• Melllvar@startrek.website
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    10 months ago

    Points of interest include (lower numbers are better):

    • 22nd in terms of gun rights
    • 50th in terms of recreational marijuana, but 17th for tobacco and 10th for alcohol.
    • 42nd in asset forfeiture
    • 50th in travel freedom
    • 1st in terms of campaign finance freedom

    https://www.freedominthe50states.org

  • AnneBonny@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    10 months ago

    “For some people who may not love freedom as much as I do, you might say, well, we’ll trade off other values, equality, equity, you know, preventing people from doing bad things to themselves even if they were free,” Ruger said. “Look, that’s fine. But the fact is, if you love freedom, you have to let people and individuals make the choices that they make for themselves, again as long as they’re not directly harming other people.”

    Yep.

  • somethingsnappy@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    Now that the US doesn’t actually need Texas for anything, can we just let them secede and offer amnesty to reasonable people?

        • DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe
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          10 months ago

          Only state to fight a war for slavery twice, and proud of both times.

          Currently offering two Republican Senators and 25/13 Representatives in favor of Republicans, basically a Republican supermajority.

          Headquarters of the Koch propaganda empire. World headquarters of climate denial propagandists in general.

          Favored state of dumbasses who are both unhinged American exceptionalists and secessionists, somehow.

          America would literally be better off with Texas, and a majority of the ruling party wants it to, sooooo

          Bye Felisha.

  • Dagwood222@lemm.ee
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    10 months ago

    [off topic?]

    A while back, someone posted a question, 'why do all Socialist countries fail?"

    I pointed out that Canada seemed to be robust. He shot back a message that the Right Wing Heritage Foundation had deemed Canada freer than the United States.

    I then asked why we couldn’t have Canadian style healthcare in the USA, since Canada wasn’t a Socialist country?

    He never got back to me.

    • DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe
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      10 months ago

      Just to be clear, Canada is definitely not a socialist country. If your tactic was just to bait him into the Healthcare pill that’s cool and all but misusing terms to make points tends to backfire in the end.

      • Dagwood222@lemm.ee
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        10 months ago

        If you think about it, my correspondent was the one misusing terms. He could have said that Obama’s ACA was based on a plan GOP Mitt Romney introduced. He was so scared of the Socialist boogeyman that he couldn’t handle the idea that a capitalist country could have laws to help the citizens.

  • yesman@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    Cato Institute

    Remember, these are the people who think freedom is child prostitutes working for heroin.

    • stembolts@programming.dev
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      10 months ago

      What? Please elaborate.

      This just screams, “I’m going to sprinkle some partially true information, then rely on you to make wild inferences.”

      So, please, talk more. These types of claims typically will either… 1. teach me something I didn’t know, or 2. disintegrate immediately under scrutiny of explanation.

      I’m open to either outcome.

      • TargaryenTKE@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        Not OP, but the Cato Institute is an American Libertarian think-tank founded by one of the Koch brothers (and others). I’m NOT going to try to look up in OP’s specific claim, but they are mostly extreme anarcho-capitalists. Massively oversimplifying here, but they believe in objectively false things like “big government bad, big business good” and “society should BE the free market” and “Ayn Rand is a good author”

        Some more extreme Libertarians believe you should be able to buy/sell literally everything, i.e. guns, drugs, children’s teeth, whatever you can think of.

          • TargaryenTKE@lemmy.world
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            10 months ago

            Personally, I’m less concerned about what they want to make legal than I am about what they want to be morally acceptable. Guns, legal to sell, morality is questionable (depends on the buyer and the purpose). Drugs, you’re right. Making them legal would help in some ways, yes. Morality? Again, it depends on a lot of things, but GENERALLY SPEAKING, they can/are often pushed on the most vulnerable members of society. Children’s teeth? Yeah, it’s legal in the U.S. Should it be? I would argue no. Honestly, I only put that in as a reference to Danger 5 (home of the “Agent Hitler, FBI” meme).

            More to my point overall, rather than nitpicking the details, Libertarians mostly view the world almost entirely in terms of market value and individual selfishness. They often don’t care about morals or empathy or the welfare of their fellow human beings unless they can turn a profit by at least pretending they do. They are exactly the type of people who think that “the poor” are ONLY poor due to bad personal choices, even though we have scientific evidence that says otherwise

  • mrcleanup@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    If you love it let it go,

    If it never returns, it was probably never yours in the first place.

    -Texas probably

    • JizzmasterD@lemmy.ca
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      10 months ago

      “I say hurl. If you blow chunks and she comes back, she’s yours. If you spew and she bolts, then it was never meant to be.”

      Wayne Campbell

  • BeautifulMind ♾️@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    Freedom always suffers when the people with power dole out privileges and patronage to the ‘right people’ but deny rights and protections to everyone else. Happens every time