Murder 1.

fuck the police

I've never seen a radical pro government type here. Can you give an example if who you would like to represent that group?

@philcore - ummmm....well....hmmmm.....I've got nothing.

@ philcore: Tolstoy might be referring to the likes of me, I suppose. I have some radical views, but I don't see supporting the idea of having a government, rather than not having one, as particularly extreme.

Having police is important. Being able to hold them to account when allegations of abuse arise, as in this case, is also important. I hope the matter is properly investigated. The local media seem to be on the case.

Having police is important? Tell that to the governments around the world cutting their funds.

This isn't that unusual, unfortunate as it is.

Ne'er beg da polis for nuttn.

Police and mods - both corrupted by power and taking it out on innocent people...

You're not really going to be that douche that turns this thread into one of those, are you SYnapse?

Yeah, SYnapse is trying to turn this very regrettable incident into something concerning him. Shame!

Loss of face, SY!

Tolstoy. This is disgusting; nobody will deny that.

You know perfectly well that nobody supports the covering up of brutal and unlawful police actions. To try to turn this into a political issue, to pin it on all of those crazy radicals that believe a government should exist is so much worse than using a mass shooting to promote a gun control agenda or an epidemic to promote healthcare reform.

Mourn this man, offer condolences to his family, bring it to people's attention, and try to get proper justice for the cops. Just don't try to turn it into some talking point for your nutjob views.

Whew! Pretty radical views there, ghug!!

Part of the problem in this particular case is the widespread occurrence of police confiscating video recordings of them in action, whether it be normal perfectly ordinary action such as escorting trespassers off private property, or brutal beatings such as these. As far as I know it varies by jurisdiction as to the specific policy regarding recordings of police, but that it has been held up by the courts that any citizen can record the police at any time, with some case by case exceptions for undercover officers. The confiscation of private property, regardless of whether or not it has a recording of a police officer on it, is a criminal act carried out by the police, and those who have had their cell phones and cameras taken from them can and should consider taking legal action against the specific officers.

On the contrary, ghug, this has a great deal of relevancy to evaluating the views of people who believe that power should be concentrated in the hands of the government in ever-greater amounts -- that humans in government can be trusted with vast amounts of power over all aspects of life, and they won't abuse it.

You're quite right that there's nothing so astonishing about this. But that simply goes to highlight the exceptional naivete of the belief in question.

I certainly don't see how you can argue this is *worse* than politicizing a school shooting; nor are you correctly characterizing what Tolstoy said when you suggest he took issue with those who "believe a government should exist." Are you unable to critique his actual position without replacing it by an absurd parody?

The difference between this and a school shooting is that nobody is attempting to concentrate power in the hands of mentally unbalanced teenagers. Quite the contrary. In response to school shootings among other things (and through completely obvious politicization), they are attempting to concentrate power in the hands of government officials, including police. It is therefore a perfectly appropriate balance to bring up some of the problems with that.

@Puddle,

I agree. Perhaps tougher new laws are needed: it could be made a felony (except in a few excepted cases) for a police officer to seize video of himself from a citizen.

In this case they did get a warrant, but only after hours of harassing and literally imprisoning a couple in their home for hours

Wow, I missed that part.

Well, too bad they didn't post it online in the interim.

@semck83, this is what is annoying about your arguments. You revoke one tiny point in someones argument and then change the topic away from their main point because you like to argue. You're twisting his argument, and ignoring the validity of his interpretation of Tolstoy's opening argument just to start an debate.

Tolstoy's opening post is aimed as an attack against "radical pro-government types" who he claims are prevalent on the forum. This story is being used by him as proof that anyone pro government is naive, which is making the assumption that pro government members will automatically approve of these police officers decision to seize the phones.

What I do know is that a man with a family died, and that shouldn't have happened regardless of what he or the police did. What I also know is that regardless of if this is *worse* then politicizing a school shooting, it's still sad.

Just to note, that last post is directed only at the format of your arguments, not the ideas you're arguing. I think this case is terrible, and my thoughts go out to the family. The BS in this thread needed some kind of rebuke though.

On the contrary, @jmo, it is you who are twisting. You do so twice in short order. First, you say, "Tolstoy's opening post is aimed as an attack against 'radical pro-government types' who he claims are prevalent on the forum."

I don't know if Tolstoy does or doesn't believe that "radical pro-government types" are prevalant on the forum; what is clear is that he didn't say or imply it in any post on this thread. Just because you direct a post at a particular subclass of forum denizens does not in any way imply that you consider said subclass prevalent.

Your second twisting is when you say, " This story is being used by him as proof that anyone pro government is naive,"

Actually, he said "radically pro-government." You can argue that he would consider anybody pro-government radically so, but it would require an argument, not just an assertion; and given his usage of the adverb, you'd be facing a good prima facie argument that he does not.

Also, not that this is twisting per se, but I don't think he actually believed that anybody would approve of police officers' decision to seize the phones. I think he believed everybody would disagree, and that it should cause tension for "radical pro-government types." Indeed he's right. It should.

You say I change away from the main point, yet you yourself state that his main point was to argue that some government supporters are naive. That was my point too, so how did I pivot away?

You complain about my style of arguing, and you're not the only one; but my style of arguing is (or tries to be, and certainly sometimes fails) about being precise and responding to what people actually say. All I really see from you in response right here is a lot of blustering and bad reasoning.

I actually burst out laughing midway through semck's post.

You pick out the "prevalent on the forum" point and make it the first thing you address. If you don't see that this is *exactly* what jmo just called you out for, there is something very wrong.

Moving on, you argue that "[t]hat was [your] point too, so how did [you] pivot away?"

That was, in fact, not your point. You decided to jump on my school shooting point, misinterpret it, and try to hide the fact that there is literally no merit to Tolstoy's point by attempting to rebuke one argument of mine. Moreover, you are wrong on that point as well, both in your interpretation of my statement and in your own argument. My argument is that it is bad that people try to use tragedies for political motives, whereas you misconstrued it as "when my side uses tragedies for political gains, it's somehow morally better than when yours does it." On top of that, when my side uses tragedies for political gains, though it's still quite certainly a low blow, it *is" morally better than when yours does it. You make some argument about teenage children not being empowered by gun laws, or more accurately a lack thereof, but they are in fact empowered, and they do horrible things like shooting up schools because they have that power. These cops are similarly empowered, but in an anarchist society, they would be easily able to gain just as much power and abuse it just as readily. If anything, the best solution to this problem is to expand police forces to give them better internal auditing and provide more thorough background checks to prevent the empowerment of lunatics who beat people to death.

/poorlywrittenrant

ghug,

I agree that anarchism would suffer the problems you suggest. So that would be an excellent point, if anarchism were the only alternative to being a "radical pro-government type." Of course, it's not, so it's not.

You claim that my point was just about your school shooting point, and not (as I claimed) to reiterate support for Tolstoy's central one. That is a very silly claim, given that I did not mention your school shooting point at all until my third paragraph, and my topic sentence was, "On the contrary, ghug, this has a great deal of relevancy to evaluating the views of people who believe that power should be concentrated in the hands of the government in ever-greater amounts...," which was precisely Tolstoy's claim.

I am looking forward to the first post by you or jmo that does not mischaracterize the post it responds to.

Anyway: if you wish to argue that news stories should never be used for political purposes, that is a respectable position (and one I will feel free to bring up in future, should I deem it relevant).

Of course, you do then attempt to claim (still) that it IS morally better for the left to do this than the right. This is a silly claim, which your attempt at justification makes all too clear.

Oh, and you mischaracterized me yet one more time. I did not say that opponents of gun laws were against empowering anybody. I said they were not arguing for the *concentration of power* in particular hands. This surely can't be that hard a point.

Oh, and as for my addressing a minor point: that is fine. The claim that I took issue with in jmo's initial post was that I had twisted anything. The relative importance of points is fairly subjective. If somebody considers that I responded to an unimportant point, then a good response would be to ignore my argument and address something else.

And there you go with the semantic little points again. You know exactly what he meant, but you chose to focus on *one* word and blow it out of proportion.

As for discussion of concentration of power, that point brings us from a comparison fruits to a comparison of apples and oranges. I chose to take the part of your argument that was actually arguable and respond to that.

Then, we have this: "Of course, you do then attempt to claim (still) that it IS morally better for the left to do this than the right."
I'm arguing about a specific point, not about something generally left or right. There are plenty of sane people on the right that advocate for stricter gun laws. You also can't just say my justification is wrong without any evidence. I'm not going to let you get away with that.

"I am looking forward to the first post by you or jmo that does not mischaracterize the post it responds to."
To quote a man who needs to man up, "hypocrite!"

"then a good response would be to ignore my argument and address something else."
This is how you approach all arguments. You ignore 98% of points the other person makes because you can't counter them and then you pick a few tiny little things and break off on tangents. The rest of us prefer to respond to all points because silence implies agreement and we actually want to discuss things because we disagree with you. When you ignore almost all of the points, there's barely anything left to argue and there's no point to arguing but for the sake of arguing.

@ghug,

"This is how you approach all arguments. You ignore 98% of points the other person makes because you can't counter them and then you pick a few tiny little things and break off on tangents. The rest of us prefer to respond to all points because silence implies agreement and we actually want to discuss things because we disagree with you. "

Wow. I guess that's why you ignored my several other points to jmo, then, and keep saying I only picked out the one small one to respond to (which is a lie), as here:

"You know exactly what he meant, but you chose to focus on *one* word and blow it out of proportion."

I focused on everything he said. No point went unaddressed. And again, when I responded to you the first time, I actually majored on your disagreement with Tolstoy's central claim, but you later said I had only addressed the school shooting point.

So now you're just sitting here lying about what I'm saying. It's beneath you. Give it up.

"You also can't just say my justification is wrong without any evidence. I'm not going to let you get away with that."

Reading back, I don't actually see a single attempt at justification for the idea that the anti-gun crowd's behavior on this issue is preferable, except maybe the idea that anarchism would be just as bad. I did respond to that argument. I honestly don't see another one. If you have an argument, please make it more clearly so that I can respond to it.

And now, please stop lying and mischaracterizing my posts. It's starting to get pretty annoying.

in which Tolstoy uses tragic killing of man to further his own lamestain internet libertarianism

"Wow. I guess that's why you ignored my several other points to jmo, then, and keep saying I only picked out the one small one to respond to (which is a lie), as here:"
You know you do this, there's really no point in denying it. You thrive on bringing the scope of an argument down and then beating people down with your argumentative skills. All it does is make you feel good about "winning," which is not really the point of debates such as these.

"I focused on everything he said."
No, you wrote a giant post about twisting. You mentioned pretty much everything he had said, but it was all in the context of an overarching claim that it was not you but him who was twisting arguments. You can talk about everything someone says with actually addressing it and keeping the argument flowing.

"And again, when I responded to you the first time, I actually majored on your disagreement with Tolstoy's central claim, but you later said I had only addressed the school shooting point."
Again, no you didn't. You wrote a brief response at the beginning and then turned the argument towards the school shooting point, writing twice as much on that as you did on the major point of the already established debate.

"Reading back, I don't actually see a single attempt at justification for the idea that the anti-gun crowd's behavior on this issue is preferable,"
Thanks for actually making an argument on this one, but you're still wrong. The anti-gun crowd is taking a problem that is directly leading to deaths, creating an agenda behind it, and trying to fix it, using those deaths to further it, whereas Tolstoy here is taking a tragedy, finding a way to connect it to his political agenda, and using it to advance that agenda. Do you not see the difference?

"And now, please stop lying and mischaracterizing my posts. It's starting to get pretty annoying."
Why do I even bother? This is ridiculous.

You guys realize that all of us are outraged that the police sometimes behave this way. The posters who are pretending not to be outraged are merely trolling.