Delta1212

Then any freedom is impossible as long as there is more than one person in the world.

Well, no, everyone has the freedom to speak out about things that may undermine their ability to do their job, whether it is private or public. They should not be surprised if they get fired for doing so, however. Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences of speech. It is freedom from specific kinds of consequences for speech, and being fired for saying something that interferes with your ability to properly do your job is not one of the consequences you are protected against.

You seem to get rather emotionally bound up in your points and in these discussions. Passion can be a good thing, but I'd suggest holding things at a bit more of a reserve. It makes it easier to consider different points of view and you won't take things quite so personally when people disagree with you.

Well, personally, I understand your perspective, I just disagree with it. Some of that is opinion, and in some areas I also think you are objectively, factually incorrect on certain points, but I do understand what the overall sentiment you express arises from. I'm not sure whether that helps you at all.

I'm sorry you got negged, for whatever that's worth. Even when I think you are very wrong and being obstinate in your wrongness, you always come across as very calm and level-headed, which I appreciate, and it makes it enjoyable to talk to you.

It is always hard to watch criminals hide behind the Constitution, but if it doesn't act as a shield for criminals, then it is useless as a shield for anyone else. The Constitution protecting people you don't like is a sign that it is working, because we rarely need protection from people who like us.

When we discuss gun violence in America, most Americans discuss it as one aspect of our culture, rather than the problem being because we are "Americans." I don't often see the same level of nuance when discussing Islamic culture. It is not that I object to criticisms leveled at aspects of Islamic cultures. It is that I object to the broad strokes with which those criticisms are generally painted in our national debates.

I don't think that anyone should be completely shielded from opposing ideas. I don't think most people here think that. I do think that when you are surrounded by opposing ideas 24/7, you deserve to have the ability to gain some respite from them. I am not in favor of having safe spaces because I think people should never have to deal with anything contrary to their own positions. I favor them for the people who either constantly, or frequently enough for it to be a constant worry, have to face some degree of opposition to who they are as people with no realistic way to choose when and where they will engage with that opposition to be able to have a way to choose not to deal with it for a little while. There are, of course, people who would abuse the availability of that service, but I would rather focus on making sure that it is there for the people who need it than focus on making sure that it isn't available to people who don't need it. In this particular case, "abuse" doesn't actually harm anyone, except people who get angry that they can't pursue people wherever they want in order to argue with them against their will, so I don't really see a downside.

So, just to be clear, you're against safe spaces but support Black Lives Matter?

Boiled down to its essentials, that line of argument went: A: "Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King didn't need safe spaces." B: "Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King had violence visited upon them, so perhaps they could have used a safe space." A: "College students are probably using safe spaces for reasons other than avoiding physical violence, therefore if Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks needed a safe space, these people don't." That can be boiled down to a logical argument of the form: If someone experiences violence then they need a safe space. Therefore, if someone does not experience physical violence, they do not need a safe space. That's a a fairly standard logical fallacy that you have made. You are reacting emotionally to counterpoints and getting frustrated by what seems to be a lack of responsiveness to your own points, but part of that is because you are missing some logical disconnects in your thinking and misinterpreting the flow of the argument as a result.

Making an area nice costs money, as does leaving an area that isn't nice. An "area" in an inner city, even a relatively small one, can have a population comprised of thousands of people. A small percentage of those could behave in a way that makes the area "bad" and it would still be many, many more than "2 or 3" people. In an area with a population of 10,000, even 100 people who are willing to do violence to anyone who tries to "clean up the streets" makes it extremely impractical for civilian policing of the community for anyone that particularly minds risking life and limb. You are expressing a very naive view of how crime works.

There may be more opportunities open to black people today than when you were younger, but that doesn't mean that the opportunities are the same as they are for white people. You can't switch from beating someone with a baseball bat to beating them with your fist and then respond to their pleas to stop hitting them by reminding them that the bat was worse and asking if they're going to complain forever. It is easy, when the only time the issue intruded upon your daily life is when someone else complains about it, to see it as an annoyance that is mostly a result of the people who are complaining. The distraction and discomfort of the complaint is the primary problem that you have to deal with. If they do not complain, then the problem goes away, and so it is easy to blame them for complaining and wonder why they can't just get on with their lives like you do. For the people complaining, it is not something that goes away when they are quite. Asking for help removing an obstacle that you have never faced and in some cases probably don't even know exists looks like asking for special favors from the outside. From the inside, it asking for a rope when you are drowning and being told by someone who was born on a yacht that no one ever threw them a rope, and could you kindly stop splashing around so much because you are getting them wet.

I'm opposing you because I think you are mistaken. My opinion of someone has little bearing on whether or not I agree with them about anything.

Impotence? Also, saying "You're stupid" is not really pointing out someone's stupidity. It's just name-calling.

But everyone is, ultimately, an individual. So if lots of individuals are subjected to such treatment without having "earned" it, then isn't it, by definition, unearned? You cannot say "Well, the community deserves it" and then ignore that there are lots of people in the community that don't deserve such treatment and that don't have the resources to leave that community. Or, in cases where the community is not "regional" but simply "being black" where no such resources exist to allow you to remove yourself from it. Now, imagine the looks that you got from the people there, or from the police during your explorations, were the looks you got everywhere you went and the way that police always looked at you no matter where you were or what you were doing. And that there was no way to modify your behavior to avoid getting those looks.

Just because you had a private space that the police were unlikely to insert themselves into doesn't mean everyone else enjoys the same privilege. "Driving while black" and, in times and places where "stop and frisk" policies have been implemented, "walking while black" are enough to get the police involved in some areas. The police are also allowed to take evidence from residences that they mistakenly raid if they had a warrant for next door, and people in poorer, densely populated areas are much more likely to be subjected to such errors.

Not everyone wants to spend every waking moment of their life "winning the debate."

Well, really all you know for certain is that they were convicted of possessing drugs, but that's a whole other conversation.

Of course people in power know the drug deals are going on and aren't stopping them. There is a rather large difference between knowing that a problem exists and having the resources to fix it.

The most recent year I was able to find complete data on was 2014, which put the murder rate in the US at a 51-year low, and was part of a consistent downward trend over the last 25 years.

Well, it is if it's illegal, but only in the literal sense.

The wonderful thing about common sense is that it always agrees with whatever you already believe, and so can be used to reinterpret any evidence to the contrary in a way that means you never have to change your mind about any of your preconceived notions.

A great many terrible and stupid things have been done in the name of common sense. As a general rule, I don't trust it.

It's helpful to remember that it is fairly unlikely that either Hillary or Trump actually wrote their answers personally. Most likely it was a staffer drawing on whatever the candidate's official platform is. Jill Stein may have written her own simply becauseI don't know how many people she has to do this sort of thing for her. There's always the chance one or both did actually write, or at least dictate, their responses, but I would be mildly surprised to learn that was the case.

There are plenty of things that you are not allowed to do in specific places that are also not illegal.