Russell Moore is awesome. Been a huge fan of his for a long time. Got me to actually buy a subscription to ChristianityToday when he became Editor in Chief.

He got kicked out of the SBC ages ago though. He was the head of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Council, which is the public policy arm of the SBC. The Executive Council ran him out back in 2016 for saying refugees were people and that maybe the SBC should be doing more to combat internal sexual abuse.

If you haven’t read some of his stuff from around that time, I highly recommend it. Some of the stuff that went down is absolutely insane, and I have made mad respect for how he managed it all. Hugely upstanding dude.

Well, not every metric. I bet the computers generated them way faster, lol. :P

To be clear, harassment and defamation are crimes in the US as well. Freedom of speech doesn’t mean that you can harm people with your speech with impunity. It’s a prohibition on the government from meddling with political speech, especially that of people who are detractors of the government.

I think the issue is that, while a country is certainly allowed to write it’s own laws, the idea that it is deeply fundamentally immoral for the government to prevent someone from saying something (or compel them to say something) is very deeply baked into the American zeitgeist (of which I am a part.)

So in the same way that a country is perfectly within its sovereign rights to pass a law that women are property or minorities don’t have the right to vote, I can still say that it feels wrong of them to do so.

And I would also decry a country that kicks out a company that chooses to employ women or minorities in violation of such a law, even if that is technically their sovereign right to do so.

Printing Nazi propaganda isn’t illegal in the US.

And I realize this isn’t in the US, obviously. But I think that the idea that the government shouldn’t be able to ban people from saying things, or compel them to say things, is so baked into the American zeitgeist (of which I am a member), that it feels wrong in a fundamental moral sense when it happens.

It’s the old, “I don’t agree with anything that man says, but I’ll defend to the death his right to say it,” thing.

I can see both sides on this one I think?

Out of curiosity, would you feel differently about this if it had been a print newsletter or physical book publisher that was printing Nazi propaganda that got shutdown because they refused to stop printing Nazi propaganda?

If so, what’s the substantive difference? If not, are you affirming banning people from publishing books based on ideological grounds?

Obviously banning books is bad, but obviously Nazis are bad, and that’s a hard square to circle.

Here’s the note taking and editors page of awesome-selfhosted. Looks like there are a few contenders in there. DailyTxT looks decent for your use case.

https://awesome-selfhosted.net/tags/note-taking--editors.html

Why not just compare the model 3 to an 18-wheeler then? Those weigh way more. Would have made his point better.

And it’s a completely meaningful comparison, as long as you throw away the fact that different vehicles are used for different things.

A model 3 to an f150 is absolutely apples and oranges.

What about it being mandated makes it unethical?

Is it the “military” part of it? Cause I think that neither of us are proposing this as a “fight and die” thing.

If it’s just the mandate in general, would you say taxes are unethical? It’s the government taking a portion of the fruits of your labor for civic gain.

Is mandatory schooling unethical? It’s the government mandating what you do with your life in large part between the ages of 6 and 17.

I just fail to see what makes this meaningfully different from any number of things that we already happily accept.

I mean, I still prefer my pitch to yours, but I wouldn’t be sad with your idea either.

I don’t think your pitch really combats the “people won’t actually want to do the work” issue. I think in either example you’ll have a lot of people who are “just here so I don’t get fined,” as it were.

But I think you’re overstating that issue in either case. Will it have that issue, sure. But so does the military writ large. Does it impact efficiency, sure. But making an efficient, well oiled machine isn’t exactly the point.

But other than that, reading your proposal again, I kinda think that the only thing that makes your proposal different from mine is the mandatory nature of the service.

The benefits you outlined are commensurate with the lower enlisted ranks in the military, so like, yeah, that’s what I’m proposing I guess.

I think the benefits of forcing people to leave their bubbles justifies the forced nature of mandatory service. It a means of helping young people escape cycles of abuse, and exposing them to other cultures. It’s also a great equalizer, in that it effects poor and rich alike, where your system ends up just admitting poor people who are desperate (not unlike the military as it stands.)

I’d also be open to having a program option where you can defer up to 5yrs to pursue a college degree if it’s in a relevant field (civil engineering, etc) and do your mandatory service afterwards utilizing those skills. The program still pays for that college time but gets relevant use out of you at the end. This prevents people who know what they want to do from having to delay and gives them relevant job experience right out of the gate as a resume builder.

I actually kinda support a mandatory civil service? Hear me out.

First, while I think structuring it like the military makes sense from an organizational standpoint, I think the focus would be on civil works projects. Maintaining national parks, infrastructure projects like federal interstate system improvements, etc.

This would serve as a way to get a big influx of money and labor into these large scale infrastructure projects in a way that’s bipartisan. The Republicans would like it because it’s cheap and they support mandatory military service. The Democrats would like it because it’s a big public works project that creates jobs and builds out infrastructure.

I think it would also be a unifier and help build a sense of national identity and break people out of their insular bubbles. They say travel is the antidote to bigotry. This would get people from all parts of this nation travelling around and intermingling. The son of a clansman from Arkansas would be exposed to, and have to work closely with, queer people from SoCal. The young gang member from Detroit would be able to get away for a few years and perhaps reinvent themselves. The son of the billionaire will have to work hand and hand and side by side with the kid raised penniless in the foster system.

It gives people a precious few years after highschool to see the nation and not have to make huge decisions about their future careers at 16 years old. It can expose them to different fields of work, and teach them skill to best prepare them for their futures.

All in all, I think a system like this could do a lot of good, both for the people in it, and for our nations failing public works.

Had the same thought, lol. :)

Me: I’m questioning the premise of this comic. I think it’s flawed.

You: Oh yeah? Did you see how it worked out for the characters in the comic? Did ya think about that?

Ideally through the civic channels that exist to accomplish change. Run for office. Campaign for reform. Pass the BAR and join a firm that does pro-bono work fighting for important issues.

But if all that fails, there is certainly a point where the people need to rise up and overthrow an unjust government.

But what I’m arguing is never justified is violence against other citizens just because they benefit from the unjust system. If the system is unjust, fix the system, don’t lash out at those who just benefit from it.

I think my issue is less with the idea that property is protected with violence.

The point of the original comic though was that one is justified in using violence to take from the rich because they only have/maintain their property with violence.

But if all property is maintained by violence, am I not then justified in taking any property I see fit? If so, is it free reign to take the property of those whose ability to protect it with violence is minimal? Am I justified in stealing from children or the disabled, since they are protecting their property with the threat of violence?

The fact of the matter is that none of us want to live in that world, so we give over that threat of violence to the state. The state holds a monopoly on violence and notionally uses it to meet out it’s use in an equitable and just way.

When the state is bad at that, that can be reason to work towards the restructure of the state, but it’s never a reason (imo) to simply violate the law.

I mean, I think you’re hugely discounting psychological barriers, if nothing else. Most people are decent and wouldn’t steal the blanket, even if they wanted it.

Ownership of things is a pretty intrinsic part of human existence, and humans are deeply social creatures. There are a lot of non-physical aspects that influence people’s concept of ownership.

So the blanket my grandmother knitted me when I was a baby? Am I justifying my ownership of that property via coercion and the threat of violence?

All property is gained and maintained through violence?

Does this mean any property, or just land ownership?

Is there a value threshold below which it becomes immoral to take someone’s property from them?

I see this position bandied about sometimes, and I’m always curious what people actually think it means.

Why not just launch it directly but background the process so it doesn’t hang up your terminal?