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[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

It's funny (or perhaps, more dryly, lamentably expected) that you'd take my comment as a shot at Biden.

I'm making a much broader statement about politics and society generally. It is quite simple: Somewhere along the line, not exactly sure where, politicians and policy wonks decided that they should tell others how to live, rather than merely maintain order.

Of course, this is needed sometimes. We probably shouldn't legalize heroin. And we shouldn't have countenanced segregation, or discrimination. But... we have passed laws - limited laws - to maintain the guardrails necessary.

Laws that impose restrictions on how people want to live ought to exist in the manner Clinton characterized abortion - safe, legal, and rare. These measures should be imposed only where there is dire necessity. In every instance, the govt should do all it can to avoid engaging in any form of social engineering.

Elective social engineering should be verboten, unconstitutional. Nobody in govt has any business, or any proper place, forcing social change that they think is best. This goes for pushing DEI through govt and seeking to preclude it through govt.

These things are overreaches. They are not w/in the purview of govt, which should be exceedingly limited.

And the reasons these problematic and damaging policy edicts exist stems from another problem - perhaps the biggest problem today, and the sourse of our division: People in power trying to reshape society as they think it ought to be.

These people are arrogant, and stupid, and none have ever considered the Law of Unintended Consequences. They are the rot at the core of this dysfunctional country. Until we get back to the notion that govt should be small, limited, and apply the most minimal of guardrails, allowing people to enjoy the freedom to live as they want, and allow their neighbor who lives differently to live how he/she wants, we're fucked.

You do your thing; I'll do mine. It isn't a fucking hard concept. It's the bedrock of liberty. And people in govt need to be reminded of that. But they won't be... Because they are sociopaths, egomaniacs, who think they should be able to craft society to look they way they think it ought to look.

If you want to control other people, you should never be allowed any position of power.

It wasn't a shot at Biden, obviously. It was both-sidesism. You have a pathological need to say that both sides of the political spectrum are similar.

And your idea that we need to "get back to the notion that government should be small, limited, and apply the most minimal of guardrails" is a nostalgia for something we have never had. "Allowing people the freedom to live as they want" doesn't work, because the freedom many people want is to disadvantage other people. I would like to be free from worrying about someone shooting up my children's school, and you would like to be free to carry a semi-automatic rifle when you go out, and so on.