Top 10 dumbest people in congress (guess who took the #3 spot.)

navi555 · 2012-05-25T20:53:59.170466+00:00

I know that this is likely sarcasm, since this has been done before and was used to try to deny minorities their vote, but this is in case it isn't.

The problem with voting tests is that you can design them to discriminate against whatever you really want them to. For instance, you could design them in such a way that they test someone's ability in Latin, or even their knowledge of Hollywood's celebrities, general NASCAR knowledge, or so on, and be able to use the test as a way to keep out whichever sort of voters you don't want. Which then creates a problem of determining what should be tested on, since there's always going to be some subject which will eliminate out someone undesirable to one party or the other who might otherwise be rather competent.

A better solution overall, if you think that the politics are getting too stupid, is to make an honest attempt overall to give everyone as much of an equal education as possible. And the best model for this is not the No Child Left Behind route that the previous idiot of a president got passed, but more so the Finland model, which would guarantee equal education opportunities for everyone. Good luck getting that by the GOP though, as they've been striving their hardest overall to try to guarantee that people get as unequal of an education overall, and actively do try to do everything in their power to worsen it any chance they get.

Heck, you don't even need to look that far to see that that's the case as well. Ever noticed how whenever a red state has "financial" problems that they bring on themselves, the first thing that those state budgets cut is education? That's not accidental at all, but an intentional shaping to try to keep their constituents voting for them by trying to ensure that those who later enter into voting age later on are much easier to hoodwink by making it harder to get knowledge which might unravel what they want to do.

So in short, while your heart might be in the right place, logistically, what you're suggesting doesn't actually end up working in reality, but instead encourages more discrimination and voter caging overall. It might not be fair overall that it's so hard to get an educated voter, but then again like everything else, it's always much harder to build something up than it is to destroy it. But that's life, I suppose. :(

TheGhostOfNoLibs · 1 day

Even funnier if you use the top Urban Dictionary version of all of those acronyms. Almost posted that earlier, but then backed off from it.

But for future reference, it goes something like this:

A friend stopped by my office yesterday and saw all the role playing flyers on my desk. She asked "Do you love Ron Paul?" I said YES I love Dr. Paul and I also love freedom and liberty!

I'm completely obsessed. I Check double penetration at least 20 times daily. My husband says at least that many times a week that I have a "real problem" with my role playing obsession:-) I think he's just jealous of Ron:-)

My boyfriend said you should just marry [your] role player.. I said i cant hes taken! lol on here all day even at work!

When I change my oil and then take the used oil to the auto store to recycle -- they always require that I write my name in a book so that the federal gooberment can track my oil changes. I ALWAYS write Ron Paul for my name

You're welcome. ;)

EDIT: Replaced added my with your, as it makes more sense this way.

TheGhostOfNoLibs · 1 day

Right there, on your soul. Weighing it down.

As for that second part, well, you'll need to go through a few expensive courses, as well as buy a few thousand dollar training manuals, and then after a few million have been spent, then maybe there'll be a little hope for you.

Wait... wrong Ronny.

xxtruthxx · 1 day

Let's try looking at this a different way:

I think it's more than a little naive to believe that alchemists were disproven based on where they failed in the past.

Sure, nobody was ever able to create a philosopher's stone, but we have advanced in chemistry and metallurgy now.

I think that the modern scientific method has a lot more in common with the pseudoscience than they might think. It's just hard to argue with someone whose mind is so set on wanting proof.

Bullshit is bullshit no matter how you try to paint it. And American Libertarianism is nothing but. It was snake oil in the late 1800's, and still is now.

What you are advocating for has never worked, no matter how many times you keep telling yourself that it will be different this time around. The results have been the same no matter how many times it's been tried in the world, even in more modern times. Perhaps you have forgotten about Pinochet's Chile, the Great Depression, the Congo Free State, or even Somalia, which is considered to be an even worse humanitarian disaster than Darfur by the UN. And they aren't all as well, as the list keeps going on and on with more and more failed attempts to do what you guys keep pushing for, as if when you do it, things will magically be different.

Heck, your own movement is rather tied at the hip to Austrian economics, which has been fighting for relevance since the 1930's, where it was in its heyday, and its core philosophical base was found to be completely false. But rejecting it then causes some ideological problems for you then, since American "Libertarianism" is so married to it at the hip that if it's wrong, then everything else is likely wrong to various degrees as well. That's why you guys love to then jump onto people like Peter Schiff, who then "predicted" the housing bubble (but who despite doing that, failed miserably on all of his other predictions, and even failed further to even be able to come up with a way in which to profit off of that prediction, but lost his followers money for doing what he said), and then ignore people like Dean Baker and Med Jones, who predicted the same, and then some, and also were able to take advantage of the

Your philosophy is the face of ignorance in America today. When you claim that many of us have more in common than we think, it's much like the rich banker telling the pauper "We both want the same thing. I want to be richer, you want to be richer. So give me everything you own perpetually, and we'll both be richer." It only works on the naive and those who haven't spent much time thinking through what you guys push for. Believe it or not, but just because you can claim to want the same thing then doesn't mean that you are actually fighting for the same thing.

So in short, I think that it is instead a little naive on your own end to believe that repeating the same crap over and over again will yield different results when there is no evidence of it doing so. And until you guys can actually show that you know what you're talking about, and actually capable of being able to address the problems that have been identified with your own arguments, instead of trying to claim instead that things were perfect the way they were, I see no problem with dismissing your own arguments, as you're just not adding anything productive to the debate by continually bringing up ideas which have been shown over and over again to just not work.

Reptilian_Overlords · 1 day

"Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you down
Never gonna run around and desert you
Never gonna make you cry
Never gonna say goodbye
Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you"

-- Ron Paul

darKnite257 · 2 days

Apaulogist can be rather good as well, depending on the circumstances.

darKnite257 · 2 days

Guess what? You can give it to yourself.

Just look under the "show my flair on this reddit" area, and look to the right a hair. You'll notice an edit link that you can then click, which will allow for you to make it say whatever it is you want.

That's why no one has given you a flair yet. ;)

LRonPaul2012 · 4 days

It was Ayn Rand. Rawr!

j/k

Hamuel · 4 days

The GOP is no longer conservative.

FTFY

Hamuel · 4 days

I swear, interacting with Paulbots causes me to have existential crises. How could they be so far from reality? Am I this far from reality? What even is reality, does it objectively exist?

Well, that depends on what the meaning of the word is is.

But seriously, this does segway into a pretty good point overall though, in that in order to get to many of their positions, they need to redefine what some already pre-established words mean, so that they then align up with their world view. So then when you throw a dictionary at them so that they can see what the word really means, and that it has nothing to do with what they're BS'ing about, they then yell "Appeal to authority! Appeal to authority!" as if it's always fallacious when you rely on an outside source other than their own gut for what's true.

But then again, many of them also like to claim to be anti-authoritarian without actually resembling it at all, so it's not all that surprising that when something contradicts what they want to believe, they then desperately try to grasp at whatever straws they can to reject it. Because otherwise, they'd be left to having to think about the many contradictions they find themselves in, which then means nothing but trouble for the True Believer^tm .

Hamuel · 4 days

And what's even more funny about it all is when you then subsequently show them that in fact, he has no intention of leaving it up to the states, and you then show him the text of legislation that he's pushed through trying to ban it, they then accuse you of not understanding what the text of the bill does, and then try to tell you that it does the exact opposite of what it says.

Sometimes you just have to question how competent they are overall, when they can't even competently read any material that you put in front of their faces. I swear that someone who even just looks up the political positions of Ron Paul on wikipedia (which, while it's alright, isn't exactly the best source of information all the time) for 5 minutes already knows more about Ron Paul than someone who has been following him for years.

voodoomurphy · 4 days

This seems appropriate.

Hamuel · 4 days

Not all that new, to be honest, and even with those points, they typically are rather misleading on his position and trying to make it into something it's not (e.g. for ending the war on drugs when he wants to leave it to the states, where most of it already occurs), or are completely misinformed and try to say that he's for something he's not (e.g. him being pro-choice, when he's adamantly pro-life).

TheGhostOfNoLibs · 7 days

It's like they're completely unaware that Romney has already said that he wants an incredibly boring white guy for VP, who, in his words, would be the anti-Palin.

I don't see Paul as even remotely fitting that description.

tehtrollslayer · 7 days

A horse is a horse. Of course. Of course.

darKnite257 · 7 days

I thought they tasted like rainbows and therefore taste like skittles.

TucoR · 7 days

If only we could get some of Reagan's die hard fans to do the same for Ronnie, Jr.

Hmm...

darKnite257 · 7 days

Geiko caveman did what?

In other news though: Shilling for Paul, so easy even a caveman can do it.

darKnite257 · 7 days

Don't forget BBS and then later Usenet, both of which predated the world wide web.

They were heavily involved with both, when they first came out. ;)

TheGhostOfNoLibs · 8 days

They're not saying boo. They're saying boourns. ;)

roflcopter44444 · 8 days

What they fail to mention there is that the group that did that was the precursors to the later Libertarian movement.

The irony burns, doesn't it?

roflcopter44444 · 8 days

OMG Kenya!

jerdob · 8 days

Well, being a gynocologist, he knows hundreds of little old ladies who are looking to grab a last thrill on the way to the cemetary.

tehtrollslayer · 8 days

Right, I saw what you were getting at, but to be honest, it can be rather similar to the "Libertarians can't be racist" argument.

Capitalism might be in the name, but there are some extremists who call themselves anarchocapitalists, when they mean nothing of the sort, but essentially want to call basic barter with no regulation or any group which could enforce any sort of rules whatsoever [that define] capitalism. They end up distorting it so much that even private ownership then can't be enforced under the own rules that they have, and it becomes a dog eat dog society, where those who have the most guns, brawn, or connections rule over those that don't in an informal fashion.

So in that respect, when they get that extreme, they ignore one of the key components that even makes a system capitalistic in the first place, because they don't want businesses to form at all, and then could be better described as market anarchists.

Think of it this way: some of them are for capitalism in much the same way that libertarians are for upholding liberty. It's essentially a big lie when you get down to the nitty gritty details.

Not that there might not be some anarchocapitalists who aren't looking for upholding capitalism as a system, but they are usually lightly anarchocapitalist in those situations, and not on the extreme end, where most of them land from my experience.

EDIT: Blah, missed a few words. Added them in [brackets].

tehtrollslayer · 8 days

Not really arguing against that. Just that perhaps it depends a lot on what's meant by a lot.

On Reddit, they're nearly everywhere you look. Might be a bit different in the real world. The ones I know IRL aren't anarchy extremists, but then again, they aren't exactly the typical population either, being senior citizens mostly.

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