First podcast comedy show I’ve ever been to
I haven’t heard the episode or know anything in depth about Thomas’ particular argument but given that a lot of Thomas’ arguments are what did the people of 1800 think, if you were an enlightened liberal on religion in say 1800 wouldn’t that be the position that you’d come down on? That , of course, ours is a Christian god fearing nation, but the Mohammadan* shouldn’t be prohibited from exercising his religion?
- using 1800’s language on religion sarcasm
I think if you were an enlightened liberal, you’d believe that religious freedom is achieved by the dual prongs of the establishment clause and the free exercise clause. That you can’t truly enjoy religious freedom if the state places burdens on how you practice your religion, nor can you enjoy religious freedom if the state endorses and supports an opposing religion whose practices conflict with your beliefs.
If I understood it correctly, Thomas’s argument surrounds the incorporation doctrine, and how it applies. Based on the constitution as written originally, states were free to do things that, had the federal government done them, would have violated the constitution.
That changed with the 14th amendment, which applied the Bill of Rights to state action. So now states can’t endorse a particular religion or prohibit the exercise of religion. What’s bizarre about Thomas’s take is that he totally accepts the incorporation doctrine, because he ruled in the vaccine cases that state prohibitions against large gatherings violated the first amendment. He just takes this super narrow view (to achieve his desired outcome obviously) that the establishment clause (and no other part of the bill of rights) does not apply to states. It’s such a stupid argument with no basis that I’m positive there must be more to it.
Just listened to Friday’s OTM and wow, they really whiffed on the open source software discussion.
There was an incredibly serious remote code execution vulnerability (these are really, really bad) disclosed in a software package called log4j late last week. Log4j is insanely widespread and is 100% maintained by unpaid engineers.
This whole weekend’s open source discourse has been dominated by engineers making the exact opposite argument that OTM’s guest made (the open source engineers all want more private companies to pour more money into open source).
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EWs best podcasts of 2021.
The only one I’ve listened to on the list is Cerebro which I’d recommend if someone wanted to do deep dives on the x men, and I mean deep dives. Like each episode is 2 to 4 hours long
I’ve listened to all of Hell of Presidents and liked it a lot. IDK if it would be less interesting to Americans who will be more familiar with the source material. The political dynamics of the early United States was all pretty new to me.
You’re making a lot of assumptions about Americans, bud
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Red Scare too low
Cerebro?
Magneto…
Part of me really regretted not going to their show in Glasgow a couple years back. Just thought it’d be sad to go to the show alone. By the time I realized how dumb that idea was, the tickets were sold out.
Now they have to decide to go east of Germany for future live shows for me to attend.
Latest Chapo is truly awful. They’re so high on their own supply they both blame Biden for COVID and complain the WH statement ripping unvaccinated people is smug liberal elite blah blah blah.
Totally agree.
They’ve kind of boxed themselves in as hating both sides. So they kind of have to go down that path now no matter what.
I thought it was a good ep and totally agreed with them about the White House statement. Like they weren’t opposed to the statement. It just doesn’t fucking matter. Lecture the unvaccinated, say nothing to the unvaccinated, plead with them, who cares. We live in a post-persuasion society.
But in 1960 everyone would have just been all, OK, let’s get vaccinated. Because they trust the government and have faith in American institutions. It’s not Joe Biden’s fault specifically that large numbers of Americans’ institutional trust has collapsed. I mean, it is, since he has been a powerful government official throughout that collapse. But President Joe Biden could do little to restore that trust. And obviously this lack of institutional trust didn’t just fall out of the sky, it was caused by 40 years of the government being actively terrible, doing nothing to help actual people, and both parties being complicit in this to varying degrees. Can a speech fix that? lol.
1960s was the era of tuskeegee study and a bunch of other shit government was doing. arguably people shouldn’t have trusted then, but should trust it now
I think that too many Americans including Democrats accept the premise that consumer choice is an absolute good. This attitude has wrecked Americans health care, retirement readiness, education, etc etc, but nonetheless it has been implanted in American brains as a commandment handed down by God. Thou shalt offer consumer choices, everything is a Personal Choice.
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Maybe, but it also might be something deep-seated and ingrained. Like the founding ethos of the country was based on personal freedom and emigrating to get away from religious or economic persecution. So maybe we as a country reverts to that in times of crisis.
The same analysis would also explain why the Australians reflexively turned their country into a prison when covid hit.
There may be some truth to this but it seems crystal clear to me that the current consumerist zeitgeist is much more a product of the 1980s than the 1780s. A lot of the linking of this back to the founding fathers is just bullshit mythology about US history to make it seems like rampant corporatism is an natural and inevitable as the sun rising and setting every day.
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I don’t know how much of my post I actually believe, I thought of the Australia joke at the same time and then worked backwards from there.
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Australia joke is Chef’s Kiss, I’ll give you that.
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