Whatcha think of China being rough on Tibetans, Uighurs, and effeminate guys in media?

@sqeptiq They're not perfect, but neither is anyone. And some of that is a distorted US propaganda narrative.

...then, those aren't real conservatives.
The concept depends on context I guess, so let's say they're not real constitutional-conservatives.
ALL abuses by the "collective"; be it organ-harvesting and genocide in Xinjiang, or forced gene-therapy experiments in America... ALL such incidents are simple examples of the same thing: someone else has decided that they have sovereignty over you.

@rway Thing is, in the US the balance of power is traded between the neoliberals and petty bourgeois tyrants. When the "real" conservatives get their way, the latter are empowered. I tend to think that I have more agency--if not sovereignty--with the neoliberals--and would have even more under communism.

@WilyRickWiles Either YOU have sovereignty over your own life, or you don't.
If your actions are determined at someone else's discretion... then it doesn't matter which "-ism" is being exercised. You're not free.
The exception is, of course, Libertarianism... since that's what it means. (used to be just "Liberalism"... but that's become a casualty of Newspeak.)
Libertarians are who I would call "real" constitutional conservatives.

@rway Just saying, libertarianism is an ideal--in the real world it creates a vacuum for established powers to accumulate more power--you can't skip straight to anarchy--a leveling is needed first.

@WilyRickWiles I'm not advocating anarchy, just the simple principle of governance that states:
"It's wrong to initiate force against another human being for any reason."
That's it.
In Government, that translates into simply protecting Individual's rights without, ironically, violating others in the process.
And that's all we in the U.S. established a government to do, domestically anyway.
All it takes to sustain it is accountability, and those mechanisms are built-in already.
What we're missing is the understanding and the unified will to use them.
That is the direct result of Education being taken over by the State... and why we need to take it back. Until then, nothing will change.

@rway I dunno, I kind of think it all started with slavery and the opium trade.

@WilyRickWiles You're starting in the middle of the story.
Protecting Individual Sovereignty is the fix for Slavery and all such injustice, which has been the norm throughout all of human history.
We just need to get back on track toward realizing the goal described in the Declaration and manifested in the (original) Constitution.
From the very beginning, that effort has been hampered by the steady-wind of collectivism in its various forms. And we're currently not even heading in the right direction, having purposefully undermined the awareness and the motivation to continue the quest; again... by allowing the State to control Education.

@rway The Constitution from the beginning and to this day checks collectivism by empowering the white regional petty bourgeoisie, unlike most of the Global North, to their shared but contentious benefit with the neoliberal cartel. It's not new, it has nothing to do with education, and obviously collectivism is the opposite of the problem.

@WilyRickWiles Really? Which part of the Constitution isolates and preserves the "bourgeoisie"?
That sounds like the kind of bumper-sticker logic produced in the State education gulags... which demonstrates, again, that it has precisely everything to do with "public" Education.

@rway The Electoral College, the Senate, and the Supreme Court empower the regional white petty bourgeoisie. You might remember the three-fifths compromise, as well.

@WilyRickWiles How? All you did was reword your assertion.

Yes, I remember the 3/5ths rule... do you remember why they did that?
So the Democrat slaveholders could not use the slaves own numbers to jack up their representation, and secure the political clout to keep them enslaved in perpetuity.

@rway My point is that compromises with slaveholders are still part of the Constitution and define how our institutions work and who has power.

@rway I.e. they give outsize representation to regional business and property owners.

@WilyRickWiles The compromise wasn't "with" the slaveholders... well, not exactly. It was reached in opposition to the slaveholders desire to count 5/5ths of their slaves for representation.
And it was done away with by the 14th Amendment over 150 years ago, as it was no longer needed.

"Outsize representation" is a claim... an assertion. What is the mechanism in the Constitution that results in such disproportionate representation? And, why do you claim that it's disproportionate in the first place?

@rway Please look up the definition of compromise. The design of the Electoral College, Senate, and Supreme Court served the same ends.

@rway You don't like the moral judgment baked into the word "outsize?" OK, how about the word "more?" Do I really have to spell out everything for you? E.g. the Electoral College gives more representation to places with less people because of those old compromises. Moral judgments aside, we should be able to agree on that. Maybe you disagree that such a system gives the regional white petty bourgeoisie a novel, outsize, or perpetuating economic advantage, but at least agree on the uncontroversial facts. This post seems relevant. [slug.com]

@WilyRickWiles Places with fewer people, have fewer Electors. You haven't even tried to support the claim that the Electoral arrangement is somehow unfair... you simply accept that a priori.
We are not a homogeneous nation of 350 Million individuals... we are an agglomeration of 50 States.

If one State is almost-entirely "White"... then should they be penalized proportionally, to prevent "too-White" an outcome? I'm sure you can see that as a purely racist analysis. Representation rightfully belongs to Individuals... not intersectional categories.

@rway I guess some individuals are more equal than others in your mind, lol.

@WilyRickWiles I see you refuse to think it through. I think that if you ever actually do... for the first time, apparently, then you'll discover that your concerns are simply unfounded.

@rway "Places with fewer people, have fewer Electors." If I paid you $2,000 for 40 hours of work and another person $300 for less than 2 hours of the same work would that be fair simply because it's less?

@rway States are just about as illegitimate as the aforementioned institutions aside from the need for some form of government delegation at that scale. They certainly aren't sovereign.

@WilyRickWiles that's right, they're not... You are sovereign.

Electors are in proportion to your representation in Congress. Do you not like that, either?
Do you think people in Wyoming should just shut up and do what they're told by Californians and New Yorkers?
If the "red" and "blue" populations generally had the same understanding about what the Government is even FOR, and how and why it can be legitimately invoked and directed against their neighbors; then nobody would be crying about people in Wyoming having a voice in their own destiny.
It is only because people like them refuse to be dictated to by busy-body control freaks who have no legitimate authority to do so, that they are just seen as a "problem" that needs to be solved; a stumbling block to the forceful ushering in of the authoritarian utopia that they fantasize about.

Sorry, but that's exactly what the Constitution is for. To be "in the way" of wannabe tyrants.

@rway Your whole obsession with education gets us to the root of modern conservatism: opposition to desegregation. Moreover your idealist framing pairs posits a straw tyrant, ignoring the real tyrants the Constitution empowers.

@rway I frankly don't care how cooperative those Wyomingans would be. THEIR tyrannical power is illegitimate.

@WilyRickWiles sorry... I just got back to this.

My "obsession" with education stems from the fact that educated people are harder to enslave, either literally or figuratively.
It is precisely for that reason, that collectivists seek to control the institution: so they can enslave the next generation, and every subsequent generation.
Marx and Engels considered "free, public education" to be one of the 10 critical planks of Communism... for just that purpose.

Our nationwide archipelago of State-run training camps could not be a better example.
It is tragically, almost comically, ineffective at educating anybody.
But, of course, that was never the primary objective. That's why collectivists continue to defend the idea religiously, with an irrational and baseless fervor that was embedded at the camp itself during their compelled participation.
The Prussian Model that we adopted in the mid-1800's or so, was developed explicitly and purposefully to cultivate blind-obedience and conformity; after Prussia got their asses kicked in one of the Napoleonic wars... the fourth, I think.
It is not good at education, because it was never for education in the first place.
What it is good for, is proselytizing the Peoples Dogma and suppressing their development as Individuals, in pursuit of a uniformly compliant Herd that can be easily and predictably "managed."

What any of that has to do with desegregation, I have no idea; another red-herring from the Playbook? Or, perhaps you can explain...