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You're applying a standard by which nobody would ever have told the truth. What if I say "The sun rises in the east." Am I lying? Well if I'm at the exact north pole, I don't think that this is true. So do I have to say "The sun rises in the east unless you're at the north pole." Oh wait. No. "The sun rises in the east unless your at the north pole or maybe on another planet or maybe another solar system." You can find people debating whether water is wet. http://www.debate.org/opinions... The spirit of the ACA was to improve overall healthcare while being as minimally disruptive as possible. Whether or not that was achieved is an interesting discussion. But whether or not we can say Obama "lied" is pretty clear cut. His statement was the equivalent of "The sun rises in the east" which has never been construed to be a lie. Being wrong is also not lying. But he wasn't generally wrong either. The ACA is, overall, a great piece of legislation that has gotten millions of people insured.

In any case, I agree that

Really, you agree that that slipshod, incoherent, thoughtless post is what it means to be an American?

That's damning by association. Don't you dare insult America like that again.

Further, if you want to understand how to parse the language, and avoid the misunderstanding that the 2nd only applies to militias, there are lots of articles out there which discuss how to parse it in the context it was written in, such as this pretty long article about it.

Lots of articles? True. But that's an empty and vacuous article that fails in the second paragraph:

But the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights is indeed a well-crafted sentence.

No, it is not. It's poorly written, and an honest historical analysis would admit it. The most damning thing? He doesn't deny the facts of the inconsistent written versions. So by his own words, he should know better.

I don't know why so many fools insist on sanctifying the specific wording of the Amendment, when they could accomplish so much more avoiding such wasteful and fruitless argumentation by engaging in a direct addressing of the particulars instead.

some other reading on the subject.

That's what it should mean to be American. Thoughtful, earnest consideration, by people with the integrity to realize that they cannot rest on the laurels of the past, that glorification of what was is a way to ignore what is, and that they need to be responsible for their own decisions.

This is the sort of thing that makes me think that the Second Amendment Advocates are worse than the Sixteenthers, they could make a legitimate and persuasive argument, but obstinately refuse.

The first one is an opinion piece that asks questions.

Sure. And that asking betrays the author's desire for "hate speech" being banned.

nobody who really doesn't believe in AGW would be prosecuted.

Ah, yes, yes, sure. As Snopes said:

California Senate Bill (SB) 1161 sought to make dissemination of scientifically inaccurate or misleading information by businesses and organizations an offense covered by California's unfair competition law.

Small comfort, though — because what is and what is not "scientifically inaccurate" will be up to the prosecutors (and then juries).

I'm certainly not going to want you shut down by legal means.

Most generous of you. There is, however, a sizeable minority, which sees it differently — and these Constitution-undermining proposals reach as high as pages of New York Times. And the far-Left is particularly against it — openly and unabashedly advocating violence against holders of certain opinions. Just as the subject of this thread says...

Don't take my word for it — the "classical" Liberals are appalled by these alt-Left's trends as well, even if their argument against it boils down to the self-serving "it will backfire" warnings...

Don't give them ideas.

It's not a sport. It's a competition. Sports by definition require an element of physical exertion.

Wrong. The definition of sport depends on context. Simplistic definitions such as that on Wikipedia do not reflect reality. The discussion on debate.org over whether chess is a sport is a reasonable proxy for both sides of this topic.

Most likely, however, the view that physical exertion is actually a necessary component is only made by those people who haven't got the mental capacity to understand the nature of what they are watching. Have a nice day.

Years ago when we told others about the existence of Prism and many other oppressive projects, people say we wore tinfoil

just because you were right about something doesn't mean you aren't a paranoid schizophrenic.

not sure a dinosaur skull counts as a cultural artifact, unless it was looted from the temple of a dinosaur worshipping cult or something.

It's happened before.

What about the left wing authoritarians who are currently in power?

http://www.debate.org/photos/a...

http://www.debate.org/opinions...