> Imagine a day when you turn on the news and instead of seeing people screaming at each other, you see an informed debate that uses good arguments and well-reasoned analysis.
He seems self-aware enough to realize that he was disinvited because of his conservative voting record. That's the point. The things he's voted for a bad for the country and its people.
He is exhibiting a common tactic for right-wingers. Break norms, assault liberal republican democracy and then cry foul when someone calls them on it. Some of the people that will be at black hat are threatened by the policies they advocate.
> Break norms, assault liberal republican democracy and then cry foul when someone calls them on it.
Most people in the U.S. do not think elective late term abortions should be lawful. Opposition to elective late term abortions is the norm, whatever you think about the issue.
"elective late-term abortion" is a right-wing talking point. The term is an invention used to help further criminalize something that the state shouldn't be involved in at all.
> "elective late-term abortion" is a right-wing talking point. The term is an invention used to help further criminalize something that the state shouldn't be involved in at all.
Well, no. I'm just saying that barring extreme circumstances (serious medical complications, forcible rape, etc.) most people do not think it is moral to abort in the late term.
I've never read or heard the phrase "elective late-term abortion" anywhere, "right-wing" or otherwise. I put the word "elective" on it because it seems like it describes basically what the surveys are asking.
There's a reason why the Satanists have filed lawsuits , using RFRA at the state level. We have states that make religious claims and require abhorrent practices (trans-vaginal wand: rape stick).
I'd posit the whole abortion "debate" (in the US) is a Christian vs non-Christian proxy battle.
> You, and conservatives like Hurd, are against all abortion. “Late term” or not.
Well, I'm not sure I'm a conservative. I don't take a position on it since it's extremely complicated, and people have outrageously strong feelings on either side. I'm not not talking about what one side of a wedge issue (all-or-nothing stances on abortion) may or may not believe; I'm talking about a common value that many people share on both sides of the wedge.
Even worse. The policies he advocates are keeping other people out entirely. Even Adi Shamir (the S from RSA) had trouble getting a travel visa a while ago.
So I think this claim is extremely overblown. One of the votes he was criticized for is a stem bill which I don't have the time to look up, and does not look defensible. The other things are abortion rights and he or the people he represents think that abortion is immoral. You aught to stop pretending like everyone who wants to put abortion restrictions in place wants to put women back in the kitchen, its not true and frankly it shows immaturity on the part of people who are unwilling to accept that people who disagree with you might not be corporate agents (even though congresspeople are on some issues).
In conclusion, your comment boils down to the idea that somehow half the country is just lying about their preferences and somehow magically the other half of the country knows exactly what they are really thinking.
Half of the country is not lying. They explicitly want to outlaw abortion. Maybe not half, but about a third explicitly want to put women back in the kitchen. At least one supreme court judge has stated that birth control is next.
Do you have any opinion surveys to back up the claim `third explicitly want to put women back in the kitchen`? If not is there a reason you suspect that?
Also genuinely curious re `At least one supreme court judge has stated that birth control is next.` Do you have a source for that?
You have broken the site guidelines egregiously throughout this thread. We ban accounts that do that. Moreover, we've warned you about this a whole bunch of times in the past.
I'm not going to ban you right now because you've also posted about other topics in a way that fits the site guidelines. But if you abuse HN for political flamewar again, we will have to.
I agree that you are immature. Your political opponents have nuanced opinions. Spend some effort understanding what those nuances are and you might learn something.
Why is this controversial? Black Hat is a private business that needs to decide how best to make attendees happy and convince them to return. Hurd's beliefs/votes are (as far as I can tell) uniformly in the minority[1][2][3][4][5], which means his presence is likely to make most of the attendees angry, perhaps to the point of boycotting the event.
The majority of Republicans want businesses to have the right to refuse gays[5], so it seems logical that they (and Will Hurd) would support the right to refuse to include someone based on ideology.
This could be said of both sides. We elect politicians to pass laws to impose opinions and values. While you may disagree with those, that doesn't make the opinion of the large portion of the population which agrees with him invalid. His opinions may be unpopular among the people who attend Black Hat, but not so much so among the rest of Americans. Congressman Hurd is also well-known for supporting cybersecurity initiatives in government, something we need more of.
If you disagree with Mr. Hurd on many issues, but agree with him on cybersecurity, why can't you just agree with him there and let him speak? The politicians with whom I agree only in part are without end.
Yes, this is why we elect representatives. So what? My point is that he doesn’t merely have opinions. The fact that this is true of all other legislators just reinforces my point.
"Uninvited to speak at a major conference" != "ostracized"
People with Hurd's views are welcomed in most places in the country. Despite having minority viewpoints, they form the majority of elected officials due to the way districts are drawn. They're CEOs, board members, and prominent parts of almost every group. It's absolutely ludicrous to suggest that people like Hurd are ostracized in a general sense.
Also, having unpopular views as a lawmaker (so not just having them, but trying to enact them into law) means that a brand may not want to be associated with you.
That country doesn't, and never has, existed. All societies, no matter how free they may claim to be, have limits to what they will tolerate, and all will ostracize you for opinions if you move outside that box, be it through public shame or imprisonment.
When the US was founded, one would have been ostracized for being a loyalist to the Crown. Or an atheist. Or, depending on where one lived, believing that blacks shouldn't be slaves, or being a Protestant or Catholic in the wrong neighborhood. And as societies go, the US is incredibly laissez-faire compared to elsewhere, where unpopular opinions have gotten people killed for centuries or millennia.
Because disinviting is stupid and getting way too common now. This is like the 5th case of this I've seen within the past year. If they is going to be a heckler's veto then get the heckler's permission before inviting.
> The majority of Republicans want businesses to have the right to refuse gays[5], so it seems logical that they (and Will Hurd) would support the right to refuse to include someone based on ideology.
This glosses over some important nuance on the "religious freedom" side of that issue. In the Masterpiece Cake Shop case, for example, they didn't discriminate against gay people, per se - they served gay customers. They refused to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding specifically.
On the religious freedom side of the argument, they maintain that its a kind of compelled speech to require the baker to make a cake celebrating a same-sex wedding. I'm not saying I buy it completely, but its an earnest argument advanced in good faith - and shouldn't be reduced to bigotry/prejudice.
We have to return to free speech and the exchange of free ideas. Banning people for having opposing viewpoints is a big step backwards. If you disagree with someone, hear them out and then explain why your idea is better.
I can’t pinpoint exactly when the shift happened, but in the recent past the tech industry was always the first to defend free speech and the open exchange of ideas. Today it seems to be increasingly beholden to a loud minority of employees with some very illiberal views about speech.
This happened because we saw that free speech on internet forums just let to people harassing women and yelling racist nonsense constantly. The forum you are on deletes garbage too.
free speech is a principle that the government can't silence you. it never meant that other people have to listen to you or care what you say.
Free speech is a principle based in rationality. Exercise of power should not overrule reason and independent thought.
Governments are notoriously powerful and prone to censorship, but private groups like corporations and busybody neighborhoods can also be heavy handed and net harmful.
Only when the speech is insulting, racist, or oppressive.
This whole thing is a dodge so that the far right can get their views in front of people. This is something that they explicitly state as a goal and a tactic.
The guy voted for all kinds of gross right wing BS. People don't want to hear what he has to say.
Yes, a "dodge so that the far right can get their views in front of people" that also happens to be a constitutional amendment from 1791.
The idea of handing the power to determine what speech is "insulting, racist, or oppressive" to government of any kind is absolutely horrifying to me. It would be a dismantling of one of the core principles of western democracy.
I mean, its not just the tech industry, even people like Senator Cruz who used to `ostensibly` be for the constitutions has toyed with a ban on supporting BDS and regulating private companies speech.
I don't know about generally, but my own feeling is that I am more reluctant about the whole thing because a lot of the people chanting about freedom of speech seem to be destructive and ill-intentioned these days.
A problem I have with today's politics/politicians is that once you are part of a group (Republican or Democrat), you tend to vote the same as the group. People talk about the free exchange of ideas, but it is in the context of them changing your mind and not the other way around.
There's no compromise on either side, why talk about different points of view, if you are not going to change your mind.
> you tend to vote the same as the group. People talk about the free exchange of ideas, but it is in the context of them changing your mind and not the other way around.
Thank the removal of earmarks and Citizens United for that.
Legislators are dependent on those sweet PAC dollars (or more critically, dependent on someone else not getting them) in order to get re-elected and without an earmark to bring home to your district to please your voters with you can't risk losing goodwill with the party elites who control the purse strings by breaking from the party.
The problem is not thinking things through. The problem is will enough people vote on something their political party is entirely against or even compromise a little.
I didn't vote for either presidential candidate last time around especially because of the us-versus-them attitudes all around. Pretending folks like me don't exist isn't going to improve our culture.
Over the last 10 years, only one side has been consistent in blocking and denying compromise to the other. The Democrats, sadly, naively, keep trying for compromise because they haven't yet quite grasped what's going on (although it finally seems to be filtering through - the Republicans are never going to compromise.)
I don't know what his viewpoints are, but what if the person's viewpoint is "climate change is fake" and "the earth is flat". Wouldn't hearing them out just be a waste of time?
There needs to be a middle ground between shutting down actual dialog and allowing flatearthers to suck all the air from the room. We all have limited time on this (roundish, mind you) earth and it sucks to have to rehash arguments. “No, no, just hear me out” is a hard thing to stomach from someone you know is yammering just to waste your time.
I think the worst thing you could do is invite a flat earther(or anyone else you disagree with) and then disinvite them. You have now given them a larger audience and new reason to say they are being censored.
You could likely find something anti-science about most people. For instance a mind boggling number of people believe in ghosts, should they be disinvited? With regards to a security conference, it’s no more harmful of a world view than believing the Earth is flat. What about anti-vaxxers? Ban them too? Maybe come up with a list of beliefs you think are ideologically pure enough for the conference?
I don't believe either are the subject of the conference. And you've created a caricature to argue against, which is at best disingenuous. It's not possible to have reasoned debate in such an environment.
> but I am concerned that this is yet another data point in a growing trend where individuals are unwilling to engage with people who think differently from them.
This idea has been said a lot by conservative people over the last 5 years or so. Do you ever stop and reflect if maybe the issue isn't that people are unwilling to engage with different ideas, but instead that conservative politics in the USA have started to adopt truly unacceptable ideas? Many of those ideas are driven by religious dogma with which there can't be any reasonable engagement.
How am I supposed to engage with a party that has completely bowed to Trump? How do I engage with a Mitch McConnell who blocks bipartisan legislation from being voted on? How do I engage with a party that refuses to engage the issue of climate change? A party that wants to treat people as subhuman if their sexual preferences are not according to religious dogma? A party who is intentionally appealing to neo nazi groups? What kind of dialog do you have there?
Its especially irritating to read that kind of comment on Fox News, which is a unabashedly partisan news service.
There are ideas which we can debate, but let us not pretend that everything is open for discussion and compromise. I wouldn't expect people to engage with every crazy liberal idea and person either.
It's actually the opposite. The left has moved further left. Ten years ago Democrats like Bill Clinton had the same views as current day Republicans. I use to be considered now I'm conservative without changing any of views. https://news.gallup.com/poll/183686/democrats-shift-left.asp...
Reductive analogy time: A donkey and an elephant are walking down a road, the donkey in the middle, the elephant on the right, both tied on either end of a rope. Over a span, the donkey pulled to the left and the elephant, in degrees, moved to the center. Now the donkey is on the left of the road and the elephant is in the middle of the road.
The friction we are currently experiencing is that while the donkey wants to go further to the left, and has continued pulling to the left, the elephant has decided not to allow itself to be moved any further and thus is still in the center.
The donkey does not like not being able to continue moving to the left. The elephant does not like continually being pulled to the left and perhaps like to move back towards the right side of the road.
So they are both pulling in opposite directions, the donkey worrying that the elephant will use its greater strength to force the donkey to the right, and the elephant worrying that the donkey will use its greater speed to force the elephant to the left.
This analogy is not comprehensive, but maybe it will help someone frame some of the reasons why the one tribe is so angry at the other and vice versa.
I am not. Left/center/right on the analogous road are only fuzzy matches to the words' meanings in the political spectrum sense, specifically, the US political spectrum relative to the 90s vs today.
Or even remotely accurate; the Republican Party has been moving consistently, though at varying speeds, to the right since at least the 1980s; the Democratic Party made a huge jump to the right (and very close to the Republicans) in the early 1990s, ushering in the brief period of the neoliberal consensus before the sharp acceleration in the rightward movement of the Republican Partyp, stayed stuck in essentially the same position for a while, and has moved a little bit to the left over the last couple years.
Not only are you wrong about the direction each party is moving, you are wrong on a more fundamental level about the idea that the distance between them is fixed (or, at least, that the recent movement has been constrained by an upper bound on that distance forcing them to move together.)
The Republican Party has moved to the left, not the right, since the 80s. The Democrat party has moved farther to the left than the Republicans have. It's actually a reasonable analogy.
> The Republican Party has moved to the left, not the right, since the 80s.
No, they've moved consistently to the right, the most dramatic manifestations of this movement being with the Contract with America in 1994 and Trump in 2016+.
> The Democrat party
It's the Democratic Party; the misuse of the noun form in place of the adjective is a weird tic of Republican activists.
> has moved farther to the left than the Republicans ha
Well, it's moved a little to the left recently while the Republicans have continued their journey to the far right, after basically moving to a position nearly identical to the Republicans of the time on economic issues and slightly to the left on, but deprioritizing, social issues with the Clintonian center-right neoliberalism of the 1990s.
Most of the "Contract with America" is not a right wing thing (shown by the fact it had broad support and catapulted the Republican Party back to power), and Trump is not a right wing person. He's a barely middle of the road person who would have been considered quite unsuited to be a Republican in the 80s. The Republican Party of the 80s would never have nominated someone who would nominate a gay ambassador -- the Democratic Party likely would not have either. Washington in general has shifted quite far to the left since the 80s.
And "democrat" vs "democratic" is probably an autocorrect "tic". I'm also not a Republican, and certainly not an "activist" in any way. My personal beliefs are that almost all politicians are simply interested in power and say the things they think will get them elected -- and in general the striking differences between the parties are on which programs they want to spend the money that does not exist.
Bill would not be able to get the nomination of the Democratic Party today -- he would be considered far too right wing.
Trump is a far right authoritarian. If he seems to be left of 80s Republicans, it’s only because Republicans have waged a fairly successful campaign to equate authoritarianism with leftism.
Trump is a sort of left leaning libertarian. He doesn't align socially or fiscally with the Republican Party on any issue other than perhaps abortion and it's an easy argument to make that he changed that position solely to get the evangelical vote so he could get the nomination.
He could have credibly run as a Democrat, probably won the nomination, and had the Democrats singing his praises now. His policies on immigration align with Clinton, Obama, Schumer and others from less than ten years ago. He's to the left of both of the Clintons on prison reform. He's to the left of both of the Clintons and Obama on gay marriage (well, Hillary changed her position two years ago, but otherwise). He's to the left of Bill on fiscal responsibility. etc. I could go on.
Are you somehow under the impression that Trump hasn't done this, or are you trying to make the blindingly obvious argument that Obama wasn't a libertarian?
Trump is a corrupt, opportunist that is probably more of a kleptocrat than having any coherent ideology, but the Trump Administration is a right-wing authoritarian regime in its concrete policy actions.
> He doesn't align socially or fiscally with the Republican Party
In the 2016 primary campaign, while there was still any significant Republican Party in the electorate or in government that hadn't aligned itself almost completely with Trump's actions, and when one could only assess Trump's position by trying to construct a narrative out of a mass of ambiguous and conflicting statements (both during the campaign and prior) rather than concrete policy and personnel actions, this was a defensible position, but it no longer is.
> He could have credibly run as a Democrat
Perhaps before he burnt Bridges with the Democratic electorate by (among other things) jumping into birtherism, he might have—he did have a long history of seeking influence with the New York political establishment (dominated by Democrats) by feigning support for Democratic policy positions that, had he not started showing his true colors as he did several years before running for the Republican nomination, he might have been a non-ridiculous (though still doomed) 2016 Democratic primary candidate, even with his even longer and well-documented history of racism and sexism which Democratic 2016 primary voters would probably have been less forgiving of than Republican primary voters the same year. Of course, he would have had to run a very different campaign with a very different assumed persona.
> probably won the nomination,
No, and to even treat that as even semi-serious requires not understanding the situation and rules in the Republican nominating process Trump exploited to win, the ones in the Democratic primary that Clinton exploited to win, and how the rules of both are engineered to be different than each other or a simple election.
> He's to the left of both of the Clintons and Obama on gay marriage (well, Hillary changed her position two years ago, but otherwise).
Rhetorically on that narrow issue perhaps, but his substantive actions are far to their right on LGBTQ issues generally. This is particularly dramatically clear when it comes to policy on transgender military service,where both Obama and Trump made active policy changes to the policy which was in place prior to their own respective presidencies, in opposite directions.
> He's to the left of Bill on fiscal responsibility. etc.
To the extent that there are ldleft and right positions on fiscal responsibility, the left wing position is that “fiscal responsibility” is a reason to cut defense and security spending and/or raise taxes on the rich to pay for government spending, while he right wing position is that fiscal responsibility is a reason to cut social programs or cut taxes on the rich (because tax cuts obviously increase revenues) to pay for government spending. Trump is not to the left of, well, anyone in the Democratic Party Cli on this issue.
I’m not going to bother with most of that because it’s just talking points, but I will point out that the birther movement was started by Hillary Clinton’s team when she ran against Obama. Also, calling him racist and sexist is comical, and nobody said that about him when he was buying democrat politicians for decades in NYC - that story got made up when he announced he was going to run for president as a Republican.
I don’t think the Central Park 5 were exonerated 35 years ago. I’m glad they have been exonerated now, and certainly they shouldn’t have been convicted then - but there was nothing racist in Trump’s ad calling for the reinstatement of the death penalty. Many people believe in it (full disclosure- I’m not one of them), and at least of those I know none of them believe in it for racist reasons.
The things you all create to be offended about are so numerous as to be impossible to continue to track. I don’t really care what new thing you’ve dreamed up this week.
The history is clear. If you were ignorant of it, I don't care, it's easy to miss. But now that you know, you can run with it or stop using it, your choice.
The Gallop data posted by jswizzy is correct. Pew Research is mostly saying the same thing: https://imgur.com/QJd2gRB
There is a sort of relativity here, and you are a moving frame of reference. When you see everybody but you going right, it's actually you going left. If you could travel back in time to discuss politics with your former self, both of you would probably get offended.
Was Obama right of Clinton? Those pictures of kids held in chain link cages that went around in the early days of Trump, those were from Obama’s concentration camps. Speaking of Obama, he was elected twice on the platform that gay people should not marry. Trump is the first president elected in open support of gay marriage. Obama immigration policies were a hairs breath to the left of Trump, or maybe to the right since he deported far more people.
Start the graph in the 60's and you'll get a very different graph. The standard narrative is that Clinton shifted the party to the right, and it's now returning to where it was in the LBJ days.
LBJ days? Are you kidding? When Democrat cities beat gay people in the streets and then threw them in jail? When the Democrat President was an open racist? You picked LBJ, when the Democrats still had segregationist, who fought against things like interracial marriage, were elected in office? You think that’s to the left of Clinton? Hell, given the moves to segregate colleges these days, maybe you’re right.
Yes, the LBJ that passed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, the Immigration and Nationality Act, the gun control act, declared a war on poverty, greatly expanded welfare, et cetera.
I think it is mostly on social issues that politics has drifted left on. So it wouldn't surprise that people would different opinions on the drift if they weighted issues differently.
I would be interested to hear contrary opinions on why we haven't drifted left socially.
If hackers want to get involved with government policy, they’re going to have to learn to have a conversation with elected reps when they disagree on policy. Doubly so if the policy in question gets them hot under the collar.
Especially since both sides of the aisle have wrongheaded policies from a hacker perspective.
Want to get progress on DRM laws? It probably won't happen solely by talking to a coalition that includes Hollywood and the broader creative community.
The amount of downvoting on opinions you disagree with in this thread is disappointing.
It’s funny that the discussion is about listening to others we disagree with, but simultaneously valid ideas/comments are being grayed out and pushed down into obscurity
This is the point that I think lots of people have been trying to make.
This talk about "free speech" is a con. The far right says as much explicitly. They don't want free speech, they want their position legitimized.
Calls for civility are the same BS. They advocate for the removal of rights and franchise from whole parts of the population and then complain when people aren't "civil".
It's a dodge. The downvotes are just a symptom of that.
This kind of power move works when you’re disinviting bloggers nobody has heard of. Disinviting a sitting representative just looks like burying your head in the sand and expecting everyone to adapt to your point of view just because you let it be known you’re cross.
How do you think lobbyists get the policy changes they’re after? By giving the cold shoulder to any rep not already predisposed to voting in their preferred direction?
It probably looks like the conference supporting the people who are affected the most by Republican party policies...if you are one of those people. If you aren't one of those people then I can see why it would seem like it was just a political move. That being said, he and his party have materially affected the lives of people who are traveling to the con.
It creates a healthier society if we can listen to people even when we don't agree with their views, thus I am not be in favour of this becoming the norm. It's also deeply impolite to withdraw an invite in this manner when no new information has come to light, merely a change of mind. If he'd been discovered to be dishonest or a criminal that's one thing, but "meh, thinking about it, we don't think we want you to come any more, even though we asked you before, when we did want you to come" doesn't cut it.
Will be interesting to see if they stick to the apolitical line consistently with others.
What a joke. Another conservative politician calling for people to work together, for "real debate". I suppose the eight years of Republican stonewalling the Obama administration on literally everything, from legislation to judges to executive branch appointees, to an unheard of degree - is just supposed to be forgotten?
Perhaps we should have a look at where he stood on the ACA - I don't suppose he was part of the Republicans that sought to repeal it for years and then didn't actually have any real policy ideas to replace it when they took control in 2016, exemplifying their bad-faith approach to politics?
> He favors repealing the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.[41] In 2017, when House Republican leadership introduced the American Health Care Act (a bill to repeal the ACA), Hurd was faced with a political quandary.[42] Hurd did not say whether he supported or opposed the legislation.[41][43] Ultimately, after the measure was declared dead and withdrawn from a planned vote due to insufficient support, Hurd "released a statement in which he appeared to oppose the overhaul."
Pathetic. The use of the ACA by Republicans for campaigning for nearly a decade and then their utter failure to repeal or replace it once they had full control of the federal government will stain them forever in my eyes (or at a minimum, the ones in federal office at the time).
It would be great to have a government that focused on policy problems and policy solutions, that had reasoned, evidence-based debates on issues. Unfortunately, the Republican party has done more than any other force to destroy that (Office of Technology Assessment, anyone?). The fact that today, in 2019, we have a Republican president who refuses to admit global warming is a thing, is another exemplar of Republican policy and strategy - which is not to debate, but to avoid it; to hide and ignore and defund evidence when inconvenient; to focus on emotions instead of logic and reason.
There's nothing useful to discuss with such people, and for them to complain on such grounds is hypocrisy of the highest order.
> There's nothing useful to discuss with such people, and for them to complain on such grounds is hypocrisy of the highest order.
Refusal to engage with individuals on subject A (cyber-security) because you disagree on subject B (healthcare in this case) is unfortunate, and possibly a similar level of hypocrisy if one would otherwise posit being open-minded as a general rule.
I think the perceived issue is not that they disagree on the subject, but that they fundamentally don't trust them to be working with you in good faith.
If I were to place myself in the position of this congressman, I don't have a good answer to as how to convince them that I'm arguing in good faith.
If the criterion for arguing in good faith is too narrowly defined, it can turn into 'agree with me on everything or else you are arguing in bad faith'
It's not because of the disagreement, though. That's a creative interpretation of the comment you're replying to. This is the crux:
> Republicans that sought to repeal it for years and then didn't actually have any real policy ideas to replace it when they took control in 2016, exemplifying their bad-faith approach to politics?
It doesn't and I guess I must admit I'm having trouble seeing where you're getting confused with this concept. It honestly feels like you're being deliberately obtuse. It's not the ACA that's the problem, it's the behavior of the Republican legislators regarding the ACA. It could have been any piece of legislation. It's the behavior that's the issue.
> Republicans that sought to repeal it for years and then didn't actually have any real policy ideas to replace it when they took control in 2016, exemplifying their bad-faith approach to politics?
Read that quote. Now read it again. It fully and clearly explains the issue without naming the ACA. That's because the fact that the behavior was bought to light by the ACA is irrelevant. The ACA isn't the problem, the behavior is. "It" in that quote could be any piece of legislation and the behavior would still be troubling. Does that help you see? Do you finally understand?
I believe I follow what you are arguing, something to the effect of repealing a law without an immediate replacement plan can demonstrate bad faith.
I would not necessarily agree with the above point, as depending on a given law, it is possible there would be those who would support its repeal with no replacement.
That is not to say I do or do not advocate such a course of action for any particular law, just pointing out the option exists.
It’s disagreement when it’s some person with political opinions. When it’s a legislator, it’s not disagreement, it’s someone working against you.
If it was about opinions he had that are not reflected in his legislative work, that would be different, but when lawmakers lawmake based on their opinions, it goes beyond just a difference of views.
> I suppose the eight years of Republican stonewalling the Obama administration on literally everything, from legislation to judges to executive branch appointees, to an unheard of degree - is just supposed to be forgotten?
Well, it depends. Do you want to punish the other team, or get back to doing the country's work? Does America really have to take one for team while we go on another boneheaded "well, if we ignore governing and prioritize fucking over our opponents just this one time, it'll mean better governing in the long run" quest?
> Do you want to punish the other team, or get back to doing the country's work?
Could you help me understand—is "running against the ACA for a decade and then having no workable plan for its replacement when you're finally in charge" an example of 'punishing the other team' or an example of 'doing the country's work'?
> having no workable plan for its replacement when you're finally in charge
Who exactly was "in charge" in 2017 and 2018? It seemed to me that there was not one united faction, nor any coalition, that on a number of popular issues could form a majority over that time period.
It seems like it is the normal course of things for the lower and upper representative houses to represent what they will, and for that either to produce or preclude new policy.
There was a lot of that kind of talk after the last election.
now that we've blocked a record number of judicial appointments including a supreme court justice, literally took out an ad in the new york times to try an undermine the Iran deal, claimed that the president wasn't a citizen along with all kinds of other horrible stuff, now...now it's finally time for us to work together. This new guy he's president of all of us. Let's get together and make sure...
No thank you. At some point it's Charlie Brown's fault for even trying to kick the football.
Edit: it looks like you've been using HN primarily for political and ideological battle. Some political overlap is inevitable with the topics that get posted here, but battling opponents is incompatible with the intellectual curiosity that HN exists for. When accounts are only or primarily doing that, we ban them. We have to, because otherwise such flames will take the site over completely.
Good. Children are missing or in cages, separation of powers is being flagrantly dismantled, and we're on the precipice of a destabilizing global war. This fascist party needs to be snuffed out like a candle.
(With that said, Rep. Hurd seems relatively sane compared to most of his colleagues. If he's not a hypocrite like the rest of them, he should really consider changing parties.)
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[ 4.9 ms ] story [ 196 ms ] threadBrought to you by Fox News.
It contains everything the right hates about "mainstream" media, they just happen to excuse it because it panders to their biases.
He is exhibiting a common tactic for right-wingers. Break norms, assault liberal republican democracy and then cry foul when someone calls them on it. Some of the people that will be at black hat are threatened by the policies they advocate.
Most people in the U.S. do not think elective late term abortions should be lawful. Opposition to elective late term abortions is the norm, whatever you think about the issue.
Well, no. I'm just saying that barring extreme circumstances (serious medical complications, forcible rape, etc.) most people do not think it is moral to abort in the late term.
I've never read or heard the phrase "elective late-term abortion" anywhere, "right-wing" or otherwise. I put the word "elective" on it because it seems like it describes basically what the surveys are asking.
Most of the recent bills we've heard about seem to ignore these circumstances..
I'd posit the whole abortion "debate" (in the US) is a Christian vs non-Christian proxy battle.
Well, I'm not sure I'm a conservative. I don't take a position on it since it's extremely complicated, and people have outrageously strong feelings on either side. I'm not not talking about what one side of a wedge issue (all-or-nothing stances on abortion) may or may not believe; I'm talking about a common value that many people share on both sides of the wedge.
In conclusion, your comment boils down to the idea that somehow half the country is just lying about their preferences and somehow magically the other half of the country knows exactly what they are really thinking.
Amazing. I'm immature. Good comeback.
Also genuinely curious re `At least one supreme court judge has stated that birth control is next.` Do you have a source for that?
I'm not going to ban you right now because you've also posted about other topics in a way that fits the site guidelines. But if you abuse HN for political flamewar again, we will have to.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Also, if you'd please stop posting unsubstantive comments generally, and particularly stop breaking the guidelines by snarking, we'd appreciate it.
The majority of Republicans want businesses to have the right to refuse gays[5], so it seems logical that they (and Will Hurd) would support the right to refuse to include someone based on ideology.
1. https://www.pewforum.org/fact-sheet/changing-attitudes-on-ga...
2. https://www.businessinsider.com/americans-gun-control-belief...
3. https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/visualizations-data/yc...
4. https://news.gallup.com/poll/1576/abortion.aspx
5. https://www.prri.org/spotlight/most-americans-oppose-religio...
If you disagree with Mr. Hurd on many issues, but agree with him on cybersecurity, why can't you just agree with him there and let him speak? The politicians with whom I agree only in part are without end.
People with Hurd's views are welcomed in most places in the country. Despite having minority viewpoints, they form the majority of elected officials due to the way districts are drawn. They're CEOs, board members, and prominent parts of almost every group. It's absolutely ludicrous to suggest that people like Hurd are ostracized in a general sense.
Also, having unpopular views as a lawmaker (so not just having them, but trying to enact them into law) means that a brand may not want to be associated with you.
When the US was founded, one would have been ostracized for being a loyalist to the Crown. Or an atheist. Or, depending on where one lived, believing that blacks shouldn't be slaves, or being a Protestant or Catholic in the wrong neighborhood. And as societies go, the US is incredibly laissez-faire compared to elsewhere, where unpopular opinions have gotten people killed for centuries or millennia.
Because disinviting is stupid and getting way too common now. This is like the 5th case of this I've seen within the past year. If they is going to be a heckler's veto then get the heckler's permission before inviting.
This glosses over some important nuance on the "religious freedom" side of that issue. In the Masterpiece Cake Shop case, for example, they didn't discriminate against gay people, per se - they served gay customers. They refused to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding specifically.
On the religious freedom side of the argument, they maintain that its a kind of compelled speech to require the baker to make a cake celebrating a same-sex wedding. I'm not saying I buy it completely, but its an earnest argument advanced in good faith - and shouldn't be reduced to bigotry/prejudice.
We have to return to free speech and the exchange of free ideas. Banning people for having opposing viewpoints is a big step backwards. If you disagree with someone, hear them out and then explain why your idea is better.
free speech is a principle that the government can't silence you. it never meant that other people have to listen to you or care what you say.
Governments are notoriously powerful and prone to censorship, but private groups like corporations and busybody neighborhoods can also be heavy handed and net harmful.
This whole thing is a dodge so that the far right can get their views in front of people. This is something that they explicitly state as a goal and a tactic.
The guy voted for all kinds of gross right wing BS. People don't want to hear what he has to say.
The idea of handing the power to determine what speech is "insulting, racist, or oppressive" to government of any kind is absolutely horrifying to me. It would be a dismantling of one of the core principles of western democracy.
And PS I'm Canadian.
I understand the emotional reaction. I don't understand how nominally rational people don't overrule their collective id on this one.
There's no compromise on either side, why talk about different points of view, if you are not going to change your mind.
Thank the removal of earmarks and Citizens United for that.
Legislators are dependent on those sweet PAC dollars (or more critically, dependent on someone else not getting them) in order to get re-elected and without an earmark to bring home to your district to please your voters with you can't risk losing goodwill with the party elites who control the purse strings by breaking from the party.
I didn't vote for either presidential candidate last time around especially because of the us-versus-them attitudes all around. Pretending folks like me don't exist isn't going to improve our culture.
Over the last 10 years, only one side has been consistent in blocking and denying compromise to the other. The Democrats, sadly, naively, keep trying for compromise because they haven't yet quite grasped what's going on (although it finally seems to be filtering through - the Republicans are never going to compromise.)
This idea has been said a lot by conservative people over the last 5 years or so. Do you ever stop and reflect if maybe the issue isn't that people are unwilling to engage with different ideas, but instead that conservative politics in the USA have started to adopt truly unacceptable ideas? Many of those ideas are driven by religious dogma with which there can't be any reasonable engagement.
How am I supposed to engage with a party that has completely bowed to Trump? How do I engage with a Mitch McConnell who blocks bipartisan legislation from being voted on? How do I engage with a party that refuses to engage the issue of climate change? A party that wants to treat people as subhuman if their sexual preferences are not according to religious dogma? A party who is intentionally appealing to neo nazi groups? What kind of dialog do you have there?
Its especially irritating to read that kind of comment on Fox News, which is a unabashedly partisan news service.
There are ideas which we can debate, but let us not pretend that everything is open for discussion and compromise. I wouldn't expect people to engage with every crazy liberal idea and person either.
Reductive analogy time: A donkey and an elephant are walking down a road, the donkey in the middle, the elephant on the right, both tied on either end of a rope. Over a span, the donkey pulled to the left and the elephant, in degrees, moved to the center. Now the donkey is on the left of the road and the elephant is in the middle of the road.
The friction we are currently experiencing is that while the donkey wants to go further to the left, and has continued pulling to the left, the elephant has decided not to allow itself to be moved any further and thus is still in the center.
The donkey does not like not being able to continue moving to the left. The elephant does not like continually being pulled to the left and perhaps like to move back towards the right side of the road.
So they are both pulling in opposite directions, the donkey worrying that the elephant will use its greater strength to force the donkey to the right, and the elephant worrying that the donkey will use its greater speed to force the elephant to the left.
This analogy is not comprehensive, but maybe it will help someone frame some of the reasons why the one tribe is so angry at the other and vice versa.
Are you seriously claiming that the Republicans are a centrist party?
Or even remotely accurate; the Republican Party has been moving consistently, though at varying speeds, to the right since at least the 1980s; the Democratic Party made a huge jump to the right (and very close to the Republicans) in the early 1990s, ushering in the brief period of the neoliberal consensus before the sharp acceleration in the rightward movement of the Republican Partyp, stayed stuck in essentially the same position for a while, and has moved a little bit to the left over the last couple years.
Not only are you wrong about the direction each party is moving, you are wrong on a more fundamental level about the idea that the distance between them is fixed (or, at least, that the recent movement has been constrained by an upper bound on that distance forcing them to move together.)
No, they've moved consistently to the right, the most dramatic manifestations of this movement being with the Contract with America in 1994 and Trump in 2016+.
> The Democrat party
It's the Democratic Party; the misuse of the noun form in place of the adjective is a weird tic of Republican activists.
> has moved farther to the left than the Republicans ha
Well, it's moved a little to the left recently while the Republicans have continued their journey to the far right, after basically moving to a position nearly identical to the Republicans of the time on economic issues and slightly to the left on, but deprioritizing, social issues with the Clintonian center-right neoliberalism of the 1990s.
And "democrat" vs "democratic" is probably an autocorrect "tic". I'm also not a Republican, and certainly not an "activist" in any way. My personal beliefs are that almost all politicians are simply interested in power and say the things they think will get them elected -- and in general the striking differences between the parties are on which programs they want to spend the money that does not exist.
Bill would not be able to get the nomination of the Democratic Party today -- he would be considered far too right wing.
He could have credibly run as a Democrat, probably won the nomination, and had the Democrats singing his praises now. His policies on immigration align with Clinton, Obama, Schumer and others from less than ten years ago. He's to the left of both of the Clintons on prison reform. He's to the left of both of the Clintons and Obama on gay marriage (well, Hillary changed her position two years ago, but otherwise). He's to the left of Bill on fiscal responsibility. etc. I could go on.
Trump is a corrupt, opportunist that is probably more of a kleptocrat than having any coherent ideology, but the Trump Administration is a right-wing authoritarian regime in its concrete policy actions.
> He doesn't align socially or fiscally with the Republican Party
In the 2016 primary campaign, while there was still any significant Republican Party in the electorate or in government that hadn't aligned itself almost completely with Trump's actions, and when one could only assess Trump's position by trying to construct a narrative out of a mass of ambiguous and conflicting statements (both during the campaign and prior) rather than concrete policy and personnel actions, this was a defensible position, but it no longer is.
> He could have credibly run as a Democrat
Perhaps before he burnt Bridges with the Democratic electorate by (among other things) jumping into birtherism, he might have—he did have a long history of seeking influence with the New York political establishment (dominated by Democrats) by feigning support for Democratic policy positions that, had he not started showing his true colors as he did several years before running for the Republican nomination, he might have been a non-ridiculous (though still doomed) 2016 Democratic primary candidate, even with his even longer and well-documented history of racism and sexism which Democratic 2016 primary voters would probably have been less forgiving of than Republican primary voters the same year. Of course, he would have had to run a very different campaign with a very different assumed persona.
> probably won the nomination,
No, and to even treat that as even semi-serious requires not understanding the situation and rules in the Republican nominating process Trump exploited to win, the ones in the Democratic primary that Clinton exploited to win, and how the rules of both are engineered to be different than each other or a simple election.
> He's to the left of both of the Clintons and Obama on gay marriage (well, Hillary changed her position two years ago, but otherwise).
Rhetorically on that narrow issue perhaps, but his substantive actions are far to their right on LGBTQ issues generally. This is particularly dramatically clear when it comes to policy on transgender military service,where both Obama and Trump made active policy changes to the policy which was in place prior to their own respective presidencies, in opposite directions.
> He's to the left of Bill on fiscal responsibility. etc.
To the extent that there are ldleft and right positions on fiscal responsibility, the left wing position is that “fiscal responsibility” is a reason to cut defense and security spending and/or raise taxes on the rich to pay for government spending, while he right wing position is that fiscal responsibility is a reason to cut social programs or cut taxes on the rich (because tax cuts obviously increase revenues) to pay for government spending. Trump is not to the left of, well, anyone in the Democratic Party Cli on this issue.
His full page ads calling for the execution of the exonerated Central Park Five ran thirty years ago!
There is a sort of relativity here, and you are a moving frame of reference. When you see everybody but you going right, it's actually you going left. If you could travel back in time to discuss politics with your former self, both of you would probably get offended.
Clinton was to the right of Trump on many things.
Start the graph in the 60's and you'll get a very different graph. The standard narrative is that Clinton shifted the party to the right, and it's now returning to where it was in the LBJ days.
I would be interested to hear contrary opinions on why we haven't drifted left socially.
Want to get progress on DRM laws? It probably won't happen solely by talking to a coalition that includes Hollywood and the broader creative community.
Call me back about the chilling effects of this when he can't get onto Fox News with those views.
This talk about "free speech" is a con. The far right says as much explicitly. They don't want free speech, they want their position legitimized.
Calls for civility are the same BS. They advocate for the removal of rights and franchise from whole parts of the population and then complain when people aren't "civil".
It's a dodge. The downvotes are just a symptom of that.
How do you think lobbyists get the policy changes they’re after? By giving the cold shoulder to any rep not already predisposed to voting in their preferred direction?
Here's what the conference said on the matter: https://www.blackhat.com/latestintel/06142019-black-hat-usa-...
It creates a healthier society if we can listen to people even when we don't agree with their views, thus I am not be in favour of this becoming the norm. It's also deeply impolite to withdraw an invite in this manner when no new information has come to light, merely a change of mind. If he'd been discovered to be dishonest or a criminal that's one thing, but "meh, thinking about it, we don't think we want you to come any more, even though we asked you before, when we did want you to come" doesn't cut it.
Will be interesting to see if they stick to the apolitical line consistently with others.
Perhaps we should have a look at where he stood on the ACA - I don't suppose he was part of the Republicans that sought to repeal it for years and then didn't actually have any real policy ideas to replace it when they took control in 2016, exemplifying their bad-faith approach to politics?
> He favors repealing the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.[41] In 2017, when House Republican leadership introduced the American Health Care Act (a bill to repeal the ACA), Hurd was faced with a political quandary.[42] Hurd did not say whether he supported or opposed the legislation.[41][43] Ultimately, after the measure was declared dead and withdrawn from a planned vote due to insufficient support, Hurd "released a statement in which he appeared to oppose the overhaul."
Pathetic. The use of the ACA by Republicans for campaigning for nearly a decade and then their utter failure to repeal or replace it once they had full control of the federal government will stain them forever in my eyes (or at a minimum, the ones in federal office at the time).
It would be great to have a government that focused on policy problems and policy solutions, that had reasoned, evidence-based debates on issues. Unfortunately, the Republican party has done more than any other force to destroy that (Office of Technology Assessment, anyone?). The fact that today, in 2019, we have a Republican president who refuses to admit global warming is a thing, is another exemplar of Republican policy and strategy - which is not to debate, but to avoid it; to hide and ignore and defund evidence when inconvenient; to focus on emotions instead of logic and reason.
There's nothing useful to discuss with such people, and for them to complain on such grounds is hypocrisy of the highest order.
Refusal to engage with individuals on subject A (cyber-security) because you disagree on subject B (healthcare in this case) is unfortunate, and possibly a similar level of hypocrisy if one would otherwise posit being open-minded as a general rule.
If I were to place myself in the position of this congressman, I don't have a good answer to as how to convince them that I'm arguing in good faith.
If the criterion for arguing in good faith is too narrowly defined, it can turn into 'agree with me on everything or else you are arguing in bad faith'
> Republicans that sought to repeal it for years and then didn't actually have any real policy ideas to replace it when they took control in 2016, exemplifying their bad-faith approach to politics?
One may agree or not, but I think his position is fairly clear, and not healthcare -specific.
> Republicans that sought to repeal it for years and then didn't actually have any real policy ideas to replace it when they took control in 2016, exemplifying their bad-faith approach to politics?
Read that quote. Now read it again. It fully and clearly explains the issue without naming the ACA. That's because the fact that the behavior was bought to light by the ACA is irrelevant. The ACA isn't the problem, the behavior is. "It" in that quote could be any piece of legislation and the behavior would still be troubling. Does that help you see? Do you finally understand?
I would not necessarily agree with the above point, as depending on a given law, it is possible there would be those who would support its repeal with no replacement.
That is not to say I do or do not advocate such a course of action for any particular law, just pointing out the option exists.
If it was about opinions he had that are not reflected in his legislative work, that would be different, but when lawmakers lawmake based on their opinions, it goes beyond just a difference of views.
Well, it depends. Do you want to punish the other team, or get back to doing the country's work? Does America really have to take one for team while we go on another boneheaded "well, if we ignore governing and prioritize fucking over our opponents just this one time, it'll mean better governing in the long run" quest?
Could you help me understand—is "running against the ACA for a decade and then having no workable plan for its replacement when you're finally in charge" an example of 'punishing the other team' or an example of 'doing the country's work'?
Who exactly was "in charge" in 2017 and 2018? It seemed to me that there was not one united faction, nor any coalition, that on a number of popular issues could form a majority over that time period.
It seems like it is the normal course of things for the lower and upper representative houses to represent what they will, and for that either to produce or preclude new policy.
Probably the party that controlled both houses of Congress as well as the White House.
now that we've blocked a record number of judicial appointments including a supreme court justice, literally took out an ad in the new york times to try an undermine the Iran deal, claimed that the president wasn't a citizen along with all kinds of other horrible stuff, now...now it's finally time for us to work together. This new guy he's president of all of us. Let's get together and make sure...
No thank you. At some point it's Charlie Brown's fault for even trying to kick the football.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: it looks like you've been using HN primarily for political and ideological battle. Some political overlap is inevitable with the topics that get posted here, but battling opponents is incompatible with the intellectual curiosity that HN exists for. When accounts are only or primarily doing that, we ban them. We have to, because otherwise such flames will take the site over completely.
I've posted about this a lot if you or anyone wants more explanation: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme.... The bottom line is, please use HN in its intended spirit, which is not this.
(With that said, Rep. Hurd seems relatively sane compared to most of his colleagues. If he's not a hypocrite like the rest of them, he should really consider changing parties.)
The Republican party needs to be defeated so soundly that it either forces them to rethink their positions or it splinters into other parties.