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BenMcLean

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Uhh ... no? Did you get that backwards? Being able to bring a full pregnancy to term in space means that inter-generational space voyages are possible...
January 14, 2026 at 18:46
I think it comes down to Robert Conquest's Three Laws of Politics: These describe why the basic moral impulse behind conservatism will occur in every ...
January 14, 2026 at 18:39
It was nice that the world made international treaties saying to not put weapons in space back when they couldn't afford to put weapons in space anywa...
January 14, 2026 at 18:26
Yeah, but like I said, this is the 21st century. We've done that research already. That was what the International Space Station was for. The only big...
January 14, 2026 at 18:21
The objection isn't to the value of scientific exploration, but is specific to the value of manned vs unmanned spaceflight. In the 1960s, manned space...
January 14, 2026 at 18:06
I would question: is this happening? What I see on X is a pretty good mix of left and right. I see more right wing stuff because, being a right wing g...
January 14, 2026 at 15:25
This seems like you're not thinking. Both sides for the most part really believe in what they're doing. Nobody ever sees themselves as the bad guys, o...
January 12, 2026 at 15:24
Yeah, I know the Republic and he's right that Plato was right that this sophistry is bad. Yeah, right. We're a predator nation. Our taxes pay to secur...
January 10, 2026 at 01:41
Except the other side was doing it repeatedly. Politically motivated violent rioting, invading federal buildings, even trying to set them on fire. All...
January 10, 2026 at 01:21
You'd think so, except that, as I've pointed out, Harris was rhetorically aligned with America's longstanding immigration laws, not against them, not ...
January 10, 2026 at 01:16
Look, there was some rioting. Rioting's bad. The people who did that should have been treated the exact same way as the rioters from the George Floyd ...
January 10, 2026 at 01:03
There just is, and this might be a good topic for a new post: to explain why the old category model that originated with the French National Assembly ...
January 09, 2026 at 22:14
Q: Was the 2020 election stolen? A: Technically yes, but crucially, not through mass vote fraud. That is Trump's mistake. An electoral college majorit...
January 09, 2026 at 21:51
This only means that neither party is explicitly Communist nor socialist in its policies. On the one issue of economics, libertarianism has dominated ...
January 09, 2026 at 18:19
Over Kamala Harris? Over any Democrat? Hell yes I did. I had to hold my nose a little because of some problems with Trump, but as far as I am concerne...
January 09, 2026 at 18:11
Conflating Trump to Kim Jong Un is just ridiculous. In another twenty years, you will see Trump in the same way Democrats currently see George W. Bush...
January 09, 2026 at 18:03
Nobody's real consistent on this and I see this as a newly emerging political category. It's not strictly identified with Trump but there are a few th...
January 08, 2026 at 23:14
No, it's because their criticism isn't constructive. They're bitter about their ideas not being in vogue -- specifically because their libertarianism ...
January 08, 2026 at 22:45
The Great Replacement exists in a quantum state. If you say that the Great Replacement is real, but is a good thing, then this is an argument that is ...
January 08, 2026 at 22:14
What they're really doing, in my view, is kind of despicable, because National Review today would rather flat out side with the rabid lunacy of the wo...
January 08, 2026 at 22:06
When FDR massively expanded the powers of the executive branch and when Obama said, "I have a pen and a phone" you clapped like a circus seal and neve...
January 08, 2026 at 20:43
One area where I see the American Left as correct is that Trump really did lose the 2020 election and his continued insistence that he really won it i...
January 08, 2026 at 20:07
I guess the big elephant in the room I haven't talked about is immigration -- but the reality is that immigration is not officially a partisan issue. ...
January 08, 2026 at 19:55
When did it count? Did it count in the early 1960s or over the long term course of the next half century. You're still playing "gotcha" by trying to d...
January 08, 2026 at 19:36
That is exactly the situation on the American Left but unfortunately, I'm not able to tell them this as a friend and they absolutely aren't going to h...
January 08, 2026 at 19:25
Oh, absolutely. I recognize here that what I'm doing is articulating an opinionated interpretation of political history and that this isn't the only v...
January 08, 2026 at 18:13
The Left has an ideological crisis right now too, but I honestly have difficulty articulating it in a non-polemic way, since I'm not one of them mysel...
January 08, 2026 at 17:55
I feel like I should maybe clarify why I perceive Vidal as having Communist sympathies: It's because his rhetoric on Vietnam went so far, to what I pe...
January 08, 2026 at 15:33
I see debating the wisdom of pursuing particular war policies as reasonable, but doctrinaire pacifism as absurd. My approach to war would be informed ...
January 08, 2026 at 15:21
War is a universal human default expierence. Your constant assumption that pacifism is somehow the norm is false. Pacifism is a luxury belief that gro...
January 08, 2026 at 14:36
I know what philosophy is. I have a BA in it. The fact that my post does discuss particular candidates and electoral cycles means it doesn't qualify a...
January 08, 2026 at 14:01
I don't know who you're talking about but whatever. You're clearly neither liberal nor democratic. Now, if anyone wants to talk about WW2 nostalgia th...
January 08, 2026 at 04:42
Hitler actually was bad, mkay. But he's so ridiculously overused as to have gone beyond absurdity into an absolute iron clad rule that bringing him up...
January 08, 2026 at 04:36
Then the "nationalism" part is redundant, because Jesus said, "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature." The people who are w...
January 08, 2026 at 04:25
"Christian nationalism" isn't a clear idea either. I'm a Christian and a civic nationalist -- does that make me a Christian nationalist? The press wan...
January 08, 2026 at 04:22
No, actually. You've been wrapped up in your own side's propaganda. We know what governance under Buckley conservatives is like, because it is played ...
January 08, 2026 at 01:56
They already have, if Disney counts. You would not believe how much and how many people hate Amazon's Rings of Power on a zealous, religious level. I ...
January 08, 2026 at 00:59
It's amazing how that one debate of Buckley v. Vidal in 1968 continues to define American politics! Vidal was just a Communist bemoaning the fact that...
January 08, 2026 at 00:37
OK fair enough, but am I right about the initial impression? Is this just garden variety Reddit atheism from the 2000s or do you have a thesis which i...
January 07, 2026 at 22:27
I would usually not want to bring up Matt Walsh because he's not philosophically deep and the politics he normally espouses are neither original nor i...
January 07, 2026 at 22:08
OK, I can see how my argument won't seem constructive to you because it doesn't accept enough of your basic premises to help you refine it. But I thin...
January 07, 2026 at 22:00
Nazis -- assuming we're talking about the very real 1930s-40s political force here and not your leftist fantasy -- would be an example of the kind of ...
January 07, 2026 at 21:54
Foucault was a critical theorist which puts him in this same post-Marxist / neo-Marxist space where social idenities replace economic determinism as t...
January 04, 2026 at 14:16
Yes, yours did that, which is what my argument about the age of consent demonstrates.
January 04, 2026 at 13:56
> "Ah, excuse me I don't see how the story of Ham can have any merit." The idea of linking Ham to Africans is a later addition, not from the original ...
January 04, 2026 at 13:51
I admire William Blake's work on this actually and also Emerson, Lake and Palmer's surprisingly sincere and heartfelt rendition of it. But the Book of...
January 03, 2026 at 02:07
If you have a theory of language which appears to break down as soon as you swap out a few simple nouns, then I'd say that's a pretty strong argument ...
January 03, 2026 at 01:55
> "This is overly political" Yes it is but it's political philosophy and it's historically grounded. I am not using "Marxist" as an accusation or insu...
January 03, 2026 at 01:49
> “Transwomen are women. Transmen are men. True or false?” isn’t something we can answer by grabbing a biology textbook and pointing at chromosomes." ...
January 03, 2026 at 01:42
I do agree but there's more to it than this. The trans ideology has an absurd premise that the word "gender" means what previously would have been und...
January 03, 2026 at 01:11