Reveal Your Uncool Conservative Beliefs Here

I like that aesthetic. A few years ago I saw two kids in glorious 90s mallrat regalia -- JNCOs, cat in the hat hat, tiny backpack that is also a teddy bear, hemp jewelry. I think they were part of some double advanced retro subculture at their high school.

Say then, my friend, in what manner does tyranny arise? --that it has a democratic origin is evident.

Clearly.
And does not tyranny spring from democracy in the same manner as democracy from oligarchy --I mean, after a sort?

How?
The good which oligarchy proposed to itself and the means by which it was maintained was excess of wealth --am I not right?

Yes.
And the insatiable desire of wealth and the neglect of all other things for the sake of money-getting was also the ruin of oligarchy?

True.
And democracy has her own good, of which the insatiable desire brings her to dissolution?

What good?
Freedom, I replied; which, as they tell you in a democracy, is the glory of the State --and that therefore in a democracy alone will the freeman of nature deign to dwell.

Yes; the saying is in everybody's mouth.
I was going to observe, that the insatiable desire of this and the neglect of other things introduces the change in democracy, which occasions a demand for tyranny.

How so?
When a democracy which is thirsting for freedom has evil cupbearers presiding over the feast, and has drunk too deeply of the strong wine of freedom, then, unless her rulers are very amenable and give a plentiful draught, she calls them to account and punishes them, and says that they are cursed oligarchs.

Yes, he replied, a very common occurrence.
Yes, I said; and loyal citizens are insultingly termed by her slaves who hug their chains and men of naught; she would have subjects who are like rulers, and rulers who are like subjects: these are men after her own heart, whom she praises and honours both in private and public. Now, in such a State, can liberty have any limit?

Certainly not.
By degrees the anarchy finds a way into private houses, and ends by getting among the animals and infecting them.

How do you mean?
I mean that the father grows accustomed to descend to the level of his sons and to fear them, and the son is on a level with his father, he having no respect or reverence for either of his parents; and this is his freedom, and the metic is equal with the citizen and the citizen with the metic, and the stranger is quite as good as either.

The Constitution actually does guarantee the individual right to firearm ownership

the second amendment is a run-on sentence with no clear subject

if you're in a committed relationship it's probably a good idea not to spend a lot of alone time w/ someone who shares your spouse's gender

significant other's* gender

lol ok Mordy

Straight people are nuts

http://www.theonion.com/article/mike-pence-asks-waiter-remove-mrs-butterworth-tabl-55661

i work in a field that is over 80% female, i spend most of my time with women!!! if i lived by pence's dumb rule i'd be fucking weirdo

how often do u go to dinners one on one with another woman?

nb i have platonic female friends and in the past i have gone to dinner w/ them but it's extremely rare and i think it's probably best to limit it. but i think i've talked on ilx before about how i don't think ppl should have intimate friendships w ppl of their SO's gender and iirc the vast majority of ilx disagreed w/ me.

"having dinner" "spending a lot of alone time" "intimate friendships" lol the goalposts are driving around on the back of a pickup truck

idk wtf that means but i'm guessing it means that some of those things you agree w/ and some you don't.

Straight people are nuts

― softie (silby), Friday, March 31, 2017 6:37 PM (forty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

My wife went out to lunch today with a male colleague, and I know has regularly eaten with or had drinks with other guys in her field at conferences and until the Pence shit yesterday it never even crossed my mind that this would be considered to be controversial or scandalous to anyone.

Still can't really wrap my head around being this distrustful of your partner or assuming everyone is a lecherous asshole.

it's just such a weird and useless thing to make generalizations about and depending on how you frame the relationship you can make it sound completely innocuous or the opposite of that so like what are we doing here

it's neither. it's that ppl bond w/ ppl they spend time with, esp alone, and you probably shouldn't be putting yourself into situations where you could develop romantic feelings - even instantly repressed - with ppl outside your relationship. it's not like humans are exemplars of emotional appropriateness and relationships of all kinds are often complicated by unanticipated feelings. it has nothing to w/ distrusting anyone, or assuming anyone is lecherous. xp

cad, i think probably you see it as a spectrum. you likely draw these lines in different places than other ppl. my impression is that a lot of ppl don't even see a problem w/ having a relationship w/ someone that rivals or even possibly eclipses the emotional intimacy of their relationship w/ their spouse. different conceptions of what a marriage indicates and how to maintain its health. i don't think it's a terrible discussion to have and over the last two days i've seen a lot of ppl acting like they can't even understand where pence might've been coming from. like i said above i don't go anywhere near as far as he does but i find his perspective v comprehensible.

On one hand what emerged about Pence is neanderthal: I would not share if I were the vice president of the Unites States, a personage who has to meet with heads of state who are not going to jump this limp dicked sad-faced asshole's bones. But I know my dad would also never meet with a woman by himself under any circumstance b/c he's terrified that my mom will out, which tells me (a) his line of business doesn't employ many women in charge or whom men like my father regard as equals (b) he doesn't trust himself.

The question changes in office and university settings. I was a grad student in the '90s and already male professors didn't close their office doors when meeting with female students.

i don't go out to dinner very much w/ anyone in my field unless i'm at a conference but one-on-one meetings, coffee, lunch, they happen all the time and are never weird and i never feel like they are a threat to my marriage. sometimes i might be attracted to the person and sometimes i might not be, wholly depends on the person obv and nothing really to do with the scenario of being alone with them.

idk i take it as a given that i will have romantic feelings for people other than my wife at times, sometimes those feelings are deep and real and sometimes they are fleeting, and they might happen whether i am working in an office w/ them in the company of a ton of other people or if i'm alone out to lunch or dinner with them. it's not a big deal imo, i think i became significantly less stressed about the status of my marriage when i accepted that i will be attracted to thousands of other people throughout my lifetime, and being attracted or romantically interested in someone other than my wife does not mean i will be cheat on her or seek to undermine my relationship w/ her

The question changes in office and university settings. I was a grad student in the '90s and already male professors didn't close their office doors when meeting with female students.

lol meanwhile show me a single athletic department who gives two shits

i think there's a spectrum, and then there's some kind of large gulf of nothingness, and then there's the pence viewpoint. i can't understand where he's coming from because i can't imagine a person choosing a highly public life and then setting those kinds of restrictions for themselves. and that's not even getting into where the restrictions are coming from which i think alfred has covered very nicely.

as an aside, i'd be curious where you see evidence for this:

my impression is that a lot of ppl don't even see a problem w/ having a relationship w/ someone that rivals or even possibly eclipses the emotional intimacy of their relationship w/ their spouse.

b/c my anecdotal experience would show few if any examples where this is the case.

lol meanwhile show me a single athletic department who gives two shits

― Not the real Tombot (El Tomboto),

Well, they generate revenue!

The way I boil it down has fuck all to do with people's bad judgement about intimacy and "romance" and a lot to do with professional ethics and trust between adults who work together, as peers, subordinate and superior, contractor and customer, mentor and protege, whatever. The rest is the goddamn marriage vows, for crying out loud.

I have a job that requires that I abide by federal prohibitions on the use of certain substances. Do I need to move to a neighborhood that doesn't have a guy selling weed on the corner on a regular basis? Some people abide by religious prohibitions against drinking alcohol. Must they avoid all establishments that have liquor licenses?

the particular conservative obsession with human weakness is so weird and lopsided and absurd to me

well this one has a lot to do with misogyny

Pence doesn't avoid spending time alone with women who aren't is wife because of his frailty it's because he hates women

Oh I don't give two shits what that moron thinks, I was speaking to the notion in the abstract

Still can't really wrap my head around being this distrustful of your partner or assuming everyone is a lecherous asshole.

lol i remember when i thought this way

idk i take it as a given that i will have romantic feelings for people other than my wife at times, sometimes those feelings are deep and real and sometimes they are fleeting, and they might happen whether i am working in an office w/ them in the company of a ton of other people or if i'm alone out to lunch or dinner with them. it's not a big deal imo

it's not something to make a huge deal out of but it's not fantastic either idk i guess i agree w/ carter here - that he lusted in his heart. and also there's an element of sanctity you're trying to protect as well which means trying to avoid thoughts that could encroach upon it if it can be helped. i'm trying to make a v nuanced argument so plz don't get me wrong - i don't think there's anything wrong with eating w/ someone of the opposite gender who isn't yr spouse, and i don't think there's anything wrong with fleeting meaningless romantic feelings about them. i just don't think it's ideal and i understand where ppl are coming from when they try to avoid it and i personally try to keep it to a minimum in my life if possible.

b/c my anecdotal experience would show few if any examples where this is the case.

unless someone speaks up here i'll just have to go by my memory which is that the last time i brought this conversation up on ilx i got at least one response from someone that was like "i've had many significant others come and go but i have friends who have lasted me my entire lifetime."

What about eating with a man who isn't your wife

http://m5.paperblog.com/i/83/830582/the-fannibal-dinner-party-cooking-like-hannib-L-B18MFv.jpeg

I mean, the number of jobs where one-on-one dinner interactions are a regular part of business is, I'm thinking, relatively low? But the bigger issue here is that if you aren't comfortable with that, maybe don't take a job where it'd be important to be alone in a room with another person

the main issue is that this mindset doesn't just include one-on-one interactions, it carries over into other business. maybe those meetings are essential and women miss out on managerial roles, or maybe the same dynamic carries over to larger groups. it's this essential idea that keeps good ol' boy networks in place, that keeps women off of executive committees or off Wall Street, that somehow having a woman in the room is going to fuck up their success, or that women in that room have to act like "one of the boys"

important government or business meeting rooms shouldn't be safe spaces for old white men talking about golf and tits

Still can't really wrap my head around being this distrustful of your partner or assuming everyone is a lecherous asshole.

lol i remember when i thought this way

― velko, Friday, March 31, 2017 8:51 PM (yesterday)

velko otm

though it's kinda a personal version of nanny state-ism, a drastic means of trying to prevent people from hurting themselves or others, when it's going to happen anyway, because people are human and life is short

*it's = Pence's rules

mordy what if you're bi

just get takeout

mh otm

important government or business meeting rooms shouldn't be safe spaces for old white men talking about golf and tits

yes, and that is exactly the 2nd order effect of this kind of thinking (NB: this kind of thinking is hardly treated as a personal decision, it's also a yardstick to judge others with)

unless someone speaks up here i'll just have to go by my memory which is that the last time i brought this conversation up on ilx i got at least one response from someone that was like "i've had many significant others come and go but i have friends who have lasted me my entire lifetime."

This is how I feel fwiw, but I don't even know how much I disagree with Mordy.

Like, if you want the whole rewards-of-coupledom-above-all-else thing (which I think are... children?) - maybe the strength of my love for my closest friends is a problem! I don't know, it seems plausible, I have no reason or evidence to disagree (although also no reason to disagree with happily married people saying the contrary)

I think resilience and courage are underemphasized in modern parenting.

I was brought up thinking that being sensitive and clever were good things and that a little bit of vulnerability and even neuroticism could be charming if i played them off in a kind of self-deprecating way. I now realize that this was stupid, i did not play these things off charmingly, and that i should have spent my teen years hanging out with the mainstream teens i thought i was better than -- the jocks. These people were more aware of the competitive aspect of social relationships and, more importantly, they didn't resent it. Their fear of showing weakness was not pathological; rather, it was adaptive. I don't think this is a gender role thing, either. i know as many women as men who have this kind of cheerful toughness I'm talking about.

Also I am not saying that people should pursue strength through aggression. Sometimes, I think, the basic virtue of being able to stand up for yourself is mixed up with aggression and people end up all turned around, validating weakness without realizing it. This is a road to psychological hell.

there are neurotic jocks, too, it's just the team social aspect pushes a more normalized way of relating

idk just join any large group that's intellectually diverse and not a bunch of nerds

Play a brass instrument

Regarding the Pence approach to staying faithful, it seems a little extreme/presumptuous to me. I think the reality of possible infidelity is that you know who the people in your life are that you might stray with. You have a responsibility not to deceive yourself about this and to guard against situations that make it easier to fuck up. The idea, in my case, that this would apply to all the men I know, or even all the men I am friends with, is sort of hilarious. My initial response to that Pence quote was, relax, nobody's sweating you.

Like, maybe Mike Pence is really afraid he might fuck literally any woman in the world, but the women of the world do not reciprocate that fear. That seems not to have occurred to him. Shocker.

No good literature has been produced since WW2.

― Mordy, Wednesday, August 3, 2016 12:48 AM (seven months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Mordy, do you actually believe this???

*fires up .xls* mordy rates isaac b singer iirc

i didn't mean that question to sound accusatory; i was just genuinely surprised.