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> As an American, I consider a "right" to be something owed to you by other people. You can consider it whatever you like. You can consider the moon to be made
by pluto9 8y ago
> As an American, I consider a "right" to be something owed to you by other people.
You can consider it whatever you like. You can consider the moon to be made of cheese. You're wrong, unless you have some basis for this statement. If so, let's hear it.
> The "Bill of Rights" is "the Bill of things the government owes you".
That is absolutely incorrect. It's the "Bill of things the government can't do" or the "Bill of things the government cannot stop you from doing". Name one thing that the Bill of Rights says the government has to provide you, other than a fair trial with representation, which is an implementation detail of the idea that they can't unilaterally decide to incarcerate or otherwise punish you. Go ahead, I'll wait.
> We have one party that actively believes that letting people who would otherwise not die is okay. In fact, some people in this party believe that letting people die who would otherwise not die is a moral good.
> whoever professes to believe the opposite isn't acting in good faith.
And now I realize we can't actually have a productive conversation about this, because you presume that the only reason anyone could possibly disagree with you is because they're morally deficient. You're not interested in the other side of the debate.
- dang 8y agoYou took this thread straight into flamewar. That's not what this site is for and we ban accounts that do it. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use this site as intended in the future, we'd appreciate it. That means steering away from ideological battle, not directly into it. It also means being civil in your comments.
- pluto9 8y agoQuestion: why is posting an inflammatory and fact-free statement like this: > You wouldn't see these scenes in even the most deprived corners of Newcastle-upon-Tyne or the Rhondda Valley. The crowds the event attracts! This is what a developing country looks like. ...not "steering into ideological battle", but objecting to it is?
- dang 8y agoThey were both steering into it, but it's a matter of degree. That comment was at least about something specific, and I wouldn't call it fact-free. It has a link to an interesting-sounding documentary, plus I assume the commenter knows something about Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Your comments went straight down a generic ideological tangent. That's the worst, most tedious stuff. Also, yours were snarky, which makes flamewars much worse. Also, you eventually got personal. All of these are markers of much worse flamewar than what the GP did.
- pluto9 8y agoIt's not the documentary I object to, it's the baseless assertion that things like that never happen in the UK (maybe they don't, but some evidence would be nice), and that a single incident in rural Tenessee (which I know something about, as I also do about developing countries, having been to several) is enough to judge the entire country. I'm not sure what you're calling "generic ideology"--my comments about the definition of a "right"? Most of our founding documents are based on that understanding of rights. Agree with that definition or not, that's how the founders defined it and that definition still frames much our national debates. I don't see how that's an ideological statement. Yeah, I admit I got snarky. That was because I tried to calmy explain my position, and the response I got for my troubles was that I must be acting in bad faith and/or be morally lacking simply for holding the views that I hold, regardless of my rational arguments for them. Frankly I don't understand HN's fixation with "snark" as if it's the only kind of rudeness that's capable of derailing a conversation. I get tired of seeing so many threads turned into opportunities to demonstrate how backwards the United States supposedly is. Every forum has a political leaning, and HN's is fairly strongly left. That's fine, but it's irritating to see you mods claim to be objective but then suppress things like "snark" and "ideology" on only, or at least mostly, one side of the debate.
- dang 8y agoWe don't claim to be objective. That would require arhat levels of self-knowledge. But we do try. People with the opposite ideology to yours perceive HN as having the opposite bias. I was keeping a list of these for a while. Here's a sample: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16098840 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16098840 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16407769 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16407769 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16750306 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16750306 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17248326 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17248326 This phenomenon has been studied. It's called the Hostile Media Effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostile_media_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostile_media_effect https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%22hostile%20media%20effect%22&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0 https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%22hostile%20media%20effect%22....