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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
> National Taxpayers Union
> America's independent, non-partisan advocate for overburdened taxpayers.
Hmm, I can't see how this would be biased in favor of a certain view on taxes.
YEAH THAT'S DEFINITELY OPINION-NEUTRAL
...okay, I can't be sarcastic anymore about this.
There's a reason my suspicion flags go up when I hear someone bandying around the term "taxpayer".
Guess what, taxation is inherently redistributive. In fact, having any modicum of a reasonable government is inherently redistributive. If not for the existence of government, you'd have wealthy people enjoying professional cops and poor people enjoying street justice. (More so than is the case in real life today.) The whole point of taxes is that everyone as a whole could be better off if we made a few people a little worse off (by taking a bit of their money) to provide a service that a lot of other people will benefit from.
So, yeah, if you don't like that you don't get to keep and spend every penny of your theoretical pre-tax income exactly as you want it and only to benefit yourself except when you feel like it...then, in some ways, I could reasonably accuse you of being a selfish jerk.
Remember that article on the last page which had Mc Cain think of not backing Mourdock due to his comments on rape?
Well McCain has decided to accept Mourdock's explanation on his comment and backs him.
On a more sad note: Hawaiian WWII vet Frank Tanabe dies after struggling to remain alive to cast his last vote.
edited 25th Oct '12 9:14:41 AM by tclittle
"We're all paper, we're all scissors, we're all fightin' with our mirrors, scared we'll never find somebody to love."I'd prefer troop invasions, because at least life is being wasted on all sides.
No such an issue with machines.
Romney flat-out admits that he supports it fully. Same with Obama. That alone is why I'm not voting for either, because I prefer principle over politics.
edited 25th Oct '12 9:43:46 AM by Serocco
In RWBY, every girl is Best Girl.
What I think (hope) is being said is that nations are less likely to make war if there's risk. Drone strikes are kinda the reverse of MAD. In this case, there's absolutely no risk to "our" people, and then, little to stop us from ordering them willy-nilly, no thought to the consequences.
It's not a huge leap of logic to say that without the risk of our soldiers being killed, we're more likely to declare war over trivial things. After all, the people who "matter" aren't in any danger, so why fret about calling in drone strikes on people who are mildly hostile to our interests?
edited 25th Oct '12 9:48:18 AM by DrTentacles
If I lose a finger ripping someone elses' finger, fine. If a soldier dies killing another soldiers' family, fine. Machines? Nope. I think that's part of why people are fine with drone strikes - it's new, it seems preferable because they don't have nukes, and it has no real casualties to their side. I hate that Double Standard.
Gary Johnson has his issues, definitely, but he's to the left of Obama on... just about everything about our military policy. He actually has enough to qualify for around 500 delegates for the general election, so he actually has a shot at the presidency. Same with Jill Stein.
edited 25th Oct '12 9:50:35 AM by Serocco
In RWBY, every girl is Best Girl.Dr. I figured that after I posted but it still seems rather cold. No matter what we do civilians will likely die. I agree we should have better discretion but saying our troops being killed is preferable to drone strikes is absurd.
Serocco: That sounds like honor before reason to me which is something I really hate when it means we should let our own be killed.
edited 25th Oct '12 9:50:21 AM by Kostya
@ Kostya.
I won't argue that. It just seems that warfare, ordering the mass murder (state-sanctioned, possibly justified murder, but still murder) of other human beings is a such a massive step to take that it should never ordered thoughtlessly, carelessly, or without considering the cost. The fact that we can order death with the push of a button, with nothing except money being risked is rather frightening.
However, if war must be declared, anything that results in less loss of *human* life, ours, or the enemies, I'm going to support. I can't say I like drones, but if they're used with discretion, and thought, I can't condemn them.
You can make the argument that if we had to actually have feet on the ground, we'd start less wars. But I don't think that's true.
I mean, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were fought predominately on the ground, now with flying death machines. So, really, the tradeoff isn't "desensitization that leads to more death in the long run but with less death in the short run" it's "less death in the short run vs more death in the short run (and more damage to the environment because of more energy being mobilized for planes trains and tank-o-mobiles, but that's likely a negligible effect)"
Not a convincing argument. What I will say is that drones kill innocents, and that is a human rights tragedy. You sometimes get soldiers on the ground doing that too but not as frequently.
edited 25th Oct '12 9:57:12 AM by TheyCallMeTomu
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Elaborate? I can't really argue that without hearing the reasoning.
Edit: Yeah, I can't really argue that. History has proven that we're all to ready to make war, no matter the cost to us. We are not exactly...rational actors, as a species. Overall, I'm in support of drones. I'd just like there to be more thought put into their use. (To avoid civilian casualties, as you said.)
Funny thing is, I made pretty much the exact same argument as you, Tomu, a few pages back, in support of drones. I don't like them. (I'm not a pacifist, and I acknowledge the necessity of war, in situations, but I'll never be comfortable with it), but I accept their place in warfare.
And one of the things that (supposedly) stops us from doing so, is knowing that if any one nation nukes the other, *all* nations are at risk of being caught in the (quite literal) fallout. With drone strikes, there's no risk of retaliation.
edited 25th Oct '12 10:05:52 AM by DrTentacles
What the ![]()
said. I don't like 'em, but they're not particularly inhumane, any more than sniper rifles are. EDIT: Actually wait, sniper rifles are more precise; a better comparison would be ship-to-ship bombardment or long distance artillery. Blowing up people from a distance beyond which retaliation is possible is not a new thing in war; the solution is thus to prevent wars.
edited 25th Oct '12 10:20:47 AM by RadicalTaoist
Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.edited 25th Oct '12 10:16:59 AM by GlennMagusHarvey

Was that addressed to anyone specific, Alichains?
It's hard to comment on a link of data without any context.
(And what a tragic, tragic waste of a pagetopper this is.)
edited 25th Oct '12 8:33:57 AM by Karkadinn
Furthermore, I think Guantanamo must be destroyed.