Objection

Ok, what about Buddhist sects that discriminate based on sex?

It's really ambiguous what they're talking about or what they even mean. Here are two things that could both be described as, "Forcing Tibetan children to kill their parents."

• A Tibetan soldier volunteers to join a war, and through sheer chance, they learn that their parents are fighting on the other side of the battlefield. They ask to leave the front and their CO refuses - technically, they've been forced to kill their parents.

• A communist agent abducts a family in the dead of night and hands the child a gun while putting a knife to their sister's throat and telling them if they don't kill their parents, they'll be killed, along with their siblings. This happens systematically across Tibet, and only Tibet.

They could be referencing the Cultural Revolution. A lot of shit happened during this period, including what you described. But to my knowledge, the struggle sessions and such were more the actions of the Red Guards, who were student led paramilitary groups, not the same as the People's Liberation Army that went into Tibet.

So like, what they said was, "the liberation army forced Tibetan children to murder their parents," but, what actually happened (so far as it's possible to connect that claim to anything in reality) was that the PLA failed to maintain control (although they did eventually succeeded in suppressing them) against young radicals denouncing their parents and subjecting them to public humiliation (the Red Guards also committed all sorts of atrocities during this time, I wouldn't be surprised if there were cases of children killing parents but I'm unaware of any specific cases). Which happened decades after the PLA went into Taiwan, which wasn't (to my knowledge) really a main area involved in the chaos.

And that's why I asked for a source.

Is the defining quality of Christianity a set of political beliefs based on your personal interpretation of the Bible? Would it be accurate to say, "There's never been a Christian president in the US," if none of them have lived up to your particular moral standards? Do I, and everyone else, have to consult you specifically any time we want to know if someone is or isn't a Christian?

No, obviously not.

Unlike veganism, the question of what the defining quality of a Christian is is more debatable. If you want to define it as, "following Christ's teachings," then it's impossible to establish any sort of reasonably objective standard since people have vastly different interpretations of those teachings. Have you sold all your possessions and given them to the poor? I doubt it. A strict reading of the text might consider that a requirement.

From an academic perspective, it isn't appropriate to weigh in on one's own personal interpretation of which sects and which people should be considered heretical. We should use unbiased terminology that's consistent with common use and can be commonly understood and based on observable things including (but not necessarily limited to) self-identification. When we debate whether or not someone is/was a Christian, trying to match our own personal interpretation of Christ's teachings with our own personal evaluation of their moral qualities would be an absolute nightmare, and it would be impossible to discuss anything past sectarian lines.

And again, it's not just Christianity that this comes up with. A Buddhist might argue that the Japanese temples that endorsed the country's actions during WWII weren't "real" Buddhists, that if they were actually following Buddha's teachings they wouldn't have done that. Should I also consult you personally every time I want to know who is and isn't a Buddhist? Or do I need to read the whole Pali canon and derive my own interpretation and denounce every Buddhist sect that deviates from it as not being real Buddhists - even if I myself am not one and don't have a dog in that fight?

You might as well be waiting for someone to go on TV and look directly at the camera and say, "I am a dictator" (which Trump even kinda did). We're always going to have elections because they're a valuable tool of controlling the population. Nearly every country in the world has them, including ones that are generally considered dictatorships.

Without elections, the only vehicle of change or expressions of popular will would be actions, and those actions are generally more disruptive and effective than voting is. We didn't always have elections in the first place, and we didn't vote our way out of monarchy.

With elections, people put their anger on hold for years, waiting for the appropriate time to express it, and the way it's expressed is by choosing a different corporate lackey to support. Gerrymandering, corporate finance, a compromised press, etc ensure that will be the case. Even better, they get people forming their whole political identity around their preferred corporate lackey and half the population hating the other half for it, making organizing on a large scale extremely difficult.

It's a very silly place to draw a red line. Even if it happened, you'd still "have to" pay taxes for the same reason you do now, because of force. What, are you paying taxes and following laws and shit right now because you think the US government represents some kind of moral authority?

Archive link for the paywall.

Consumerism is a pox on the nation, this should fix this.

Leftism is when you fix consumerism by rendering common people too poor to buy shit. What a take.

Why are we opposed to exploitation and pollution here at home but are ok when China does it because it allows us to buy a year’s worth of clothes every week for the price of single ethically produced garment??

Well, first off, these tariffs aren't focused on China. They're hitting everyone, including countries with better labor laws and more environmental regulation than the US, such as the EU. Second, the tariffs aren't conditional on countries making improvements, like if you want to argue we should have tariffs based on emissions per capita, that's not an unreasonable position (although we'd have to tariff ourselves somehow), but that's not what's actually happening at all.

Turns out Trump may be a tankie after all.

No, he isn't.

I’m glad to hear they’re hurting and not anyone else.

Unless you're accused of being an immigrant and are deported, or you're trans, or in Yemen or Palestine, or like, have/want a job that isn't subsistence farming. Look at the Depression, it wasn't just investors who were hurt.

Trump might be accidentally causing some good things to happen, but a lot of regular people are going to suffer too.

The example used to illustrate the No True Scotsman fallacy in no way means that it only covers similarly minor things. That's not how logic works, you've completely missed the point.

The claim "No Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge," is falsifiable, because we can first determine whether someone is a Scotsman and then check if they put sugar on their porridge or not. But if it's, "No true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge," where a true Scotsman is defined as someone who would never put sugar on their porridge, then it's a truism, it's just saying, "People who don't put sugar on their porridge don't put sugar on their porridge (also, this has something to do with Scotsmen for some reason)." It's not predictive and it's not falsifiable, and it's just as true for any other group of people defined the same way as it is of Scotsmen. The actual material world has no bearing on the claim and the claim tells us absolutely nothing about the material world.

Likewise, if you're saying "No true Christian would ever commit mass murder," then it's a meaningless claim because you're defining a "true Christian" as someone who would never commit mass murder. So really the claim is, "People who don't commit mass murder don't commit mass murder (also, this has something to do with Christians for some reason)." If I define a true Buddhist or a true Muslim or a true Communist or a true Liberal or a true man or whatever else as being someone of that group who doesn't commit mass murder, then it's just as true of any of those groups as it is of Christianity. The claim that "true Christians" or "bible-believing Christians" don't commit mass murder is a meaningless truism, it's not predictive and it's not falsifiable, even if someone you think is a true, bible-believing Christian and has every appearance of being so goes off and commits mass murder, you only conclude that you were wrong about the person being a true Christian. And that would be equally true of any other group or ideology you apply the standard to.

Personally, I've never had problems with the mods on .ml, but I have several times with .world.

This was a .world mod, not .ml.

The main thing is the bigotry and making marginalized people feel unwelcome and unsafe. Having trans people and Nazis existing in the same space isn't really tenable, in practice, most marginalized people would rather be in a space where their existence and basic rights aren't up for debate and where they won't receive slurs and threats of violence. So the question is, who would you rather have in your community, oppressor or oppressed?

Of course, this person applies this standard blindly by including "tankies" as "right-wingers." She's just abusing a valid argument by using it to dismiss any perspective she doesn't like, left or right, bigoted or accepting, bad faith or good faith, as "right-wing."

forcing Tibetan children to murder their parents

Gonna need a source on that one, chief.