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Comment by rosariom | Hacker News Reader

Ron Paul message resonates with people because he is talking about something none of the other candidates are talking about: returning freedoms and sanity to America. It would be hard to rollback all the damage done by the likes of Obama and his predecessors but I think it can be achieved gradually and with some culture changes in America. This is a great country and I hope to see its freedoms preserved and reinstated otherwise we will head down the road to god knows what and never come back. Freedom begets greatness and innovation.

The media needs to stop its blackout of Paul and the smear campaign and cover the issues he is highlighting which are of the utmost importance.

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"sanity" being "what you agree with".

That's why we should flag political articles and leave them to other sites.

(Disclaimer: I'm not from US).

  That's why we should flag political articles and leave them to other sites.

Except that at other sites, politics equals name callings and rhetoric. I understand that that is the primary reason you want politics to stay out of HN.

But if all scientists, techies and reasonable people stay out of politics and common people are distracted by media, how can we expect things to change? If readers of HN cannot discuss political beliefs in a rational manner, I wonder who can.

No wonder legislation like SOPA has reached to the doorsteps of congress in US.

I don't understand how you can equate keeping politics off of this site to not being involved in politics.

I'm not. I'm saying signal to noise ratio of political discussions on political sites is so low that any rational discussion drowns out in the noise. Plus, most political sites have a clear and strong bias, such that opposing ideas are rarely discussed based on their merits.

Also, many techies who otherwise would not engage in political discussions (due to aforementioned reasons), can bounce off ideas here. I'm not claiming that HN becomes a political discussion forum, I'm saying downvoting legitimate political discussions for being political is taking it too far.

[Edit: missed a word and it bothered me enough to edit the post.]

> I'm saying signal to noise ratio of political discussions on political sites so low that any rational discussion drowns out in the noise.

And you'd like to bring that here?

I'm not trying to be rude or condescending here, but if you read my reply in its entirety, you'll find the answer to your question.

The connection you aren't making is that politics leads to flame wars, on the internet. "Politics" regards deeply held beliefs people hold about how the world ought to be run. Also, the same discussions tend to be run over and over on ad infinitum. Hacker news doesn't need it. It does well by having a tight focus.

Your point is well taken. But tech discussions can also lead to flame wars and HN seems to handle those rather well. I for one am interested in what this community thinks about many subjects. Including politics.

The site has guidelines. Please reread them.

It's confusing that you would direct posters to the guidelines while willfully disregarding the guidelines yourself, and call the guidelines "stupid."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3405357

The guideline I'm referring to here is not stupid.

The "don't comment about flagging" guideline is. It's meant to eliminate pointless arguments about what is or isn't germane to the site, much like how you're asked not to comment about being downvoted. But flags are invisible, and the number of people flagging is dwarfed by the number of people upvoting threads about Ron Paul's newsletters, so that the only way for it to leave the front page of the site (precipitously, if you didn't notice) is admin intervention.

Commenting on this post in the first place was stupid, since the story already got buried. I just felt bad for 'davidw, and I'm a nerd, so when someone says "I think HN is in fact a great place to talk about politics", it's hard for me to resist commenting that it's by charter not a place to talk about politics.

I'm answering in detail because you seem to follow my comments, and I don't want you to think I'm blowing you off. I'm not. I don't know you or have any problem with you personally.

"sanity" being "what you agree with" is generally a truism in any context.

HN is in a unique position to offer high quality discussion on topics that have become extremely important to hackers, much more important than some nostalgic ideas on what HN is 'supposed' to be. This is no time to stick our heads in the sand. We have a powerful platform and a powerful community here and it would be very foolish to waste them given the seriousness of what we face.

> it would be very foolish to waste them

Which is why many of us do not want politics here.

when I said sanity maybe I should have been more clear: political sanity against tyrannical crap like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_Authorization_... .. this bill silently passed without any substantial media coverage and grants the president unprecedented powers the kings of old would envy.. I know no politician or anyone for that matter is "perfect" (really no such thing exists) but I like a lot of what he is saying not everything. I would leave it at that to avoid any diatribe that may arise on HN over political discussions.

Maybe this should be a tech-only forum to avoid getting people charged up and polarized.

> Maybe this should be a tech-only forum to avoid getting people charged up and polarized.

Well, technically, it is supposed to be limited to tech, startups, and 'things hackers might find interesting'. Politics is generally considered off topic. SOPA is directly relevant to many of us, so it's gotten a pass, but this discussion doesn't seem to be much about SOPA, but about Ron Paul.

I don't understand why davidw has been downvoted. Ron Paul maybe a principled politician, but his views/past actions on the issues of racism, homosexuality and science and technology policy don't stand up to scrutiny. While some of his policies may be laudable, he also has plenty of stuff that can be categorized as insane.

I don't want to start a political flamewar on HN, so all I'm trying to say is that there are valid reasons to believe what davidw believes and he shouldn't at least be downvoted for it.

I didn't make any comments about Ron Paul; I just pointed out the use of "sane" to mean "things I agree with", which is indicative of a debate that's not headed anywhere good.

I don't understand how you can attribute "sane = I agree with" to that poster. What evidence do you have for that?

I think it would also be reasonable to attribute "insane = courting disaster by inviting unintended consequences".

I would posit that "insane" and "broken" are problematic in civil discourse, as these words tend to evoke strong emotions. However, if one ascribes to, "insane = courting disaster by inviting unintended consequences," and also to, "broken = fails to filter insanity," then SOPA/Protect-IP are clear indicators that something in the system is broken.

In a way, this is much worse than the "Indiana Pi Bill" since that bill wouldn't have had any impact on practitioners who understood math. On the other hand, SOPA/Protect-IP has a huge impact on practitioners of computation and programming on the Internet.

In Indiana they were lucky to have a mathematician in the legislature, and a legislature humble enough to listen to him. The US House of Representatives and the Senate apparently don't meet this standard.

> I don't understand how you can attribute "sane = I agree with" to that poster. What evidence do you have for that?

His original sentence:

> he is talking about something none of the other candidates are talking about: returning freedoms and sanity to America

It's a cheap rhetorical trick. "Sanity" is defined as what his favored candidate wants to do, no?

> I would posit that "insane" and "broken" are problematic in civil discourse, as these words tend to evoke strong emotions.

Exactly.

It's a cheap rhetorical trick. "Sanity" is defined as what his favored candidate wants to do, no?

It depends. If Ron Paul were to reverse his views on positions where individual rights and freedom are the foundation, do you think the original poster would still support Ron Paul?

If your answer is no, then he's clearly not defining "Sanity = What favorite candidate wants."

If the answer is no, then the original poster is guilty of ineloquence and inadvisable word choice. By the same token your position is misattribution of the other poster's motivations.

My above phrase was not quite correct: it's not about the candidate, per se, it's about labeling as 'sane' those policies that he agrees with. Presumably, he could have a great time trading 'insane' and other verbiage with the people who view the lack of universal health care in the US as 'insane', as one example, and no one would be the better off for the whole exchange.

By the way, you, too, are insane for not agreeing 100% with me:-)

By the way, you, too, are insane for not agreeing 100% with me:-)

It would be seem we agree on many points, but you've thought a little more about the meaning and implications of (un)civil discourse. At first glance, maybe one would feel compelled to label insane proposals as such. But the lack of a clear arbiter of what is sane and not sane is a bit problematic.

Everyday life has always involved a bit of insanity and unreality, yet somehow we all muddle through.

But what if a person's value system defines certain ideas as wrong, and unsupported adherence to those ideas as insane? Is it wrong in a society that supposedly values free speech to express this belief?

> Is it wrong in a society that supposedly values free speech to express this belief?

Absolutely not! But there's a difference between expressing it here and on some other site. There are plenty of sites for political debate, from free-for-alls with all included, to various flavors ranging from neofascists to anarcho capitalists to communists and of course everything else in between.

I'm skeptical of many such sites producing anything other than volumes of vitriol, because many people do believe other people's positions to be 'insane', and if that's where you're starting from... it's difficult to find common ground.

I absolutely agree: things have gone in that direction and this simply isn't the forum for it, as such I've flagged the submission.

My understanding is that Ron Paul's idea of freedom is to limit the role of the Federal Government by moving the legislative burden to each State. I can relate to the frustration that most Americans seem to have towards “Washington”, but would this really be in the best interest of the country?

It's 2011, not 1787. The US is a vastly different country than it was when the idea of States Rights was created. Would the level of innovation that you describe be possible in a country that does not have a strong central government? Could an individual State put someone on the moon? Would sectors of the economy that are closely associated with a specific area (Technology – CA etc) still be as prosperous without a central government? I am skeptical.

Abandoning the Federal Government because it is dysfunctional seems short sighted. Personally I do not see how the US can prosper in the modern world without a central government. We need more political compromise and a more consistent government agenda, not a shift towards one political agenda. Government should represent everyone, not just the 51% of constituents that elected them this term.

Also, suggesting that human rights should be legislated at a State level is absurd. It astounds me that a Libertarian such as Paul can so proudly proclaim that government intrusion is wrong, but then defer to the State on issues such as gay marriage and abortion. Legislating religious views at a State level is no different than doing it at the Federal level. Rob Paul style libertarianism only brings “freedom” for some.

I do not think people or Ron Paul are talking about dismantling the federal government just limiting its powers. As the old saying goes, "Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely". It is extremely dangerous to give power over to a few in central government and not distribute the power evenly to all of its participants as history has shown us. I fear governments that want more power in the name of providing for my welfare and giving me security. I will do most of that on my own no thank you.

Innovation coming from a strong central government? What happened to the Soviet Union's innovation? They had a strong central government and collapsed... almost zero innovation came from them. What about China? Largely a beneficiary of treaties like NAFTA and GATT which gives them a great opportunity to ship in products made with substandard wages or as some would argue, slave labor wages. They also appear to be manipulating their currency and have a copy-and-paste business model. I see little innovation here as well.

I do agree that states and the fed can collaborate on issues of national interest that apply to all parties but I am totally against shredding the constitution or increasing the size of the fed because we are not in 1787. This country got to where it got because of freedom and allowing the people, like hackers, to tinker, fail, experiment, succeed, and do whatever they wanted as long as they did not infringe on the rights of others. SOPA and the NDAA are acts of central government that are appalling. Centralize government did not get us here, free people did.

Sorry, I should have been more specific. I did not mean to imply that Ron Paul or the average Libertarian intends to completely dismantle the Federal Government. However, it does seem that for many important issues, they wish to defer to the State level.

By “strong central government” I did not mean an economy centrally managed to the point at which Washington would be dictating how many widgets are made in a given month. I meant to imply a government that acts in the best interest of the population. Is it unreasonable to have minimum national standards for education, welfare, safety, and pollution? Every successful OECD country has these because they are necessary to prosper in the complex modern world. Would the US be more successful if we had policies such as centralized healthcare? Insurance is a HUGE burden on business in the US (not to mention on the individual – my wife was seriously ill earlier this year, even with insurance the total out of pocket cost will be ~$30,000. I can assure you that this burden is NOT helping my own attempts to start a business).

The freedom for people to tinker, fail, experiment and hopefully succeed comes from living in a society that educates, has some form of a social safety net, and provides reasonable economic legislation – i.e. the stable conditions necessary for capitalism to flourish. It is disingenuous to ignore the role that government has played in the success of the US and every other successful country.

No one is down playing the role government has played in helping liberty flourish and prosper in certain conditions we just do not want it to be to become to big and threathening to freedom.

> What happened to the Soviet Union's innovation? They had a strong central government and collapsed... almost zero innovation came from them.

Yeah, what was that "putting the man in space" thing anyway?

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