this post was submitted on 25 Nov 2023
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I'm liberal and support trans/gay rights, woman's body autonomy, social umbrellas for the poor and unhoused, legalization of recreational drugs, but I also like guns and desire all minorities who have no agency to own them, as well as support all wars against bullies because pacifism does nothing to stop them otherwise. Where do I stand? I guess I'll go fuck myself then.
That's the fun thing; go far enough left and find that guns become an important tool for the proletariat to protect itself from the ruling class.
I agree with all of those except I don't like guns. Don't want nothing to do with them, and those that do should be required to take mental and physical competency tests as well as mandatory registration. I wouid also impose a minimum 5 year prison sentence for letting one of your guns fall into somone else's hands owning a gun should come with massive responsibility to keep the gun secure.
Similar to nuclear proliferation, it doesn't matter if you don't like nukes because if your neighbor simply has only one of them, then they can leverage it to force you to do things against your own interests with the threat of your complete destruction.
Your recourse is to bend over and let them fuck you, or build/buy your own nukes to deter them bullies. Pandora's box is open; guns are necessary and are never going away. Either you arm up the helpless to allow them to speak at equal footing using them as deterrence or let them slowly and eventually be destroyed by the growing intolerant majority.
So everyone just gets guns? I should carry a gun with me at all times and live in fear of my neighbor? This is an absurd viewpoint, guns don't deter shit, if someone wants to shoot me, owning a gun won't stop them. Nuclear deterrence doesn't work with gun ownership because if I own a gun, and you shoot me, I'm not shooting back because I'm dead.
If all your neighbors have guns, you might want to get one too, or you're at a disadvantage when they gang up to kill you.
That's why it's like nuclear proliferation.
Why would they need to gang up to kill me? They have guns, they can kill me damn near instantly even if I have a gun myself
This.
Gun fetishists live in this wild west fantasy where someone planning on shooting is going to slowly and deliberately approach while announcing their intentions so you can respond and have a showdown ensuring only the gunliest gunner wins. If somebody's going to shoot you, you're just going to get shot - probably before you're even aware, or at least without sufficient preparation time to grab your gun or pull your gun and aim.
These people just tell themselves fairy tales to justify their hoarding.
Pretty much yes. Literally the only reason you live in a peaceful society is because you have delegated all violence to a specific group of people and armed them to ensure everyone follows the rules: it's fucking called law enforcement.
The cops are allowed the monopoly of all violence; if you need help, you call them because they have guns and can compel people (i.e. criminals) to do things by leveraging this fact, otherwise no one will listen to them.
Do you seriously trust ALL cops to all maintain the idea that all gays and trans people deserve life? Most of them would not mind if society leaned extreme right and imprisoned all the "undesirables". You are fucking delusional to put all your trust into them.
Basically this, people should consider disarming when the police and military do as well
Until then, nobody should have a pure monopoly on violence
I don't trust a single cop, but I also don't trust many people to be allowed to have guns either. If you look at countries where guns are not readily available there is much less gun crime, and any guns that people get are coming from the US because we hand them out basically for free. If the US has stricter gun control it would most likely lower gun crime around the world even.
Edit: another thing I want to mention, I don't call cops if it can be at all avoided precisely because they do carry guns. Once you I produce a gun into a situation, it becomes instantly more dangerous and unless it is something like a mass shooting or a violent robbery I'm not gonna call the cops for shit.
Treat the symptoms not the cause
Simplify geopolitics into "bullies", support the actions of NATO/US as though they're not "bullies"
Pretty much liberal yeah
Treat both. They usually give you a painkiller while setting your bones.
Wait until they find out that there's a ton of "we don't know what the underlying cause is" and "we don't have a cure for that yet" in medicine. In which case you have to do your best treating the symptoms -- which is also true outside of the world of medicine.
Sometimes a temporary fix buys you time to do it right. Sometimes a perfect or even "really good" solution isn't feasible for myriad reasons: so you do the best with what you have.
It's just such a stupid false dichotomy. Give the man the fish and teach him to fish. It's a lot easier to learn on a full stomach.
You expect leftists to do anything but idly daydream about the day that a socialist revolution finally and magically falls into their laps?
You'll find that almost all liberals also want to treat the cause, but they are blocked at every step by conservatives and centrists.
But why do they defend the core underlying cancer - capitalism?
I definitely prefer my symptoms being treated while waiting to get the cure
Liberals don't want the cure though. They want "ethical capitalism" or whatever. (A contradiction in terms)
I didn't say they were the one with the cure
Those are all very liberal-minded interests and there's nothing really wrong with them. The left largely agrees as well but would go further to the structural causes for why these issues are important, questioning the very economic and material arrangements for which these issues are contingent on. IE why does our economic system require people to be poor? What are the class dynamics behind these issues etc.
Liberalism is the ideology of free markets and individual freedom, but those mechanisms are contingent on exploitation.
Let me guess, you’re from US. Or from Canada, and are stuck in US narrative.
Your economic system (or rather society) has never ditched slavery, which is nowadays masquerading as a penal system. Poor people are easy to enslave.
I think you're missing how I'm rhetorically posing that question to the preceding comment and not sincerely wondering myself...
I think that makes you a leftist who hasn’t yet realized that liberalism doesn’t want many of those things.
Most Americans still don't realize there's a difference. I've been hoping the recent conflict in the Middle East would wake some people up to the major differences between libs and leftists - it sure did for me.
Leftists are literally losing their job for not supporting Israel and yet liberals are still out here confused about what's even going on.
Liberals prefer negative peace - the absence of conflict - over positive justice.
If you prefer positive justice, you aren't a liberal.
Sounds like liberalism can go fuck itself too if they don't care about trans/gay rights, etc.
They care about them in a performative way. The minute it stands in their way or they can’t use it as a tool to get your support to gain or maintain power they will immediately drop the act. Before Oberfell even Obama wouldn’t give a clear statement of support for gay marriage because it was seen as political poison.
Standing up for trans acceptance and rights is the right thing to do but it is by no means a winner of a political platform:
Democrats haven't dropped it yet, despite anti-trans sentiment being one of the Right's favorite things to rally around.
You are left.
Need to know his stsnce on capitalism first.
Sounds liberal af to me; definitely not a leftist.
Long live the American arms trade and long live the empire!