Erik Haugen @ech@qoto.org

@morecowbell@mastodon.social yep! But there's balance right? You could make up some pretty dystopian things in the name of preventing abuse, yes? So where is that balance? Privileged people who don't understand how the government could possibly abuse them, or people naturally comfortable with authoritarianism are going to want a different balance than other people, who are a little bit more wary of too much statist control.

Think about the RNC convention in 2016: it was all about setting aside your civil liberties so that we can keep you safe. Did you watch it? It totally had that vibe. Some people are comfortable with that: "the best government identifies and stops that crime" – this to me was where we really saw an uptick of authoritarianism in the Republican party.

@morecowbell@mastodon.social did I ever say taxation was tyranny? Why are you making up weird things and pretending I believe them?

@morecowbell@mastodon.social can you see the difference between a home preschool with a bunch of other people's kids versus just you with your kids?

Do I consider preschool inspections authoritarian? It's a spectrum, right? I've made it pretty clear elsewhere in this thread that I'm not an absolutist non-authoritarian or whatever weird thing you like to lump everyone in together with.

Look some people are totally comfortable with the government doing all kinds of things to keep them safe or whatever. Other people aren't, because it's expensive or they see where that kind of oversight can go wrong. It's pretty clear which kind of voter leads to more authoritarian governments.

Some particularly privileged people have no problem with inspections and that kind of thing: the more the merrier. Like Eric Schmidt said, why are you worried about surveillance if you weren't doing anything wrong. I think when you become more aware of how those kinds of things are abused or can lead to unintended consequences, you get a little bit more wary.

@morecowbell@mastodon.social @GottaLaff @emptywheel I guess that's a "no" about the cognitive dissonance?

Yeah like I said above maybe I'm using a different definition. Just looked it up in a dictionary, which perhaps isn't the best place for this conversation, and yeah, making it more difficult to choose the non-state-approved solution for educating your kids would certainly count.

I mean look, I'm not necessarily against building inspections and things like that, but I think home inspections to check up on your parenting is a bit too far?

@morecowbell@mastodon.social @GottaLaff @emptywheel on one hand, I'm encouraged that you think it's so bizarre that a politician would propose home inspections on homeschoolers that the only way I would conclude that a fire inspection regulation had to do with homeschool was incoherent paranoia. This says something good about you; don't get me wrong!

@morecowbell@mastodon.social @GottaLaff @emptywheel no, I don't wonder why I made that connection, because the person proposing the law made it very clear what the connection was. No need to wonder. (Do you wrestle with this cognitive dissonance now that you know that?)

@morecowbell@mastodon.social @GottaLaff @emptywheel no, I don't think The state should require mandatory inspections of parents parenting their children, regardless of what you call the inspectors.

I don't think it occurred to me to blame the government after I heard about the Turpins.

I can't follow the rest of what you're saying.

@morecowbell@mastodon.social @GottaLaff @emptywheel Medina made it clear that cracking down on homeschool was the goal. Some fire inspectors weren't too thrilled with being used to keep tabs on parenting techniques: “You are putting the fire inspectors out to look for social problems. That is not our role.”—Fresno Deputy Fire Chief Ted Semonious

@morecowbell@mastodon.social @GottaLaff @emptywheel does the fire department come inspect your smoke alarms in a residence regularly? Do you have to pay for that? Not in California.

@73rdNemesio @pdiff1 @GottaLaff “Rules for thee, not for me” – Sure, some people deserve that criticism (any pol or rich person who favors making it ~impossible to get a CCW and yet rolls around with armed bodyguards, etc, etc).

But there are some who are consistent at least – no "rules" enforced by a violent state actor. Both left and right, of course. Like you I don't see how that would work too well.

@morecowbell@mastodon.social @GottaLaff @emptywheel OK yeah the swearing fealty thing is weird, I'll give you that. No D's are doing that publicly that I know of. 😂

A lot of those questions are meaningless political rhetoric, but one of them reminds me of Jose Medina's (D-CA) AB 2756 requiring fire alarm inspections for schools, which would have made homeschooling harder. This was probably in reaction to the Turpin/Perris incident – you see, we can't trust you to take care of your kids without constant supervision, better to let us experts do it; let the state raise your kids. (Nevermind that they didn't do anything to prevent this problem when the Turpins went to public schools either, this patronizing philosophy is incredibly stupid.)

Again, though, as I replied to someone else, maybe this isn't what is meant by authoritarian? If not pardon me: yes, Ds are less likely to support R policies, and if you define those arbitrarily as "authoritarian" then right: Ds are a lot less likely to be "authoritarian". But even so, there are pro-life democrats and so on.

@GottaLaff I think the thing I was replying to or boosting there was deleted or something, so that post may not make much sense.

@jhavok@mastodon.social @GottaLaff @emptywheel beg pardon, I tried to address that (with "at least, it seems structurally there are always 2 major parties that will seek balance") but I can see I was totally unclear with the next sentence. My claim is that with the way US presidential elections work, it appears that there will always be two parties, and neither will dominate (for long). One may die and be replaced by something else ~right away that has a different name – we've seen that, you're absolutely right.

@ChrisHolladay @GottaLaff @emptywheel Maybe we mean different things by authoritarian? I would have thought Democrats' support of powerful far-reaching government (welfare, health codes e.g. covid, gun control, etc, etc, etc) was pretty well known. (I mean, I'm not even saying all those things are bad...)

@pdiff1 @73rdNemesio @GottaLaff Yeah, I've noticed this too about hardcore libertarians. I mean, there's a balance, right? You don't want the state to be too authoritarian, but certain things probably aren't going to go so well if you go too far in the other direction.

@GottaLaff @emptywheel I think it can't really die – or, at least, it seems structurally there are always 2 major parties that will seek balance. (One or both parties may shift dramatically, as we've seen, but I think not die.)

Both parties certainly have their authoritarian elements, so keeping the rise of authoritarianism in check is important.

@simon_brooke @GossiTheDog Interesting. In the US both parties are absolutely awful on this particular kind of issue. A few pols in each party would see the problem with OP, I think, but as a whole I suspect they'd both enthusiastically support this proposal.

@simon_brooke @GossiTheDog American here: I was under the impression that the UK is always absolutely terrible on these issues, regardless of which party is in power. Are conservatives worse?