The downvote button is supposed to help bury off-topic or inappropriate comments, not opinions you happen to dislike. But let’s face it—most people use it like a “disagree” button. The result? Conversations turn into echo chambers, diversity of thought evaporates, and we end up patting ourselves on the back in cozy little ideological bubbles.

Removing the downvote button might actually lead to more diversity of thought and differing opinions rather than each post instantly turning into a groupthink circle jerk.

Where did you all go? I talked with tons of you just a few months ago. You claimed Kamala would target free speech. This was your number one concern. Well what the fuck - Trump is illegally detaining and deporting legal residents and foreign diplomats, and refusing entry to visitors for their personal political views. The latest guy, the French scientist, didn't even protest or post anything publicly. They refused him entry because of private text messages that showed he didn't like Trumps research policy.

I thought free speech mattered to you guys? What happened? We all know that if this were Kamala doing this, you would be up in arms. Anyone who claims to care about free speech and isn't upset by Trumps attacks are spineless cult members.

Edit: The only conservatives in this thread so far don't seem to care at all about these attacks on free speech. They are giving maximum charitability and acting like Trump can't attack free speech unless he's literally tearing up the Constitution... Well, you've all lost all credibility you once had and can never accuse a Democrat of attacking free speech by your standards

DOGE was billed as a means to curb waste and restore discipline to a bloated federal bureaucracy — a cause many conservatives might instinctively support. But what we’ve seen from DOGE so far bears no resemblance to conservatism. DOGE is not protecting and preserving institutions and making carefully considered reforms. It’s an ideological purge, indiscriminately hacking away at institutions with all the childish abandon of boys kicking down sandcastles. History shows that when revolutionaries confuse reckless destruction for strength, it’s a recipe for ruin.

https://americandreaming.substack.com/p/doge-isnt-conservative-its-radical

https://youtu.be/UxwpFe7Psj8?feature=shared

Does his history railing against oligarchy lend him more credibility?

https://rumble.com/v3mroia-kill-shot-the-cias-sv40-cancer-weapon-full-story-w-shannon-joy.html

KILL SHOT: The CIA's SV40 Cancer Weapon - Full Story w/ Shannon Joy

The Shannon Joy Show

Oct 3, 2025

I would define myself as a social libertarian. I'm in favor of uplifting the underclass. I just think the policies the left defend actually are NOT the solution to that.

(that I would summarize as "trust everything the institutions do")

One big one is defending monetary policy.

Look at the S&P 500. It's the safest investing you can think of. It multiplied times 7 in 13 years.

Who do you think benefits when their wealth being multiplied by 7? The poor or the rich?

Why are you guys so confused how the rich got richer?

Yes, you can tax them a bit more - but don't you think it has anything to do with all the moneyprinting that happened after 2008 and 2020?

Obviously it'll be disruptive and I particularly feel for anyone navigating student loan issues right now. But I've not heard what the rationale actually is for shuttering the dept of education. Anyone care to take a stab at it?

I’ve been following the situation in Ukraine, and while I understand why people support Zelensky, I can’t shake this uncomfortable thought. If I stand with him, am I not also endorsing the forced conscription of men - many of whom don’t want to fight - being dragged to the frontlines to die?

I get that defending your country is important, but where’s the line? If forced labor is considered slavery, and forced conscription is just forced labor with guns involved, isn’t it kind of the same thing? Both involve taking people against their will and sending them to suffer and die.

I brought this up with some friends, and they said I was being insensitive or overthinking it. Now I'm wondering... Am I a bad person for questioning this?

It’s a bit of a cliche to compare America to the Roman Empire, and while I don’t think America can be directly compared to the Roman Empire, it can DEFINITELY be compared to the Roman Republic in a lot of ways. Many of which are unsettling. In fact I’d say, with the way our republic is going our end is going to be down right ridiculous. Laughed at by future generations for millennia.

The founding fathers of this country were English enlightenment thinkers, at this time the English had a new found interest in the classical era with Ancient Greek philosophy and Ancient Roman society. They valued rational thought and democracy above all else and decided to create a governmental system that rekindled these ideals from Ancient Rome. In fact one of the names they considered calling Washington DC was Washingtonople (after Constantinople).

They mimicked the Roman senate, where representatives were elected to represent different parts of Roman society in a centralized government, this office did not have term limits, and was usually made up of wealthier people or people from families with a political background. They mimicked the consuls (which would be like the president and vice president), where two people were elected (usually senators) to effectively run the government and lead the senate for a 1 year term, they were also meant to be a check on each other’s power. Our system is pretty different to theirs as the POTUS and VP have very separate roles, but originally the vice presidency was meant to serve as a check to the presidency’s power, not be in direct alignment like it is now. Lastly the Roman Republic was very big on checks and balances and the separation of powers, they got their independence by overthrowing a tyrannical king and vowed to never have a king again (lol), the founding fathers saw America in this story and wanted to emulate it.

I say all this because what the founding fathers did was incredibly short sighted. They were thinking way too idealistically. They understood all of the reasons the Roman republic worked and completely and utterly ignored all of the reasons that system of government eventually broke down. And lo and behold, 2,000 years later, America is facing the exact same issues that Rome did before its own republican government fell.

What are these issues you may be asking? Starting with the biggest one, corruption. Now every nation/society/civilization ever has dealt with corruption so this isn’t necessarily unique to America or Rome, but the similarity lies in where the worst corruption was happening: The senate. The senate being the senior legislative body in Roman society meant that any check to their power must go through themselves, naturally this led to them abusing this power.

They used it to make themselves richer by passing laws that favored the rich, taking bribes, putting the tax burden on the lower classes, getting involved in foreign wars or the wars of their allies/client states to gain control over their governments and enrich themselves with the spoils, went to great lengths to block the lower classes from gaining real political power, all while the lower classes were incredibly poor and the rich grew richer. And of course no checks on this power ever came because who had the authority to do that? They did.

Unsurprisingly, this tension, corruption, and extreme wealth divide led to a civil war, to many civil wars over the course of a century in their case. These civil wars were always between two factions, conservatives and liberals (for their respective eras), conservatives wanted to maintain the status quo and the liberals wanted to end it. I believe America is in the period right before this stage. The stage right before things get very unstable and some violent in-fighting starts happening. You will have people who side with the ruling elites and want to uphold the status quo (“leave the billionaires alone” people), and you will have reformationists, people who want to completely burn the system down and restart from scratch. In the case of Rome this led to strong man figures like Julius Caesar who vowed to restore stability, who was then assassinated due to being too popular, which then led to more civil wars and finally led the Caesar Augustus. Romes first emperor. And just like that the people who vowed to never have a king again ended up with a king under a different title. All because the senate let greed and power get out of control.

I’m typing this on mobile so I have no clue how long this actually is, but obviously the real history of the Roman republic is way more nuanced than this and this is as best I can summarize it but I hope you all can see the similarities. In America we’re truly in weird times, it feels like we all know something’s gonna go horribly wrong but have no idea what it is and when it’s gonna happen. We need to look to history in times like this.

Dairy, lumbar, banking, trade deficits, fentanyl and drugs, illegal immigrants, border security, and NATO funding: Donald Trump has lied repeatedly about everyone one of these Canada/US issues. He has spoken truthfully about precisely ONE issue. All of this is discussed in this video, with receipts provided.

https://youtu.be/_KMoYsnPuHg?si=l80B8NYjBjayy1Sj

EDIT@T+31 minutes: This is being downvoted by the Good Germans already. As I've already said in the comments, if you don't want to believe me, that's completely fine, guys. Just keep watching what happens.

There are moments when a person discovers who they truly are and what they stand for. This is one of those moments for me.

I have been active in this subreddit for around five years. My political instincts have often aligned against the Left. I consider myself a centrist politically, a Keynesian socialist economically, and a classical liberal philosophically. My upbringing was steeped in English boarding school traditions, and I was educated in an environment that valued order, discipline, and structure. I have a deep appreciation for military history, particularly Spartan strategy, and have often found myself favoring the Right in many cultural and rhetorical battles.

I have engaged in vigorous debate against DEI initiatives, Critical Race Theory, and what I saw as the overreach of LGBT activism. I have openly opposed aspects of progressive ideology, and I do not apologize for doing so.

But I have never been a fan of Donald Trump. And now, his administration has crossed a line I cannot ignore. The detention of Mahmoud Khalil and the invocation of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to accelerate the deportation of Venezuelans are not just policies I disagree with—they are two markers of a path that history has shown us before.

Anyone with even a passing knowledge of history recognizes where this road leads. It always begins the same way: by targeting an unpopular minority that the majority will not defend. The justifications sound reasonable at first. The public is assured that these actions are necessary, that they are only aimed at those who pose a threat. But the real purpose is never the stated reason. The first ones are always taken for the purpose of normalising a scenario in which potentially any individual can be detained, without charge, at any time, and treated in any manner the state wishes, up to and including execution.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vo7ejqdyjB0

This is how it started in 1933 Germany, in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, in China under Mao. The initial targets are always groups seen as outsiders—foreigners, refugees, political dissidents. But the machinery, once built, does not stop. It is never satisfied with its first victims. It moves inward, tightening the circle, consuming more and more until even those who cheered it on in the beginning find themselves trapped in its grasp.

Today, it is Venezuelans and Muslims. No one cares about them, right? Tomorrow, it will be gay men, lesbians, and trans people. Then it will reach legal immigrants—Latinos who believed their documentation would protect them. Then the Black community. And eventually, it will come home—to the white, straight, conservative Americans who thought they were the safe ones, who believed they would always be protected.

I know what Trump’s most ardent supporters will say. That I am being hysterical. That this is exaggerated fear-mongering. That nothing like this could happen in America. That these "others" deserve whatever happens to them because they do not belong, because they are criminals, because they are deviants, because they are freaks, because they are not "real Americans."

You are right about one thing, Trump supporters. You will be the last group to get that knock on the door in the middle of the night. The very last.

And when it happens, there will be no one left to help you.

Yesterday, Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a long-forgotten law that makes it easier for Presidents to arrest and detain immigrants in times of war.

OK, at face value, that's probably something that could be of use for various hypothetical scenarios we could work through.

The problem is this invocation really has nothing to do with any technical wars we are involved in right now (this gets cloudy for sure, because we absolutely have involvement in places like Gaza and Yemen and Syria at the moment).

Instead, Trump has invoked this because of...terrorism conducted by the Venezuelan gang Tren De Aragua on American soil.

Now, I'm a pretty online person, and this is the first I'm hearing of the existential threat of the Tren De Aragua gang. I haven't heard a lot of our podcasters/media figures talking about it. I don't see anything about it on social media.

I just want to point out something about how American media works. Because today, March 15, will be the day that bisects two worlds, a past world when no one gave a shit about Tren De Aragua, didn't even know what it was, and another world when everyone has a strong opinion about Tren De Aragua. And makes it an existential threat that can't be ignored.

And when I mean "everyone," I mean right wing media, because I assume Fox News will be reporting on the horrors of Tren De Aragua tomorrow morning.

Just out of the blue.

And we will all have to follow and argue about it.

Issue with Capitalism I have if left to its own devices is that it concentrates wealth within a select few. Due to our legal precedent folks with more wealth have more power to influence our government which could lead to a tyrannical form of government which undermines the general welfare of our nation as a whole.

I think the State has a valid interest to make sure that people have access to private property and economic opportunity. This being housing, the ability to establish businesses ect without dealing with predatory actors.

Edit- I forgot to the change the punctuation of the title to a question mark.

Does this country have it's dark history regarding minorities, yes. But so do most other countries that get overlooked when it comes to bringing up dark history.

But as a black boy/man in the South, I haven't experienced much racism. In fact I've experienced more of the opposite. People of other races including white people being friendly and helpful. Does this mean racism doesn't exist anymore? Hell, no. But my experience for over 20 years hasn't been the "typical" experience of a black person in America or specifically the south.

Yes, I know others like me don't have the same experiences and mine doesn't define theirs. However theirs doesn't define mine and I'm not lying about my lived experiences for the benefit of anyone's confirmation bias. Sorry if that's "tap dancing for the white man's approval" or whatever.

This country despite it's darn past regarding minorities, has made incredible strides to make life better for everyone here.

A whole civil war was fought, multiple major pieces of legislation were passed, months were dedicated to minoritiy recognition, and we've had a black man become president which is the highest position of power in this country for not 1 term, but 2 by both the popular vote and electoral vote and Hillary Technically beat Trump in 2016 if the EC wasn't a thing.

How can anyone genuinely say this country doesn't like minorities in the modern era? If this country truly didn't like us, they would have showed it in obvious manners like they did in the past.

Remember we're minorities, not the majority. If the majority decided to keep treating us like shit, we really couldn't do anything about it. Population isn't everything, but it matters.

Not only that, but there's frankly one too many countries where bigotry is still legalized or normalized and gues what some of them aren't even majority white. Why don't those countries catch the same hell America does simply because we can't erase bigotry from humanity?

There's always going to be bigotry, it's just a flaw of humanity and has been since different humans were a thing. Yes, it sucks to encounter that behavior especially when it's towards you. However, you can't let some hateful idiots keep you down and give you the wrong impression about the current state of this or any other country that has made strides to make sure people no matter their identity, sexual orientation, etc have better lives.

Is there more work to be done? Yeah. But it's not going to get done by regressing or developing a defeatist or "revenge bigotry" mindset.

Most people in this country don't hate you. It's just some ignoramuses and idiots who need to change their mind.

Also try not to reply with the usual right vs left bullshit. That's not the point and I've seen enough bigotry from both sides.

EDIT: endorsed , not sponsored

Is this not ridiculous ? Has this happened in modern history? The executive official of our company doing a car ad on national tv? “A tesla can be bought for $35,000” , “ I am going to buy one “ , product in full view of the camera, owner of the company giving pricing and talking it up, a presidential endorsement, president pretends to test the product.

That is text book definition of an ad in my book. What about that situation is not objectively an ad ? Even if you want to say it is not an ad it is certainly a presidential endorsement.

Maybe i am overreacting, maybe this has happened before. If not though this is one of the most ridiculous things i think i have ever seen.

Video is all over YouTube.

Can anyone with a background in economics explain this to me...

Is having a more equitable distribution of wealth not more condusive to economic growth than the current system?

I'm far from a socialist, and I certainly believe in a meritocracy where wealth creators are rewarded.

But right now it's not uncommon for a CEO to earn 30x what a low paid employee earns. Familial wealth of the top 1% is more than the combined wealth of the bottom 50%.

We all know the stats around this. In real life we've all seen the results too, I've seen projects where rich celebrities take up 70% of the budget whilst others who work twice as hard can barely afford their rent. Which ironically is all owed to landowners of the same ilk as those same celebs.

Now we have a cost of living crisis where even those on middle income are struggling to pay bills, and hence have no disposable income. Is this not a huge dampener on economic growth.

One very wealthy family can only go on so many holidays, buy so many phones, watch so many movies. If you were to see this wealth more evenly distributed suddenly millions of people could be buying tech, going to the cinema, going on holiday. Boosting revenue in all sectors.

Surely this is the fundamental engine for economic growth, a population with disposable income able to afford non-essential consumer items (the essential ones should be a given).

I'm sure there are many disagreements with how to create this even distribution, but it seems the only viable one is the super rich need to earn less and those profits and dividends need to find their way into the salaries and wages of ordinary people.

Whether that's by bolstering labour rights, regulating, or having a more competitive labour force.

Does anyone disagree with this assessment, if so why? Also, if there's a term for this within economics I'd be keen to know?

My trans friend has told me that he sometimes feels like he didn't ask for the circumstances of his existence and that if his parents hypothetically had some way to detect or prevent it, he wouldn't have minded if they aborted or genetically engineered him at the embryo stage. I found this line of thinking really disturbing but it made me question how I think about the "privileges" inherent to the random chance result of genes when they form an embryo. I don't find it disturbing if a mother decides to abort all male or all female embryos or specifically select for a male or female baby, or even select for their height, eye color, hair color, etc. Considering this, why do I instinctively find horrifying the thought of a mother, if such a thing was possible in the future, specifically selecting for a straight baby, a gay baby, or trans baby? Are some inborn traits, caused by random chance, privileged over others? If in the future mothers were to specifically select for straight children knowing the systematic oppression an LGBTQ child might face, would this be an act of violence, eugenics or genocide on LGBTQ? Is investigating links between genetics and LGBTQ therefore problematic because it could lead to such a situation? My thoughts on this are a little scattered so bear with my wording.

Five children burned alive in their beds. We are told that this is a world historical peace process. Lots of us believe that.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/08/russian-attacks-on-ukraine-intensify

Does the EU need the US to actually have the will to defend the Baltic States?

Couldn’t the E.U. by themselves maintain a proxy war with Russia in Ukraine? They’re richer than Russia and probably have a larger industrial capacity than them.

It seems like the EU was caught off guard by sudden shift in priorities by the U.S. that the decades of underfunding their militaries bit them.

I find it funny for Non-French Europeans to complain about American troop presence as a violation of their sovereignty but when there’s an actual threat to their sovereignty they want to preserve an American presence. Germans laughed at Trump for suggesting to them to not rely on Russian Gas through NordStream and to not shut down their Nuclear Plants in the late 2010’s.

I’m glad the French are stepping up. I’m also glad they have their own nuclear umbrella. They’re smart enough to actually preserve their own sovereignty through their own military/nuclear policy. Germans should be kissing La France’s ring and learn not to be full of hubris.

Fellow Canadians and supporters of Canada,

I'm Canadian in America. For me, by far the most significant and saddening thing that I have noticed during the Tariff War is broad-scale American indifference. Caring about this issue, Canada, and the Canada-US bond is frankly a minority position in the United States.

In this video I draw attention to the truly gutting significance of what Trump is doing to Americans (because, honestly, it's clear to me that most Americans are quite aloof), deeply thank those Americans who do see and care about what is going on, and I argue that the era of the polite, apologizing Canadian needs to be supplanted by a More Muscular Canada.

I hope you will give it a look and, if you think it is worthy of sharing, doing that as well. This isn't just a video for me. This is a hope of starting something significant. 

https://youtu.be/mEb6DPOPRpw?si=ipoHjy5NHv6jPhWq

Suppose right now Canada was preparing for guerrilla warfare against the United States. What would that say about what's going on in the U.S.? How would this affect the relationships between the U.S. and its allies, and what kind of impact could it have on global security and trust among nations?

Is Canada not suppose to be USA's biggest ally? Why would they need to be afraid of the greatest partnership between nations in human history?

Here is the link.

Here is the Doge guy Elon Musk replying with two fire emojis.

So are there examples of people being fired in America for not putting pronouns in their emails? This is the "free speech" party? Along with making criticism of Israel illegal?

It's a hot topic on both sides of the ideological divide, and personally I think both sides have some fair claim to saying they've had their ideas censored.

I'm running a project trying to help connect the free speech across political divisions. I've noticed that while free speech is often talked about on the right, most of the organisations dedicated to defending free speech are left and centre.

Does anyone know any organisations I should research defending conservative free speech?

Although I have profound misgivings about attributing anything approaching intelligence or strategy to Trump, I do wonder if part of the reason he's appeasing Russia is to prevent stronger ties developing between Russia and China - together that's a large combined chunk of Eurasia that would allow China better access to the Arctic, for example, and Russia a bunch more routes for export. Two nuclear states (plus N.Korea) pissed off at the West together - not a pretty prospect.

So, is this just Trump's version of divide and conquer?

I don't know if people genuinely are over looking this or if they're intentionally being disingenuous about it. But yes, there's people a lot of people that vote mostly based on their individual views on topics.

These people aren't going to vote against their views/interests for the approval of a certain group of voters or a certain candidate and frankly that's a good thing.

We're supposed to vote for what we want done to improve the country, not who will do it, what party will do it, our identity, etc.

If you want these people to vote a certain way you/your party needs to do an efficient job of getting them to be more lenient on their views, change their mind, or need to meet them halfway on their views.

No, I'm not asking you to do this with actual extremists. Fuck their votes and trying to appeal to them will do more harm than good.

However, this should be done with those of reasonable yet differing views.

Unfortunately people are unknowingly or knowingly sabotaging their chance to do this by lumping these people in with those who do vote based on candidates or party of the "opposition."

Their votes help decide elections, so to ignore or push them away is an unwise and risky decision.