READ HOLMES OR TO THE UNDERCLASS YOU GO, YOU INTELLECTUAL PEASANT!

Of course, you can be "useful" in some ways that won't necessarily help you points-wise. This system will be as disengaged from the economic system as it can be. Maybe if you make your living by flipping houses or by raiding companies and selling their assets off and laying off the whole workforce, we can dock you a few points. You can still be rich with lower status, but having more money in the bank won’t buy you citizenship points. More money to you, but you’re not getting any closer to being an Eagle.

You can’t serve as a judge, in public office, as a cop, or a lawyer unless you have at least Silver (75 points). In fact, maybe elected offices, and even appointed positions, require a certain status. I like the idea of using this to punish non-violent crimes as well. Why lock people up, if they have committed some crime, but are really not a danger to society? Prison populations would crash, and that's a great thing.

If you have less than 50 points, the Constitution doesn’t fully apply to you. Maybe some provisions apply at 10 points or so, but you’re not a full citizen, you don’t get full protection. Certain geographic areas would be closed to people below a certain number of points. You sure as hell don’t get to vote if you’re under 50 points.

If you are over 25 years old and you have less than 10 points, you get nothing. No First Amendment, no Fourth Amendment, no nothing. Essentially, you’re on probation. You have to move out of the way for citizens when you are in line at the store. You don’t get to drive. If your points get to zero, we give you a choice of moving to another country (never to return) or prison — but in Prison, you can earn points and get yourself out. But, if you're a grown man or woman and you can't get at least 10 points, you aren't worth much, so you shouldn't get much.

With this plan, we open the borders and welcome everyone. Certain immigrants get to start with a few points. Perhaps you did some act of service to the United States, like saving American soldiers from kidnappers. You win a Nobel Prize, you get 25 points just to move here. But, your average immigrant gets only a point or two for checking in at the border and letting us know he’s here. A truly worthy immigrant – the kind we want, can earn 50 points in 5 years or less, and within a few decades can even be eligible to run for president. A crappy one will find life here to be very unpleasant, as will a home-grown loser, who might find it more desirable to just leave – thus making room for more worthy immigrants.

So, Donald, you wanna do this? Lets really do it!

Last 5 posts by Randazza

  • Murum Aries Attigit, Y'all - December 13th, 2019
  • Due Process for Tsarnaev - Demanded by a Masshole - December 13th, 2019
  • Randazza: Nothing is Straight in Boston - September 9th, 2019
  • Randazza: Damn right we should get rid of birthright citizenship - October 30th, 2018
  • Randazza: Vermin Supreme's Pony Horde Rides on Kansas (Popehat Signal Activated) - June 22nd, 2018
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Filed Under: Effluvia

Comments

  1. I Was Anonymous says

    October 30, 2018 at 8:47 am

    And Poe's Law strikes again

  2. Zelda Pinwheel says

    October 30, 2018 at 8:47 am

    Isn't this pretty much what China is trying to do with it's "Citizenship credit score" program?

  3. PaulWartenberg says

    October 30, 2018 at 8:50 am

    What happens if someone inserts a buy-in clause? effing billionaires…

  4. Tom Amitai says

    October 30, 2018 at 8:54 am

    I Was Anonymous says

    October 30, 2018 at 8:47 am

    And Poe's Law strikes again

    Are you sayin' he's ravin'?

  5. Florian Ulrich says

    October 30, 2018 at 8:55 am

    I hear the Chinese have lately amassed some experience with point systems, maybe we can ask them to help us here

  6. Jonathan Not-So-Swift says

    October 30, 2018 at 8:56 am

    This is the kind of "satire" where the writer actually kind of agrees with his modest proposal. Like when I say, "That idiot should be killed" and I don't actually think that guy should be killed but I do think he's an idiot and maybe someone should kick his ass.

    So, uh… thanks for this shitty affirmation of the shitty president's shitty proposal disguised as a bad joke. Sure glad I read it.

  7. DP says

    October 30, 2018 at 8:57 am

    How many points do I get for getting claims dismissed under an anti-SLAPP statute?

  8. Kevin says

    October 30, 2018 at 8:58 am

    You laugh, but China is actually doing something like this.

    And so is the US. We call it a FICO score.

  9. Andrew says

    October 30, 2018 at 8:59 am

    You almost had me. But you started off too strong with the "majority of people on earth would gladly swap out their citizenship to be American" line.

  10. Michael says

    October 30, 2018 at 9:01 am

    So true about Poe's Law… I still remember reading the let's-legalize-child-porn article from Randazza and thinking: if someone actually believed this, would they put it in writing? But after reading the article, I thought he made a compelling case. Not quite persuasive, since I can't think rationally about the horror of child porn. But enough that I think the article was genuine.

    This article started off similarly contrarian, but then went much further. One might call this a modest proposal. While appealing to Rand-reading teenagers, some of the downsides were treated nicely in Ep. 2 of Black Mirror's first season.

  11. mcinsand says

    October 30, 2018 at 9:02 am

    A nicely written modest proposal.

  12. Sol says

    October 30, 2018 at 9:04 am

    Marc, are you okay?

  13. Pho Queue says

    October 30, 2018 at 9:04 am

    Radazza's brain is so far gone he thinks Democrats actually want open borders. Go back to Infowars.

  14. Lewis Baumstark says

    October 30, 2018 at 9:05 am

    "Service Guarantees Citizenship!"

  15. Sol says

    October 30, 2018 at 9:05 am

    @I Was Anonymous
    Yeah, there's the 'modest proposal' take, as @mcinsand mentioned, and there's the 'Marc is maybe having a stroke' take, and given his past writings it's not 100% clear which way to lean

  16. Andrew says

    October 30, 2018 at 9:08 am

    By the way,

    In Canada we already have the topmost rank. It's called the Order of Canada. A club that people join by generally being pretty great Canadians. There's all kinds of ways to score points to get in. Does America have something like that?

  17. Dave says

    October 30, 2018 at 9:22 am

    @Lewis Baumstark
    "Service Guarantees Citizenship!"

    Arbeit Macht Frei.

  18. steve oberski says

    October 30, 2018 at 9:24 am

    Heinlein beat you to this by about 60 years in Starship Troopers.

  19. Edinfla says

    October 30, 2018 at 9:24 am

    You were brought up Catholic, weren't you?

  20. RazerCannon says

    October 30, 2018 at 9:25 am

    Can it be done by Executive Order only?

  21. NPC says

    October 30, 2018 at 9:30 am

    Parser not found: Satire. Unable to process article. Orange man bad.

  22. Mechaninja says

    October 30, 2018 at 9:33 am

    Apropos of nothing, do you ever wonder if Trump had those Russia whores wiz on the presidential bed before he let them replace Obama's bed?

    I don't know where that thought came from, other than every time I see Randazza's name, taking the piss comes to mind.

  23. Jordan says

    October 30, 2018 at 9:33 am

    Why do people always tell me the president cannot create or veto an existing law yet they do literally whatever they want with presidential orders?

  24. Brian says

    October 30, 2018 at 9:40 am

    I’m… not 100% certain about how to take this (Damn you, Poe’s Law!), but I think it’s a way to point out why we have a birthright citizenship in the first place, and sort of extends it in a way that Trump probably wouldn’t want but isn’t inherently bad or any more absurd than some of Trump’s other ideas. It’s a very unusual form of parody.

  25. Rliyen says

    October 30, 2018 at 9:49 am

    Thanks for the chuckle, Marc. I sooo needed it today.

  26. Sol says

    October 30, 2018 at 9:52 am

    @steve oberski
    Eh, Heinlein's take was much more directly militaristic – sure, there was lip service to 'if a devout pacifist or someone physically incapable of combat really, really insists on being a citizen we'll find some pointless make work for him to do', but the focus of the culture was that citizenship derived from your willingness to kill people. Marc's proposal does mention that military service contributes, but it's one of a vast range of things, most of which Heinlein would hardly have approved of.

    @Jordan
    What the President 'cannot' do in the sense that it is illegal for the President to do something, and what the President 'can' do in the sense of what the President can say and do assuming that he is completely ignorant of/apathetic to the law and the Constitution, are two very distinct categories.

  27. James Hammond says

    October 30, 2018 at 9:57 am

    A law degree, sadly speaking, might not be worth a whole lot.

    "The first thing we do, let's dock all the lawyers 20 points."
    – Dick the Butcher, as told to Bill Shakspere

  28. David says

    October 30, 2018 at 10:05 am

    You say you'll deport your losers… but the rest of the world doesn't want them either!

  29. GuestPoster says

    October 30, 2018 at 10:18 am

    I envy those who think Randazza is being satirical/hyperbolic, and not actively advocating for the more severe institutionalization of privilege that is currently, blessedly, not directly rewarded in law. I wish I had that high an opinion of my fellow probably human beings.

    But, well… I came here following Trump's decision to revoke the US constitution by executive order and said 'Gee self, I bet either Ken will explain why this can't be done, or Randazza will explain why it's a great idea'.

    I hate being right sometimes.

  30. Richard says

    October 30, 2018 at 10:22 am

    You get 5 points for being born to an American parent, so there is a little bit of legacy preference, but not a lot.

    I don't think that should be an absolute value. Let's make it sliding, dependent on how long your family has been here. Let's say, one point per century?

  31. Total says

    October 30, 2018 at 10:32 am

    Let's say, one point per century?

    As long as we deduct one point for every enslaved person your ancestor 'owned.'

  32. Richard says

    October 30, 2018 at 10:41 am

    @Total:

    Sounds fair.

  33. Zed says

    October 30, 2018 at 10:49 am

    That sounds basically fine. Codifying privilege could be a good thing, to the extent it actually does track value-to-society rather than bad proxies thereof (parentage, wealth, race).

  34. JM says

    October 30, 2018 at 10:58 am

    I am not sure how Poe's law can be invoked on this blog: Marc Randazza is a known contributor here, not a Twitter rando, Poe's law applies when you lack past experience to evaluate someone's motivations.

    That weird satire is satire only because the proposed scheme is not practical (there is the Constitution-cannot-easily-be-amended part, and also the creating-apatrids-is-bad part). But the proposal behind is dead serious. That's the kind of stuff libertarians produce when they get too intellectual (liberals or conservatives or the rare in USA economically-statist-but-socially-conservative types also produce drivel when they get too intellectual, just a different kind).

    Suggesting citizenship as a state-citizen contract with flexible terms, levels of rights/service/etc. depending on how well you uphold your end of the bargain is actually standard hardcore-libertarian stuff, not obvious satire. I suspect MR finds China's social credit system immoral, not because it gives Leviathan a complete view of one's most intimate life experience for oppressive purposes, but because the Chinese do not get to choose which Leviathan they subscribe to.

  35. Jackson says

    October 30, 2018 at 10:59 am

    My modest proposal would be that the only way to stop our current political firestorm is to eradicate the members of both parties by removing their citizenship.

  36. Jason says

    October 30, 2018 at 11:14 am

    Randazza: given a platform by Ken. Takes a few extra seconds in his satire to punch down on my friends with mental illness & ESAs.

  37. OldCurmudgeon says

    October 30, 2018 at 11:53 am

    Eh, Heinlein's take was much more directly militaristic – sure, there was lip service to 'if a devout pacifist or someone physically incapable of combat really, really insists on being a citizen we'll find some pointless make work for him to do', but the focus of the culture was that citizenship derived from your willingness to kill people.

    Citizenship derived from your willingness to one's life on the line, not one's willing to kill. IIRC, the ST government purposely maintained a number of useless-but-dangerous jobs through which people could acquire citizenship.

    "We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America…mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor."

  38. Lucas says

    October 30, 2018 at 12:03 pm

    Not the best, but not the worst Black Mirror pitch submission.

  39. OldCurmudgeon says

    October 30, 2018 at 12:03 pm

    You laugh, but China is actually doing something like this.

    We don't have a point system, but arguably have levels of citizenship already:
    Bronze: felons, embryos
    Silver: 18-21 yro (can vote, but draft eligible and can't drink)
    Gold: 1-18 yro (can't vote, create contracts)
    Platinum: all others

  40. Malc says

    October 30, 2018 at 12:38 pm

    Anyone (else) read "In The Wet" by Neville Shute (1953)?

    He describes a system where each person can get up to 7 votes for each ballot question/position. Everybody gets 1 vote. Services in the military gets another. Graduate degrees, raising kids to adulthood, being a religious leader, living abroad, making lots of money, etc up to the 7th vote which is described as the "Sovereign's Vote" for people; a kind of medal-of-honor thing.

    The overall idea is that "most" people would find it quite easy to get 2 or 3 votes, "community leaders" might get 4 or more. As described, almost no-one could get all 7 because you'd have to be a parent, a clergyman, served in the military, made lots of money and be noticed enough to get the sovereign's vote to complete the set.

    Of course, Shute's system as written favors the socially more conservative over (say) artists and trades unionists, but nevertheless it's an interesting variation on Randazza's thought experiment.

    (Another random thought experiment: how about if the top 10% — or 20% — of states with the most population got 3 senators instead of two? Yeah, I know, pigs might fly, constitutional amendment, etc… but an entertaining thought).

  41. M says

    October 30, 2018 at 1:46 pm

    "how about if the top 10% — or 20% — of states with the most population got 3 senators instead of two?"

    I think that would be directly contradicting the reason for existence of the Senate in the first place.

  42. Deez says

    October 30, 2018 at 2:20 pm

    This is stupid and bad

  43. steve oberski says

    October 30, 2018 at 2:22 pm

    Heinlein also explored the idea of tiered citizenship in "Revolt in 2100" where full citizenship was only accorded to those willing to carry a weapon and adjudicate disputes in public by dueling, usually with terminal results for at least one of the participants.

  44. Randazza says

    October 30, 2018 at 2:37 pm

    I'm flexible.

  45. Randazza says

    October 30, 2018 at 2:38 pm

    Germany would be delighted to take them! (Oh, wait, Merkel is no longer in power)

  46. Randazza says

    October 30, 2018 at 2:43 pm

    That's part of the point. I'd imagine that there will always be some unfairness or bias in any system. But, I'd expect that my system would clear out a bit of the entrenched race, wealth, and parentage advantage — and give advantage to the "most valuable" members of society. Today we really do this already, but it is almost entirely on the basis of wealth (and thus usually inheritance).

  47. Randazza says

    October 30, 2018 at 2:45 pm

    Either you didn't read the post, or you haven't seen Starship Troopers.

  48. Randazza says

    October 30, 2018 at 2:45 pm

    Yep, its called being a billionaire.

  49. Randazza says

    October 30, 2018 at 2:46 pm

    I would vote for "service to the First Amendment" as a points-gathering activity.

  50. dudedon’t says

    October 30, 2018 at 2:54 pm

    Jim Crow much?

  51. Ann says

    October 30, 2018 at 3:04 pm

    Randazza cracking unfunny, predictable jokes about his own personal preoccupations from the complacent perspective of someone who isn't the least bit threatened or implicated by the subject under consideration? Must either be satire or just another article by the same genius who wrote this:

    How about that? The Democrats bring in Antifa. The Republicans bring in their own thugs. Anyone else noticing that these two private organizations don't give a shit about us? They just want power at all costs.

    Hint: There are zero instances of the Democrats "bringing in" Antifa anywhere outside of the imaginary island of Whatabout, where Randazza roams free and unrestricted by fact or reason.

    At least it's true that Republicans have embraced the rhetoric, outlook, and tactics of violent, organized well-funded right-wing extremists, though. He also approvingly retweeted this gem:

    The atmosphere of hate and division is largely the result of Democrats' inability to admit they lost an election. It's been a two-year nervous breakdown that would be hilarious if it weren't so dangerous.

    And that one isn't even tangentially based in reality or reason at all. (Examples of Democrats being unable for two years to admit they lost an election? None. Explanation of how such an inability could even prompt a rabid anti-Semite to shoot Jews or an attempted serial bomber/fanatical Trump supporter to target more than a dozen people (all of whom demonstrably accept and acknowledge that the Democrats lost an election) to act in the first place? Also none.)

    It might be possible to discern whether this post is satirical or sincere, in short. But why bother? It would be equally like reading an angry, fearful, and exceptionally ill-informed child with a language-processing issue that implicates verbal logic and creativity either way.

    That line in his brief for Andrew Anglin about how no reasonable person could possibly interpret online threats of anti-Semitic violence as true threats because such things are commonplace all over the internet isn't exactly looking any better with age, either.

  52. Sol says

    October 30, 2018 at 3:23 pm

    …. @Randazza:
    Marc, you really need to either quote the posts you're responding to or at least @ people. I could figure out one of those by context, sorta, (I'm assuming the Starship Troopers one is at the first reference to that, not to the follow-on comments?), but the rest are too vague to make head or tail of.

  53. I Was Anonymous says

    October 30, 2018 at 3:59 pm

    @JM

    If we're talking citizenship as a flexible contract, I'd prefer to contract with Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong

  54. steve oberski says

    October 30, 2018 at 4:01 pm

    Either you didn't read the post, or you haven't seen Starship Troopers.

    Try reading the book.

  55. steve oberski says

    October 30, 2018 at 4:04 pm

    @I Was Anonymous says

    The world of Snow Crash is becoming depressingly more real by the day.

  56. Richard says

    October 30, 2018 at 4:11 pm

    @steve oberski:

    If it progresses to the world of The Diamond Age, it might be worth it.

  57. Sol says

    October 30, 2018 at 4:40 pm

    @steve oberski
    Wait, shit, I missed that in my skimming of Randazza's posts. Yeah, he really did say "seen" Starship Troopers.
    @Randazza
    Uh, Marc, you… are aware that Starship Troopers was a book first, right? A book that is rather substantially distinct from the film*?

    (*I've actually heard people describe the film as a parody targeted at the book, an over-the-top mockery of how creepy and fascist Heinlein's proposed society would be in actual practice. I'm not certain that was the intent, but I can definitely understand how one would see it that way.)

    @OldCurmudgeon
    Terms of service are explicitly "rough and dangerous" by default, but the point doesn't seem to be to make it life-threatening, just to make it difficult and scary – to ensure that only the brave, the tough, the *macho* will 'stick it out' in order to complete their term of service and incidentally earn the right to vote – which their entire society holds either in contempt or as generally pointless – the cultural trappings around citizenship and the term of service aren't about how valuable and precious voting is and how voters have to lay down their lives for the state. They're about the cachet of being in the military.
    "it has become stylish, with some people — too many people — to serve a term and earn a franchise and be able to wear a ribbon in your lapel which says that you’re a vet’ran… whether you’ve ever seen combat or not"
    The important part for those dandies isn't the franchise, it's the implication of combat, of killing for your country, because the novel describes a society that not just idolises but fetishises its soldiers, and the novel itself idolises the use of force and violence to achieve one's goals. So, I picked my words carefully. It's the killing, not the dying, that the novel promotes.

    @Ann
    It strikes me as particularly amusing to see 'Antifa', which where it's anything more than a random assembly of 'everyone who hates Nazis', i.e. all sane people in the local area, is typically composed of the local *anarchist* activists, described as wanting 'power at all costs'.
    At any rate, you're not quoting nearly the most interesting Randazza bizarro-world reports. How can you miss out gems like "I think that "white supremacist" is a term that gets used to describe anyone who happens to be caucasian and refuses to also subscribe to a particular orthodoxy of thought"?

  58. Randazza says

    October 30, 2018 at 5:05 pm

    Why? You think I don't have a stack of shit I am already reading, and then another stack of shit that I want to read?

  59. jdgalt says

    October 30, 2018 at 5:28 pm

    This has the same problem as all regulation schemes: anyone who supports it is assuming that people who share his goals will be the ones awarding the points.

    I dare say that fact is not in evidence.

  60. Sol says

    October 30, 2018 at 5:32 pm

    @Randazza

    Why? You think I don't have a stack of shit I am already reading, and then another stack of shit that I want to read?

    You're still not actually giving any indication of *which post* you're responding to. There are 59 comments as I'm writing this – granted, quite a few of them are your own, and I'm assuming you're not quite so far gone as to talk to yourself, but that doesn't narrow it down a lot. My guess would be that you're responding to steve oberski's 4:01pm post, "Try reading the book", but the reason that's a *guess* is because you're still being pointlessly unclear.

    Oh, also, re: 2:38 pm,

    Germany would be delighted to take them! (Oh, wait, Merkel is no longer in power)

    That's not actually accurate – Angela Merkel has declared she's not running for re-election, but her next Chancellor election is 2021. It's more like Trump, or some other, less power-obsessed President, declaring that he won't seek a second term. She's not out the door right this second. (It does influence her overall power projection, for sure, but it doesn't remove it all.)

  61. SocraticGadfly says

    October 30, 2018 at 5:58 pm

    Is "reading through some dumb-fück shit by Randazza that isn't a good Poe if it is one and is just dumb-fück shit if not a Poe" worth platinum-level citizenship? Diamond level? Enough bonus points to permanently bar Randazza from citizenship?

  62. Randazza says

    October 30, 2018 at 6:49 pm

    You're still not actually giving any indication of *which post* you're responding to.

    FUCK, IM SORRY – COMMENT PARTY FOUL!!!!

  63. Ann says

    October 30, 2018 at 7:49 pm

    @Sol —

    He's a troll and a cowardly, unimaginative one, to boot. Just look at the comment above this one.

    @Deez —

    This is stupid and bad

    Well said.

  64. Sol says

    October 31, 2018 at 12:43 am

    @Randazza

    FUCK, IM SORRY – COMMENT PARTY FOUL!!!!

    There we go. Now, next thing, there's a big key on your keyboard, just to the left of the A key. It might have a big padlock symbol on it, or an arrow, or it might just say 'Caps Lock'. Try pressing it, just the once, and see if that fixes your typing issue.

    @Ann

    He's a troll and a cowardly, unimaginative one, to boot. Just look at the comment above this one.

    Well, sure, but trolling generally doesn't work super well if the people you're trolling have no idea that you're talking to them, does it? That's why Marc exploits and abuses Ken's friendship to spew this nonsense on Ken's blog in the first place, rather than just shouting it out in the shower.

  65. steve oberski says

    October 31, 2018 at 4:23 am

    Why? You think I don't have a stack of shit I am already reading, and then another stack of shit that I want to read?

    If you had time to piss away watching the movie you can piss away more time reading the book.

  66. Melvin Chudwaters says

    October 31, 2018 at 7:49 am

    I check daily for new posts here. Imagine my disappointment when it's Randazza. I can tell this is supposed to be satirical, I get that. But it's heavy-handed and lame.

    You have none of Ken's wit. And nothing you say is even slightly insightful to anyone who reads stuff here. Please just stop.

  67. yet another David says

    October 31, 2018 at 8:28 am

    Serving in Congress is worth -(5* years served) points each year salary or pension is drawn.

  68. Steve says

    October 31, 2018 at 8:58 am

    Edinfla, I'm curious about that observation since
    1) I find aspects of this proposal appealing
    2) Though I'm atheist, I was raised Catholic
    3) I have no idea why 1 and 2 would be correlated.

    Andrew, I don't think we have an equivalent to the Order of Canada.

  69. Richard says

    October 31, 2018 at 9:00 am

    @yet another David: are you intending for that to build geometrically?

    That is, as stated, if you have 50 points the first year served, you lose 5 the first year, 10 the second year, 15 the third year, and 20 the fourth year, leaving you at 0. After that, you start accruing a negative balance.

    Or were you intending for it to take 10 years of service/salary/pension to lose 50 points?

    Either way, I approve.

  70. Total says

    October 31, 2018 at 9:05 am

    Let's not turn this into Yet Another Heinlein Thread.

  71. GuestPoster says

    October 31, 2018 at 9:11 am

    @Sol: I think Randazza is responding to the suggestion that he try READING Starship Troopers. Because, you know, why would he ever draw an allegory about that story and bother to actually experience it directly first?

    Re: one of your other comments: my understanding (which may well be wrong) is that the director HATED the book. This is part of why the movie is, functionally, an action movie, while the book really just has the action in the background, and the propaganda as the major subject matter. And I do enjoy the movie, as a fun dumb film, but it's hardly got the philosophical value of the novel.

    @Ann:

    Re: antifa, it's particularly funny that conservatives are so ready to assign them to democrats/liberals/smart people. Because, really? We should be PROUD to be associated with Antifa. After all, literally all they are is anti-fascist. That's it. That's their entire mission statement.

    Back in WWII, Nazis were running rampant in Europe, and everybody on Earth was given the opportunity to choose a side. Now, Nazis are running rampant across the US. Once again, we've been given a chance to choose a side.

    Every intelligent, or decent, or just simply not horrible person on Earth has chosen to be not Nazis. The conservatives of the US have chosen otherwise.

  72. Troutwaxer says

    October 31, 2018 at 9:22 am

    I've often said that there are two kinds of Libertarians; those who don't know that Ayn Rand was writing fiction, and those who don't know that Heinlein was writing fiction. Know we know which category fits Randazza!

  73. JD Ohio says

    October 31, 2018 at 9:41 am

    Pho Queue: "Radazza's brain is so far gone he thinks Democrats actually want open borders. Go back to Infowars."

    Dems use fig leafs to claim they are against open borders.

    Let me ask you this question. Assume we are dealing with people who desire to sneak in. Let us consider all people who have illegally sneaked in in and have been in the US for 6 months to one year. What are the first 5,000 (not guilty of crimes) that you would deport? Also, what procedures would you use to find and deport them.

    On my end, I see many Dems claim they oppose open borders, but once anyone sneaks in, they use sob stories to oppose or prevent deportation. If sob stories will prevent deportation, then we have functional open borders. What is your position.

  74. Karl says

    October 31, 2018 at 9:49 am

    Starship Troopers
    (The Heinlein novel, not the dismal movie)

  75. Total says

    October 31, 2018 at 9:51 am

    What is your position

    That people should use question marks when they're asking questions.

    As to the rest of your comment, I disagree with the postulate that not deporting everyone in the US is functionally equivalent to open borders, so we can't even have a discussion.

  76. xoa says

    October 31, 2018 at 10:22 am

    RazerCannon says
    OCTOBER 30, 2018 AT 9:25 AM

    Can it be done by Executive Order only?

    No, I don't think so. The 14th Amendment's "subject to jurisdiction" encompassed exactly 3 things (one of which is gone as far as I know?).

    First is children of recognized diplomats, who are not subject to US domestic legal jurisdiction in the normal way (hence "diplomatic immunity"). In accordance with the rules of the Vienna Convention of course a country may declare a diplomat persona non grata and demand they leave (with immunity revoked if they don't within reasonable time), and the country of a diplomat may choose to waive rights if it wishes, but ultimately all arguments there are questions of international relations/power between sovereign states. They are effectively extensions of their state as is consular property.

    Second, children of occupiers (though of course it's been a very long time since this was a serious threat to America). This one is kind of obvious too, while the US would naturally still claim occupied territory and hope to recapture it eventually, by definition it doesn't have any jurisdiction there in the mean time since it cannot exercise any power there. In passing I've only ever seen it talked about in the "US gets invaded" context. I do wonder if it's ever been debated about what would happen in the reverse, if the US one day decided to conquer the rest of the continent or something. It certainly seems like if we did so, all else aside, all new children born in occupied territories would become US citizens regardless of whether they were officially incorporated as "states" or not. They couldn't be kept as second class servants of the conquering nation, which is actually kind of a nice little check on that sort of thing.

    Finally at one point it was considered that Indian Tribes on their own land were "special jurisdiction", and while foreign policy might be restricted they owed no allegiance to the US and relations were governed via treaties. However I vaguely recall there was a specific indian citizenship law passed in the early 1900s that just did away with the whole question and gave them all citizenship and that was that.

    I mean it's kind of weird and self-contradictory that people would even question this particularly wrt illegal immigrants. Like, if those illegal immigrants aren't subject to US jurisdiction, that means you can't actually arrest them either. They'd all have "immunity" in the same way diplomats do. I'm reasonably sure that's not exactly what the POTUS and co are arguing for. And if not then again by definition they're subject to our jurisdiction and invoke the citizenship clause. The whole point of it was to overturn Dred Scott and prevent generational disenfranchisement and the establishment of "permanent resident lesser peoples" who would be stateless and in turn subject to massive abuse and no representation. An EO to the contrary would be flagrantly unconstitutional. Not that that stops him from issuing it, he could issue an EO declaring all federal officials will hence forth state the Moon is made of blue cheese and declare the undying allegiance to the Sleeper in the Tomb if he wanted. Doesn't mean it'd survive contact with the courts following the inevitable instant lawsuit though.

  77. Pho Queue says

    October 31, 2018 at 10:30 am

    @JD Ohio

    Nice strawman you got there. To answer your question I think it's perfectly possible to determine which "sob stories" are genuine. Asylum is a thing. What's your alternative? Deport everyone, even if it means sending them to their literal deaths? That violates not just the law but basic human decency. After all, fleeing for your life should be a capital crime!

    Or how about the horror of putting thousands of children in desert tent cities and cages governed but the lowest bidder. Surely that's necessary for the safety of this great nation! Surely there was no other option. Surely we won't be hearing about the abusive conditions for years to come. Surely those children aren't scarred for life.

    Surely there wasn't already a system in place to parse the bad from the good. Surely they're all guilty of something, due process be damned. As Trump said, they're not sending their best. They're "Invaders", and some might even be … from the MIDDLE EAST. Shock, horror, BROWN PEOPLE!!! Surely it's necessary to deploy US troops domestically to protect us from these barbarian hordes!

    Kindly go fuck yourself, and that goes double for Randazza. Why Ken gives this Trump cult trash a platform is beyond me.

  78. Michael 2 says

    October 31, 2018 at 10:31 am

    A great ideas; the difficulty would be obtaining consensus on what each civic activity is WORTH. Endless arguing about it.

    When the United States was founded, voting tended to be limited to landholders. Why might that be?

    Social Contract. Those who have "skin in the game" choose the rules of the game; otherwise there is no contract.

    That is one of the big distinctions between left and right or at least socialists and libertarians. Libertarians believe in "contract", I do for you and you do for me and we negotiate the worth of these things. Economic transactions are valued in dollars; I do for you one thing worth ten dollars and you do for me two things worth five dollars and we are happy and the contract is honored.

    Socialists tend to be on the consuming side of things, strong on "you do for me", and weak on "I do for you".

    It came to my mind almost immediately Starship Troopers where citizenship (voting rights) had to be earned and military service (and law enforcement) was a sure way to earn citizenship; how much more skin in the game can there be but to actually HAVE your skin in the game? Your life at risk!

    Imagine that the only thing you had to do to get free college, free housing, free food, was to vote for it! Well, that's the case in a democracy except that if everything is free there's no particular need for college.

    Consider the 47 percent that Romm Mitney knew wasn't going to vote for him for the simple reason that there is no "upside" to doing so and considerable risk to their benefits.

    Where is the social contract right now? There pretty much isn't one. By virtue of having been born here, i can demand the fruit of your labor and property whether you like it or not; there is no contract.

    To be sure, the United States has *some* elements of social contract remaining; your social security benefits are at least partly indexed to your work history and some veterans benefits are tied to actually being a veteran.

    I have little doubt that the left would disenfranchise the Trump voters given the opportunity to do so so there's something to be said for free speech and universal voting franchise. It's not the best for the United States but it's also not the worst.

  79. En Passant says

    October 31, 2018 at 10:37 am

    Marc Randazza wrote:

    We would each earn between 0-100 citizenship points. 50 points, you’re a citizen. At 75 points, you get Bronze Citizenship, 85 points you get Silver Citizenship, and at 95 points you get Gold Citizenship.

    I just read Marc's article and this whole comment thread; and I kept a straight face the whole time.

    That's worth at least 10,000 points.

    I demand Promethium Citizenship!

  80. Michael 2 says

    October 31, 2018 at 10:48 am

    Troutwaxer says "I've often said that there are two kinds of Libertarians."

    I say that there are as many kinds of Libertarians as there are Libertarians! One libertarian is not obligated to conform to any other.

    All words are fiction. A story is good (in part) when it mirrors reality. That you mention Ayn Rand and Robert Heinlein is an example of that. Heinlein explores a social system where giving to society precedes taking from society, Ayn Rand explores what happens when there's nothing left to take from society.

    A real world parallel is the Soviet Union where citizens have a constitutional right to medical care, employment and housing; but no mechanism existed to provide all that stuff.

  81. JD Ohio says

    October 31, 2018 at 10:51 am

    PHO Q: "Nice strawman you got there. To answer your question I think it's perfectly possible to determine which "sob stories" are genuine. "

    According to wiki, there are approximately 500,000 illegal entries into the US per year. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_immigration_to_the_United_States#Illegal_entry That means there are approximately 250,000 for every 6 months. I was asking you to pick (roughly) the top 5,000 out of the 250,000 that you might consider to be deportable. You go on a rant about asylum and sending people to their deaths. Surely 5,000 out of 250,000 could be found who wouldn't be sent to their deaths. Please tell me who those people would be. Or, I would expect that you would support the position, as appears to be the Dem position, that if you can sneak into the country in violation of immigration law and haven't committed a crime, you are entitled to stay in the US and not be subject to deportation.

    If your position is so rational and humane, why not support it openly. The Dem position appears to be that anyone who can sneak into the US and who doesn't commit a crime is not subject to deportation. I would call it functional open borders. Others may put a different name on it. We can debate your actual policy instead of going into silly tangents like death to asylum seekers (there are 5,000 people who are not asylum seekers), or the Left can continue its dishonesty and name-calling to avoid attention to its actual policies. All the Left has is uninformed self-righteousness and name-calling.

  82. cecil says

    October 31, 2018 at 11:06 am

    Subject to jurisdiction? Perhaps children born of persons conducting a criminal enterprise not in a nation of their own fail that for the citizenship test? Are Indians not taxed subject to jurisdiction, are they citizens but not represented? How about females, are they citizens but not represented, after all, they aren't male and therefore aren't counted… Maybe the words in the fourteenth amendment mean what they say, not what we would want them to say if we were writing them…
    So that is my question, what does "subject to jurisdiction" actually mean and can that meaning be swayed by an executive order?

  83. JD Ohio says

    October 31, 2018 at 11:10 am

    PHO Q:

    "Nice strawman you got there. To answer your question I think it's perfectly possible to determine which "sob stories" are genuine. Asylum is a thing. What's your alternative?

    According to wikipedia there are about 250,000 illegal entries per year. (See Wiki illegal immigration to the US) I asked you if you could pick 5,000 out of those 250,000 that you could deport. You go off on a rant about asylum and death, which has nothing to do with 5,000 out of 250,000. The Left should honestly say that it is their policy that anyone who sneaks into the US can stay. I consider that functional open borders. Others may have a different label.

    The Left in its Hillary Clinton mode deflects as do you. I will take it that you can't answer the question and prefer not to debate whether there are at least 5,000 people (who haven't committed crimes) out of 250,000 illegal entrants that should be deportable for violating US law.

  84. Michael 2 says

    October 31, 2018 at 11:15 am

    GuestPoster says "I hate being right sometimes."

    I look forward to it happening someday.

    "I came here following Trump's decision to revoke the US constitution by executive order"

    Except that didn't happen, not yet anyway, and no worse than Obama doing that, not that its any excuse.

    As I traveled the world in the United States Navy, my children born to me were automatically American Citizens; NOT (usually) citizens of where they were born. A few nations allow for dual nationality BUT the important part is that children take on the nationality of their parents even when the event of birth isn't in the parents nation.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birth_tourism

    "Until 2004, Ireland was the last European country to grant unconditional birthright citizenship." This wonderful Europe that is often held to high praise apparently has eliminated birthright citizenship everywhere.

    The relevant clause in the Constitution, 14th Amendment, is "subject to the jurisdiction thereof". That's the loophole. It is not established that the child of visitors is automatically "subject to the jurisdiction" of the United States; for that matter, I'm not sure that babies are subject to the Constitution or they'd have the right to vote (and bear arms and petition the government and so on).

  85. David Schwartz says

    October 31, 2018 at 11:24 am

    It is not established that the child of visitors is automatically "subject to the jurisdiction" of the United States

    Really? So if the federal government orders the child to be detained or deported, it's not clear whether the child needs to comply?

  86. mostromundo says

    October 31, 2018 at 11:39 am

    Super Eagle.

  87. steve oberski says

    October 31, 2018 at 11:43 am

    I would point out that the request that a thread not turn into another Heinlein thread aid and abbets that very thing.

    And how awesome is it that there have been other Heinlein threads (on Popehat I assume).

  88. Thomas says

    October 31, 2018 at 11:45 am

    "And Poe's Law strikes again"

    For a moment there before I looked it up, I got confused with Rule 34

  89. Steve says

    October 31, 2018 at 11:52 am

    Michael2, are you seriously suggesting that US law only applies to US citizens? I'm pretty sure a noncitizen arrested for, say, drug smuggling, can't walk free because "I'm not a citizen, so your laws don't apply to me – I'm not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States!"

    Your alleged loophole sounds made-up and stupid, because it appears to rely on a stupid and made-up definition of "jurisdiction". Likewise with your attempt at a (rhetorical?) question, cecil.

  90. justafool says

    October 31, 2018 at 11:57 am

    winning an anti-SLAPP dismissal losses 3x points if you get the victory on some bullshit immunity instead of the merits.

  91. JD Ohio says

    October 31, 2018 at 12:05 pm

    To David Schwartz : The analysis is much more subtle from the Wong Ark Kim case, upon which birthright citizenship is based. Here is Justice Harlan's (most people would say the most accomplished justice on that court) view in the beginning of the long dissent he wrote:

    "If the conclusion of the majority opinion is correct, then the children of citizens of the United States, who have been born abroad since July 8, 1868, when the amendment was declared ratified, were, and are, aliens, unless they have, or shall on attaining majority, become citizens by naturalization in the United States, and no statutory provision to the contrary is of any force or effect. And children who are aliens by descent, but born on our soil, are exempted from the exercise of the power to exclude or to expel aliens, or any class of aliens, so often maintained by this court, an exemption apparently disregarded by the acts in respect of the exclusion of persons of Chinese descent.

    The English common law rule, which it is insisted was in force after the Declaration of Independence, was that

    "every person born within the dominions of the Crown, no matter whether of English or of foreign parents, and, in the latter case, whether the parents were settled or merely temporarily sojourning in the country, was an English subject, save only the children of foreign ambassadors (who were excepted because their fathers carried their own nationality with them) or a child born to a foreigner during the hostile occupation of any part of the territories of England."

    ******

    The nationality of his parents had no bearing on his nationality. Though born during a temporary stay of a few days, the child was irretrievably a British subject. Hall on Foreign Jurisdiction, etc., § 1.

    The rule was the outcome of the connection in feudalism between the individual and the soil on which he lived, and the allegiance due was that of liegemen to their liege lord. It was not local and temporary, as was the obedience to the laws owed by aliens within the dominions of the Crown, but permanent and indissoluble, and not to be cancelled by any change of time or place or circumstances.

    And it is this rule, pure and simple, which it is asserted determined citizenship of the United States during the entire period prior to the passage of the act of April 9, 1866, and the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, and governed the meaning of the words "citizen of the United States" and "natural-born citizen" used in the Constitution as originally framed and adopted. I submit that no such rule obtained during the period referred to, and that those words bore no such construction; that the act of April 9, 1866, expressed the contrary rule; that the Fourteenth Amendment prescribed the same rule as the act, and that, if that amendment bears the construction now put upon it, it imposed the English common law rule on this country for the first time, and made it "absolute and unbending" just as Great Britain was being relieved from its inconveniences.

    Obviously, where the Constitution deals with common law rights and uses common law phraseology, its language should be read in the light of the common law; but when the question arises as to what constitutes citizenship of the nation, involving as it does international relations, and political, as contradistinguished from civil, status, international principles must be considered, and, unless the municipal law of England appears to have been affirmatively accepted, it cannot be allowed to control in the matter of construction.

    Nationality is essentially a political idea, and belongs to the sphere of public law. Hence, Mr. Justice Story, in Shanks v. Dupont, 3 Pet. 242, 28 U. S. 248, said that the incapacities of femes
    *****

    "do not reach their political rights, nor prevent their acquiring or losing a national character. Those political rights do not stand upon the mere doctrines of municipal law, applicable to ordinary transactions, but stand upon the more general principles of the law of nations."

    Twiss, in his work on the Law of actions, says that

    "natural allegiance, or the obligation of perpetual obedience to the government of a country wherein a man may happen to have been born, which he cannot forfeit, or cancel, or vary by any change of time or place or circumstance, is the creature of civil law, and finds no countenance in the law of nations, as it is in direct conflict with the incontestable rule of that law."

    Vol. 1, p. 231.

    Before the Revolution, the view of the publicists had been thus put by Vattel:

    "The natives, or natural-born citizens, are those born in the country of parents who are citizens. As the society cannot exist and perpetuate itself otherwise than by the children of the citizens, those children naturally follow the condition of their fathers, and succeed to all their rights. The society is supposed to desire this in consequence of what it owes to its own preservation, and it is presumed as matter of course that each citizen, on entering into society, reserves to his children the right of becoming members of it. The country of the fathers is therefore that of the children, and these become true citizens merely by their tacit consent. We shall soon see whether, on their coming to the years of discretion, they may renounce their right, and what they owe to the society in which they were born. I say that, in order to be of the country, it is necessary that a person be born of a father who is a citizen; for, if he is born there of a foreigner, it will be only the place of his birth, and not his country."

    Book I, c.19, § 212.

    "The true bond which connects the child with the body politic is not the matter of an inanimate piece of land, but the moral relations of his parentage. . . . The place of birth produces no change in the rule that children follow the condition of their fathers, for it is not naturally the place of birth that gives rights, but extraction."

  92. JD Ohio says

    October 31, 2018 at 2:25 pm

    Correction of 11:10 Post which said: "According to wikipedia there are about 250,000 illegal entries per year. " It is 500,000 per year and 250,000 per half year.

  93. Pho Queue says

    October 31, 2018 at 2:59 pm

    I don't care how many it is, and I answered your question. Every single one gets a fair shot at asylum. That's not what's happening now, much to the frustration of the ACLU.

    The 1951 UN Refugee Convention and the 1980 US Refugee Act is supposed to guarantee this. Nevermind separating kids from their parents and putting them in the worst of private prisons. If there is no valid asylum claim, I'm fine with throwing people out.

    I do, however, think that the criteria for granting asylum should be broader so as to include those fleeing domestic violence and organised crime. I don't see this is particularly extreme and isn't even part of the mainstream Democratic platform. None of this would qualify as "open borders" so keep moving those goalposts, fuckwit.

  94. GuestPoster says

    October 31, 2018 at 3:07 pm

    Ok, let's pretend JD Ohio deserves an answer. JD Ohio is VERY worried about the 500k people who enter the US illegally each year. And, he considers the entry of these people to be proof, PROOF, that the democrats/liberals/smart people support entirely free immigration with no borders.

    Now, the fact that the vast majority of the world currently lives outside the US totally disproves his point. But still, let's further address it. 500,000 people per year. Sounds like a lot, doesn't it! Then we actually load up wikipedia. Oh, wait, that's 500,000 people TOTAL. Of all the people who ever migrated to the US, the best estimate is between 250-500k of them overstayed their visit based on a border card entry.

    But, well, let's lobotomize ourselves, and pretend that JD Ohio has a point, despite his obviously faulty and misleading use of facts. Let's pretend that a half million people a year enter the US illegally, with the goal to stay for the rest of their lives, take really, really good jobs that US citizens are standing in lines to take, pay no taxes, and live like kings off Medicare and social security. You know – let's pretend that the things conservatives tend to claim are, contrary to all evidence, actually true.

    The population of the US is about 327 million. He claims a half million people a year enter. That's like having $300, and worrying about the fifty cents that slipped into your pocket somehow.

    As to how we should address this horrible, horrible problem? It's easy. We've known how to stop illegal immigration for years. Raid farms and factories, find the undocumented migrants, and throw the employers in jail. What? What? Hurt the US citizens? Yup. The whole reason people come here without proper documentation is to work really shitty jobs offered by really shitty people. Lock the shitty people up, the shitty jobs disappear, and the migrants stop migrating because this is no longer the land of opportunity. Punish the people providing the incentive to migrate, and you remove the incentive to migrate. Heck, the undocumented migrants will leave, all on their own, with no further effort on our part at all, because there'll be no reason to stay!

    Oh, and you'll pay $10 for a head of lettuce at the grocery store, but hey – at least you won't have to worry about Mexican day laborers competing with you for a job you wouldn't ever disgrace yourself with doing.

  95. qdpsteve says

    October 31, 2018 at 3:13 pm

    This is not a horrible idea. The only problem is, the way things are going, it would be quickly weaponized for partisan purposes.

    Kamala Harris becomes president? EVERY Republican loses 75 points immediately, no appeals, and it's 3x the work to make back any points.

    Mike Pence gets to the Oval Office? Bonus points for Christians, negative points for everyone else. (If you convert from Islam to Christianity, AUTOMATIC +100 points, no questions asked.)

    So keep brainstorming Randazza, but a lot of safeguards would need to be built into this system.

  96. Katfud says

    October 31, 2018 at 3:49 pm

    We also need to enact one more thing – I say bring back the old Greek custom of ostracism.

    Every 2-year election we add names to a ballot for ostracism. The 'winner' gets banished from the country for, say, 10 years. Furthermore their name is filtered out of all social media. Their words are not permitted. Their speech is also banned.

    Combined with the Point system, we have a way for the electorate to deal with people who become too powerful and disruptive. A wealthy person can perhaps figure out how to buy points in the Randazza system. But a vote for ostracism is a completely different deal.

  97. JD Ohio says

    October 31, 2018 at 4:07 pm

    Pho Q "I don't care how many it is, and I answered your question. [That is a Bernie Madoff/Clinton lie] Every single one gets a fair shot at asylum."

    Stupid. Not that you care about accuracy or facts. Here is the UN definition of asylum:

    "The United Nations 1951 Convention and 1967 Protocol define a refugee as a person who is unable or unwilling to return to his or her home country, and cannot obtain protection in that country, due to past persecution or a well-founded fear of being persecuted in the future “on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.” Congress incorporated this definition into U.S. immigration law in the Refugee Act of 1980."

    Mexicans and many others coming here are not refugees. You still have not named one person who has sneaked into the US and not committed a crime who should be subject to deportation. You have proven that you support open borders. Won't waste my time with you anymore. This site seems to attract more than its share of mean-spirited and uninformed Lefties.

    Yet you claim Dem support for open borders is non-existent and fake news. Here is Keith Ellison supporting open borders. http://alphanewsmn.com/ellison-advocates-for-elimination-of-national-borders/ The fake news is coming from Lefties like you.

  98. Sol says

    October 31, 2018 at 4:17 pm

    Oh joy, Michael2 is back.

    @Steve

    Your alleged loophole sounds made-up and stupid, because it appears to rely on a stupid and made-up definition of "jurisdiction".

    Making up his own stupid definitions of words is basically Michael2's only trolling trick. That and insisting that words don't mean anything and therefore he doesn't have to acknowledge anyone else's actual arguments instead of his own strawmen. It's pointless to try and actually engage with him.

    @Guestposter

    And I do enjoy the movie, as a fun dumb film, but it's hardly got the philosophical value of the novel.

    A good send-up of a concept can have plenty of philosophical value. Certainly the movie doesn't spell out its philosophy as clearly as the book, but I think there's definitely a strong philosophy behind its design, taking pointed shots at Heinlein's philosophy.

    The conservatives of the US have chosen otherwise.

    Now, let's be fair. Plenty of conservatives have stood up and condemned Trump and the GOP's swing towards authoritarianism. And plenty more are just turning away in disgust.
    And even within the Republican party, you have plenty of people, who, like Marc, are just very good friends with Nazis and support everything the Nazis do and stand for, and encourage everyone to cheer for the Nazis, but aren't actually Nazis themselves. Not to mention plenty of spineless cowards and opportunists willing to sacrifice all principles and everything good about America just to cling to personal wealth and power for a few more years. So they're not all Nazis.

    @JD Ohio:
    No one is answering your 'oh surely you can list some bad immigrants you hate' question because you're blatantly arguing in bad faith and your bait isn't remotely as subtle as you think it is. Come back when your trolling is as incomprehensible and baffling as Michael2's.

  99. JD Ohio says

    October 31, 2018 at 4:19 pm

    Pho Q "I don't care how many it is, and I answered your question. Every single one gets a fair shot at asylum."

    Stupid. Most Mexicans aren't refugees seeking asylum. (Also, Bernie Madoff/Clinton lie about answering the question. Still not one person identified who you would deport, assuming the illegal hadn't committed a crime)

    Although you are too lazy to read or understand it, here is the definition of asylum:

    "The United Nations 1951 Convention and 1967 Protocol define a refugee as a person who is unable or unwilling to return to his or her home country, and cannot obtain protection in that country, due to past persecution or a well-founded fear of being persecuted in the future “on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.” Congress incorporated this definition into U.S. immigration law in the Refugee Act of 1980."

    You made the false claim that Dems don't support open borders. Your failure to be able to name 1 person illegally in the US who you would deport shows that you support open borders. Also, Keith Ellison supports open borders. http://alphanewsmn.com/ellison-advocates-for-elimination-of-national-borders/

    This site seems to attract Lefties who are both ignorant and mean-spirited. Won't bother responding anymore to your stupid rants.

  100. JD Ohio says

    October 31, 2018 at 4:30 pm

    Pho Q "I don't care how many it is, and I answered your question. Every single one gets a fair shot at asylum."

    Stupid. Most Mexicans aren't refugees seeking asylum. (Also, Bernie Madoff/Clinton lie about answering the question. Still not one person identified who you would deport, assuming the illegal hadn't committed a crime)

    Although you are too lazy to read or understand it, here is the definition of asylum:

    "The United Nations 1951 Convention and 1967 Protocol define a refugee as a person who is unable or unwilling to return to his or her home country, and cannot obtain protection in that country, due to past persecution or a well-founded fear of being persecuted in the future “on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.” Congress incorporated this definition into U.S. immigration law in the Refugee Act of 1980."

    You made the false claim that Dems don't support open borders. Your failure to be able to name 1 person illegally in the US who you would deport shows that you support open borders. Also, Keith Ellison supports open borders. See " “yo no creo en fronteras.” tee shirt. Can't provide links here without risking losing comment.

    This site seems to attract Lefties who are both ignorant and mean-spirited. Won't bother responding to anymore of your stupid rants.

  101. Pho Queue says

    October 31, 2018 at 4:30 pm

    not one person identified

    Yes I did. I said you boot anybody who isn't at danger of being sent back to their deaths. I said it multiple times. You're just fail at reading comprehension.

    Go back to tds, Stormfront, Infowars, /pol/ or whatever other cancerous bunghole you crawled out of. And take Randazza with you.

  102. Sol says

    October 31, 2018 at 4:46 pm

    … @JD Ohio:

    Still not one person identified who you would deport

    … Are you asking for, like, an actual list of names? 'Oh, that guy Juan from down the block, he eats his steak with ketchup, let's deport him'?

    Your failure to be able to name 1 person illegally in the US who you would deport

    What on earth do you even mean by 'name' in this context?

  103. JD Ohio says

    October 31, 2018 at 4:53 pm

    GP: " JD Ohio is VERY worried about the 500k people who enter the US illegally each year. And, he considers the entry of these people to be proof, PROOF, that the democrats/liberals/smart people support entirely free immigration with no borders."

    Nice straw person argument along with the rest of your post. Pho Q stated that Dems don't support open borders. I said many did and gave him the challenge. I gave him the challenge. He goes on a rant about asylum and death. I simply said Dems support functional open borders. You prove my point, by not addressing it and veering off to economic arguments and not answering my question about 5,000 out of 250,000 that you would deport. I would also note that Keith Ellison, deputy chair of the DNC, supports open borders. So admit you support open borders and make your economic arguments.

    It is inconvenient for you to admit the truth, so you go on a rant. (Here is another one: "The whole reason people come here without proper documentation [This is a lie. They come illegally. There are no documents floating out there that are missing that would make them legal.] is to work really shitty jobs offered by really shitty people. Lock the shitty people up, the shitty jobs disappear,…")

    You can't face the truth or admit the truth so you rant and imagine the most hateful things you can in an attempt to smear me. All I said was that many Dems support open borders. I have proven my point, which is inconvenient and disorienting to you.

    As I said upthread: This site seems to attract Lefties who are both ignorant and mean-spirited. Won't bother responding to anymore of your stupid, hateful rants.

  104. c andrew says

    October 31, 2018 at 4:53 pm

    And Mark Twain beat Heinlein by a few decades…

    "The Curious Republic of Gondour "

    http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3192?msg=welcome_stranger

  105. GuestPoster says

    October 31, 2018 at 5:04 pm

    @Sol,

    Or maybe, we COULD list some bad immigrants, and children of immigrants? How about Rafael Cruz? Let's send him back to Canada. And Donald Trump? Send him back where his ancestors came from too! Those two are poster children for hurting people in the US, and have certainly done far worse things than the average immigrant.

    But yeah. It does seem to be almost the definition of a bad-faith argument to provide the names of 'just' five-thousand people who are in the US without appropriate documentation, AND who have never committed a major crime, whom one would like to deport. Because remember, that's the OTHER half of the demand: that you name people who aren't even in the system, because their ONLY crime to date is having overstayed a Visa, or otherwise violated the immigration laws of the US.

    Also, funny thing. According to 8 USC 1325, the penalty for improper entry into the US (of which undocumented entry is a subcategory) is… a fine and a few months in jail. Deportation is not actually a listed punishment. We're not SUPPOSED to deport people whose ONLY crime was entering illegally – we're supposed to slap them on the wrist. Deportation is brought up in the INA, but 8 USC 1325 seems to have been amended rather more recently than the INA – I'd think it would take precedence. It was also in place BEFORE the INA, strongly suggesting the founding fathers saw no real (or desire) to deport people.

  106. Anonymous says

    October 31, 2018 at 5:04 pm

    What in the actual fuck. @Ken uh
    Are you sure Marc is okay

  107. JD Ohio says

    October 31, 2018 at 5:29 pm

    Sol: " Your failure to be able to name 1 person illegally in the US who you would deport

    What on earth do you even mean by 'name' in this context?"

    I am asking whether there are even 5,000 people (who haven't committed crimes) out of 250,000 who have come illegally that you think could be deported. I made it easy in the sense, they would have only been here for between 6 months to a year. Of course, I wasn't asking for real names. I was asking whether there was any (even small) class of illegals who sneaked into the US that should be deportable. (Again, excluding those who have committed crimes)

    My point being that when people are deported for being illegally in the US, the Dems always say how terrible it is that someone who has gotten a reasonably nice job (by, say Mexican standards) has to leave the US, or it affects his family et cet. No matter what the situation, there is always a sob story. If there is always a sob story that will prevent deportation, there are functional open borders.

    The Shouse Calif Law Group law firm summarized deportation standards under the law:

    "When can I be deported for being in the U.S. unlawfully?

    An immigrant who is in the U.S. unlawfully can be deported without a hearing, often by expedited removal in as little as 24 hours after being picked up by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement ("ICE") officers. An immigrant is in the U.S. unlawfully if:

    The immigrant does not have permission to enter the U.S.;
    At the time of entry or adjustment of status the alien was inadmissible to the U.S. for any reason;[2]
    Admission to the U.S. has been revoked or termination;
    The alien has failed to maintain the status under which he or she was admitted;
    The alien has failed to comply with any conditions of entry to the U.S;
    The alien has knowingly encouraged or assisted another alien to enter the U.S. unlawfully; or
    The immigrant procured his or her visa or other documentation by fraud."

  108. somebody says

    October 31, 2018 at 7:04 pm

    The most amusing personal attacks are the ones that from those leftists too timid to target the OP directly, so they call to Ken for validation. Too bad Ken is busy frantically virtue signalling on Twitter in hopes he can avoid being the next target of an SJW lynch mob.

  109. Joseph says

    October 31, 2018 at 7:29 pm

    This conversation reminds me of this article, it is fascinating how much this process has changed:
    https://deportnation.com/all-possible-responses-to-they-should-get-in-line-and-do-it-the-right-way-the-way-my-family-did-ab0b7dbcbb26

  110. JD Ohio says

    October 31, 2018 at 8:06 pm

    Joseph: Deport Nation. Inaccurate and biased article. Among the inaccuracies: "Did you mean a greencard (aka “lawful permanent residence”), because there are really only a few narrow and often lengthy paths to those as of 2018 and most of them are unavailable to people who have ever been undocumented or out of status, and never would have been available to them before they came here.

    We can debate the merits of how visas should be awarded and how many should be available, but I’m really over doing that with anyone who doesn’t take the time to understand the system that we actually have and just wants to keep going on about “the line.”

    I am a lawyer and have married 2 Chinese wives. First, deceased. Second, divorced. Both got green cards without a super amount of difficulty, and I followed all of the procedures.

    Here is the way it works. You file for a K-1 Visa, which permits the foreigner to visit the US for 90 days, in order to marry. The K-1 visa is not automatic, and you must demonstrate the financial ability to take care of the foreigner and must prove that you have a genuine romantic relationship. This takes roughly 6 months if everything goes well. Once I married my second wife, she got conditional status (essentially a 2-year green card that is renewable into a 10-year green card) within about 4-6 months. With that conditional card, she was free to work as though she was an American citizen. Her 15-year-old daughter was also admitted to the US. Both my now ex-wife and her daughter have green cards. It is a somewhat messy process (like doing your taxes), but not extremely difficult.

    So, getting a green card is not something super hard to do in a number of situations. On the other hand, if you are legal, you do have to follow not easy procedures.

    Of course, there are also family based preferences for green card holders, where they can sponsor their relatives to come to the US. My son's best friend is of Vietnamese descent, and his father brags about bringing about 15 of his relatives to the US. He has chain immigration down to a science. (I am neutral on this)

    Also, my paternal grandparents were Italian, and I have the right to Italian dual citizenship, so I am familiar with my grandparents' history. My grandparents followed procedures and were naturalized in the 1940s.

    So, the idea that virtually no one has waited in line and that it is extraordinarily difficult to get into the US is false. Of course, there are many people who would like to come, but are not eligible, which is the consequence of the huge amount of poverty that exists in the rest of the world and the democratic decision of Congress to limit immigration and have a policy that restricts entry into the US.

  111. Seth says

    October 31, 2018 at 10:04 pm

    What I find most amusing about the spirit behind "libertarian" takes such as this is that their proposals (even the 'serious' ones, of which this is arguably an exaggeration, but likely so only as a last resort) actually accord the state far *more* power than it currently wields, and implicitly trusts the people running the state to wield that power with perfect reason and fair-mindedness. It is, in short, its own refutation.

    More philosophically, so-called "libertarian" proposals often (always?) invert the relationship between nation and state–the two are not synonymous, and the nation does not derive from the state. It's rather the converse, that the state is an outgrowth of, and is subordinate to, the nation. It seems almost worthless to point out, especially as this thread has devolved into Total's trollfighting with the usual suspects (and a few new ones!), but entrusting agents of the state to administer a neverending competition to determine one's membership of the nation that state represents gives that state (and any particular human agents) far too much power to shape the course of human lives. Any attempt to instantiate it would immediately devolve into a Stalinist horror.

  112. Tom says

    October 31, 2018 at 10:43 pm

    Re: Antifa
    Antifa isn't anti-fascist because they dislike tyrants.
    Antifa is anti-fascist because they dislike competition.

  113. Rob says

    October 31, 2018 at 11:15 pm

    So keep brainstorming Randazza, but a lot of safeguards would need to be built into this system.

    Yeah, because checks and balances has worked so well…

  114. Rob says

    October 31, 2018 at 11:20 pm

    JDOhio:

    The fake news is coming from Lefties like you.

    Do we get to point at one racist, murderous terrorist who is a registered Republican and self-avowed Trump supporter and assign their beliefs and actions to every single Republican and self-avowed Trump supporter? Just asking for a friend…

  115. Sol says

    November 1, 2018 at 1:25 am

    @somebody

    The most amusing personal attacks are the ones that from those leftists too timid to target the OP directly, so they call to Ken for validation. 

    Are you talking about that one guy who said 'Ken, is Marc okay'? Because if so, first, you might want to work on your counting skills, and secondly, well… your entire post pretty much translates to "I have no empathy or compassion for people I hate, and I'm so ignorant and self-centered that I assume everyone else must be exactly like me in this respect, so clearly anyone expressing concern must be doing it as a sarcastic personal attack. That's the only reason I'd ever express concern for someone." Which really, says more about you than it does about 'leftists'.

    @Tom

    Antifa is anti-fascist because they dislike competition.

    Competition for what, exactly? What is it that you think 'Antifa' does all day? … For that matter, what do you think 'antifa' *means*?

  116. Cromulent Bloviator says

    November 1, 2018 at 4:33 am

    I've long said the problem is that sword duels aren't allowed, but winning a duel only solves the problem of the person you were dueling. It is ridiculous to tie some sort of score to it.

    In Thailand they used to have a numerical value system, everybody had to pin their score to their shirt. If you watch the movie The King and I, the young prince in that story in real life grew up to ban that numerical system; an act also known as "freeing the slaves."

  117. Michael 2 says

    November 1, 2018 at 10:04 am

    David Schwartz asks "So if the federal government orders the child to be detained or deported, it's not clear whether the child needs to comply?"

    That is correct. The child can refuse to comply whereupon he will likely be lifted off his feet and detained and deported. But he didn't comply.

    It would be like you visiting Beijing and being ordered to comply to something — with the added twist that you do not understand Mandarin and the order was given in Mandarin!

    Steve says "Michael2, are you seriously suggesting that US law only applies to US citizens?"

    I believe I used the word "jurisdiction". Let us argue the nuances of that for a while.

    "I'm pretty sure a noncitizen arrested for, say, drug smuggling, can't walk free because 'I'm not a citizen, so your laws don't apply to me – I'm not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States!' "

    I believe a number of Americans in Mexico, caught drug smuggling, imagine themselves not subject to the jurisdiction of Mexican law. It might even be so, but there they are; being not Mexican citizens unable to enjoy whatever protections are afforded Mexicans in their own jails.

    If I were to try to take your comment seriously I would say that American laws recognize the existence of non-citizens in United States territory and do NOT afford those non-citizens the same rights accorded American citizens. However, things like treaties and passports accord some rights to visitors that sometimes exceeds the privileges of natural citizens ("diplomatic immunity" comes to mind).

    "Your alleged loophole sounds made-up and stupid"

    That is the nature of loopholes particularly the ones you didn't think to take advantage of yourself.

    Sol says "Oh joy, Michael2 is back."

    I missed you too!

    "It's pointless to try and actually engage with him."

    But fun. Keeps your mind sharp trying to get one step ahead of me or at least not more than two steps behind.

    "Come back when your trolling is as incomprehensible and baffling as Michael2's."

    That could be a long time coming ;-)

    Many different social contracts are possible including the socialist utopia. What does not work (in my opinion) is mixing them.

    President John F Kennedy announced the terms of one such system: Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. [at the time it was a need for Vietnam war cannon fodder]

    "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" is a slogan popularised by Karl Marx in his 1875 Critique of the Gotha Program. The principle refers to free access and distribution of goods, capital and services.

    The problem with either of these is measurement. That which is not measured might not exist. In a real society, it is likely that my "needs" would end up exceeding my "ability" and so would yours.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_each_according_to_his_ability,_to_each_according_to_his_needs

    "In the Marxist view, such an arrangement will be made possible by the abundance of goods and services that a developed communist system will produce; the idea is that, with the full development of socialism and unfettered productive forces, there will be enough to satisfy everyone's needs."

    Incredibly, many people believe this to be possible.

  118. Michael 2 says

    November 1, 2018 at 10:39 am

    To elaborate slightly and maybe head off unnecessary wrangling, the problem with the idea that there's enough for everyone is that no animal species that ever existed limited itself to available resources.

    Earth has about 7 billion (with a B) humans! Suppose for the sake of discussion it is possible to feed that many; and it is, for now. What is the nearly inevitable consequence? Well, soon there's 14 billion. Maybe. At some point it becomes impossible to feed everyone.

  119. Bob says

    November 1, 2018 at 10:51 am

    Marc Randazza is no Jonathan Swift.

    He's barely even Taylor Swift.

  120. Richard says

    November 1, 2018 at 11:59 am

    To elaborate slightly and maybe head off unnecessary wrangling, the problem with the idea that there's enough for everyone is that no animal species that ever existed limited itself to available resources.

    How do you account for the fact that, among humans, wealth is negatively correlated with birth rate?

    If your premise is true, and access to resources beyond what is needed for basic subsistence causes population growth, then why do richer countries have birth rates below replacement, and poorer countries have birth rates much higher? Why, within countries with large wealth discrepancies between the richest and the poorest, do the richer individuals have lower birth rates than poorer individuals?

    If what you say about animals were true for humans, one would think you would see the opposite statistical trend: that the rich, having access to more resources, would have more children than the poor, who cannot support them.

  121. Sol says

    November 1, 2018 at 12:35 pm

    Earth has about 7 billion (with a B) humans! Suppose for the sake of discussion it is possible to feed that many; and it is, for now. What is the nearly inevitable consequence? Well, soon there's 14 billion. Maybe. At some point it becomes impossible to feed everyone.

    Well, Judgement Day is clearly around the corner – @Michael2, that's an extremely logical and coherent point. Well-reasoned, well-explained and relevant to the discussion.

    Now, it is primarily a point *against* modern laissez-faire capitalism, which is far more growth-obsessed and resource-hungry than most variants of socialism I'm aware of, and I don't think you quite intended it to be, but still, good point.

    (Personally I'm in favour of solving the question by expanding out into space, which puts off eventually hitting the limit of 'more people than available resources can support even in best case' for long enough that we'll find other technological solutions eventually, but I do recognise that 'we'll find other technological solutions eventually' is a little bit of a hand-wave. Still, other than 'kill people whenever we're over the limit' or 'legally restrict the number of children people can have', space colonisation is really the only feasible solution, and I have substantial moral objections to those other two options.)

    There is one other thing I'd like you to consider. As you said, it *is* currently possible to feed all 7 billion people on Earth. Not just with hypothetical high-efficiency agriculture, but with current-day food production. So why don't we? I don't mean that as an 'ought' argument, but as an 'is' argument. Why is it currently the case that famines exist in plenty of places? Why are 13 million people in the Horn of Africa currently facing down food shortages, when plenty of food exists that could be supplied to them? Those people aren't in socialist countries. The food surpluses aren't in socialist countries. This isn't the Holodomor. Capitalism should be capable of solving this problem – a desire exists, a supply exists, shouldn't the market be finding the most efficient way to connect them?

    But it's not. The market is failing.

    @Richard

    why do richer countries have birth rates below replacement, and poorer countries have birth rates much higher?

    While you make some important points, it's worth considering also that there's a confounding factor: access to healthcare. Richer countries, in general, have better healthcare, and within countries with large wealth discrepancies the rich have better healthcare than the poor; the change in many countries' birth rates over time can be seen to have a rapid drop not merely when the country started getting wealthy, but particularly when infant mortality suddenly dropped. Which makes sense, on reflection; if you expect that you'll need to have five children to have a high chance that two of them will survive to adulthood and support you in your old age, you'll probably have six just to be sure. (It's worth bearing in mind also that in many poor countries there's no social security net, no state pension, no NHS or Medicare, and most people will be far too poor to reliably save for retirement. Having plenty of children is likely to be their only way to survive getting too old to work themselves.)

  122. Michael 2 says

    November 1, 2018 at 12:57 pm

    Richard asks many questions. Let us examine them individually.

    "How do you account for the fact that, among humans, wealth is negatively correlated with birth rate?"

    Choice. Wealth, combined with intelligence, creates choice; many people, but not all, choose a life of pleasure rather than a life of duty. The most important choice available to humans specifically is to engage in reproductive behavior while choosing the consequence of that behavior: Pleasure versus duty.

    "If your premise is true, and access to resources beyond what is needed for basic subsistence causes population growth, then why do richer countries have birth rates below replacement, and poorer countries have birth rates much higher?"

    That's not exactly my premise. My premise is that all animals reproduce as often as biology and opportunity permits; the ultimate limiting factor for every species, including humans, is available resources. Choosing not to have children is not a "limit" but a choice. For every woman that chooses to not have a child exists many women that are having children (some without choice).

    What that means in the context of this page is that the United States might succeed to manage its population growth but guess what? Immigration and open borders. Hello world, welcome to global scarcity.

    "Why, within countries with large wealth discrepancies between the richest and the poorest, do the richer individuals have lower birth rates than poorer individuals?"

    Choice. Wealth, combined with intelligence, creates choice; many people, but not all, choose a life of pleasure rather than a life of duty. The most important choice available to humans specifically is to engage in reproductive behavior without the burden of its natural consequence.

    "If what you say about animals were true for humans, one would think you would see the opposite statistical trend: that the rich, having access to more resources, would have more children than the poor, who cannot support them."

    Those that wish it, do! It is also the case that some rich persons don't really care about children and simply engage in reproductive behavior as often as opportunity permits.

    http://www.complex.com/sports/2015/06/things-we-wish-we-didnt-know-about-dennis-rodman-sex-life/slept-more-than-2000-women

    For what its worth I do not see much point in sleeping with 2000 women besides the problem of requiring a really big bed!

    http://www.thesportster.com/entertainment/athletes-with-kids-they-didnt-plan/

  123. Michael 2 says

    November 1, 2018 at 3:35 pm

    Sol says "Now, it is primarily a point *against* modern laissez-faire capitalism, which is far more growth-obsessed and resource-hungry than most variants of socialism"

    I do not argue against the principles of socialism per se, just as George Orwell, personally a socialist, seems to be arguing against his own beliefs.

    Socialism expects a "commons" and that produces an economic principle called "tragedy of the commons" which comes into existence because of cheating.

    A workable, but less than ideal, solution is to privatize the commons. That limits the damage that can be done by any particular cheater to his own domain rather than his, yours AND mine; but there is still some damage and it might bleed or leak onto your domain.

    Another workable, also less than ideal, solution is the "benevolent dictator" of which Singapore is a currently working example.

    Yet another approach is corporate ownership; assign the commons to a church or group for oversight and management of the commons. That way it isn't really a commons but people still enjoy some of the benefits as if it were a commons. Example of this in the United States is National Forest and BLM (Bureau of Land Management) between them owning rather a lot of western United States.

    "So why don't we?" (Feed 7 billion people)

    Who is WE?

    All currently existing species of life superceded all previous species. Competition is good, winning is better than losing. Cooperation is also good: Bees and ants being examples. Life includes cooperation and competition.

    If I were to share my food with a polar bear, would he share his food with me? Probably not, I would simply be his next meal. So it is that your kindness may not only be not reciprocated but might signal your weakness or subservient status; in which case your kindness isn't kindness at all. This is exemplified with animals; if you start feeding animals you become obligated to continue because they will abandon their natural methods of feeding themselves. Humans have parallel and creates what is known as the welfare trap.

    Would life be better in a socialist Utopia? Probably; but how much humanity would you lose in order to become just a worker bee? Sir Thomas More wrote the ultimate tract on this sort of thing, the book whose name became the word "Utopia".

    Star Trek (the original series) explored this in an episode where the people had conquered death and poverty. There were people everywhere, shoulder to shoulder covering the entire planet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mark_of_Gideon

    It is a cautionary tale about getting what you think you want.

    The advancements in science in particular are the point of a spear, not the spear itself. The spear is the ordinary people that prop up an economy by their various actions and desires; but it permits a concentration, some "non equal" member of society is permitted, maybe even encouraged, to pursue a peculiar hobby and in so doing discover pasteurization. Then there's Guiglimo Marconi, who because of his unequal social status, had the time on his hands and resources to develop wireless communication.

    Socialism in its purest form would allow all people to pursue hobbies hopefully producing socially useful results. But as you probably observe, most people are not self-actualizing and will actually be happy, or at least content, to spend their lives immersed in a video game. That kind must be compelled just to feed themselves and they will burn through your charity like there's no tomorrow, because for them, there isn't — it will be just another today.

  124. OldCurmudgeon says

    November 1, 2018 at 3:53 pm

    @SOL "It's the killing, not the dying, that the novel promotes."

    The explanation the book itself gives:

    But if you want to serve and I can't talk you out of it, then we have to take you, because that's your constitutional right. It says that everybody, male or female, should have his born right to pay his service and assume full citizenship — but the facts are that we are getting hard pushed to find things for all the volunteers to do that aren't just glorified KP. You can't all be real military men; we don't need that many and most of the volunteers aren't number-one soldier material anyhow…[W]e've had to think up a whole list of dirty, nasty, dangerous jobs that will … at the very least make them remember for the rest of their lives that their citizenship is valuable to them because they've paid a high price for it … A term of service is … either real military service, rough and dangerous even in peacetime … or a most unreasonable facsimile thereof.

    Nothing about killing, lots about skin in the game. IMHO.

  125. Sol says

    November 1, 2018 at 6:11 pm

    Hrm. I appear to have been spam-filtered. @Ken, you really need to be clearer about what triggers that.

  126. Richard says

    November 2, 2018 at 7:03 am

    @Sol: In my experience, you get spam-filtered if you either post two or more links in your comment, or post a comment with a link and subsequently edit it.

  127. DrCos says

    November 2, 2018 at 7:13 am

    Can I get citizenship points with my credit card points? Then I'm in.

  128. Richard says

    November 2, 2018 at 8:38 am

    @Michael 2:

    I Don’t Know How To Explain To You That You Should Care About Other People.

  129. Sol says

    November 2, 2018 at 9:31 am

    @Richard
    Yeah, that's why I make sure not to use any links. Except…….. ah, hell. I quoted Michael's bit about the Star Trek episode at one point, and he linked to Wikipedia. And then I tried to edit my post (for paragraph spacing). Seems like even a quoted link still counts against the post. That's inconvenient. It was a really good post too. Hopefully it'll be unlocked eventually.

  130. Michael 2 says

    November 2, 2018 at 9:34 am

    Richard says "I Don’t Know How To Explain To You That You Should Care About Other People."

    I'll be here, maybe, when you figure out a way.

    But it is a worthy question so we examine it.

    The problem starts with the word "should". There is no "should" without a condition:

    If you want X, you should do Y.

    It is incomplete to just blurt out "you should do Y". The response will often be "Why?"

    In your sentence you probably meant:

    If you want me to approve of you, you should care for other people.

    Except of course since you have no way of knowing whether I care for other people you should not be making judgements (if you want *my* approval!).

    Caring is invisible. Words may be untruthful; only actions matter, but you cannot see my actions. That is why Christianity says "faith without works is dead"; and the specific example is charity; thus "caring without works is dead".

    The difference between a libertarian caring for other people and a socialist caring for other people is whether that care is manifest as personal service to other people (libertarian), or directing government to take money from those who have it and give to those who do not and still call it "caring" (socialist).

    Ways of explaining caring:

    An economist would likely discuss the externalities of poor people, for so it was explained in one of my classes. Poor people exist. You can spend money to fortress your house against them or you can spend money to help them be less poor and the best is to spend some money to teach them skills and help build infrastructure so that an economy can arise.

    Reciprocity is a good starting point. I do for you in the hopes that you do for me; perhaps not today, but I never know when I may be the person in need of some help.

    Religion is a good starting point. Identify what a person enjoys in this life, see if that enjoyment in the next life is tied to charity; which in Christianity, it is. While some people emphasize the importance of "feelgood", you cannot eat it; "faith without works is dead" is the operating principle of actual charity.

    In all of these examples, an assumption is made that the hearer of your explanation probably is not going to experience the emotion of "caring" if the mechanism for that emotion does not exist or is even microscopically less dominant than whatever IS dominant.

    I do not accept that my "caring feelings" licenses me to take your property, at gunpoint, and give to someone else. Needless to say I also do not accept that you have that license

    I recognize that some things are necessary or expedient even if not morally licensed, and I recognize that your mileage doubtless varies and that you might be licensing yourself. Why not? If it feels good, do it.

  131. cecil says

    November 2, 2018 at 11:36 am

    Socialism's problem seems to be that it has too few resources to handle the problems of today. It keeps taking the resources away from solving the problems of tomorrow. Unfortunately, tomorrow always comes, complete with it's problems. And just like a frog in a pot, the build up is so slow that you're boiling before you realize it.

  132. Michael 2 says

    November 2, 2018 at 2:10 pm

    Richard's question was actually a link to Huffington Post.

    The actual author of the question is Kayla Chadwick, Contributor Video Editor.

    She wrote: "I don’t know how to explain to someone why they should care about other people."

    She then excuses her failure to make the attempt.

  133. I Was Anonymous says

    November 2, 2018 at 4:01 pm

    @JD Ohio

    Here is Keith Ellison supporting open borders [link redacted]

    FOUL! Generalizing from a single example!

    By the same token, we can assume that all Republicans support the Klan, because David Duke does.

  134. SocraticGadfly says

    November 3, 2018 at 5:36 am

    Part of the sadness here is some of the commentary, not just Randazza. People who call Hillary a leftist given me a laugh … until I realize they're serious, in some cases.

  135. marvo says

    November 3, 2018 at 11:56 am

    Did someone let Clark back?

  136. Ann says

    November 3, 2018 at 1:46 pm

    @Guestposter —

    Re: antifa, it's particularly funny that conservatives are so ready to assign them to democrats/liberals/smart people. Because, really? We should be PROUD to be associated with Antifa. After all, literally all they are is anti-fascist. That's it. That's their entire mission statement.

    I'm not any prouder of them than I would be of any group that decided to indulge its own self-righteous anger at its own self-selected targets without regard to anything other than its own self-satisfaction. It's true that I'm also anti-fascist. But that's why I take opposing it too seriously to go around having ugly, violent tantrums that alienate my natural allies from my cause and give my opponents the appearance of an ex post facto justification, then calling it political activism.

    So I respectfully disagree. They're stupid, destructive, potentially dangerous idiots, imo. Even leaving the "potentially dangerous" part aside, their actions would be pointless at best and counterproductive at worst. I'm neither proud nor ashamed of them. They have nothing to do with any political belief or cause of mine.

  137. Richard says

    November 3, 2018 at 8:16 pm

    @ I Was Anonymous:

    Everyone generalizes from a single example.

    Or, at least, I do.

  138. Tom says

    November 4, 2018 at 9:05 am

    There is a rather large difference between David Duke and Keith Ellison, though: David Duke hasn't held a leadership position in the GOP in decades.

  139. yet another David says

    November 5, 2018 at 9:23 am

    @Richard:

    Sorry for the late response; event prep at work took a lot more time then expected last week. I definitely mean geometric progression – the more time served, the more effort you need to expend in order to "prove" you're still working for the good of the country. By the time you've served 4 terms in the Senate, you're up to -120 points for the year – more "career statesman" then "citizen statesman".

    For government employees perhaps a waiver of penalty for the first two years, in order to allow enough time to learn the job properly. From there, however, the clock is ticking.

  140. GuestPoster says

    November 5, 2018 at 11:33 am

    @Ann,

    Perhaps. Some of them really are just violent thugs. But most of them seem to be far better people who are neither stupid, nor violent, nor potentially dangerous. The violent rampages should be decried – and ARE, routinely. But they're not actually representative – they're outliers. The folks who show up at the Nazi rallies, just to form a wall between the Nazis and their targets? Those seem to be the majority who call themselves antifa.

    Those are pretty decent people. They don't start fights. But they do finish them.

    And goodness knows the right, in general, condemns them all, and tend to actively support the Nazis, the KKK, etc. in preference.

  141. Ann says

    November 5, 2018 at 1:05 pm

    @GuestPoster —

    Point taken. The violence and the counterproductivity are both real and very serious issues though.

    And goodness knows the right, in general, condemns them all, and tend to actively support the Nazis, the KKK, etc. in preference.

    Indeed. Randazza uses the very post we're commenting on to recreate the Reich Citizenship laws in his own image, in fact, except with himself and others who meet his criteria for superiority in the Ubermensch class.

    The sad thing is that I think the strength of his implacable conviction that what he thinks is superior is objectively and universally superior prevents him from knowing it. ("But miiiine is meriiiit-baaaased!")

    You know who else thought that, though? Every single other person who advocated for a hierarchical approach to citizenship at any point in time or space. That's who.

    This is what comes of thinking you can address subjects about which you know and understand nothing. It's funny how often he makes that mistake.

  142. ysth says

    November 5, 2018 at 10:55 pm

    A very different take on this in Ethan of Athos. No movie, though (yet?)

    Was that an intentional plug for NaNoWriMo?

  143. GuestPoster says

    November 6, 2018 at 8:25 am

    @Ann:

    As I said earlier: I envy those who can look at the ATL stuff and think Marc is Poe-ing, or otherwise satirizing, and not saying what he honestly, truly believes. I envy those who have that much faith in the humanity of people who've shown us, time and again, who they really are, and who are able to ignore all that, and assume those people are still, somehow, some way, decent human beings.

    Nazi Germany was supposed to be a warning. Nearly half the country wants to use it as an instruction manual. The smaller fraction who actively call themselves Nazis are simply the honest bunch.

  144. Total says

    November 6, 2018 at 9:07 am

    It seems almost worthless to point out, especially as this thread has devolved into Total's trollfighting with the usual suspects (and a few new ones!)

    Hey, now, I've only posted in this thread three times. If I was really trying to tweak the trolls, I'd have responded to Michael2 multiple times already.

  145. Jon says

    November 8, 2018 at 1:51 pm

    Now that it's all calmed down, I think I'd like to cheerfully stir it up again.

    See, if you (as government) are going to take away my right to vote, and you have the power to do so, then carry on. However, if you do so, then you have also removed your own right to tax me, because taxation without representation is tyranny, and tyrannical governments have no right to govern a free people.

    c.f. The Declaration of Independence. Jon

    (As an aside, non-citizens and illegal immigrants pay a great deal in taxes (sales taxes; to start with), and get very little benefit therefrom. Arguably, the USA is a tyranny).

  146. R.C. says

    November 8, 2018 at 3:06 pm

    The only problem with the proposal is that the wrong people will judge the behavior and set the points-values.

    For example, you'll get 20 points just for Tweeting your support for third wave feminism or something. You'll get docked 35 points for being a white male. If you're a comedian, you'll get 10 extra points for being approved-of by other entertainers, right up until the moment you make a joke that offends someone; then you'll permanently be set to zero.

    Conquering the institution that sets and awards the points would become the immediate preoccupation of the left.

    And that's the fatal flaw of the proposal. I'd be perfectly happy to accept it if it were perpetually to be run by a triumvirate of Socrates, George Washington, and Mother Teresa.

    But it wouldn't be.

    Which is why this plan would wind up being a new form of Hayek's Road to Serfdom.

    Oh, well.

  147. Jon says

    November 8, 2018 at 3:31 pm

    @R.C.

    You are correct that the wrong people will judge, but you are correct in the wrong direction.

    You see, those who set the points are going to be those already in power, and they're not "3rd wave feminists" (whatever that may be). Those in power (in the USA being generally old white men) are going to be the ones making the rules, and they're not going to admit any conquering of that institution.

    It's not 'tweeting' that'll score points, it's 'being an old white man' that will score points, because old white men will be making the rules.

    Look at, if you doubt, redistricting upon political lines, aka 'gerrymandering'. It wasn't the down-trodden doing the line-drawing, It wasn't those who feel marginalized or discriminated against. It was those in power drawing the lines to ensure they remain in power.

    It was an open goal of Republican lobbyists to concentrate on state races in 2010 so that they could rule the state houses when they could redraw the lines. In Maryland the Democrats did likewise.

    It was those in power who conquered the institution, not those out of power. In that you badly erred.

    Many of your other assumptions I believe incorrect also, but that's for a different time.

    Have fun, Jon

  148. Total says

    November 10, 2018 at 8:50 am

    Conquering the institution that sets and awards the points would become the immediate preoccupation of the left.

    Yeah, just like the left did so well conquering the state governments, the Congress, the White House, and the Supreme Court.

    What world do you live in, exactly?

  149. Ann says

    November 11, 2018 at 9:09 pm

    @R.C. —

    Conquering the institution that sets and awards the points would become the immediate preoccupation of the left.

    From whom would they be wresting control, exactly?

    I mean, if your point is that giving the government the power to set up and administer a caste system for citizenship amounts to an open invitation for those in charge of it to abuse the power it gives them for reasons of political and/or personal interest, I completely agree with you. That's what would happen. But it's not like the right is uninterested in conquering institutions and using them to its own advantage, come on.

  150. Ann says

    November 12, 2018 at 9:33 am

    It just occurred to me:

    Randazza is proposing that the United States handle citizenship the same way that Harvard handles applicants for admission. He does this despite having been proudly involved in the lawsuit challenging Harvard's admissions process for discriminating against Asian applicants by using vague and subjective criteria very much like these:

    You get bonus points for truly kicking in to improve America. You author a book. You start a business that employs a certain number of people. You invent something useful. You cut a bad ass album. You fill in potholes. The details can be tweaked as much as we like – but the concept is the same. You get points for being worthwhile and making America greater.

    This concisely and perfectly represents the hypocritical and unprincipled nature of Randazza's supposedly libertarian stance. He's not against discrimination or in favor of liberty and justice for all. He just wants to write the rules so that they favor his own biases and preferences. .

    And that's not hyperbole. It's transparently, nakedly the case.

    Oh, well. I'm sure he means well. It's just that self-awareness is not his strong suit and he's too terribly in the grip of his emotions for his reasoning to be reliable, in all likelihood.

  151. A. Stallings says

    November 14, 2018 at 9:00 pm

    @Randazza: Satire just like Clarkhat was satire, I'm sure. You are certainly a direct replacement for him; your prose is just as hammy and heavy-handed.

    Instead, would you care to discuss the recent decision against your client Anglin and its free speech relevance? (Or lack thereof.)

  152. A. Stallings says

    November 14, 2018 at 9:00 pm

    @JD Ohio: On my end, I see many Dems claim they oppose open borders, but once anyone sneaks in, they use sob stories to oppose or prevent deportation. If sob stories will prevent deportation, then we have functional open borders. What is your position.

    My position is that anyone who has "illegally sneaked in" needs to be treated in accordance with the laws in place. If the sob stories legally prevent deportation, and you have an issue with that, make the sob stories not be legal to prevent deportation.

    I was asking you to pick (roughly) the top 5,000 out of the 250,000 that you might consider to be deportable.

    I don't have the knowledge to know. I defer to INS for that opinion.

    I would call it functional open borders.

    That's an opinion, not fact, so I shrug at it. Call it what you like. Ain't open borders in my opinion.

    All the Left has is uninformed self-righteousness and name-calling.

    If the Left is so evil, why don't you just execute them?

    Here is Justice Harlan's (most people would say the most accomplished justice on that court) view in the beginning of the long dissent he wrote:

    Dissent? I'm very glad he gave his opinion. Since it 's a dissent and not the majority holding, I'll shove it in the dumpster where it belongs.

    (I.E., I really don't care what dissents say.)

    Mexicans and many others coming here are not refugees.

    Until we ask them, we won't really know, will we?
    I have faith in the procedures and laws.

  153. A. Stallings says

    November 14, 2018 at 9:01 pm

    @Michael 2: Those who have "skin in the game" choose the rules of the game; otherwise there is no contract.

    Define 'skin in the game'.

    It came to my mind almost immediately Starship Troopers where citizenship (voting rights) had to be earned and military service (and law enforcement) was a sure way to earn citizenship; how much more skin in the game can there be but to actually HAVE your skin in the game? Your life at risk!

    If I wanted to live in a stratocracy, I would either move to Myanmar or build a time machine to go back to ancient Sparta. No.

    Where is the social contract right now?

    1) Written libertarian thought claims social contracts do not exist, societies do not exist, and that there are only individuals, no groups.

    2) The "social contract" is only evoked in the Declaration of Independence, which has no legal weight. I don't believe in social contract theory as no one person has been able to determine what it is universally. I do believe in laws.

    Except of course since you have no way of knowing whether I care for other people you should not be making judgements (if you want *my* approval!).

    One can simply judge you by what you post. That's sufficient for anything.

  154. Donald Fagen's Rhodes Piano says

    November 15, 2018 at 6:55 pm

    but don’t think that it is going to make you more valuable to us than a nursing degree or an engineering degree, because it ain’t.

    Only if you're the sort of idiot who thinks that an understanding of the diverse array of experiences and life stories of people who aren't 100% like you in every way isn't an important civic virtue that is crucial to maintaining a peaceful, functioning pluralistic society.

    And if that's the kind of idiot you are, that should cost you as many citizenship points as committing multiple murders, because it's basically as destructive.

  155. Narad says

    November 29, 2018 at 11:59 pm

    Given that the site is mostly dead, I'll go ahead and try to make it 151 comments.

    American citizenship is one of the most coveted statuses that mankind has ever invented.

    That's not even wrong, you fucking dago. Stick to what you actually know, which is actually helpful to people, rather than gratuitously obnoxious.

    A majority of the 7 billion people on this planet would gladly swap their passport for a nice blue one with a gold eagle on its cover.

    Citation needed, as the interkids say.

  156. Michael 2 says

    December 2, 2018 at 6:45 pm

    Narad says "Citation needed, as the interkids say."

    Why? If you do not believe the author of the comment, why would you believe a citation, which is merely a different author?

  157. J says

    December 3, 2018 at 1:23 am

    @Michael2 – Note also he demanded a citation without providing one of his own. This is a dirty little trick, because if you do provide one he will tear it down, while you don't have the opportunity of tearing down his because he didn't provide (or have, most likely) one of his own.

  158. IForgetMyName says

    December 3, 2018 at 10:01 pm

    but don’t think that it is going to make you more valuable to us than a nursing degree or an engineering degree, because it ain’t.

    It also disregards one of the fundamental assumptions/greatest strengths of a free market economy: That value isn't intrinsic and static, but dynamic and highly situational. Engineers and doctors are valuable right now because demand is high and supply is low. We have a lot of jobs that need doing by people with those skills. We don't have enough folks going into those jobs because, among other reasons, 1) those jobs require a certain amount of native intelligence, 2) the process to gain those basic skills require a lot of work and dedication, 3) getting the required education generally takes money and years of time spent not making much money, 4) on the aggregate, more people find "Victim Studies" and similar fields more appealing from a purely academic standpoint, and perhaps most importantly 5) people aren't willing to pay enough to encourage more people to take on student loans for years of school instead of doing something easier or more immediately fulfilling.

    Doctors are valuable right now because we don't have enough doctors to provide decent healthcare to everyone. If overnight, we had a hundred times more doctors–maybe because we somehow found a way to pay them much more, or because Chairman Randazza decreed that "the right to life and liberty" was a double platinum citizenship thing that's out of reach for most non-doctors–then the value of the next marginal doctor would probably be less than the value of a bus boy, or a plumber, or a public school teacher, or any other job that's suddenly facing a shortage.

    While I am sympathetic to the sentiments, the system is essentially one that has been tried and proven faulty multiple times already: It is Mao's China, or Stalin's Soviet Union, only with "citizen points" instead of "do these jobs or you go to the gulags." Putting aside the ethical considers, it's simply not a practical system. It either forces a governing body to try to read the economy and constantly tweak the system to put the right numbers of people into each field, or it simply doesn't respond to changing needs.

  159. Narad says

    December 4, 2018 at 10:29 am

    Note also he demanded a citation without providing one of his own. This is a dirty little trick….

    This is the dumbest fucking thing I have heard in a long time. The burden of proof for an assertion is on the person making the assertion.

  160. Cheeto_Jesus says

    December 4, 2018 at 11:51 am

    This is the stupidest BS I have read in a long time.

  161. Amy says

    December 5, 2018 at 7:59 am

    This sounds like China’s dog policy for citizens how their social status is ranked *blank stare*

  162. Jonah says

    December 10, 2018 at 1:36 am

    This is some top-notch satire. I'm glad we're all on the same page that nobody could actually support drivel like this.

  163. Michael 2 says

    December 11, 2018 at 8:04 pm

    Thank you for helping keep this thread alive!

    Jonah writes: "I’m glad we’re all on the same page that nobody could actually support drivel like this."

    There is no WE.

    But I appreciate that you are willing to support some drivel; just not drivel like this.

    Narad writes: "The burden of proof for an assertion is on the person making the assertion."

    Generally speaking I agree; but nothing here is proof. Everything here is argument and you are free to agree or disagree or argue something else. A statement of belief is self-referential; each person is the authority of his or her beliefs and need not cite any citations because the argument *is* the citation.

    Now it may be that a person that wants others to believe a thing may try to offer a variety of persuasions. People of the Left seem particularly sensitive to Group Think; in that case showing that many people think a certain thing is likely to be more persuasive than the thing simply being correct. Libertarians, on the other hand, tend not to care how many people think the same way and are, in my opinion, likely to be persuaded by physical evidence and where that is not possible, by the reputation of various advocates of an idea combined with the experiences each person brings to the matter.

  164. Bob says

    December 27, 2018 at 4:26 pm

    I can't help but wonder how many negative points all the acts alleged in this article are worth…

    https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/alex-jones-lawyer-marc-randazza_us_5c1c283ae4b08aaf7a86b9e4

    I mean, forget citizenship… someone's going to The Bad Place.

  165. A disheartened fan says

    December 28, 2018 at 2:37 pm

    Ken,

    I'm writing here because i don't use twitter, but I'm honestly curious about your responses to people criticizing you for your connection to Marc Randazza.

    You seem to be focused a lot on "well everyone deserves representation". And that's a fair retort if the extent of the criticism were about your professional connection to him. But as evidenced by the post I'm commenting on, that's not the extent of your connection to him.

    At what point does unethical behavior and support (not just representation) for godawful groups give you enough pause to stop someone from getting the privilege of having his viewpoints boosted by being featured on a popular legal blog? At what point do you cease giving someone the credibility of speaking with what in (in part) your voice?

    You've taken on censorious litigants before, using your influence to condemn the use of the legal system to try to punish accusers and critics. You've taken on unethical behavior by lawyers. What has Randazza done (other than replace Clark as the resident representation of sentient garbage on your site) to earn such undying loyalty from you that your response to criticism of your connections to him is that people should "snort your taint"?

  166. Michael 2 says

    December 31, 2018 at 8:53 am

    A disenheartened fan writes "What has Randazza done (other than replace Clark as the resident representation of sentient garbage on your site) to earn such undying loyalty from you?"

    Let us turn the question around: What has Randazza done to earn such undying hatred from you? Clearly he is not a Person of the Left; is that all it takes to bring out the Silencers? I have seen quite a few deprecating comments; but most seem aimed at Ken persuading him to shut up the enemy rather than addressing any specific point Marc makes.

    Why should the benefits of a social contract be extended to any person that has not subscribed to that social contract? It's a two way street; government can only redistribute wealth that people create; it would be very easy for people to quit creating wealth on the assumption that it all comes from "government" and nobody needs to work.

  167. bhull242 says

    January 1, 2019 at 4:50 pm

    I have seen quite a few deprecating comments, but most seem aimed at […] persuading [Ken] to shut up the enemy rather than addressed at at specific point Marc makes.

    Okay. While I don’t know if that applies to “most” of the negative comments, that does seem to be the case here. So why do you think that may be?

    Clearly he is not a person of the Left […]

    Oh…
    Well, that seems to be quite the assumption there. You think that’s the only possible reason people have a problem with him? That he’s not liberal enough for them? Ken isn’t exactly a liberal either, so I think there’s more to it than that.

    I don’t think it’s fair to compare Marc to Clark, either, nor do I feel that Mark should leave, at least right now. However, there are certainly other reasons to find him or what he writes distasteful, including his highly irreverent tone (far more so than Ken’s) and the fact that he’s known to defend some questionable people.

    Also, I don’t know what you’re thing about the “social contract” and redistribution of wealth has anything to do with anything Marc or A disheartened fan had to say, thus making your reply even more irrelevant to the discussion. That is a non-leftist idea, sure, but it has nothing to do with anything here. I’m not even sure Marc would agree with it anyway, so why mention it? It seems to be hypocritical to criticize someone for failing to address any specific point Marc actually makes, and then defend a specific idea neither Marc nor A disheartened fan has actually mentioned.

    In any case, I’m not even sure that this post was meant to be taken seriously in the first place; it seems like it would end up penalizing free speech, which is the one thing that Marc can be 100% counted on to defend, so this idea of a points-based citizenship seems out of character as a serious idea. In light of this and Poe’s Law, it would be nice if Marc could clear up whether this is parody or a serious suggestion.

  168. A disheartened fan says

    January 2, 2019 at 8:54 am

    What has Randazza done to earn such undying hatred from you?

    Aside from the legal malpractice, ethical violations, and continuing active support for people who spread conspiracy theories (like Alex Jones) long after the point at which they cross over into dangerous territory?

    What more would you be looking for?

    Clearly he is not a Person of the Left; is that all it takes to bring out the Silencers?

    Nope, there are plenty of people not "of the left" for whom I hold at most middling disdain for. Randazza is a special case of someone who had abused the legal system in ways which Ken himself has repeatedly criticized others of doing.

    Bringing lawsuits to silence the critics of his clients, threatening lawsuits without basis, and abjectly unethical legal practice.

    But let's be clear, not being given a platform is not the same thing as being silenced, as Ken himself has noted.

    persuading him to shut up the enemy

    Ken does not have the power to shut anyone up, just to refuse to give him a platform. If you need to be taught the difference between a privilege (access to Ken's platform) and a right (free speech), I'm happy to find you a post around these parts.

    rather than addressing any specific point Marc makes.

    The reason I replied to this post as opposed to any other is because it is a recent post by Randazza which gained the increased exposure of being featured on the Popehat blog. It is an example of the connection to Randazza beyond "I represented him one time" which Ken has not addressed.

    If you haven't read the recent article about Randazza's misconduct, you should probably do that.

    Why should the benefits of a social contract be extended to any person that has not subscribed to that social contract?

    I have no idea what you think this has to do with anything I wrote, but feel free to elaborate.

  169. Michael 2 says

    January 2, 2019 at 10:55 am

    A disheartened fan says "I have no idea what you think this has to do with anything I wrote, but feel free to elaborate."

    The topic is, or appears to be, earning citizenship rather than having it bestowed as merely an accident of birth.

    "What more would you be looking for?"

    Why it matters to YOU.

    "there are plenty of people not of the left for whom I hold at most middling disdain for."

    No doubt ;-)

    "Randazza is a special case of someone who had abused the legal system in ways which Ken himself has repeatedly criticized others of doing."

    That may well be, but why does it matter to you and what has it got to do with earning citizenship?

    "Bringing lawsuits to silence the critics of his clients, threatening lawsuits without basis, and abjectly unethical legal practice."

    Happens thousands of times every business day. What makes Randazza special and why does it matter to you? As it happens I do feel a level of contempt for lawyers who use unethical (as defined by me of course) practices. And yet, lawyers have a duty to represent their clients and failing to do everything on behalf a client is negligent and at times actionable. When your opponent is down in the mud you'd better be willing to play at the same game. It is a well known Saul Alinsky rule to make your opponent live up to his rules (ethics) while you are free to not have ethics at all. It creates a short term advantage and in a courtroom that's all you need (seems to me).

    "But let's be clear, not being given a platform is not the same thing as being silenced, as Ken himself has noted."

    People of the Left can be pretty slippery when the need arises. When no bloggers will post your stuff, when Facebook and Twitter start blocking you, when Google itself refuses to index your website, have you been silenced? Yes indeed, most effectively, and without violating the First Amendment!

    It was People of the Left (Democrats) that push "equal time" requirements on radio and television stations; trying to silence the likes of Rush Limbaugh by taking away his platforms.

    If ten radio stations exist and one does not want to carry your words, that's liberty. When all ten refuse to carry your words, you've been silenced.

    "Ken does not have the power to shut anyone up, just to refuse to give him a platform."

    And by so doing obeying your wishes rather than his own.

    "If you need to be taught the difference between a privilege (access to Ken's platform) and a right (free speech), I'm happy to find you a post around these parts."

    Perhaps you can be shown where they intersect.

    "The reason I replied to this post as opposed to any other is because it is a recent post by Randazza which gained the increased exposure of being featured on the Popehat blog."

    So; nothing to do with the topic of earning citizenship. His name triggered you.

    "If you haven't read the recent article about Randazza's misconduct, you should probably do that."

    There is no should but it sounds mildly interesting; although it sounds a bit like taking coals to Newcastle.

  170. bhull says

    January 2, 2019 at 5:57 pm

    You do know that Marc already had a platform before coming to Popehat, right? Also, whatever your opinion on whether removing Marc is infringing his right to free speech, I doubt Ken would think it is, and his opinion’s the only one that matters here.

    I personally don’t think Marc should be removed, but you’re defense is lacking.

  171. Michael 2 says

    January 2, 2019 at 6:10 pm

    I'm back after studying the ethics problems of Marc Randazza, with due regard for the objectivity of Huffington Post of course. The one thing a lawyer must not do, in my opinion, is insert himself into the case, make it personal (his own case rather than his client's case) but as we have seen here and elsewhere, it is nearly ubiquitous. Winning and losing becomes personal rather than strength or weakness of the case and the ethics involved. Affluenza appears to be contagious.

    So, with that aside, what about the topic? I concur that citizenship can and perhaps ought to be graded with the most benefits available to those who have contributed the most; but at least some benefits extended to any for two reasons: (1) incentive to greater benefit through greater contribution and (2) to avoid some "externalities" that accompany NOT providing any public benefits.

  172. A disheartened fan says

    January 3, 2019 at 12:42 pm


    The topic is, or appears to be, earning citizenship rather than having it bestowed as merely an accident of birth.

    Again, the reason I'm writing in response to this post is because it's a post by Randazza hosted by Ken on this site, hence a good context for the question of Ken's continuing support for Randazza by allowing him this platform on which to express himself.

    Why it matters to YOU.

    In this case because I respect Ken, and wanted to hear his rationale for his support of Randazza outside of the attorney-client context Ken was defensive about on twitter (see my original comment).

    That may well be, but why does it matter to you and what has it got to do with earning citizenship?

    It has nothing to do with earning citizenship, hence both addressing the question to Ken and giving the context for that question.

    I'm sorry that you didn't understand that context, but if your entire point was "OMG this isn't the topic of the post you responded to" I can only re-direct you to my original comment:

    "But as evidenced by the post I'm commenting on, that's not the extent of your connection to him."

    Happens thousands of times every business day.

    And is something Ken White, writer of Popehat, the blog we're both commenting on, takes issue with. So why does a notorious censorious litigant not only not get criticized for it by Ken, but gets Ken's tacit support and promotion?

    And yet, lawyers have a duty to represent their clients and failing to do everything on behalf a client is negligent and at times actionable

    No lawyer is required to bring a lawsuit he does not feel is supported by the facts or the law. This notion of "well you can't judge a lawyer for what he does on behalf of his client because he has to do whatever helps his client" is simply ignorant of the rules of legal ethics.

    When your opponent is down in the mud you'd better be willing to play at the same game.

    Now feel free to establish that women accusing Gavin McGinnis of sexual misconduct are "in the mud" and thus deserve to be hit with SLAPP suits.

    It is a well known Saul Alinsky rule to make your opponent live up to his rules (ethics) while you are free to not have ethics at all. It creates a short term advantage and in a courtroom that's all you need (seems to me).

    Aside from the fact that Saul is not an ethical lawyer, clearly this gives an answer to why your complaints about "OMG leave Marc Randazza alone, stop trying to silence people on the right" are wrong.

    If it gives me any advantage to "silence" Randazza, that's "all you need" according to you.

    People of the Left can be pretty slippery when the need arises

    To quote you:

    "It is a well known Saul Alinsky rule to make your opponent live up to his rules (ethics) while you are free to not have ethics at all. It creates a short term advantage and in a courtroom that's all you need (seems to me)"

    So clearly you approve of any amount of being "slippery".

    When no bloggers will post your stuff, when Facebook and Twitter start blocking you, when Google itself refuses to index your website, have you been silenced? Yes indeed,

    "It is a well known Saul Alinsky rule to make your opponent live up to his rules (ethics) while you are free to not have ethics at all. It creates a short term advantage and in a courtroom that's all you need (seems to me)"

    So you must approve of selective silencing too.

    And of me supporting "silencing" of Randazza even while not wanting to apply it to myself.

    Man, that makes it so easy to do just about anything.

    It was People of the Left (Democrats) that push "equal time" requirements on radio and television stations

    Please find where I wrote I support that.

    I can wait.

    When all ten refuse to carry your words, you've been silenced.

    And clearly it's fine for me to want to silence those I disagree with and not be silenced myself.

    Hold Randazza (and you) to your rules about free speech, while having no rules myself. You said that was good.

    And by so doing obeying your wishes rather than his own.

    Or I can attempt to persuade him.

    Perhaps you can be shown where they intersect.

    For me, where it's the government.

    For you apparently anytime too many places don't host some jackass's content.

    So under your Saul Alinsky rule:

    You have to respect my view and do nothing to "silence" me, while I can silence anyone I want. Man I love your rule.

    Winning and losing becomes personal rather than strength or weakness of the case and the ethics involved. Affluenza appears to be contagious.

    That's because, and I know this can be confusing, someone can "criticize" a result as being "unjust" even where it's the "legal outcome."

    Though it's really funny that you're distinguishing "personal" from "the ethics involved" where the entire discussion is about Marc Randazza being unethical as hell.

    So, with that aside, what about the topic?

    Of my post? Feel free to address it.

  173. Skythe says

    January 21, 2019 at 4:05 pm

    One thing that apparently never dies is American hybris.

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