One of the arguments Chomsky and others make is that we ought to defend free speech so that our opponents can’t claim it, and use that persecution as publicity. Rather, you should win the argument.



The Nazis were routinely censored. Hitler himself brought up the fact of this censorship in his debates and used it as justification to censor others. The one time censorship ought to have worked, it didn’t.

A ripple in a pond can always knock against something larger. Societal rules did not predate society. It is literally the result of people before us, maintained by those of us who understand and respect their sacrifices. Sacrifices that, again, due to theirs, you and I don't have to make, and therefore lose meaning and reverence toward. As you perfectly illustrate.

Societal rules and the sacrifices involved in maintaining them… maybe you can name one of these societal rules and one of these sacrifices that you so much revere, because so far I have no idea what you’re talking about.

You don’t mention that out of the 12,000 or so arrests in 2023, there were only 1,119 sentencings, according to the Times article you cite.

We can hold these numbers against other statistics of that year, like that only 5.7 per cent of crimes were solved by police. The charge rate was at 3.6 per cent for sex crimes, with rape at 2.1 per cent. Apparently that’s around 2.7 million crimes being dropped without a suspect being found.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/crime-unsolved-data-labour-b2384679.html

No wonder people are pissed off in the UK, where it appears everything is policed except crime.

But why are they state jurists though? They're fulfilling the will of the people. Said will being peace, law, and order. This requires a robust and powerful underlying system of codes and ordinance.

These series of remarks seem to imply you don't care about what other people want, only yourself (and those whom you favor or who otherwise think like you). This is the mindset of a small child with little understanding of the larger world around him.

You and I both know neither one of our wills have affected any law, code, or ordinance. No jurist has ever fulfilled anything that you or I have ever willed. And if you already possess a will for peace, law, and order, a system of enforcement ought to be entirely redundant.

I don’t care what you want, but only because I don’t know what you want. What I do know is, these institutions, like the ones they are adapted from, have been a scourge on the earth and the species, and the sort of obsequious fealty to them is unimpressive. The admission that you require them in order to satiate your own fears does not imply that everyone else does.

I like to think not, but I would never delude myself into thinking every other person, even the majority, does. There's 8 billion people on this rock. You've likely only ever even been in the same room with a few hundred thousand of them. And that's a very liberal estimate.

You know how to act because someone or something taught you how to. One might assume that's because you were raised in a functional healthy household with both parents who knew and were equipped mentally, physically, and financially to raise a child (that child being you).

Not everybody has that luxury. Did you not know this?

Who has killed more people, your imaginary criminal, or governments? Who has led to more famine? Genocide? War? Who takes from the fruits of your labor in order to fund his activities? Who drops bombs on weddings, or nukes on cities? The one you describe as not being raised in a functional household, or the ones you now defend?

The laws pertain to everyone in a given jurisdiction, including those who do not reach for pitchforks upon hearing words. As such, millions and millions lose their rights to speak and to hear whatever speech they want because some who live among us fear words.

Do you have anything in this world you care about? Anything at all? Would you care much if you died right now? If not, that's a perfectly understandable viewpoint. But that's not how the world works or how normal people are or think. Certainly you recognize that.

I care about a lot of things. The impositions of state jurists isn’t one of them.

Do you require law to know how to act around others?

Let's start simple: you think death threats should be illegal, right?

I don’t think anything should be illegal, especially not speech.

Did you pay attention in your IR101 class? The deal was quite simple. The US allow and support an integrated and strong Europe if Europe would not arm itself. The economic might of the EU supports the US, accept and support its super power status, while the US supports Europe militarily. It benefitted both sides enormously.

Maybe I wasn’t paying attention because The North Atlantic Treaty article 3 says that all parties “will maintain and develop their individual and collective capacity to resist armed attack.” Where is the agreement that Europe would not arm itself?

Words are not movement, but they can unlock the door to it, or influence its direction.

That’s probably too metaphorical for my own tastes because to argue from a metaphor is to substitute imagination for judgment. That might not be the best approach wherever law is concerned, but then again that kind of rhetoric is built into the law itself, which, to me, shows how flimsy it all really is.

It is a legitimate concern for anyone who cares about freedom. People are being arrested over tweets, one of which you just quoted and published on a public forum.

As you know, it does not meet the threshold for incitement in American law, as there is zero evidence it incited anyone to anything, and because the violence was never immanent. The charge of “inciting racial hatred” is even more ridiculous because racial hatred does not come about by reading someone’s angry words.

But when people pooh-pooh such concerns it makes me curious. Was there any time in your entire life that you read something and it incited you to violence or hatred or anything that can be construed as a crime? When you read the above tweet, did you feel yourself reaching for the pitchfork?

How was Sacks a sexual abuser? Did I miss something in the article?

I feel terrible. I confused Sacks with one of his characters, Leonard, who was the abuser in question. I think the author of the article was implying he came up with this story using his own experiences. I admit my guilt and take full responsibility for that dangerous and false accusation.

Yes, it is true. Both sides often devolve into common bigotry when faced with thoughts and words that oppose their own, that it’s difficult to tear them apart. At any rate, they both want power, they both want to use the state in order to benefit people they prefer, and as such they both resemble a criminal organization.

But this is a box-shaped conception of politics, relevant only to choosing where to sit in the National Assembly. There are no wings and no one who thinks and speaks politically is guilty by such threadbare associations.

If you add Russia to Europe, which I would do, this is totally true. Russia is the most clearest example of European colonialism and imperialism. And the last pure example of it, I would add.

I live in Canada and recently watched the Prime Minister pledge allegiance to the King of England and his heirs during his inauguration. Lawyers and judges bow or curtsy towards a picture of King Charles when they enter and leave a courtroom. Russia could only dream of such fealty.

Says the guy who isn't an US taxpayer. No, what you simply don't understand that the US has benefited from being the security guarantor, the Superpower. That most valuable thing that has come from this role has been the US dollar being the reserve currency. No other great power has enjoyed the situation of the currency they print being the universal reserve currency. If the US would have chosen again the "Splendid isolation" after WW2, the West would have gone with Bancor. It's pure insanity and total ignorance to believe that the role of the US dollar as the reserve currency would just somehow descend from Heaven to the US because it was afterwards the biggest economy.

I am a US taxpayer. I have to file my income tax with the IRS every single year.

I never said nor implied the US never benefited. Indeed, clipping the wings of European war-mongering might have benefited the entire world. But this arraignment has allowed NATO countries to forget about their duty to defend themselves, to spend less tax dollars on militaries, and to spend the money they saved for their own benefit and no one else’s—and all while maintaining that air of European superiority.

I’ll stick to the medical understanding of disability because it is the disabled body that prevents certain bodily movements and actions, not stairs. We could put a paraplegic man and an able-bodied man in any environment imaginable, including accessible ones, and witness how this is the case. It’s just a plain fact that one’s capacity is diminished by his disability, so in my mind the able-bodied ought not be blamed for it.

The reason we use stairs and not ramps in architecture is that stairs take up significantly less horizontal space for the same vertical rise. In other words, stairs are practical and cost less. Not only that, but the physiological cost of stairs is always less than a ramp of equal slope. No doubt, this poses a problem for the disabled, but to argue building stairs is an act of exclusion, or otherwise the failure of an architect to consider human variability, is unjust and absurd.

The real social question ought to be: why are the disabled left to care for themselves?

Europe has been fighting itself for thousands and thousands of years, and not even that long ago. Hell, they were doing genocide there not more than 30 years ago. The entire union is essentially a rogues gallery of states. It was Europe that invented fascism and communism, and spread them worldwide. We don’t even need to speak of the travesty of European colonialism.

I never said it was a demand from Europe for the US to provide security, like what you and @ssu seem to believe. What I said was you all have been taking advantage of the United States taxpayer for far too long without developing any way to defend yourselves. The EU gave itself the Nobel peace prize for providing peace to the region, even though they’ve been milking US military presence. So Europe obviously doesn’t need the help to maintain their defense anyways, and I would like nothing better than get out of that blood-soaked continent.

American presence there is the only deterrent Europe has ever had, and the only reason NATO stands any chance. The problem is you all have been taking advantage of the United States taxpayer for far too long without developing any way to defend yourselves. And once that tit is finally pulled away their leaders start to cry while they scramble for answers.

You’re right, I don’t care what the EU response is, because it will invariably contain a bunch of symbolic trash about European ideals before they sentence every Ukrainian to death.

What bullshit is this "decisive coordinated military response", when a) you cannot train for this and Ukraine cannot be a member or anybody else (like Ireland etc.) cannot join NATO? The emasculation of NATO and Ukraine-NATO ties makes this totally ludicrous statement. Who the fuck will defend Ukraine, when NATO cannot be in Ukraine?

“The United States affirms that a significant, deliberate, and sustained armed attack by the Russian Federation across the agreed armistice line into Ukrainian territory shall be regarded as an attack threatening the peace and security of the transatlantic community….

… NATO members, including France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Poland, and Finland, affirm that Ukraine's security is integral to European stability and commit to act in concert with the United States in responding to any qualifying violation, ensuring a unified and credible deterrent posture.”

https://archive.ph/S58Vt

NATO was never masculine. They can hardly move tanks between each other’s countries. Beyond serving as a symbol of American posturing in Europe, the only battles they’ve ever had in their 75 year history was against some pirates. You think they’re going to run in and save the day? Delusional.

Read your history. The Soviet Union doesn’t exist anymore. The Cold War is over.

At any rate, I can’t wait to watch the EU bring out their counterproposal, which will invariably lead to WW3.

Putin will not get Ukraine. The EU gets Ukraine.

11. Ukraine is eligible for EU membership and will receive short-term preferential access to the European market while this issue is being considered.

In fact, if Russia invades again, they face destruction at the hands of NATO and the US.

10. If Russia invades Ukraine, in addition to a decisive coordinated military response, all global sanctions will be reinstated, recognition of the new territory and all other benefits of this deal will be revoked;

No matter. If this deal goes through, invasion would be illegal according to Russia’s own laws.

16. Russia will enshrine in law its policy of non-aggression towards Europe and Ukraine.

I suspect that warmongers don’t like the deal because they’ve wasted so much time, money, and human bodies for essentially nothing. I further suspect that the end of this war will mean the final nail in the neoconservative coffin, and the obsolescence of their belligerent alliances.

(and it should be noted, Biden carried out to the end dutifully)

That’s simply untrue. He violated the agreement. The Biden administration said the U.S. would not withdraw the remaining soldiers by May 1st, the date which all parties agreed upon, but would withdraw them by September 11 (a purely symbolic form of deceit). His hubris led directly to the death of US soldiers and the loss of billions and billions and billions in military assets, none of which would have been there had Biden abided by the agreement.

The house and senate voted to release the so-called Epstein files. I hope we’ll see some good stuff.

Democrat Stacey Plaskett avoided censure for being Epstein’s finger-puppet during an anti-Trump congressional investigation, and will retain her position on the intel committee.

Evidence of the breakup in the bromance?

Definitely evidence of collusion between Epstein and others.

It’s crazy to think he was influencing congressional investigations into president Trump through party apparatchiks, literally feeding them talking points. We can watch it happen live. What other ones did he have his dirty hands in? Whatever it is, that’s a romance of an insidious kind.

Much of it was anti-Trump, though, and he was clearly coaching a Dem congressman what to ask Michael Cohen during an anti-Trump investigation. Like most of you, he had the same Trump obsession. Should we count how many times you’ve said the word “Trump”?

It’s a common story told in a common way. We literally start “within” a mother, within a womb. This fact gives the argument a little force. But then for some reason we have to switch to our figurative voice. We’re “within” a community, figuratively, as if a community was a thing within which we can contain ourselves. This figurative language is used routinely in arguments against individualism.

Of course, you wouldn’t mention that the umbilical chord is cut shortly after birth. Our individuation is a brute fact most of us will face for the majority of our lives, and the “minded world” has yet to come to terms with it. All it can offer is metaphor.

Take care!

More Epstein files have been released and I hope to hear some doozies. Here’s a good one.

Right, but I think there is a quite robust argument to be made that it is secularism and liberalism that has spawned fundamentalism, elevated fideism, etc. The two are not unrelated. It's not unlike how the excesses of laissez-faire capitalism and the Gilded Age spawned socialism. Even if one sees socialism as largely or wholly negative (and many do not), it would still be the case that it is precisely deficiencies in the existing system that strengthened it.

I don’t think there is much of an argument to be made there. The main reason is that liberalism hardly took off in the first place, and was never present in any of the formative years of modernity. The many-pronged attack against liberalism was effective enough to give us so-called “social” or “modern” liberalism, which is liberal in name only (Neosocialism would be a better term). Herbert Spencer, for instance, documented how this occured in England in the mid-to-late 19th century, but classical liberals will attest to it as well.

In fact, any advance towards the freedom of individuals, like laissez-faire economics, is consistently met with a much stronger ideology. That ideology is a mixture of the fear towards the freedom of other men, the manorial love of order and obedience, and the glorification regarding the status of the arbiters of our lives, the state. Illiberalism, the opposite of liberalism, spawned the political aberrations of the 20th century, including so-called social liberalism. Illiberalism is the common thread of modernity and beyond.

And that, I think, is the thorn in the communitarian and ethno-nationalist’s argument: that their common enemy, liberalism and individualism, never took off in the first place, and indeed was actively supressed wherever it emerged. It simply isn’t present anywhere, as a politics or a philosophy. As such, its persistence as a theme of modern decline is largely a bugaboo.

It’s quite simple, in my understanding, and is discovered in the answer to the question “who or what controls my actions?”

In other words, it’s a matter of sourcehood and identity. If something other than me controls my actions, then I do not have free will. If I control my actions, then I have free will.

In the debate so far, determinists and those who otherwise deny free will have never found any other source of the control of our actions, and the identity of that outside controller remains a mystery to them. And until that occurs, one ought to side with the existence of free will.

The only logical thing a sane, educated, and enlightened society can do is pay people for both study and jobs and let them choose what they wish.

A sane, educated, and enlightened society wouldn’t steal from the fruits of one man’s labor in order to fund the labor of another. That’s what a society of criminals does.

It would have to be a voluntary, perhaps unpaid effort, as these things often are.

Yes, that was not pointed at you. I believe one can witness a nascent anti-modernism in politics and popular thought. In my view, they’re blaming the wrong things, and should they push their resentment into political action they’re going to pull the rug right out from under themselves. Thanks for the back and forth.

I appreciate your view, and I understand why people might think that way.

I just don’t see how one can move from the belief “All there is matter” to the rest. I also don’t see how physicalism, individualism, human rights, the scientific method, or whatever these days are considered enlightenment thinking, precludes the experience of beauty, love, or meaning. I suppose Nietzsche is prophetic in this regard, but the only way one could reach such a state of nihilism is if one was already steeped in the defamation of the world and the worldly, and have laid the foundation of all subsequent thought on some variation or other of supernaturalism.

Observe the metaphor “stripped of meaning” when pointing the finger at the use of scientific language to describe the cosmos, as if some words or symbols were a kind of paint thinner when applied to celestial bodies. The language has changed since Galileo’s time, sure, but the cosmos has hardly changed at all. It’s the same with the evolution of the human species. Ideas and words just don’t have the evolutionary effect that people imply, and we’re practically the same animal as we’ve been for thousands of years. We’re just privy to more information than we once were.

At any rate, given the propensity to blame modern authors and words, and harken back to the authors of less enlightened times, it’s clear that they do not like the language of modernity rather than modernity itself, especially now that the means of communication are practically open to anyone and literacy rates are much higher. They fear the ugliness and disorder that comes with freedom of thought and speech.

If I think about what could be lost should anti-modernism be turned into political action, it may turn out to be the most dangerous form of egoism we’ve ever seen.

Jamal provides a great service and can maintain the site precisely how he sees fit. We ought to defend and respect his right to do so, even if it means our own banning.

But wasn’t wealth a means to the good for Aristotle? Status was practically built into the hierarchies of all pre-modern societies.

Because the prevailing philosophical outlook of materialism has nothing to do with the adopting of materialistic values which is so endemic to modernity?

If you mean the prioritization of wealth and status over spirituality, then we’re speaking of a vice that has long predated modernity, and is perhaps endemic to the species.

The communitarians and illiberal types are wrong in that modernity is not the result of a success of this-or-that way of thinking or ideology, nor can it be blamed on so-and-so (a very small portion of the population has read Descartes, for example). It’s due to the utter failures of the rest, those very same methods and obligations they seek to resurrect. It was Illiberalism, the unscientific method, and illiberal collectivism, that has led the rest of us into modernity.

They are children and you are their father. The claim “there is nothing wrong with spying” pertains to all those who “get the urge to spy”, who “want to find out what someone is up to“. Are you fine with them checking up on the whereabouts of your children?

Who have you spied on?

There's nothing wrong with spying.

Good lord.

Spying on your political opponents in a fishing-expedition to find evidence of criminal activity, because there was no probable cause to justify the spying in the first place, is anti-Trumpism manifest. Trump and his ilk are such obvious criminals that we must corruptly abuse the justice system in order to find the crimes, which in the end we couldn’t. All the usual corrupt rogues are of course present in this ever-growing scandal.

Jan. 6 probe potentially investigated over 150 Republicans, documents show

https://www.axios.com/2025/10/29/trump-january-6-republican-senators-fbi-arctic-frost

No it's not. The example I provided had dissimilar methods for acheiving the same result. The submarine example has dissimilar methods for acheiving dissimilar results.

The example you provided had two water pumps, but I was speaking about an organism versus a machine.

The question is whether Z can result from method X or Y. Your argument is that it cannot because Z will necessarily be different if from X as opposed to Y. That doesn't follow. The same thing can arise from different processes.

The question was whether machines can act like humans, can do things humans can do, like thinking, typing, being conscious. My argument is that they cannot because they are different things, have different structures, and so act differently.

Following your logic, suppose text on a screen results from X or Y, a machine and a human. We generate text on a screen by typing. Machines using AI generate text on a screen by using algorithms on user prompts, and performing a vast array of mechanical actions that results in legible text on a screen. Is the machine typing?

I don't see how you arrive at the second sentence from the first.

The things involved and the movements they make are different. It’s like saying submarines swim.

My take is skeptical, according to your definition.

For the simple reason that machines are not biological, they do not have similar structures, components, parts, or what have you, to any organism, let alone humans. If they do not have similar structures, they do not act in similar ways to humans. If they do not act in similar ways, they should not be described in anthropomorphic terms. In that way, it cannot be said there is knowledge, consciousness, learning, thinking, or any human-like acts involved in anything these machines are doing.

In my opinion the field requires new terms to describe the activity of AI; or if these terms are already available and established, they should be used instead.

One clear one is the US Constitution if you ask me.

I don’t think a document suffices, personally, especially one that allows slavery.