I'm less concerned with Title IX stuff than with Falwell's apparent animosity towards accreditation and federal funding regulations that are starting to force colleges to show academic achievement and post-college outcomes. I expect some of the regulations Falwell wants to get rid of will allow private and for profit colleges to get student loan dollars without having to prove efficacy of their work.

At the state level in SC, but I learned there is a plastic bag industry that pumps money into the government. That seems insane to me. A bill is likely to be passed through the SC State house (maybe not the senate) that would ban municipalities from banning plastic bags.

Senators asked to sink plastic bag bill | The State

This is an honest question for Jon/other conservatives. A main cause for conservatives seem to be getting the federal government from intruding on our lives, but its fine for the state government to do so at the expense of truly local government. I get the feeling that most conservatives feel city/county government is inherently corrupt/incompetent. But people in local government are often the ones that then move to state/federal government, which means that each level should be equally incompetent.

My question is, why is OK for a state to intervene at an extremely local level, but not the federal government? Should both stay out of things that are too local for their own purview? Basically, the feds only deal with interstate issues and states only deal with inter-city issues, while allowing cities to handle their own things?

The vast majority of people--left and right--care about issues. They don't really care about the nuts and bolts of government. (I would imagine that this board, a self-selected group of people attracted to text-sims, cares much more about the nuts and bolts on average than the general public).

People,however, want to pretend that their motivations are more intellectual and pure than mere issues. It is also much easier to defend an abstract principle (like "less federal intervention" or "separation of powers") than it is to defend the merits of a controversial issue. So folks tend to frame their desired policy results as simply a consequence of what they really care about--the nuts and bolts of administration.

The same folks who were bitching about the Feds telling Oklahoma what to do for the last 8 years will be cheering the Fed telling New York what to do for the next 4/8. And vice-versa.

I don't think conservatives today believe in less intrusion anymore. The libertarian part of the Republican Party got run out a long time ago.

You still have your old school conservatives like the National Review folks but their influence is practically gone.

Overall, this is mostly a red/blue issue. Red states are increasingly reining in their blue cities.

I don't think it's intellectually inconsistent - if you're a less-government type in a state legislature, you might object to one of your cities doing its own minimum wage, or other things you think are too intrusive on residents or businesses. Stepping in where you have a majority and shutting that down fits with your philosophy, in that case. The only "government intrusion" they are committing there is intruding on a lower level of government who doesn't share their views.

Expect More Conflict Between Cities and States - Route Fifty

So much policy has been handed down from the feds to the states in the last decade or so of federal stagnation -- state legislatures are where most policy is getting done now. With the courts coming in at #2 with a bullet.

Iran is an ally of Russia so this is just grandstanding.

Every time I hear Liberty mentioned, my first thought is "wait, is that even a real university?"

(Of course wouldn't you know, one of my HS classmates who was, uh, not the brightest has a kid going there. Makes sense.)

From what I can tell 'no it isn't - unless you count Trump University as having been a real university, searching online it shows up in 'scam reports' and has classes in biology which include Creationism ... so no to me it's not a real university.

It's funny - I read an argument yesterday for Philly eating up its surrounding counties and possibly applying for its own statehood.

Make Philly Bigger as a Way to Boost Power Under Trump Administration

If you have issues with the state, just become your own!

Who is "just about everybody?" Haven't you argued that colleges are more capable than many local police forces in dealing with this?

As far as what I said, which part isn't true? The part where Falwell hired a guy who oversaw an athletic department with more than 50 outstanding rape allegations and weeks later takes a position with the federal government where he immediately states a primary goal of getting rid of the title IX regulations designed to protect students in that situation, thus exonerating his hire? Or the part where every time a male college athlete is accused of rape Jon immediately runs to their defense and blames the girl?

A little perusing of his college shows that they don't do tenure. Seems like they're not concerned with much in the way of actual quality or integrity.

I'm probably a bad benchmark, but with that caveat I'll answer for me.

I'm against stupid shit. No matter who does it.
I'm in favor of actions that block stupid shit, also largely (tho not entirely) no matter who does it.

This qualifies as stupid shit -- and an unwarranted intrusion on the decisions of businesses & their customers -- and therefore whomever blocks it is fine by me.

It's a privately funded Christian university. I wouldn't be caught dead there, but some of their degree programs rated ok (criminal justice for one). Just because we don't agree with the views taught there, doesn't mean they are not real. This is a college afterall. The kids are 18 and older.

If by that time they believe in creationism, a "proper" university is something that probably isn't changing them. Furthermore, they can forget about ever getting a job in the scientific field.

I'm a centrist at this point, but I'll give you my take.

1 - The Republican party that didn't want to intrude on your rights is dead. It has been dead for quite a while. Republicans have always wanted to control marriage, abortion, and a ton of other things. The only difference in the parties now is what they want to control. If it's gun control, a conservative is going to want the government to mind it's own business. When it comes to abortion, it wants Roe V Wade overturned.

2 - There are "free market" libertarians left. There are people who have the principles your are talking about here, but they don't make up a large enough party to make any difference.

3 - It's critical to note that I don't think a lot of people are the black/white conservatives or liberals anymore. Most people are issue driven and have no real party to turn to anymore.

Conservatives believe decisions should be made at the smallest level of government they control.

As I said above, it's a private university.

Tenure in regular universities is now pretty much dead for one group of people anyway. There are not a ton of conservative voices in most colleges. Tenure used to be for professors who could speak out about controversial things and be protected while they did it. Now? Not so much, because conservative profs are never getting hired and the ones that do are long gone before they ever make tenure.

What's funny is the study did this year by the Washington Post. They state that conservatives can thrive in a university setting and everything is wonderful. When you look at the actual study you find that a majority of the conservatives who were happy were in economics. You also find that over 1/3 of all conservative leaning profs hide their views from students and colleagues until they can get tenure.

Don't be so pessimistic. Under this administration there is a quickly growing need for climate change deniers, and it's not like those people are going to come from somewhere that actually teaches science! Somebody needs to be able to pump out those shoddily-constructed studies so people like Dutch can quickly Google "global warming is fake" or "states with more gun laws have more violence" and get something that confirms their point of view so they can pretend to have studied up on the matter.

Hey, Liberty has been to 3 NCAA basketball tournaments.

Fair enough and that is a valid point - I just find it hard to comprehend anywhere being taken seriously as a place of learning which has just a tenuous grasp of reality.

I can understand their law courses being acceptable though as that doesn't require a basis in science (same thing for arts and such I expect).

Not entirely the case. As someone on a couple Campus Ministry boards I can tell you that there are plenty of folks that come to school believing in Creationism and get their minds utterly blown by the science classes. Usually it ends up with the student abandoning their faith, but the denominations who are fine with science try to let those students know that faith and science can co-exist. However by that time many of them feel as if religion lied to them and it's hard to get them to see that.

Their law school is one of the lowest rated in the country.

It's a real school but it's a really bad school by most metrics. A degree from it probably doesn't go far in the outside world. I think what they bank on is that a lot of Liberty graduates hire other Liberty graduates. It was a knock on the Bush administration back in the day. They had a few Liberty graduates in the administration that hired almost exclusively from that university.

Thanks! I thought you generally believe local government is usually inept and/or stupid anyway, so I figured I'd ask for your opinion to clarify what I saw.

So in the past there were state's rights/small government conservatives, but now those monikers are mainly just shorthand or dinosaur terms and don't exist in the way they used to.

Justin Amash, Rand Paul, Thomas Masse, Mike Lee. Probably a few others I just don't know that well but yes this list is quite short.

Probably at least fair to note that they appear to have the same accreditation as most colleges/universities, including the highest classification from SACS.

Assuming the Wiki is accurate, while some of the alphabet soup is Greek to me (no pun intended) and I can't assess the level of credibility, several are recognizable including NCATE and CCNE.

I think shorthand is fair in some cases for sure. But that's probably been a more realistic assessment of it for a pretty long time now.

I mean, a literal interpretation of "small government" that extends to something meaning "smallest government possible/conceivable" isn't compatible with very much in the way of laws ... yet we don't have a sizable number of near-anarchists running out loose.

It's almost always really a matter of whose ox is being gored for the vast majority of people, no matter where they land on the socio-political spectrum.

Well, they were created as euphemistic ways to say "minorities shouldn't have civil rights" during a time when that was no longer seen as a viable way to win elections at a national level. Now that the Voting Rights Act is no longer enforced and you have someone like Steve Bannon involved in things to the extent he is, that conventional wisdom has changed and it seems to be okay to be a little more overt.

Cool, just checking.

Listening to the Spicer press conference. He was asked about the white kid who killed muslims in the mosque and how the US will stop these kinds of attacks. He said stronger borders.

So I guess we're building a wall up North too.

If you follow or work around state government, there's plenty of regular old-fashioned conservatives who generally support lower taxes, lower government spending, and limited federal government involvement in state affairs. (But who will still vote to improve infrastructure and stuff like that).

It seems like at the state level there's less ideological warfare and more people just generally applying their policy and economic views to the running of a state's business.

No, no, no! Strong borders to keep Muslims out so our own citizens don't feel compelled to have to kill them.

That's basically the niche where I fall. I believe the USA should function as a confederation of 50 independent states that each have the ability to govern as their citizens dictate. The most important elections should be the ones held at the state level and the the federal government should be downsized by at least 80% and only be left with administration of duties that cover the union as a whole (defense, interstate infrastructure, international trade, etc). If any state wants to govern itself by passing laws that reflect their own brand of liberal or conservative ideologies, so be it. By doing so, you'd give the American public a bit of a choice as to the laws/policies they would like to live under. I believe that in doing so, you'd also encourage competitiveness between the states that would force improvements in state controlled areas like education, health care, and such.

Nope, we're just completely ignoring terrorism and radicalization by white supremacists.

Trump to focus counter-extremism program solely on Islam

So Trump's first military operation lead to the death of a US soldier and 8 year old American citizen, surely we can expect the first of what will be 7 or 8 congressional investigations into it to be opening up soon.

"a bit." So basically you're imposing an extra 'you were born a poor person in a red state' tax on people and would need to find some way around that.

But that's the last thing "small government" conservatives would want because they would rather have people whipped into a frenzy about "radical Islamic terrorism" than to actually think and say, for example, "Hmm, let's see how all that money trickled down from the job creators once Kansas slashed state income taxes. Oh, maybe that's not the smartest thing to try."

In this day with the abundance of communication tools and devices, I don't see it as being difficult to identify other places where you would rather live if their laws/living conditions/social policies were ones where you would feel more comfortable living.

I don't really agree with that. I'd rather want people living in places that reflect their own ideals and gives them the best way to live their life according to both their social conscience as well as their economic means.

If you believe in a World Historical perspective and think that conflict between the US as The global superpower and China (/India) as populous developing countries with different cultural values is inevitable then there is incentive to attack when you still hold a huge advantage in production capacity. (And I assume Bannon has read some Teutonic philosophy...)

Of course you now have nuclear weapons to worry about, so allying with regional countries who fear China with things like TPP are probably the smarter play. But those are hard to both achieve and explain!
Iran (& Syria) are useful tools. If such a crass deal were put on the table Putin would gladly sell them out in a heartbeat and allow the U.S. to run point there if we gave him a free hand in Eastern Europe.
I mock Liberty U too, but tenure is a double-edged sword. A philosophical stance against tenure doesn't preclude quality if it's intellectually honest and consistent.
But states and cities with more gun laws do tend to have more violence. It's a reverse causation where they have more gun laws because there's more gun violence, but it's still a correlation.
No doubt it's been used as a euphemistic shield by racists in the last half century, but the state's rights vs Federalism argument goes back to when the Articles of Confederation were replaced by the Constitution and court cases like McCulloch vs Maryland. Implying that this was created in the 1960's or all people who want to limit federal power are closet racists seems dumb to me.
+1 I think there are more things than just the strictly Libertarian ideals that should occur at a federal level, but on something like health care it would have been great to see how RomneyCare played out in Massachusetts for 20 years, and how other states attempts worked out, so we had more data and could pick and choose the best parts instead of trying to implement a top down system across the country. Within reason I don't see why Massachusetts and Texas need to have the same gun laws or abortion rights - this is a huge country and people have different values and interests in different parts.

Though as Quiksand's article shows, the real divide in the country has almost always been (more progressive) urban constituencies vs rural ones. North Carolina is a huge flashpoint for that now because Charlotte & the triangle are growing & tipping the state from red to blue; Texas will probably be there in a few election cycles etc. Maybe the Democratic party can figure this out, but considering who they picked & retained for national leadership it doesn't appear likely to happen anytime soon. (Though the anti-Trump vitriol may still be enough to flip a lot of House & local seats in 2018 at the rate he's going.)


Speaking of which, the administration indicated it'll be going after H1-B visa's next. Good, get those highly skilled temporary immigrants who fill jobs in an industry with tons of vacancies and pay more than their share in taxes out of our country! That'll improve global American competitiveness!

Right, and such a paper would be very unlikely to hold up to peer review and be published by a reputable journal, but for a lot of people if you just make it *look* like a study and throw it in a pay-to-pay journal, then they can point to it and go "see, a study says (this thing I believe) so it must be true."


Yeah, I took US history class in high school too. I was referring to the specific coined phrase of 'states' rights conservatism,' which unlike anti-federalism did not see any type of usage until the 50s and 60s. And of course those terms were taken up by politicians who in the preceding decades were just fine with having the federal government step in with protectionist tariffs or New Deal programs that benefited rural whites in the South.

Generate your own executive order.

Trump Executive Order Generator

No, a paper that drew a positive correlation between gun violence and gun laws would (probably) hold up to peer review. People using that paper to draw the wrong correlation, whether due to disingenuousness or idiocy, would not.
The officlal States Rights Dixiecrats showed up in the 1940's under Thurmond, but the concept of state's rights is the same as anti-federalism, the modern Republican Party was founded largely on an anti-slavery platform in the 1850's which highlighted state's rights to oppose the Fugitive Slave Act, and was dominated by "pro-Business" state's rights supporters for much of the 20th century. Politicians have always changed their views based on where in the power structure they were - just look at Jefferson pre-Presidency vs in it - and at various times every major political concept is adopted as a dog whistle or used in support of bad policy. But there are plenty of genuine state's rights/small government supporters (although relatively few who support it in both economic and social policy when their party is in power), this board has a higher concentration of them than most places, and claiming the broader concepts were created instead of selectively (mis-)used by Dixiecrats and their descendants is both laughable and the type of racist implication that isolates and hurts progressive leftists from growing into a larger coalition.

I think the "state's rights" debate changed a lot after the commerce clause was interpreted to include just about everything. The Civil Rights Act was obviously a big part of that fight, but it wasn't the only thing. The big federal/state tension in my state and bordering states isn't about race, it's about federal lands and whether they should be transferred to the state. And there's always debates about accepting federal money against a fear of what "strings" will be attached.

#Penceblackhistory is a thing

A step in the right direction on debate participation requirements.

If there's an award for corruption, the SD state government is a frontrunner. They declared a state of emergency so they could legally repeal ethics laws voted in by the populace.

You do realize the Obama adminstration planned this operation, right?

Yes and it hadn't been actually undertaken because of a lack of intelligence .... which apparently hadn't changed when it was attempted.

(arguably it was carried out DUE to a lack of intelligence ;) )

Howard Stern on Trump: Howard Stern: Trump wants to be loved, presidency will be 'detrimental' to his mental health - Feb. 2, 2017

Kinda jives with what I thought the whole time Trump was running when it seemed unlikely he'd even stick with it till the end of campaigning, let alone win. I think he picked the wrong running mates if he wanted to be loved publicly while letting his circle direct policy...

I don't know what all this has to do with the fact the term came into wider usage as a direct response to the civil rights movement. Here you go.. It's cool that people who live in some of the less populous states that are upwards of 90 percent white ostensibly use the term to talk about things besides race, but even then it's fairly obvious that most of these people who fancy themselves to be ideologically-pure budget hawks (even as they live in states that are among the most dependent on revenue from the federal government) don't apply the same amount of scrutiny to how much the associate to the associate dean's provost at Random State U is making compared to the idea that 2 percent of people on welfare may be smoking weed.


I hope it makes you feel smarter for jerking yourself off about semantics. I don't care about the freaking etymology, and it's obvious that the post I responded to was making the observation that at one point there was a larger movement of people who identified as states' rights/small government conservatives, and I pointed out the time period from which most of them came and how it had more to do with seeking political power than some pure ideology.

Anyway, sorry for all I have done to make race relations worse in America. The majority of Americans (Democrats and Republicans equally so) were against interracial (not gay, interracial) marriage the year I was born, and I could have helped matters so much more by just constantly neglecting to point out how people at times make poor policy decisions based on little more than their fucked-up racial phobias. I'm gonna go ahead and say that the idea that someone who voted for a guy who operates straight out of the facism playbook would have been willing to join a 'coalition of progressive leftists' had they not been implicated to be a racist at some point (aww, that must have hurt their feelings to hear that. Those poor special snowflakes!) is more laughable than anything I've said.

There was that Tom Hanks SNL sketch in the runup to the election that everyone seemed to love, but the actual dark humor that seemed to go over most people's heads was how Hanks' character, despite all his shared views and experiences with the African-American contestants, could not muster up the solidarity at the end to say "Black Lives Matter."

Bowling Green Massacre? Seriously?


I wonder why they didn't cover it...

Don't worry, Rand Paul already confirmed it happened.

I hope someone asks Spicer what the unemployment rate is now. Given that Trump said it was 42% during the campaign, I wonder if they'll take credit for a 37% drop in their first month.

She needs to get together with the Iraqi Information Minister so they can start their own comedy skit.