10 ms·

Can you highlight the part that isn’t true?

scarface74 4y ago
How many “conservatives” would be in favor of giving police less power, stopping the war on drugs, legalizing weed, letting individual schools decide what to teach, letting individual cities decide not to allow religious institutions in areas zoned for residential properties (they increase traffic), getting rid of tax exemptions for religious institutions, etc? Those are all “Libertarian stances”.
- robertlagrant 4y ago
  Isn't the tax exemption for separation of church and state reasons? Remove them and religion will require political representation? (Source: vague memory of something from the West Wing.)
  - nybble41 4y ago
    If that was the intent then it isn't working very well. If anything, legal equality between religious organizations and similar secular organizations, whether for-profit or non-profit, would entail decreasing the influence of the former on politics. Personally I'd make the opposite change (everyone should be exempt) but religious organizations shouldn't get special treatment just because they're religious. The practice of having special rules which only come into play when religion is involved undermines the separation of church and state; it means that the state is discriminating between citizens on the basis of the presence of absence of a (recognized) religion.
    - rayiner 4y ago
      Exemptions for religious organizations are typically just part of a larger framework of exemptions for a wide variety of non-profit, civic activities: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/501 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/501 > Corporations, and any community chest, fund, or foundation, organized and operated exclusively for religious, charitable, scientific, testing for public safety, literary, or educational purposes, or to foster national or international amateur sports competition (but only if no part of its activities involve the provision of athletic facilities or equipment), or for the prevention of cruelty to children or animals Religious organizations are exempt from tax, but so are PETA and the ACLU. Against that background, efforts to strip tax exemptions from churches are a deliberate attack on religious organizations as compared to other civic organizations.
      - nybble41 4y ago
        The fact that "religious … purposes" are sufficient in and of themselves to claim tax-exempt status is part of the bias in favor of religious organizations. Yes, secular organizations can also be tax-exempt—but they have to earn it, and not all secular organizations will qualify (even ones without a profit motive), whereas churches automatically receive tax-exempt status. Stripping them of that status is practically unheard of so long as they avoid directly campaigning for or against specific political candidates. There are plenty of other areas where the government shows favoritism toward religious organizations besides 501(c)3 status. For example, ministers are exempt from federal income tax withholding, despite being classified as W-2 employees, and can opt out of Social Security taxes via Form 4361, which is available only to "An ordained, commissioned, or licensed minister of a church; A member of a religious order who has not taken a vow of poverty; or A Christian Science practitioner."[0] (That last one is oddly specific… and goes so far as to endorse a specific religious organization.) Membership in a "health care sharing ministry" also offers, or did offer while it was still in force, an exception to the individual insurance mandate under the Affordable Care Act (26 U.S. Code § 5000A(d)(2), "Religious Exemptions"[1]). [0] https://www.irs.gov/forms-pubs/about-form-4361 https://www.irs.gov/forms-pubs/about-form-4361 [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/5000A https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/5000A
        rayiner 4y ago
        Secular organizations don’t need to “earn” 501(c)(3) status. They just need to show that they need to apply and show they meet the applicable criteria. For churches, that exemption is automatic. Obviously there are a much wider range of possible secular organizations that may or may not meet the criteria, compared to religious organizations. Ministers are exempt from withholding but they still have to pay it, and they pay FICA taxes like self employed workers: https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc417 https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc417
        nybble41 4y ago
        > For churches, that exemption is automatic. And that was the point. Other organizations have to be based around some particular beneficial purpose such as charity or education in order to qualify, and that classification can be challenged if, for example, a "charitable" organization doesn't actually redistribute most of the money it receives to charitable causes, but you can start a religious-themed amusement park (charging admission!) and call it a "church" and it's automatically tax-exempt.[0] > exempt from withholding but they still have to pay it Which means they're getting several months' worth of extra growth out of that portion of their income than everyone else by paying it at the end of the tax year rather than having it withheld from their paycheck. It's clearly a religious privilege; other W-2 employees would opt out of withholding if they could, but they can't since they aren't ministers. > and they pay FICA taxes like self employed workers Despite not being self-employed, and only if they don't use Form 4361 to opt out of Social Security, as I said before. Which is something which can only be done on religious grounds, or a lot more people would be doing the same, as SS is a poor retirement strategy compared to investing the same amount of money privately. (The average rate of return for SS contributions is lower than T-bills, much less mutual funds or stocks.) [0] https://www.orlandosentinel.com/features/os-holy-land-experience-tax-breaks-20160225-story.html https://www.orlandosentinel.com/features/os-holy-land-experi...
  - s1artibartfast 4y ago
    no, because churches are considered non-profit entities and non-profit entities are tax exempt. Your local chess club could take advantage of basically all the advantages your local church does. There are some historical nuances about power dynamics and avoiding conflict between the church and state, but that is all long ago.
- the_only_law 4y ago
  The ones that are willing to become Paraiahs.
robertlagrant 4y ago
I could, but this really isn't the place for it. Please just imagine that the constant emotional conditioning you have experienced from one-sided news and opinion pieces may not be the best way to understand half of the country.
rayiner 4y ago
Let's stipulate off the bat that many conservative causes are religious in nature: if you want schools to teach intelligent design instead of evolution, that falls within the scope of "imposing religious beliefs on people." But it's 2022, not 1992, and a lot of contemporary conservative causes are based on coding conservative positions as being based on "religious beliefs" and liberal positions as being based on some sort of "rational morality." But that distinction is fictitious. For example, liberals decry Mississippi's 15-week abortion ban as "imposing religious beliefs." So why do highly secular countries like France and Denmark draw the line at 13 or 14 weeks? In reality, the abortion debate rests on competing moral ideologies--one that emphasizes the importance of reproduction, and one that emphasizes the importance of individual choice. Neither position is based primarily on scientific facts or rigorous logic. Likewise, when it comes to teaching kids about sex and gender. "God created man and woman and told them to reproduce" is a religious gloss on the factual observation that humanity comprises two sexes which reproduce sexually, and any sustainable human population requires each woman on average to have 2.1 children. Any conclusions you want to draw on top of that are moral judgments, not based on science or logic. It's no different when it comes to law enforcement. Unless you're an anarcho-libertarian, you recognize that the state has a role in defending individual rights. Moreover, any system of law enforcement is going to produce problems and false positives at scale--especially when dealing with people at the margin of culpability. Leaving aside second-order effects for a moment, there is nothing inherently libertarian about asserting that we should err on the side of less aggressive policing to reduce the false positives, at the cost of allowing more wrong-doers to escape punishment. Likewise, there is nothing inherently libertarian about saying that destroying private property in riots is a justified reaction to police misconduct. These are all liberal moral judgments. None of this is to say that liberals are wrong about any of these things. It's okay to formulate positions based on moral ideology rather than logic. My point is simply that you can't stake out a bunch of positions based on moral ideology, while claiming the high ground of secular rationalism and attacking your political opponents as "imposing religion."
- scarface74 4y ago
  The entire idea behind the Constitution is “innocent until proven guilty”. Not “you’re automatically going to be assumed to be guilty because you don’t look like you belong in the neighborhood.” Why does it always seem like the people who are on the “margin of culpability” always minorities? Like when Ving Rhames was suspiciously sitting in his own house (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jul/28/ving-rhames-police-gunpoint-home https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jul/28/ving-rhames-...) There are plenty of statistics showing minorities are stopped at a higher rate, convicted more harshly, face higher bail, etc for the same crime when you control for everything else. So if you should only marry to reproduce, does that mean old people shouldn’t get married? Should we stop people who take steps not to reproduce? Conservatives use to fight to outlaw birth control and it is still the stance of many. None of these are “Libertarian” stances.

How many “conservatives” would be in favor of giving police less power, stopping the war on drugs, legalizing weed, letting individual schools decide what to teach, letting individual cities decide not to allow religious institutions in areas zoned for residential properties (they increase traffic), getting rid of tax exemptions for religious institutions, etc? Those are all “Libertarian stances”.

robertlagrant 4y ago
Isn't the tax exemption for separation of church and state reasons? Remove them and religion will require political representation? (Source: vague memory of something from the West Wing.)
- nybble41 4y ago
  If that was the intent then it isn't working very well. If anything, legal equality between religious organizations and similar secular organizations, whether for-profit or non-profit, would entail decreasing the influence of the former on politics. Personally I'd make the opposite change (everyone should be exempt) but religious organizations shouldn't get special treatment just because they're religious. The practice of having special rules which only come into play when religion is involved undermines the separation of church and state; it means that the state is discriminating between citizens on the basis of the presence of absence of a (recognized) religion.
  - rayiner 4y ago
    Exemptions for religious organizations are typically just part of a larger framework of exemptions for a wide variety of non-profit, civic activities: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/501 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/501 > Corporations, and any community chest, fund, or foundation, organized and operated exclusively for religious, charitable, scientific, testing for public safety, literary, or educational purposes, or to foster national or international amateur sports competition (but only if no part of its activities involve the provision of athletic facilities or equipment), or for the prevention of cruelty to children or animals Religious organizations are exempt from tax, but so are PETA and the ACLU. Against that background, efforts to strip tax exemptions from churches are a deliberate attack on religious organizations as compared to other civic organizations.
    - nybble41 4y ago
      The fact that "religious … purposes" are sufficient in and of themselves to claim tax-exempt status is part of the bias in favor of religious organizations. Yes, secular organizations can also be tax-exempt—but they have to earn it, and not all secular organizations will qualify (even ones without a profit motive), whereas churches automatically receive tax-exempt status. Stripping them of that status is practically unheard of so long as they avoid directly campaigning for or against specific political candidates. There are plenty of other areas where the government shows favoritism toward religious organizations besides 501(c)3 status. For example, ministers are exempt from federal income tax withholding, despite being classified as W-2 employees, and can opt out of Social Security taxes via Form 4361, which is available only to "An ordained, commissioned, or licensed minister of a church; A member of a religious order who has not taken a vow of poverty; or A Christian Science practitioner."[0] (That last one is oddly specific… and goes so far as to endorse a specific religious organization.) Membership in a "health care sharing ministry" also offers, or did offer while it was still in force, an exception to the individual insurance mandate under the Affordable Care Act (26 U.S. Code § 5000A(d)(2), "Religious Exemptions"[1]). [0] https://www.irs.gov/forms-pubs/about-form-4361 https://www.irs.gov/forms-pubs/about-form-4361 [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/5000A https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/5000A
      - rayiner 4y ago
        Secular organizations don’t need to “earn” 501(c)(3) status. They just need to show that they need to apply and show they meet the applicable criteria. For churches, that exemption is automatic. Obviously there are a much wider range of possible secular organizations that may or may not meet the criteria, compared to religious organizations. Ministers are exempt from withholding but they still have to pay it, and they pay FICA taxes like self employed workers: https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc417 https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc417
        nybble41 4y ago
        > For churches, that exemption is automatic. And that was the point. Other organizations have to be based around some particular beneficial purpose such as charity or education in order to qualify, and that classification can be challenged if, for example, a "charitable" organization doesn't actually redistribute most of the money it receives to charitable causes, but you can start a religious-themed amusement park (charging admission!) and call it a "church" and it's automatically tax-exempt.[0] > exempt from withholding but they still have to pay it Which means they're getting several months' worth of extra growth out of that portion of their income than everyone else by paying it at the end of the tax year rather than having it withheld from their paycheck. It's clearly a religious privilege; other W-2 employees would opt out of withholding if they could, but they can't since they aren't ministers. > and they pay FICA taxes like self employed workers Despite not being self-employed, and only if they don't use Form 4361 to opt out of Social Security, as I said before. Which is something which can only be done on religious grounds, or a lot more people would be doing the same, as SS is a poor retirement strategy compared to investing the same amount of money privately. (The average rate of return for SS contributions is lower than T-bills, much less mutual funds or stocks.) [0] https://www.orlandosentinel.com/features/os-holy-land-experience-tax-breaks-20160225-story.html https://www.orlandosentinel.com/features/os-holy-land-experi...
- s1artibartfast 4y ago
  no, because churches are considered non-profit entities and non-profit entities are tax exempt. Your local chess club could take advantage of basically all the advantages your local church does. There are some historical nuances about power dynamics and avoiding conflict between the church and state, but that is all long ago.
the_only_law 4y ago
The ones that are willing to become Paraiahs.

robertlagrant 4y ago

I could, but this really isn't the place for it. Please just imagine that the constant emotional conditioning you have experienced from one-sided news and opinion pieces may not be the best way to understand half of the country.

rayiner 4y ago

Let's stipulate off the bat that many conservative causes are religious in nature: if you want schools to teach intelligent design instead of evolution, that falls within the scope of "imposing religious beliefs on people." But it's 2022, not 1992, and a lot of contemporary conservative causes are based on coding conservative positions as being based on "religious beliefs" and liberal positions as being based on some sort of "rational morality." But that distinction is fictitious. For example, liberals decry Mississippi's 15-week abortion ban as "imposing religious beliefs." So why do highly secular countries like France and Denmark draw the line at 13 or 14 weeks? In reality, the abortion debate rests on competing moral ideologies--one that emphasizes the importance of reproduction, and one that emphasizes the importance of individual choice. Neither position is based primarily on scientific facts or rigorous logic. Likewise, when it comes to teaching kids about sex and gender. "God created man and woman and told them to reproduce" is a religious gloss on the factual observation that humanity comprises two sexes which reproduce sexually, and any sustainable human population requires each woman on average to have 2.1 children. Any conclusions you want to draw on top of that are moral judgments, not based on science or logic. It's no different when it comes to law enforcement. Unless you're an anarcho-libertarian, you recognize that the state has a role in defending individual rights. Moreover, any system of law enforcement is going to produce problems and false positives at scale--especially when dealing with people at the margin of culpability. Leaving aside second-order effects for a moment, there is nothing inherently libertarian about asserting that we should err on the side of less aggressive policing to reduce the false positives, at the cost of allowing more wrong-doers to escape punishment. Likewise, there is nothing inherently libertarian about saying that destroying private property in riots is a justified reaction to police misconduct. These are all liberal moral judgments. None of this is to say that liberals are wrong about any of these things. It's okay to formulate positions based on moral ideology rather than logic. My point is simply that you can't stake out a bunch of positions based on moral ideology, while claiming the high ground of secular rationalism and attacking your political opponents as "imposing religion."

scarface74 4y ago
The entire idea behind the Constitution is “innocent until proven guilty”. Not “you’re automatically going to be assumed to be guilty because you don’t look like you belong in the neighborhood.” Why does it always seem like the people who are on the “margin of culpability” always minorities? Like when Ving Rhames was suspiciously sitting in his own house (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jul/28/ving-rhames-police-gunpoint-home https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jul/28/ving-rhames-...) There are plenty of statistics showing minorities are stopped at a higher rate, convicted more harshly, face higher bail, etc for the same crime when you control for everything else. So if you should only marry to reproduce, does that mean old people shouldn’t get married? Should we stop people who take steps not to reproduce? Conservatives use to fight to outlaw birth control and it is still the stance of many. None of these are “Libertarian” stances.