Ironically, this will increase illegal immigration. But maybe that’s what they want?

But Trump has not been accused of any criminal wrongdoing, and he and his team have previously derided Epstein as a “creep” whom Trump expelled from his club.

I’ll just leave this here: https://www.cleveland13news.com/story/old-epstein-allegations-resurface-online-amid-trump-and-musk-feud-as-anonymous-woman-claims-direct-i

I think you’re exaggerating a bit here. I never said it was easy but society is chock full of people who have exited religion. For the ones that are more cultlike it may be more difficult but otherwise it’s fairly common for people to realize it’s nonsense and leave.

The ones where it’s truly borderline impossible are where the religion is intwined with the state. In Islamist countries you can be prosecuted for leaving your religion. But is that a problem with religion or with government? To some extent it’s both but the real issue is the ability of people to do violence to you with impunity. In modern society this is a feature of government and not religion.

Well specifically with genital mutilation and pedophilia it seems to be common across all abrahamic religions (maybe not equally in every sect though).

We can quibble about what is truly voluntary but I just mean you’re free to stop participating any time. If you decide you no longer want to follow their silly rules then you don’t have to. Governments don’t have that option unless you want to leave the country but that’s not reasonable.

Fair but it’s still more voluntary than stupid attempts by the government to tell people how to dress.

The solution is to cultivate an educated, tolerant culture. This rule is a step in the opposite direction.

How we dress or adorn ourselves is a fundamental part of human freedom of expression and I think it needs to be taken way more seriously than it typically is in most societies.

You wouldn’t steal an oil tanker… oh wait.

True but I mean no one respects child autonomy anyway, so we would need to levy that criticism far more widely if we want to take it seriously.

Plus I’m not sure I trust governments to protect child welfare more than their parents do. Parents are imperfect but when governments get it wrong the consequences are far more catastrophic.

They’ve never been for small government. This lie needs to be called out every single time.

It’s a little weird to call out specific religions here for behavior they all engage in. Or at least all of the abrahamic ones, not as familiar with others.

Anyway yeah religions are bad but as long as we live in a world where they are voluntary and government is not then I’m going to be a bit more upset about one than the other.

Pretty hard to say since they both go so far back, and in past times there was no distinction between them.

Religion today is voluntary, at least in most of the world.

Banning religion is just replacing one master with another. No thanks.

Different country. Gotta read carefully lol

Paul Ryan is that you?

This author: “Won’t someone please think of the poor, oppressed motorists?”

Governments and telling people how they’re allowed to dress. Name a more iconic duo.

Well your labels are inaccurate in that case. And those axes are not particularly independent from one another.

While I personally agree that the traditional political compass is a flawed and subjective view of the diversity of political views, it does a fairly good job of quantifying some differences that exist within the left and right that often confuse people otherwise. And it does seem to adequately categorize the vast majority of people in the west, even if imperfectly. So I don’t really get all the hate.

But you’ve got people who are normally in the auth-left quadrant in the lib-left one. This confuses me.

Sorry, I guess I misunderstood. I thought you were saying the stories were just made up.

What happened to the other two quadrants?

If you’re implying these are contradictory then you need to work on your media literacy.

The hierarchies present in the USSR didn’t take the form of income inequality. You’re taking a metric that is very useful for analyzing capitalist countries and using it in a context where it doesn’t make much sense.

Anyway, the comparison with the west isn’t really relevant to the comparison I would make in that case, which would be between the initial revolutionary movement and where it ended up.