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[quote]The hit parade of the world’s worst human rights violators is out, and it reads like a rap sheet of the usual suspects

The “worst of the worst,â€

The UN's job is to prevent great power war, because the two we had in the first half of the twentieth century really sucked and the next was going to be worse. Pretty much the entire weight of human history is lined up against that. Human right committees et. al. are bolt on, after the fact additions and they're flawed and fucked up because that's what the nations of the world are like and we're still getting used to the idea that nations shouldn't mug other nations and steal their shit.

In a more esoteric way, I also refuse to recognize the existence of the country of Somalia, as it hasn't effectively existed for twenty years and is just a nonsense line drawn in the desert that encompasses Somaliland, pirate coves, and warlordships.

More on topic, how do they make their lists of human rights violations? EDIT: Not saying these places are great, but why leave out certain usual hellholes like the Democratic Republic of the Congo?

To be frank I think the fact that Freedom House consistently rates the US as the pinnacle of human rights and freedom (highest scores possible under their system) casts doubts on its neutrality and objectivity.

Derek Thunder wrote:To be frank I think the fact that Freedom House consistently rates the US as the pinnacle of human rights and freedom (highest scores possible under their system) casts doubts on its neutrality and objectivity.

There are 26 countries that Freedom House rates as the highest scores possible under their system (scale of 1-7 on ratings of Political and Civil Liberties). They are categorically not making the claim that the US is the most free country in the world, only that the US is somewhere in the top 26. I don't think that's in any way an absurd claim, in fact I think the opposite claim is completely absurd.

The scale is meant to represent the overall freedom of nations, not nitpicky issues of no overall importance. It is intended to show numerically the massive societal distinction between a free nation such as the US and an unfree one such as China. While I can, and do, dispute certain specific ratings that they have given, merely reflexively insisting that anyone who claims that the US is a free nation lacks legitimacy is patent nonsense.

General Havoc wrote:There are 26 countries that Freedom House rates as the highest scores possible under their system (scale of 1-7 on ratings of Political and Civil Liberties). They are categorically not making the claim that the US is the most free country in the world, only that the US is somewhere in the top 26. I don't think that's in any way an absurd claim, in fact I think the opposite claim is completely absurd.

The scale is meant to represent the overall freedom of nations, not nitpicky issues of no overall importance. It is intended to show numerically the massive societal distinction between a free nation such as the US and an unfree one such as China. While I can, and do, dispute certain specific ratings that they have given, merely reflexively insisting that anyone who claims that the US is a free nation lacks legitimacy is patent nonsense.

I don't think the fact that the U.S contains 25% of the world's prison population is a nitpick, nor is Guantanamo (still open) or Baghram Air Force Base (still very much open). Or, for that matter, the massive racial and socioeconomic disparities in our justice system (see sentencing guidelines on crack vs. powder cocaine, or three-strikes laws). The United States is not North Korea, but I don't think we currently deserve to be in the top 13% of nations considered 'totally free' and to claim otherwise suggests a lack of introspection.

Section F of the Freedom House methodology (here) lays out their definition of the "rule of law."

- "Are judges appointed and dismissed in a fair and unbiased manner?"

Looking back at the politically-motivated firing of judges by the Bush Administration for failing to prosecute questionable vote fraud charges, I would say this is in doubt.

- "Do judges rule fairly and impartially, or do they commonly render verdicts that favor the government or particular interests, whether in return for bribes or other reasons?"

See: Citizens United vs. FEC, Baker vs. Exxon, and so forth. The current high court reserves a broad bias towards powerful private interests.

- "Do law enforcement officials beat detainees during arrest and interrogation or use excessive force or torture to extract confessions?"

We've admitted to using torture on terror suspects, even US citizens accused of terror plots.

I just don't think the US has earned the right to the 1/1 score assigned to it by Freedom House. Strangely, the 2009 report on the US acknowledges numerous shortcomings on the rights of minorities, although the total lack of acknowledgment of Native Americans seems like a glaring oversight. Still, they glibly assess the U.S. as perfectly free.

Is this another troll? Am I going to be called out for responding to trolling yet again? I ask, because the last time I responded at length to an argument this stupid, I was called out for falling for some inane troll routine, and I am going to take it extremely poorly should that be the case again.

No, nevermind, you know what, whether or not this argument is a troll, it is stupid, and I will treat it as stupidity. Either you believe this, or you do not believe it and wish me to think that you do. In either case you are an idiot.

I will now present my reasons for this assertion:

I don't think the fact that the U.S contains 25% of the world's prison population is a nitpick, nor is Guantanamo (still open) or Baghram Air Force Base (still very much open).

Not only is that a nitpick, but it's an absurd nitpick based on cherry-picked statistics with no context.

First off, the US is the third largest country by population on Earth. The total population of prisoners in our system is going to accordingly be higher than such other "Top tier free" nations as Switzerland or Belgium. We have a racially, ethnically, religiously, and culturally pluralist society, one that takes in hundreds of thousands of immigrants legally and more hundreds of thousands illegally every single year. By design. We have liberal weapons laws and strict ones concerning controlled substances like drugs. This is a mixture that no other country in the first world (if even the world at large) has. We are thus going to have a larger prison population than Iceland.

That being said, we do have the largest incarceration rate per capita in the world (North Korea excepted). The reason we have this however is multifold. It's partly because we commit more crimes per capita than the rest of the developed world, and also because of societal and legal and cultural issues. It is not because we are a prison state wherein those who oppose the government are locked away. This is an index of freedom, not an index of social liberalism. The fact that we have a lot of people in jail on Marijuana charges (while stupid) is entirely beside the point.

As to Guantanamo and Baghram, grow up. The existence of these detention facilities is more complicated than an issue of the evil government trying to oppress virtuous Afghanis. The prisoners in Guantanamo are stateless war combatants that no countries (including nearly every other member of the top tier free list) are willing to take. In wartime, prisoners are taken, and rather than doing what most nations would and simply shooting them, we detained them there. We do not know what to do with them at this point, as the legal status of said prisoners is unclear. NONE of the above factors however is somehow an indictment of US society as being pathologically unfree. This is akin to claiming that because a policeman in Iceland once beat up a suspect, the Icelandic nation is a police state.

It is absurd to characterize the existence of Guantanamo Bay as evidence of the US's unfree nature, particularly given the total lack of reasonable suggestions posed by us or anyone else in the world for how to do away with it. Remember, President Obama tried to close it, and has not yet been successful thereat. I do not believe that this is because he is a fascist.

Or, for that matter, the massive racial and socioeconomic disparities in our justice system (see sentencing guidelines on crack vs. powder cocaine, or three-strikes laws). The United States is not North Korea, but I don't think we currently deserve to be in the top 13% of nations considered 'totally free' and to claim otherwise suggests a lack of introspection.

As I stated above, the racial and socioeconomic disparities in our justice system are due in no small part to the unique racial and socioeconomic conditions prevalent in the country at large relative to other nations. They are not due to the government's pervasive campaign to incarcerate minorities. The socio-economic reality of this country is that there is a disparity in crime rates between racial groups. To claim that therefore the justice system is pervasively racist (as it would have to be in order for your claims that we should not be in the top 13% to have any merit) is to ignore fact and reality. To point to minor factors (such as crack vs. powder sentencing laws) as evidence of pervasive anti-freedom is to be an idiot. And as to the Three Strikes Laws, I truly fail to see how sentencing recidivist violent felons to lengthy jail terms is in some way indicative of our being a police state, nor for that matter a bad idea.

Section F of the Freedom House methodology (here) lays out their definition of the "rule of law."

- "Are judges appointed and dismissed in a fair and unbiased manner?"

Looking back at the politically-motivated firing of judges by the Bush Administration for failing to prosecute questionable vote fraud charges, I would say this is in doubt.

- "Do judges rule fairly and impartially, or do they commonly render verdicts that favor the government or particular interests, whether in return for bribes or other reasons?"

See: Citizens United vs. FEC, Baker vs. Exxon, and so forth. The current high court reserves a broad bias towards powerful private interests.

- "Do law enforcement officials beat detainees during arrest and interrogation or use excessive force or torture to extract confessions?"

We've admitted to using torture on terror suspects, even US citizens accused of terror plots.

Section F of the Freedom House methodology does lay those criteria out. So do Sections A, B, C, D, E, and G. Each one being filled with desperately important criteria to measure the freedom of a society which the United States easily meets in all but a few cases, and those cases only as nitpicks or temporary inconveniences. Moreover, Section F alone contains 24 different criteria. THREE of which you have a problem with. This is beyond cherry-picking. By the methodology listed in Freedom House's criteria, even if we award the US ZERO points for every SINGLE issue that you have brought up, the US still EASILY makes it into the top bracket of nations. To get 1/1, a nation must have higher than a 36/40 in Political Rights and higher than a 53/60 in Civil Rights. Taking everything you just said at face value, the US clears those marks without question.

But even that doesn't cover how idiotic this is, because the reasons you cite for denying the US points are themselves utterly flawed.

Let's go over them again, shall we?

- "Are judges appointed and dismissed in a fair and unbiased manner?"

Looking back at the politically-motivated firing of judges by the Bush Administration for failing to prosecute questionable vote fraud charges, I would say this is in doubt.

We are talking about an entire nation here. A nation of 300,000,000 people. There are over 1200 Federal judges alone, a thousand more district court judges, and tens of thousands of state and municipal judges of all stripes. You're referencing the firing of seven members of the Justice Department, none of whom were judges, by a Presidential administration that is no longer in power. And when those seven men were fired, the result was public record, senatorial hearings, that resulted ultimately in the resignation of the Attorney General of the United States.

Help me out here.

The Executive branch of government in the United States does not have the authority to fire judges in any case. This scandal had nothing whatsoever to do with the way in which judges in the United States are appointed or dismissed, nor does it have anything to do with judges in general, and to claim otherwise is simply to be wrong.

- "Do judges rule fairly and impartially, or do they commonly render verdicts that favor the government or particular interests, whether in return for bribes or other reasons?"

See: Citizens United vs. FEC, Baker vs. Exxon, and so forth. The current high court reserves a broad bias towards powerful private interests.

Excuse me?

Citizens United vs. FEC was not a judicial ruling. It was a finding by the FEC (Federal Elections Commission) that the claim by Citizens United (a conservative non-profit political lobbying group) that trailers for Farenheit 9/11 constituted political advertisement was entirely bogus. The FEC ruled that ads for the movie were not political advertisements, and consequently that the ads could be run as normal (normally, political ads can only be run 60 days before an election). Citizens United was trying to get the trailers for the movie taken off television. The FEC ruled against them. Please explain to me how this is in any way indicative of a broad bias towards powerful private interests?!

And as to the Exxon case? The fact that you disagreed with the ruling does in one case does not equate to a "broad bias towards powerful private interests. I didn't like the ruling either, but it's no different than a thousand other types of rulings in every single country that is on the top tier of this list. Judges, like it or not, deal in the law, not in emotional appeals to sentiment, and we cannot fine Exxon enormous amounts of money just because you don't like them. The amount that Exxon will eventually have to pay in fines is still being hashed out, and will still be hashed out for a long time to come. It does not follow that the US justice system is comprised entirely of plutocrats, which it would have to be for your objection to make any sense on a societal level.

- "Do law enforcement officials beat detainees during arrest and interrogation or use excessive force or torture to extract confessions?"

We've admitted to using torture on terror suspects, even US citizens accused of terror plots.

We admitted that in the past we used waterboarding on enemy combatants. If that's the worst of our tortures, they should give us a medal.

It's probably not the worst of our tortures though, at which point I'll mention that A: This policy was dropped after the Bush Administration left office. B: Said torture was, in any event, restricted to specific individuals. I'm aware that that doesn't make it right. It does however make it a slightly different matter to the routine use of torture on dissidents of all sorts in many nations around the world.

Urban legends and the occasional bad apple to the contrary, you are not tortured in this country for political opposition. You are not even tortured (same caveats) for committing actual, violent crimes. We (extremely stupidly) began employing torture for the interrogation of terrorism suspects at one point. It was an act of barbarism that was unworthy of us as a free nation. It was however, a relatively rare and now stopped act (and if you're going to sit here and blather fantasies of Obama's torture camps to me, you'd best go find someone stupider to speak to). Superpowers sometimes play dirty. It does not make us a police state.

I just don't think the US has earned the right to the 1/1 score assigned to it by Freedom House. Strangely, the 2009 report on the US acknowledges numerous shortcomings on the rights of minorities, although the total lack of acknowledgment of Native Americans seems like a glaring oversight. Still, they glibly assess the U.S. as perfectly free.

You're free to think whatever you want about the US, but as I have demonstrated, your opinion is not backed up by the facts, and in my opinion, is based on your flawed definition of your own political beliefs as the hallmark of freedom in the world. The United States has not only earned the right to that 1/1 score, we have earned it easily. The US is, factually, among the freest nations on the face of the planet, which does not mean that we are not without shortcomings. Every nation, particularly large or powerful nations, possesses shortcomings. I could go down the list of all 26 nations with a 1/1 score and describe to you shortcomings that afflict them commensurate with the minor nitpicks you have cited. I could list you a dozen more that concern the US without breaking a sweat. They do not make us intrinsically unfree. They make us imperfect.

The purpose of the Freedom House rankings is to ascertain and judge the overall level of freedom throughout the world, not to point to specific hot button issues and pretend that they alone determine what a nation's liberties are. It is a comparison, a ranking by overall freedom indexes, in which it is made abundantly clear that while the United States is not perfect, far from it, we are better than the vast majority of the other nations of the world.

Look at those criteria again, the hundreds of criteria that you didn't cite, not the three you did. In almost every single case, the US is obviously awarded full points for freedom in them. Most countries in the world are not. That's the point. That is the reality of much of the rest of the world. Compared with nations where (to take an example), the press is muzzled, the head of state is protected by libel laws, there exists no right to trial by jury, no protection against self-incrimination, nations where minorities are not "disadvantaged" but massacred, repressed, beaten, driven out, or forcibly converted, nations where elections are outright frauds, political parties are jokes or state organs, voters are harassed and attacked regularly, where corruption is pervasive and government action entirely opaque, ethnic cleansing is governmental policy, where censorship is omnipresent, academic freedom nonexistent, where the judiciary is an organ of the ruling party, trade unions are banned, arbitrary arrests are enacted consistently, equality before the law is a fiction, and personal rights are trampled upon... compared to nations like that, is the US in the top 15% of all nations in terms of freedom?

The answer, absolutely. And if you think otherwise, you are simply, frankly, and totally, wrong.

I can assure you that I'm not trolling.

I'm going to address the rest of the points later, but one stuck out.

Citizens United vs. FEC was not a judicial ruling. It was a finding by the FEC (Federal Elections Commission) that the claim by Citizens United (a conservative non-profit political lobbying group) that trailers for Farenheit 9/11 constituted political advertisement was entirely bogus. The FEC ruled that ads for the movie were not political advertisements, and consequently that the ads could be run as normal (normally, political ads can only be run 60 days before an election). Citizens United was trying to get the trailers for the movie taken off television. The FEC ruled against them. Please explain to me how this is in any way indicative of a broad bias towards powerful private interests?!

You, uh, gonna stick to that?

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Citizens+United+vs.+FEC

Citizens United was a sweeping decision by the Supreme Court regarding a pay-per-view movie about Hillary Clinton produced by Citizens United, a corporate-sponsored PAC. The specific issue was whether corporations and corporate-funded interests could advertise for political programs which was illegal under McCain-Feingold. Instead of ruling narrowly on restrictions regarding on-demand programming, or specific limitations on advertisements for pay-per-view programs, the Supreme Court overturned a century of precedent and ruled that corporations were not bound to McCain-Feingold and could spend unlimited money on political campaigning without restrictions.

At least humor me by researching your points before making them.

Derek Thunder wrote:At least humor me by researching your points before making them.

No sir, humor me by specifying which Citizens United vs. the FEC ruling you are actually referring to, as the results I found were in reference to this.

You do not get to make a throwaway mention of a court case, fail to specify what it is you are actually talking about, and then turn around and snark at me for not doing research. This pedantic "let me google that for you" crap is rich coming from someone who thought that the attorneys dismissed in the Justice Department scandal were judges.

Not to mention, I don't see any analysis of that case from you in the above post. I don't see your damning indictment of the US justice system, your arguments, your evidence to back it up. You don't get to gesticulate wildly in the direction of cases you don't like and expect that that it somehow proves your point about society-wide lack of freedom within the United States.

I didn't like that ruling either (I'd forgotten the precise name of it). But it was a ruling that the First Amendment prevented the government from prohibiting corporate entities from financing campaign ads and messages in the way that individuals can. How can possibly stretch that into evidence that the United States is lacking freedom is entirely beyond me. I cite the Chicago Tribune, who editorialized in favor of the ruling, stating that...

"If corporate advocacy may be forbidden as it was under the law in question, it's not just Exxon Mobil and Citigroup that are rendered mute. Nonprofit corporations set up merely to advance goals shared by citizens, such as the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Rifle Association, also have to put a sock in it. So much for the First Amendment goal of fostering debate about public policy."

I don't like the above statement or the ruling it was based upon, but for the fiftieth time, the fact that you do not like a ruling does not make it compelling evidence of a reversion to authoritarian anti-freedom within the United States, and yes, it would have to be that for this ruling to have the slightest to do with the presence or lack of freedom in the United States as a nation.

The ruling was made on sound judicial grounds, not because Exxon-Mobil or whoever bought a judge (let alone all of the ones who ruled in favor). You can disagree with it all you like, and if you want, we can debate its merits and demerits here. But it does not prove your fundamentally flawed thesis, nor would your thesis be tenable even if it did constitute such evidence.

And by the way, next time, address my entire post, or wait until you have the time to do so. If the best you can come up with is the fact that I mixed up two different "Citizens United vs. FEC" rulings, then I don't have a whole hell of a lot to say to you.

First off, the US is the third largest country by population on Earth. The total population of prisoners in our system is going to accordingly be higher than such other "Top tier free" nations as Switzerland or Belgium. We have a racially, ethnically, religiously, and culturally pluralist society, one that takes in hundreds of thousands of immigrants legally and more hundreds of thousands illegally every single year. By design. We have liberal weapons laws and strict ones concerning controlled substances like drugs. This is a mixture that no other country in the first world (if even the world at large) has. We are thus going to have a larger prison population than Iceland.

That being said, we do have the largest incarceration rate per capita in the world (North Korea excepted). The reason we have this however is multifold. It's partly because we commit more crimes per capita than the rest of the developed world, and also because of societal and legal and cultural issues. It is not because we are a prison state wherein those who oppose the government are locked away. This is an index of freedom, not an index of social liberalism. The fact that we have a lot of people in jail on Marijuana charges (while stupid) is entirely beside the point.

The size of the US is irrelevant - we are 4% of the world's population, but have 25% of its prisoners. Within those statistics, when you break it down it's even worse. Currently, 1 in 9 black men between the ages of 24 and 29 are in prison (link). This is in part due to unfair sentencing guidelines that establish much, much, much harsher penalties for "black" drugs such as crack. Also, I don't think you can wave this away as "societal/cultural/legal issues" without it being an indictment of our political system. Our politics intersect with our society, the latter does not dictate the former. Three-strikes laws are also patently unfair - even a petty theft can constitute a third strike that will put someone behind bars for life. Our system also makes little effort to rehabilitate and support convicts, meaning they are more-or-less doomed to the revolving-door system. As for your final point, considering that many states permanently revoke voting rights for convicted felons means that being sent to prison for possessing pot does make one much less free far beyond one's incarceration.

In the United States, 13% of black men are currently unable to vote (link). If this doesn't represent a significant racially-defined limitation on freedom, I'm not sure what does.

We have liberal weapons laws and strict ones concerning controlled substances like drugs.

You're sort of trying to have it both ways by saying that this contributes to our incarceration rate but our government is somehow not culpable for this vis-a-vis human freedom. I'm also not sure it's been made clear that our government's economic policies contribute to the socioeconomic challenges that tend to fuel crime in the first place. We've offshored manufacturing jobs that could provide a stable basis for a community (even providing tax incentives for overseas outsourcing), we've encouraged white flight through development plans that create suburban sprawl and artificially-low gas prices that encourage long-distance commuting, and we've failed to provide adequate education by idiotically tying school funding to property tax revenue.

As to Guantanamo and Baghram, grow up. The existence of these detention facilities is more complicated than an issue of the evil government trying to oppress virtuous Afghanis. The prisoners in Guantanamo are stateless war combatants that no countries (including nearly every other member of the top tier free list) are willing to take. In wartime, prisoners are taken, and rather than doing what most nations would and simply shooting them, we detained them there. We do not know what to do with them at this point, as the legal status of said prisoners is unclear.

Being lectured to 'grow up' is rather amusing. If the choice is a binary between well-intentioned naivete and jaded relativism, I'll choose the former. The problem with Guantanamo is the fact that we've taken men (or bought them from Afghan warlords/bounty hunters in many cases) and placed them in a legal black hole where they are entitled to neither the full protections afforded by the US criminal justice system or the rights accorded to prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention. Additionally, since we're fighting a tactic rather than a real 'enemy,' the men in Gitmo will most likely be imprisoned there without charges or evidence until they die.

"In wartime, prisoners are taken, and rather than doing what most nations would and simply shooting them."

Actually most industrialized nations would probably follow the Geneva Convention as they have done so in the past, unless you have evidence to the contrary.

"Remember, President Obama tried to close it, and has not yet been successful thereat. I do not believe that this is because he is a fascist."

Yes, Obama tried to close it, but if the United States didn't have authoritarian tendencies I would imagine he would have a much easier time doing it. The people in congress who oppose closing Guantanamo didn't appear from thin air, they were elected after all.

The Executive branch of government in the United States does not have the authority to fire judges in any case. This scandal had nothing whatsoever to do with the way in which judges in the United States are appointed or dismissed, nor does it have anything to do with judges in general, and to claim otherwise is simply to be wrong.

Conceded.

Judges, like it or not, deal in the law, not in emotional appeals to sentiment, and we cannot fine Exxon enormous amounts of money just because you don't like them.

Actually it was a jury that assessed Exxon the initial punitive fine, not a judge, and we can fine Exxon an enormous amount of money on account of the enormous long-term societal and economic damage they caused by putting a red-nosed lush in command of an oil tanker. The damage sustained by people living and working in Prince William Sound go far, far beyond the costs of cleanup that Exxon paid (and recovered immediately via insurance) and the ecosystem still has not fully recovered.

I believe that the strong pro-corporate tendencies of the Roberts court makes us less free as a country. Money=speech has become the enshrined law of the land, and it does form a de facto plutocracy even if we're a democracy on paper.

We admitted that in the past we used waterboarding on enemy combatants. If that's the worst of our tortures, they should give us a medal.

It's probably not the worst of our tortures though, at which point I'll mention that A: This policy was dropped after the Bush Administration left office. B: Said torture was, in any event, restricted to specific individuals. I'm aware that that doesn't make it right. It does however make it a slightly different matter to the routine use of torture on dissidents of all sorts in many nations around the world.

An ethically-minded person might conclude that torture constitutes a moral Rubicon that no civilized country should cross regardless of the immediate circumstances (as a matter of national policy). Keep in mind that 70 years ago we found waterboarding a serious-enough violation of human rights that we sent Japanese officers to the gallows for it.

No sir, humor me by specifying which Citizens United vs. the FEC ruling you are actually referring to

I would have assumed that you would know what I was referring to, considering one has been discussed at extreme length for the past year.

And by the way, next time, address my entire post, or wait until you have the time to do so. If the best you can come up with is the fact that I mixed up two different "Citizens United vs. FEC" rulings, then I don't have a whole hell of a lot to say to you.

Forgive me for not being able to shit out unnecessarily verbose walls of text on command. Don't get me wrong, I can see how it might be useful in sandbagging a GM in order to save your level 20 half-dragon cybermancer, but you really let this shit get to you and I can't for the life of me figure out why. I expected some tut-tuts for my China thread, but you replied with a doctoral thesis.

Forgive me for not being able to shit out unnecessarily verbose walls of text on command. Don't get me wrong, I can see how it might be useful in sandbagging a GM in order to save your level 20 half-dragon cybermancer, but you really let this shit get to you and I can't for the life of me figure out why. I expected some tut-tuts for my China thread, but you replied with a doctoral thesis.

Okay this? Is not gonna fly Derek. Because your own posts are not what I would call pocket novel sized in the first place and in the second you cannot make a multi-point view and get whiney because someone replies in length. Futhermore you are just as nerdy as anyone here and should not be attempting covert sneering.

Now speaking as mod, Havoc you will refrain from calling Derek stupid or otherwise insulting him. Derek you will refrain from attempting to act like you're trying to get a seat at the cool kids table at highschool. These are orders and not open to debate. Any whining or "but he started it" will be flushed.

Disagree as violently as you like gentlemen but you're at my forum so you'll do so with a bit of civility.

frigidmagi wrote:Disagree as violently as you like gentlemen but you're at my forum so you'll do so with a bit of civility.

I'll be perfectly honest and civil right now - Knowing myself and my predilection for provocative and sometimes personal rhetoric, I probably can't meet this standard, so rather than go against the wishes of someone I deeply respect I'm going to take myself out of this forum.

When I am arguing in full-throated defense of issues that I believe strongly in, I tend to get both long-winded and abrasive (I doubt this comes as a surprise to anyone). The former I cannot do much about, as the points I'm attempting to make (and respond to) are complex. The latter, however, I do apologize for. Frigid is entirely correct that these matters should be discussed with civility, whatever the ideology. I harbored a suspicion when this thread was brought to my attention that I was somehow being pranked again, and thus reacted with more venom than I should have. This was an unfair discourtesy, and I regret it. I'll try and be more cool-headed in my reply.

I would have assumed that you would know what I was referring to, considering one has been discussed at extreme length for the past year.

A great number of legal matters have been discussed at extreme length for the past year, and as I said, while I was well aware of this case, I didn't recall the name it went by, and my initial search for Citizens United v. FEC uncovered a completely different case. Moreover, having determined which case we are now referring to, I have responded to that one as well.

Nevertheless, I concede that the case you are referencing was, by far, the most important of the cases that went by that name (which leads me to wonder why the hell it didn't come up at all, let alone first on my search). I should have checked and determined what you were actually talking about. My fault. I'll check it more carefully in the future.

Forgive me for not being able to shit out unnecessarily verbose walls of text on command. Don't get me wrong, I can see how it might be useful in sandbagging a GM in order to save your level 20 half-dragon cybermancer, but you really let this shit get to you and I can't for the life of me figure out why. I expected some tut-tuts for my China thread, but you replied with a doctoral thesis.

I believe Frigid responded to this adequately, however I'll just add that if you thought what I posted was too long, you should have seen what my original draft reply was. Believe it or not, what I actually posted was the abridged version.

My view is that if you want to talk intelligently about politics, you don't get to hide behind TL;DR. I like to address the actual substance of an issue, not the five second soundbyte version. I did respond to your China thread with a lengthy and in-depth reply (which I did because I thought it was genuine). It's not a habit I intend to alter.

Now then, to the actual reply...

The size of the US is irrelevant - we are 4% of the world's population, but have 25% of its prisoners. Within those statistics, when you break it down it's even worse. Currently, 1 in 9 black men between the ages of 24 and 29 are in prison (link). This is in part due to unfair sentencing guidelines that establish much, much, much harsher penalties for "black" drugs such as crack. Also, I don't think you can wave this away as "societal/cultural/legal issues" without it being an indictment of our political system. Our politics intersect with our society, the latter does not dictate the former. Three-strikes laws are also patently unfair - even a petty theft can constitute a third strike that will put someone behind bars for life. Our system also makes little effort to rehabilitate and support convicts, meaning they are more-or-less doomed to the revolving-door system. As for your final point, considering that many states permanently revoke voting rights for convicted felons means that being sent to prison for possessing pot does make one much less free far beyond one's incarceration.

In the United States, 13% of black men are currently unable to vote (link). If this doesn't represent a significant racially-defined limitation on freedom, I'm not sure what does.

The size of the United States is absolutely relevant when one is discussing the size of its prison population. The metrics of comparative freedom across the world is a relative measure between nations. It is not irrelevant to point out that the US has thirty times the population of Belgium when ascertaining if the number of prisoners in the US is incommensurate with that of Belgium. Don't get me wrong, it is incommensurate, in that we, per capita, have far more prisoners than Belgium does, but as I've made pains to point out, we're not Belgium. As to this "25% of the world's prisoners statistic," China doesn't even publish how many prisoners they have in jails. Neither do half of the other countries in the world. You do not get to turn around and claim that because we're actually relatively open with our numbers that we're the bad guys of the universe.

Our Social/Legal/Cultural issues are not an indictment of our political system, they're an acknowledgment of reality. Sweden (as an example), which is ethnically, linguistically, and culturally homogeneous, does not get to turn around and claim that the US, which is none of those things, is evil because our de-facto pluralism leads to tension and sometimes even violence. The entire purpose of this index is to compare the relative freedom of nations, and you cannot compare a country that is 98% homogeneous to one that in many states does not even have an ethnic majority without some acknowledgment that we are dealing with two entirely different cases. I'll remind you that the last time Sweden had to deal with a couple hundred black immigrants (from the United States no less, during Vietnam), there were race riots in the streets of Stockholm. We're far from perfect, but we deal with the very real challenges of integration and pluralism far better than almost every other country out there, and we deal with them on a scale that nobody else does.

Incidentally, the Three Strikes Law is not patently unfair. At least by the California statute (which I'm most familiar with), you only get on the Three Strikes track by committing violent felonies. I'm not filled with indignation at the notion that recidivist violent felons are being locked away. We can debate the rights and the wrongs of Three Strikes if you like, but it is not a tool of government repression. Similarly, I'm not familiar with any state wherein your voting rights are permanently removed when you commit a felony. It does take a long time in some cases, longer than it should, but that's true of half of the 1/1 rated nations on the planet. Finally, the fact that 13% of black men are unable to vote is because 13% of black men are in prison for felony offenses. That statistic by itself says many things, none of them terribly complimentary, about society in general, but is it your assertion that those men are in jail solely because they are black? Remember, these men were all convicted by Jury trial (something that isn't even on offer in quite a few nations, including Japan). Is it your assertion that the entire concept of criminal trial by jury is racist? In that case it's racist across the board, and all nations that use it are equally liable (our black incarceration rates are no worse than France's, for instance) Is it your assertion that felons should have the right to vote? That's potentially a defensible position, but not a racial one.

You can't just look at the statistic without context and claim that it means what you think it means. The high rate of incarceration among black men is due to a lot of factors. Unfair sentencing guidelines are undoubtedly one of them, but so are economic factors (blacks are generally poorer than whites and other ethnic groups), and even cultural ones (the idealization of thugs and gangsters among some elements of African American culture). To point to the number by itself and claim that it constitutes a "significant racially-defined limitation on freedom" indicates to me that you have no idea what a racially-defined limitation on freedom actually is. We abolished the poll tax quite a while ago, and just elected a black president. I'd hardly call that compelling evidence of a race-based electoral system.

We have liberal weapons laws and strict ones concerning controlled substances like drugs.

You're sort of trying to have it both ways by saying that this contributes to our incarceration rate but our government is somehow not culpable for this vis-a-vis human freedom. I'm also not sure it's been made clear that our government's economic policies contribute to the socioeconomic challenges that tend to fuel crime in the first place. We've offshored manufacturing jobs that could provide a stable basis for a community (even providing tax incentives for overseas outsourcing), we've encouraged white flight through development plans that create suburban sprawl and artificially-low gas prices that encourage long-distance commuting, and we've failed to provide adequate education by idiotically tying school funding to property tax revenue.

I am explaining that the reality of the situation is that in this country our weapons laws are more liberal and our drug laws more restrictive than most, and the result (not unreasonably) is a lot more crime than in other first world nations. That is not the same thing as claiming that the government established these things as so because they wish to restrict human freedom by promoting crime. All of the policies you just mentioned may be good or bad ideas, but they have nothing whatsoever to do with the overall index of human freedom available in the country. It is not a mark of unfreedom that the government has policies that encourage suburban sprawl, nor that our tax policies tie school funding to property tax revenue. They may be bad ideas, but they are not an indication of our lack of freedom, no matter how much you personally dislike them. They are also, additionally, no different than a myriad of stupid or wrong-headed policies that the governments of every nation in the world have employed for one reason or another.

We are discussing the ranking of the United States as one of the world's freest countries, not your view of offshore manufacturing policy. This index is not a forum wherein everyone is supposed to complain about whatever they dislike about the United States. I don't care for the Electoral College, but I do not believe it somehow causes the United States to be an unfree state.

Being lectured to 'grow up' is rather amusing. If the choice is a binary between well-intentioned naivete and jaded relativism, I'll choose the former. The problem with Guantanamo is the fact that we've taken men (or bought them from Afghan warlords/bounty hunters in many cases) and placed them in a legal black hole where they are entitled to neither the full protections afforded by the US criminal justice system or the rights accorded to prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention. Additionally, since we're fighting a tactic rather than a real 'enemy,' the men in Gitmo will most likely be imprisoned there without charges or evidence until they die.

You can choose the former all you like, it does not magically transform it into reality. The men in question are in a legal black hole because the laws of war were never designed to deal with situations like this. Creating new law for new cases is an ugly process, but to throw up your hands and declare that they will be imprisoned in Gitmo FOREVER is just foolishness. You are making up a future wherein you get to be right with no evidence whatsoever. A number of detainees have already been released once we finally found countries that would take them in. What would you have us do with the rest? Afghanistan won't take them back, and neither will any of the other glorious free paradises around the world (we've asked). Pointing fingers and predicting some made-up dark future is all well and good, but if you have no suggestion as to what should be done, then where exactly do you get standing to talk about the situation as an affront to human freedom?

"In wartime, prisoners are taken, and rather than doing what most nations would and simply shooting them."

Actually most industrialized nations would probably follow the Geneva Convention as they have done so in the past, unless you have evidence to the contrary.

Does any of this ring a bell?

And those are just from industrialized nations. If I start listing developing nations we'll be here all week.

"Remember, President Obama tried to close it, and has not yet been successful thereat. I do not believe that this is because he is a fascist."

Yes, Obama tried to close it, but if the United States didn't have authoritarian tendencies I would imagine he would have a much easier time doing it. The people in congress who oppose closing Guantanamo didn't appear from thin air, they were elected after all.

Oh this is just rich. Guatanamo was not closed because authoritarian congressmen prevented the president from doing so, due to widespread authoritarian tendencies within the populace. Of course. It had nothing whatsoever to do with any Legal Issues associated with doing so. It was all the fault of fascist voters electing authoritarians to office.

Seriously, if you hadn't already insisted that this was for real, that argument would have tripped my "I'm being trolled" alarm. Blame the courts for not foreseeing the issue. Blame the other nations who won't take the prisoners in or Bush for creating the detention camp in the first place. Blame congress for being fearful or acting with regard to looking politically tough on crime. Hell, blame me, personally, for supporting the establishment of Gitmo (which I did). But "authoritarian tendencies in the United States?" Now you're just seeing what you want to see, without reference to facts.

Actually it was a jury that assessed Exxon the initial punitive fine, not a judge, and we can fine Exxon an enormous amount of money on account of the enormous long-term societal and economic damage they caused by putting a red-nosed lush in command of an oil tanker. The damage sustained by people living and working in Prince William Sound go far, far beyond the costs of cleanup that Exxon paid (and recovered immediately via insurance) and the ecosystem still has not fully recovered.

I believe that the strong pro-corporate tendencies of the Roberts court makes us less free as a country. Money=speech has become the enshrined law of the land, and it does form a de facto plutocracy even if we're a democracy on paper.

Yes, it was a jury that assessed Exxon the initial fine, and it was a judge (or rather, many judges) that pointed out that the law is not based around punishing people you perceive as being evil for damages you can neither quantify nor even describe legally. This is a nation of laws, not a nation of opinion courts. I think Exxon should have been nailed to a wall, but it's not about what I think of Exxon, it's about what the law says. We do not employ a Supreme Court because they will return judgments that you personally approve of, we employ them so that they will interpret the law. Waving your hands and shouting that Exxon is evil has no bearing whatsoever on the situation unless you can point to me where they mis-interpreted the law.

Glib slogans like "money=speech" work when written on a protest sign, but they have little-to-nothing to do with the reality of governing and running a nation as large and complex as the United States. The Roberts rulings have been more or less "restrictions on speech are not permitted, even for corporations". If you want to interpret that as plutocracy, you're welcome to (and some have), but not everyone sees the ability for organizations that you dislike to access public debate as a victory for fascism.

The key point, as always, isn't whether you think the US has more or less freedom than some arbitrary utopia, it's whether or not the US has more or less freedom than the other nations of the world. Shall we compare ourselves to Italy? Wherein the entire media (more or less) is controlled directly by the President? Shall we compare ourselves to Turkey? Where journalists are beaten and arrested for speaking out against the regime (in a democracy no less). Find me a nation rated as something other than a 1/1 by this index, and tell me how they are freer than we are.

This is not about all of the various things you dislike about the US.

An ethically-minded person might conclude that torture constitutes a moral Rubicon that no civilized country should cross regardless of the immediate circumstances (as a matter of national policy). Keep in mind that 70 years ago we found waterboarding a serious-enough violation of human rights that we sent Japanese officers to the gallows for it.

Now here you have a real point. I agree, torture is a cancer that destroys the moral integrity of a nation. Independent of whatever else, it is beneath the dignity of the United States (or should be). Nevertheless, there are cases where I feel it may be justified. This is simply my viewpoint on the matter, nor do I believe that we have restricted ourselves to such cases in our use of it over the past bit.

Nevertheless, there are a few salient points here. First off, we sent Japanese officers to the gallows for much much worse than waterboarding. I included links above to Japanese atrocities in WWII, the reading of which is not for the squeamish. Secondly, I know of no nation on Earth, even the smallest ones, that have refrained totally from acts of torture in defense of their own political goals. That is no excuse, we're supposed to be better than the rest of the world, the City on the Hill and all that. But as I have repeated time and again, the index is one of relative ranking of the nations of the world. To be ranked in the top 15% (or so) of nations is not to say that we, any more than any other nation, are perfect. For all I know, we may be dead last among the 26 nations that comprise the 1/1 rating (though I doubt it). But I encourage you all to read over that link again, the one that shows the criteria whereby these nations are ranked. All of those issues that we haven't even touched on here are real issues to an enormous segment of the world's population. We, in the United States (and in 25 other nations) take them all for granted.

We're not perfect, far from it, but we're among the best that have ever been.