Honestly, we stopped getting banned ...
The most memorable thing I have of him is how he and Prof. Voluptuary would constantly get into arguments that would invariably result in both of them getting banned.
We stopped getting banned when he (or his friends when he thought that would work) stopped running off to the mods. He honestly believed that he could get me banned without getting himself banned, but eventually learned. Every time the mods would ask us to cool it, I'd be like, "fine by me, any ban is up to you guys" and Fox would bark at me, "no, no, we're going to get banned, stop it, [but let me have the last word]" (the last part was implied, and I often joked about it by adding it).
Ironically on individual rights, we agreed, we were both open minded. But where we differed is that he wanted a world built on simple democracy and I recognized that every simple democracy of any size implodes overnight as people piss away their individual rights. He was a young idealist and we all tend to be that way in our 20s. By our 30s we recognize that while it's not bad to look at individual choices as simple ones, the world as a set of ruling bodies require complex sets of checks to keep things from going totalitarian.
As much as I'm pro-immigration, it's rather sad when people come to this country and don't appreciate why we have our freedoms. It's not just allegedly on the backs of other nations, but we have a very strong set of federal and state Constitutions that prevent the government from restraining our freedoms without due process. That's what continually disappointed me in Fox, as most of what he stated were already lessons learned in countless history -- much less already visited in early American history, and decided against for the very damages they caused.
The "we've never tried" phrase from him got old, when we very much did. Some outstanding discussions and heated arguments were made by people both before, during and even after this nation was founded. Fox was hardly the first person to make them and push their case, and I even pointed him to several, key events in US history that he publicly stated he had no interest in reading about (at least he was honest). But, sadly, those who fail to understand history are the ones most likely to repeat it.
Still, there's something ironically romantic about an idealistic fool, and they are more interesting than someone who merely follows the herd. I'll give him that. I fear him less than someone who merely defends the status quo. But the general "evilness of America" did get very much old, especially when he tripped himself over it. He never understood the concept, "If you don't like this country, why are you here? Did you ever stop to think that maybe the country is what it is, with the freedoms that it has and continues to have, because of such?"
The US was hardly built on one person deciding what was right. But who in their '20s doesn't think they know everything and what was best? I surely thought I did. As much as I claim to be a Libertarian and had my values by age 15, it still wasn't until twice that age that I was able to effectively communicate them. Who knows, maybe Fox just hasn't found the right set of ways to make his point, and knows better than most of us? With a little less confrontation and general distain and he might just have some insight.
After all, if there is one nation that was heavily screwed over by the US, it is Iran. No argument there, and that builds a lot of history.
:1orglaugh
