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Comment by uoaei | Hacker News Reader

This is the kind of weird freedom-at-all-costs libertarian fetishism that the rest of the world makes fun of Americans for.

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I find the statement "the rest of the world makes fun of Americans for" to be a bit disingenuous. For one thing, the world is a very big place, and the alleged people making fun of the U.S. are no doubt a part of a certain demographic, who's views align with a certain demographic within the United States. That demographic is one of many demographics in both the US and elsewhere, and thus, it feels very intellectually dishonest to generalize that an entire world population of 8Billion+ "makes fun" of any one thing.

A better statement would be: "... that the rest of the [insert demographic] of the World make fun of Americans for"

Literally everyone who isn't an American libertarian makes fun of American libertarians. For good reason.

This is the kind of nitpicking pedantry that the rest of the internet makes fun of HNers for.

Reducing it to "nitpicking" is fundamentally misunderstanding the content of the comment, and goes to show the truth of the criticism regarding the myopic nature of the perspective you are peddling.

The entirety of the point that was made is "people are different and have different opinions" which is a retort to a clumsily-framed statement serving primarily as rhetoric and not fact. Shooting semantic fish in the rhetorical barrel is what makes people "no fun at parties" and something that has become a stereotype -- no, a meme -- on HN.

> The entirety of the point that was made is "people are different and have different opinions"

That is only a superficial understanding. What you left out is the manipulative hubris of your clumsy rhetoric pretending to command some kind of hegemony of opinion. It is no surprise to see a continuation of that in the further comments.

Excuse me. This is a rather dispassionate note that the government has likely done something it is not authorized to do, and that its orders are at risk of being overturned. It does not assign value to the order, nor declare it worthless. It does not decry the violation of civil liberties, nor does it declare the violation meaningless.

If merely raising the issue in such a note is sufficient to count as "freedom at all costs libertarian fetishism" these days, then by all means, sign me up for freedom at all costs libertarian fetishism. In the meantime, I am confident that our government is strong enough to withstand mild observations of this nature.

I know we're all willing to die for each others freedoms, but seniors eating it to respiratory illness and other injureds dying because the ICUs were full doesn't really have the glory factor.

What in God's good name are you talking about, sir?

I think you are replying to the wrong part of the thread. The post you want was written by someone with the username `strawman` who was posting patriotic poems about dying for freedom. This thread is entirely unrelated and much, much more boring.

> If merely raising the issue in such a note is sufficient to count as "freedom at all costs libertarian fetishism" these days, then by all means, sign me up for freedom at all costs libertarian fetishism.

The fetishism I refer to is one that is distinctly anti-social, since the premise is entirely "others are telling me I shouldn't do this thing, and obviously I know what's best for me, so I will do it to exercise my freedom". You are falling into the same trap.

Sir, the person who is fetishizing all these things, and exercising his freedom, is not a part of this conversation, and you offer no meaningful link to this conversation.

The line I quoted is an example of such anti-social behavior. I thought that much was clear.

I'm afraid not.

You are completely right! US will sacrifice big comparing to China that we laugh about.

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