How Does Republican Platform Help Middle Class?

And I'm perfectly willing to be helped. Seriously, this isn't a trick. Like when you say: I don't understand what you're talking about. I've given you two examples, now, of how I parsed this statement that you made and each time you were convinced that I was purposefully misrepresenting you.I was simply relating the different ways I've tried to understand this statement of yours. You indicated that both attempts were failures. Well, that's fine! Perfect clarity often eludes people who are trying to communicate.So, could you explain what you mean? Specifically the concept I'm having trouble with is what you mean when you say that a child has no right not to hear what a parent, teacher, or paster says. I've made two efforts to explain what I took that phrase to mean, and you've indicated both times that my understanding was flawed.I don't have a third interpretation, so I'm currently at a loss. Could you elaborate as to what you mean by this claim?Edited by crashfrog, : spelling.

A child has no right to NOT hear what a parent, teacher, pastor, custodian has to say.I really don't see how I can make it any plainer than that.

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

There's no need to repeat it; that's not helping me understand it. But, yes, this is the phrase specifically that I don't understand. Since it's not plain at all, I'm sure you could make it much plainer. For instance:What do you mean by "a right to NOT hear"? How do you envision that a child would take an action to "NOT hear" words spoken by a parent, a teacher, or a pastor? Please give examples for all three, and then explain how, legally, a child would have no right to take those actions if he or she desired.

Nope. Not down the rabbit hole.The audience can see what I have presented, they can see what you have presented, they will decide who has made their case.I'm more than happy with that.Later.

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

Again - seriously not a trick. I'm not making any kind of "case." This isn't a debate we're having. This is a request from me for you to explain a phrase that didn't mean anything intelligible to me. I'm asking you what you mean by "a child does not have a right not to hear a parent, a teacher, or a pastor."I had hoped examples might be illustrative, but ok, your promise to help me understand doesn't extend as far as examples. Whatever. Well, ok, but what do you mean? What does it mean to have, or not have, a "right NOT to hear" someone else's speech?What does that mean?Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

Of course Canada is a country. So is Pakistan, Nigeria, and Argentina. They all have their own laws and legal standards, some of which are quite different from those of the United States. If you're going to argue about Constitutional rights and the First Ammendment, then you are by necessity limited to citing US statutes and case law only. Bringing up how they do things in other countries is irrelevant. As I pointed out, and you ignored: Go look up legal principles. One of the more significant is that of jursidiction. In matters of state law, one state's laws have no force in another state, unless they conflict with fereral laws. Just because I can marry another man in Massachusetts, that doesn't allow me to do so in Georgia. You can't cite Wyoming's' speed limit if you get a ticket in New Jersey. Likewise, Canada has no jurisdiction over the United States, meaning Canadian law is controlling in Canada, not the US, and need not be considered in US courts of law. You yourself brought up this case as evidence to support your claim. In Message 241 Rahvin examined this case, and showed quite convincingly that in fact this case, which you yourself brought to the table, not only did not support your arguement, it disproved it. You haven't offered any specific refutation of his analysis. Instead, first you back-pedeled and called it your weakest case, then you complained that Rahvin hadn't dealt with your other evidence yet, and now you're admitting you were wrong but that it doesn't matter because it's just one case. No, no, no. Rules of debate say, you have to either address your opponent's arguments and evidence with counter-argument and/or your own evidence, or you concede the point in your opponent's favor. What you're doing is the fabled Gish Gallop, and it's not going to win you any points. Did you actually read this case, or did you just Google "brainwashing" and "First Ammendment"? I read it. This is a case in which the Moonies effectively kidnapped adults, kept them separated from their families and imprisoned and through coersion, fraud, isolation, and other unsavory means, attempted to turn them into virtual slaves of the Unification Church. All of the above were explicity cited by the court in Molko as necessary elements of brainwashing, as you yourself admit. Unless you want to assert that setting curfews, deciding to serve meatloaf instead of pizza for dinner, and insisting on homework being done before bedtime are can also be considered elements of brainwashing, then again, this case is irrelevant and fails to support your hypothesis.Find me a case in which Nazi or Mormon or Green Party parents kept their child in a closet, denied him meals, and subjected him to hours and hours of coersive lectures about their beliefs, then you'll have valid case of brainwashing. That's also physical and emotional abuse, and certainly potential grounds for the loss of parental rights. But by themselves, lectures and "indoctrination" do not rise to the level of "brainwashing." No, as I've pointed out, Canada doesn't count in this discussion. If you fail to undertand that, then you don't know enough about the law to present a legal argument.What does count is that these are all, so far as I can tell, divorce cases. Pay attention to this: in a divorce, neither parent is going to retain full custodial rights over his or her children. {ABE: What I meant to say here was that both parents are not going to retain full custodial rights over their children. It could go all to one, all to the other, or they could be divided somehow. But you can't have both parents retaining 100% of their custodial rights in a divorce. The math doesn't work out.} A judge must necessarily limit one or both parent's rights. Someone has to lose. And in limiting those rights, that judge is going to take a lot of factors into consideraton. Some are fair (dad is in jail for selling crystal meth) and some less so, depending on your point of view (mom is Wiccan). In the cases you've cited, being a nutjob racist has been part of a pattern of undesirable behavior, and that's what cost a parent custodial rights. As has been pointed out, the courts have the ability to deny both parents custody of their children. In no relevant case that you've cited has a judge denied custodial grounds on the sole basis of a parent being a racist asshole. You have no case in which parents, absent a determination of custody in a divorce case or absent a finding of physical abuse, have lost custodial rights over their children simply because of "indoctrination." No you haven't. Not yet, anyway, and it doesn't appear that you're likely to. Yes, we are talking about US law. If you start bringing in the legal standards of other countries, then the conversation becomes too unbounded to be meaningful anymore.And while US courts have on occassion consulted the laws of other countries in rendering decisions, they have never held any other country's laws as determinative or controlling. Now you want to claim that you're talking about "universal rights." That's moving the goalposts, friend. Please come up with an international treaty or agreement that forbids "brainwashing" of children, and I'll consider it. As you yourself are about to admit, brainwashing by definition must contain elements of coersion. You don't spell them out, but I will: threats, physical abuse, isolation, sleep deprivation, etc. Without those, then you are indeed just talking about teaching.Telling your child that Jews are subhuman or that flouride in the water is a Communist plot is teaching. Slapping him if he doesn't say "Heil Hitler" before breakfast, or making him spend the night in the garage until he has memorized all of Mao's Little Red Book can be considered "brainwashing." There's a significant difference between the two that you're not seeing, or at least you're not admiting to. Well, I think that you're moving the goalposts again, but let's set that aside. You yourself now admit that coersion is a necessary element of brainwashing. Indoctrination by itself does not meet the standard of brainwashing. Can you provide evidence that parents have used any of the techniques I've mentioned in order to force their children to believe as they do. If you can, then you have elements of physical and emotional abuse that I agree are grounds to curtail or limit a parent's custodial rights. If you can't, then you don't have brainwashing, you have parents raising their children to be just as vile as they are. I absolutely agree that children are human beings with rights. They should be raised with love and understanding, and taught to respect the dignity of other human beings. I despise parents who raise their kids to be racists, or to believe that men have ownership rights over their wives, to take another example. But just because something is wrong, that doesn't alway make it illegal.Edited by ZenMonkey, : Added a clarification, probably unnecessarily.

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I have no time for lies and fantasy, and neither should you. Enjoy or die.
-John LydonWhat's the difference between a conspiracy theorist and a new puppy? The puppy eventually grows up and quits whining.
-Steven DutchI never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it. - John Stuart Mill

Yes, I rather expect they are. Is there some reason to be US-centric, here? I'm not arguing about the Constitution and the First Amendment. I'm arguing a point about basic human rights. Neither the US constitution nor the First Amendment can abridge someone's innate human rights, because those rights are independent of, and therefore superior to, any law of any nation. I've never made any claim to the contrary. Sure, and I explained how it did so even though, ultimately, the court did not choose to remove custody from the racist parent. The only reason that you and Rahvin know that didn't happen is because I already told you it didn't happen. If that was somehow a refutation of my entire point, then why on Earth would I have offered it up as support?That makes no sense. As I explained, the court had the opportunity to reject the claim of unfitness due to racist association on the basis of a First Amendment claim to freedom of speech and association, and specifically chose not to. I'll repeat - they specifically did not reject the claim on the basis that you and Rahvin claim that they must. Thus, it's evidence against your position and evidence in favor of mine, which is that there is no controlling First Amendment right to indoctrinate your children in racism that supersedes their basic human right against unwanted indoctrination. I'm not at all engaged in the Gish Gallop. The Gish Gallop is when you speed on to the next item of evidence without addressing the refutation of the last, and then you wind up at a place where you've presented a dozen pieces of evidence that each have been refuted.That hasn't happened - I've gone back and forth with you and Rahvin about that single example, and defended it against your refutations. There's been no Gallop here because you and Rahvin have both adamantly refused to consider any piece of evidence but the one I've acknowledged as the weakest. The game here is cherry-picking, and it's the two of you who are engaged in it. What "rule of debate" says that a successful attack against a single piece of evidence means I forfeit the entire debate? That's not in Robert's Rules of Order, that's not in the rules of Parlimentary Debate, that's not in the rules of the IPDA, and it's certainly not how evidence is handled in a legal trial - disqualifying a single piece of evidence, for instance, isn't a basis to have the entire trial dismissed.So, no. Even if Rahvin was correct about the case - which I've demonstrated, he's not - that doesn't "disprove" my argument, because it would continue to rest on all the other evidence in its favor, which you and Rahvin have stated that you have no intention of reading.Not even attempting to grapple with your opponent's evidence? That is a debate forfeiture. Indeed. And it was found that, despite an assertion by the Unification Church that they had a First Amendment right to practice as they saw fit, they had in fact no right to brainwash people. That people, as a matter of a basic human right, have a right to be free of coercive thought control.I never stated that Molko vs. Unification Church had anything to do with children. Molko vs. Unification Church is a direct contradiction to your claim that there's no legal definition of "brainwashing" as a crime.Remember when you made that claim? It was in Message 297:

quote:

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The courts are not, as you seem to believe, saying that a parent who "brainwashes" his child is committing a crime or is unfit per se.

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Did you make that claim, or didn't you? Who put those words in your post if not you? If what you're saying here is that courts are likely to take a dim view of a parent's association with a racist organization, or a history of racist remarks, and conclude that exposure to same is not in the best interests of the child - that's the claim I've been making throughout. You're agreeing with me.If there were a universal, unabridged right of a parent to raise a racist child, courts would not be able to use that as a basis for terminating parental custody. Yet, as you admit, they do. Yes. Teaching, on the other hand, does not involve elements of coercion. Instruction is not a coercive process; it's a voluntary process. How can I be "moving the goalposts" when I'm just repeating things I said a dozen posts ago? I don't recall ever denying that vile parents frequently succeed in raising vile children. Where have I ever claimed that this doesn't occur? Please be specific. You're quite right, of course. Luckily, in this case we're talking about conduct that is both wrong and illegal - brainwashing.

But it's not just the weakest, Crash; it's been demonstrated to you time and again that it is a direct refutation of your hypothesis. Rahvin, et al. may just as well have presented that evidence first in a counter argument, because it is so perfectly suited to disproving your claims. Fortunately for them, though, they didn't have to go find the disproof: you provided it yourself.As for the other examples, they're irrelevant; your argument's been falsified and no amount of other evidence will change that.JonEdited by Jon, : clarity

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Check out No webpage found at provided URL: Apollo's Temple!
Ignorance is temporary; you should be able to overcome it. - nwr

There is no "hypothesis", as I've explained. A single counterexample - even if it were a counterexample, which it's not - wouldn't prove anything. It would give me one less piece of evidence, but my argument would still rest on the other half-dozen examples I gave. How would one example of a single court finding racism less harmful than abuse and alcoholism prove that there's a First Amendment right to brainwash your children, particularly when the court didn't rule on any issue having anything to do with the First Amendment?Neither you nor Rahvin seem to understand how arguments are supported by evidence. I'm not making an argument based on a logical syllogism, such that a single counterexample would prove the inverse. I'm describing a general legal trend based on a weight of evidence. Even were I to grant the other side the single "Prussian Blue" example, the weight of evidence is still on my side, four to one. And I can, of course, go off and find other examples where courts dissolved parental custody based on the parent's involvement with white supremacy groups, etc.It would be nice if the three of you could stop repeating the same refuted, wrong point about "disproving my hypothesis." I've not offered a hypothesis of any kind. I'm defending a position with a weight of evidence, which is why you forfeit if you don't address the entire weight of evidence. Whatever you decide to ignore remains evidence for my position. That's how debates work.Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

Or, to repeat myself:

quote:

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You're like a Creationist arguing that birds did not evolve from dinosaurs, asserting that because Archeoraptor liaoningensis was a hoax, all of paleontology must be. When other examples of feathered dinosaurs are presented, you assert that you "don't have the time" to look over the evidence.

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Just as Archeoraptor liaoningensis doesn't disprove the existence of feathered dinosaurs, neither does the "Prussian Blue" case disprove that courts can and have dissolved parental custody based entirely on a parent's association with racist causes, racist ideology, white supremacy organizations, etc.

You claim that a coin toss will always come up heads. You toss coins, and ignore the results that come up tails. Your argument that the coin toss will always come up heads is supported by the other examples.

If you want to make this your argument, then perhaps we can work with it.You'll still have to show how your other examples demonstrate a trend of removing children from homes because of the racial bigotry of the parents. Since a lot has been made over the fact that all your cases are divorce custodial hearings, perhaps you can present some examples which do not involve divorce or other clearly contributory factors in the decision to move a child from the home of racist parents.Jon

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Check out No webpage found at provided URL: Apollo's Temple!
Ignorance is temporary; you should be able to overcome it. - nwr

Imagine if you will, a child is told by a parent to turn off the television and clean up his room. The child is told by a teacher to put away the comic book and work the problems on the board. The child is told by a priest to quit complaining and take it up the ass like a man. Okay, bad example. The child is told by a pastor to stop disrupting the Sunday school lesson. This child then files suit against the parent, teacher and pastor, claiming he has a right to not listen to them.What do you think a judge would do with that suit?

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Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. -- Thomas Jefferson

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We see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- Phat

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It has always struck me as odd that fundies devote so much time and effort into trying to find a naturalistic explanation for their mythical flood, while looking for magical explanations for things that actually happened. -- Dr. Adequate

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...creationists have a great way to detect fraud and it doesn't take 8 or 40 years or even a scientific degree to spot the fraud--'if it disagrees with the bible then it is wrong'.... -- archaeologist

Thank you for getting directly to the center of it, Rahvin. You've simply misunderstood the terms of my position. I didn't claim that a coin toss will always come up heads, and I didn't claim that every single court, under every single circumstance, would find racist association and ideology worse than every other conceivable trait.I merely claimed that a parent could lose custody of their children on the basis of their racism, which I demonstrated. Not that they always would. If I had indeed made the universal claim, one counterexample would have proved me wrong.I made that mistake once, years ago. I don't make it any more.

The Winnipeg case was not a divorce proceeding, so I've already met this standard.