Just so HN can see what was later edited out, here’s the earlier “mask off” version of your most recent comment:
> Congratulations, you saw my earlier versions. They were much less kind, because you're frankly rather a dishonest and unlikable human being of a particular sort that I think our country and society would be better without, and my lesser nature originally won out. Post the screenshots if you like, I can't imagine why you think I'd care.
> Violence isn't criticism. And yes, if you try to run over law enforcement, that's violence by which one will absolutely ‘FAFO’.
> Dress up your extremism however you like. We're not engaging in debate on the battlefield of your choosing, we're enacting and enforcing the law on our terms. If you don't like it, vote.
> If you choose to instead support the kind of hysteria and lawless violence that led to that women's death, the obvious and natural consequences are on your head.
For the record: saying things like “society would be better without people like you” and “we’re not engaging in debate… enforcing the law on our terms” is not a defense of the rule of law, it’s contempt for pluralism dressed up as seriousness.
The American project (very explicitly influenced by Enlightenment liberalism) doesn’t rest on “our terms,” loyalty tests, or treating dissent as culpable. It rests on the opposite: argument, equal rights, due process, and state power constrained by transparent rules and oversight. When someone’s instinct is to skip debate and sanctify enforcement, that isn’t “law and order.” It’s the anti-Enlightenment impulse the Constitution was designed to restrain.
If you want to defend policy, do that: cite the authority and justify the scope. If you want to argue that disagreement itself is illegitimate and that enforcement answers to “our terms,” then you’re not defending America, you’re arguing against the principles it was founded to protect.
Imagine believing this is a gotcha; not that anyone else has followed this thread this far, but if they have, I'd point them to your original posts about "boots on the neck" and this being the rise of a new nazism.
And no, we're no longer engaging in debate with those who do not engage earnestly or honestly, but who instead foment violence and call it protest. On that note, have a nice day and next few years.
> Congratulations, you saw my earlier versions. They were much less kind, because you're frankly rather a dishonest and unlikable human being of a particular sort that I think our country and society would be better without, and my lesser nature originally won out. Post the screenshots if you like, I can't imagine why you think I'd care.
> Violence isn't criticism. And yes, if you try to run over law enforcement, that's violence by which one will absolutely ‘FAFO’.
> Dress up your extremism however you like. We're not engaging in debate on the battlefield of your choosing, we're enacting and enforcing the law on our terms. If you don't like it, vote.
> If you choose to instead support the kind of hysteria and lawless violence that led to that women's death, the obvious and natural consequences are on your head.
For the record: saying things like “society would be better without people like you” and “we’re not engaging in debate… enforcing the law on our terms” is not a defense of the rule of law, it’s contempt for pluralism dressed up as seriousness.
The American project (very explicitly influenced by Enlightenment liberalism) doesn’t rest on “our terms,” loyalty tests, or treating dissent as culpable. It rests on the opposite: argument, equal rights, due process, and state power constrained by transparent rules and oversight. When someone’s instinct is to skip debate and sanctify enforcement, that isn’t “law and order.” It’s the anti-Enlightenment impulse the Constitution was designed to restrain.
If you want to defend policy, do that: cite the authority and justify the scope. If you want to argue that disagreement itself is illegitimate and that enforcement answers to “our terms,” then you’re not defending America, you’re arguing against the principles it was founded to protect.