> it was originally “You wouldn’t steal a car”, which I’d argue is true for most people.
Sure, but it's only true if you stretch the definition of what's occuring. If we stretched it in the other way, in that "stealing" a car in fact left the perfectly fine original right where you found it, the vast majority wouldnt think twice.
SF city and county are actually the same legal entity, not just the same land. It's officially called the City and County of San Francisco, and it's just as unusual as it sounds. The mayor also has the powers of a county executive with both a sheriff's department (county police to run the jails) and police department (city law enforcement) reporting to him; the city government runs elections like other counties; the Board of Supervisors - which is the typical county legislative structure - also serves as city council. (Denver, Colorado works the same way, I think.)
Cocaine is still produced overwhelmingly in South America. Yes, it does have to go through Mexico. But the start of the trade route is Colombia, Bolivia, and Peru.
It's important from a supply chain perspective, but not in the getting-rich-off-of-this sense anymore. The analogy I use is Apple in the USA (Mexico) and Foxconn in China (Colombia).
> It’s shunning time in Madison County, Virginia, where the school board recently banished my novel The Handmaid’s Tale from the shelves of the high-school library.
Note: a school library. A student can go to a regular library and check out this book, if they are really interested.
This involves removing books from public libraries nationwide (not just school libraries of one county), banning of sale, and sometimes criminalizing and prosecuting private possession of the book.
The US is fortunately quite far from such a sorry state.
The First Amendment specifically speaks about government not limiting free expression. An indeed, school boards are a branch of the government, not a private organization. Their actions may be seen as a real infraction on the First Amendment.
If the state doesn't limit freedom of expression by choosing what material to teach in schools (which it does) then it doesn't limit it by choosing what material to host in school libraries (which it does).
If you want to say removing these books from school libraries is an illegitimate constraint on freedom of expression, then so is the school curriculum. So is public education generally.
While removing a book from a school library by the school board may be a sensible act, and does not violate the letter of the First Amendment ("Congress shall make no law..."), it definitely has something to do with the spirit of it, that it, the interaction of government and free speech. It's very certainly something to keep an eye on.
Book banning means banning books. It doesn't mean removing books from school libraries. That isn't what it has ever meant. Who is doing the redefining?
The people who are saying that excluding books from libraries isn't banning. It's straightforward. Discussing this reminds me of arguing with my narcissist father - he slips through conflict by redefining terms to fit his inability to take accountability and recognize that his actions have consequences.
It really is a bad look to argue like this for a group of people who are trying to accomplish a goal.
This only affects school libraries. As long as the book is available in public libraries, and is legal to sell, buy, and possess, it's not banned. It's just considered inappropriate for minors. It's more like giving a movie an R rating than like banning.
I'm aware of that. Clarifying it only doubles down on digging the argument-by-definitions hole. I'm starting to get a sense that that's the only argument here.
You can't complain about an "argument by definitions" when your entire argument rests on applying a label like "book banning" that has significant cultural weight. Book banning sounds bad, it sounds authoritarian, and that is basically your entire argument. So yes in that scenario it is pretty fatal to your argument if you are completely misapplying it to a situation that cannot actually be described as involving book banning at all (because no books have, in fact, been banned).
So what's happening here is that there is a group who is banning books and then doing language policing because it has bad optics. What everyone else is hearing is, "Conditional banning isn't banning" which isn't a coherent argument.
It's pretty clear that if the books they are banning from these places were unconditionally banned they wouldn't go to bat for them. Rather the sentiment would be "that's good actually." It doesn't take a genius to recognize that the playbook is to make incremental advances and argue over definitions in order to achieve this goal.
> "Conditional banning isn't banning" which isn't a coherent argument.
It absolutely is a coherent argument and you know that.
"Unconditional availability" inherently excludes "banning" and also "conditional banning" but the latter is a mere subset of "banning". Denying the distinction of the sub- and its superset is extremely intellectually dishonest when that's what the entire argument hinges on.
When I dump hundreds of tons of a book into a river a day and the government requires me to stop doing that, it's not banning the book from the people living downstreams, even despite the availability of the book being reduced for them.
The big houses are REALLY big. And, while I can find a small apartment, new homes under 2000 sq ft are tough to find. The house I grew up in was 1500 sq ft and plenty for a family of four. I wish I could own a 1100 or less sq ft home but they’re all very old
I suspect that something has changed in the way square footage is calculated. Perhaps there are more finished basements or something. I was very involved in several moves my family undertook when I was younger. I feel like I got a good sense for home sizes. Many of the ones listed for 3000 sq ft. today look more like the 2000 sq ft. houses from yesteryear.
I also think about Louis Rossmann's quest to find a NYC storefront for his repair business a few years ago. He brought a laser measure with him, to document how the actual space squared with advertisements. I don't know that he ever found a place that wasn't lying. Yes, New York and, yes, commercial, but I wouldn't be surprised to see similar tactics in place for residential, across the country.
Almost all of the middle class tract homes built in California (for example) in the 60s/70s are around 1200sf. They also used cheap materials, had no insulation, maybe 2 bathrooms but often 1.5, very simple kitchens, etc.
The stuff that people buy now are much bigger and much more luxurious even at the bottom end.
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