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I don't understand it either. The Republicans have the hick and religious nutter vote locked up, why court them at all?

Your problem is that you are not very American in the traditional sense (not questioning your citizenship, etc. just pointing out that you have a set of beliefs that are probably very different from those of most people who lived in the country pre-1969) and are very modern American (in the sense of having a modern US non-education. I'm sure you are very good at using condoms and dental dams and think it's super-cool modern art to piss on a crucifix and swear at people you disagree with and think it's reasonable to have government do as much as possible.)

From the point of view of people who loved the country when it was good and decent, the Democrats have the sexual pervert, child killing, 7th-century-jihad-hugging, drug-addicted, no-values, no-morals, no-ethics vote locked up. (And don't even try the bogus argument that people who loved America in 1969, or in the 1950s, loved slavery or segregation... the huge majority of this nation NEVER had slavery or segregation and the states that DID have those things were run by Democrats.)

See? When you are so insular and such an arrogant jerk with your positions, it becomes VERY easy to construct a caricature of you opponents and then ridicule and/or denounce them. This is what jokers like Colbert, Stewart, and Maher do all the time, and their no-information followers fall right into it.

Textbook examples of "conservative" or "liberal" are virtually nonexistent in the current political landscape. I think both parties have become bad caricatures of the other sides worst qualities.

Calm down everyone. You're all confusing three distinct phenomena: classic libertarianism, an inconsequential modern political third party, and the contemporary mainstream Randian wannabe sociopolitical movement of the same name that at best is nothing more than a reactionary coalition of political, social, and civic amateurs, some of which are actual liberal pro-legalization college kids that think they are brilliant scholars because they got an A in poli-sci and soc, and in-fact sociopolitical conservative moralists that are anti-tax because they either fear their money going to welfare or are borderline confederacy-seeking states rightists that want a Fed so small they can drown it in a bathtub. Add in a dash of actual anarcho-capitalist industrialists and entrepreneurs and crazed gold standard pushers of alternative currencies for flavor. By and large, the libertarian movement as it is popularized today is a caricature of the original libertarian movement, but populated by low information people that don't read enough, that get all their news from pundits, and who only recently in the last 8 years have taken a real interest in domestic policy and macroeconomics. To put it simply, they don't know what they don't know.

To put it another way, I have recently in the last decade taken a refreshed interest in physics after sleep walking through it as a student and a professional. But, much of my new learning comes from advocacy sources like Michio Kaku. I enjoy doing fun things with magnets and lasers. My teleportation machine is awesome, but I assure you, none of you should use it no matter how much I tell you I've worked out all the kinks because I'm a physics tourist and my input should be taken as if it came from an enthusiastic child that still believes in Santa.

Non-whites are being flooded into EVERY white country on Earth,

Mere centuries ago whites such as the British and the vikings were flooding into every colored country on earth, and under far more hostile terms. Their "invasion" has been considerably more peaceful.

Will it be when somebody YOU love is murdered by a black? Or when YOU are attacked by a mob of black 'youths' and almost killed?

Is this what blinded you into a hilarious caricature of a butthurt racist?

Or when the whole country is in a civil war because the hate-filled non-whites can't contain themselves any longer, and there aren't enough white people left to provide them with all the WHITE luxuries that these parasites came here to take in the first place?

Clearly irony is lost on you. Know that both non-whites as well as the whites with a brain are all laughing at you.

Really? This tired old joke yet again? You're going with "Computer geeks can't get girls!" in this age when the name "Bill" is almost always followed by "and Melinda"? When Mark Zuckerberg is married, but if he weren't, he could probably walk into a room and pick any girl he wants? When geek girl is the new chic, and the goddess Felicia Day proudly proclaims, "I'm the One That's Cool"?

The 1980s John Hughes geek caricatures called and want their stereotypes back, because I've got news for you: Nowadays, we are the rich and sexually jaded.

Don't worry, Republican friends, Mitt will just claim he wasn't actually running for President anyway.

It is often the little things that are most revealing:

Over in Chicago, the Obama campaign had invited 10,000 to fill the floor of the McCormick Place convention center. But here in Boston, Mitt Romney favored a more genteel soiree for an exclusive crowd.

Romney's election-night event was in a ballroom at the Boston Exhibition and Convention Center that could accommodate a few hundred. Most men wore jacket and tie; women donned dresses and heels

Outside the ballroom, waiters in black tie tended bar, and Jumbotrons showed the election results on Fox News. Downstairs, Romney's big donors assembled in private rooms for finer fare; guards admitted only those whose credentials said ''National Finance Committee.''

But the election results, even filtered through the rose-colored lenses of Fox News, were not promising.

Michigan fell to Obama, and then so did Pennsylvania and Minnesota. Obama was holding his own in Florida and Virginia, and things were looking grim for Romney in Ohio. The ballroom was as quiet as a library as the audience listened to the Fox personalities on-screen.

''Romney would have to draw to an inside straight'' at this point, pronounced Brit Hume, who predicted ''an awful lot of recriminations.''

Romney had spent nearly two years, and hundreds of millions of dollars, trying to convince Americans that he wasn't an out-of-touch millionaire unconcerned about the little people --- that he was more than a caricature who liked to fire people, who didn't care about the very poor or the 47 percent who pay no income tax, who has friends who own NASCAR teams.

He very nearly achieved it: Polls showed him neck-and-neck with Obama in the campaignâ(TM)s closing days. But his final day in the race showed why he couldnâ(TM)t persuade enough working-class Americans that he spoke for them.

On election night in 2000, George W. Bush hosted an outdoor rally for thousands in Austin. In 2008, Barack Obama addressed a mass of humanity in Chicago's Grant Park.

The very location set the candidate and his well-heeled supporters apart from the masses: The gleaming convention center, built with hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars, is on a peninsula in the Boston harbor that was turned into an election-night fortress, with helicopters overhead, metal barricades and authorities searching vehicles. Only a few gawkers crossed the bridge from downtown to stand outside.

At Romney headquarters, the defeat of the 1 percent

All fringe movements that later go on to change the face of society begin with fringy people.

Think slavery abolition and early pioneers in aviation. Think of the art world.

By definition, all revolutionary movements start at the fringes and are characterized by low participation, an evolutionary timescale uptake, massive trial and error, oddball individuals doing work of dubious ultimate value and some scurrilous binding "vision" of society that is cleanly orthogonal to mainstream's understanding of itself.

If such things were wont to start with Apple, it wouldn't termed called "revolutionary" except by media types, it would be called a "product release".

Of course such a group also describes every whacked-out, AK-47 hording, black helicopter fearing, alcoholic, self -loathing "oh! congratulations, when-are-you-due ?"-belly sporting, government hating, liberal bashing, IQ impaired, amphetamine popping, Ayn Rand reading, John Galt worshiping, racist scumbag or hippie-dippie dope smoking tie-dye wearing, lice infected, rasta-haired , smelly, dirty, freecycle cruising group of freakazoid social misfits that any slashdot poster ever mindlessly caricatured in any post ever...

The point is, the indicators you used to predict success are known to be unreliable differentiators.

I'm an Australian and I find the whole thing hugely confusing. The US Republican party is so far to the right they've turned into caricatures. In Australia the sort of statements Republicans routinely make ("legitimate rape", etc) would end a career within 24 hours.The things they've voted down, like medical care for 911 first responders, and for veterans... I don't honestly understand how anyone can do those things and look at themselves in the mirror. It's truly disgusting, and I don't understand what sort of mentality people can have that says "Yep. That's the people I want leading my country."

Not to mention, the whole "obamacare socialism" nonsense is utterly inexplicable to anyone from the rest of the developed world. Just... crazy.

While my statement does have a similarity to the plot of Atlas Shrugged, it is just a fact, and i'm not using a fictional book as the basis of my argument. If you think people who make more should contribute more in taxes AND those who are able to hold onto more should then be taxed EVEN MORE you're full on proponent of redistribution. Pretending like there are limits/thresholds where the excessive taxation ends assumes that the need to continue to take more to prop up those who view government provided sustenance as their right will actually level off. It won't, it will just keep growing. Even if the government was as close to 100% efficient with redistribution as it could be, eventually that bar of $250K will edge lower and lower till no one is making more than middle of the middle class. Now tell me, do you really think people will contribute to that sort of societal rape at the same level as they do now? Ted Turner, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet would all be down to $50K per year just like everyone else. If you don't reward exceptionalism, you're rewarding the opposite. Bill Gates is known as a philanthropist because he gives a buttload of his hard earned money ON HIS OWN. Not because he's coerced by taxation. You people who think redistribution will work...I hope beyond hope you won't have to see the true utter end that will come from it. I hope you'll see before it goes too far that it should not exist even at a small level.

A lot of the details of Atlas Shrugged end up sounding a bit goofy today, almost a caricature of the conservative view of liberalism turned full on communist/socialist. And while I won't expect to ever find a hideout in the Rockies hidden from view by a massive cloaking system, you and everyone else will lose the creative genius that thrives in a free market. Not because they run off an hide, but because they will just lose the will to be exceptional when exceptional is seen as unfair to the less exceptional.

Rs and Ds don't behave like the caricatures you have of them. Clinton deregulated and produced a balanced budget. Bush increased regulation greatly. Obama has been one of the worst presidents in recent memory in the area of civil liberties. And Romney ran Massachusetts for years and he isn't the demon you imagine him to be.

Obama does not deserve a second term: he broke his promises on the economy and has been a bad president in many ways. I understand if you don't want to vote for Romney, there are plenty of things to dislike about him as well and I wouldn't vote for him either, but you do have several other choices.

I hate when bullshit like this gets modded up.
Do you also take the Religious Right's culture into context, and implore others to sympathize?
Do you also take the racist rural white culture into context, and implore others to sympathize?

I think these are both good examples. Americans outside the religious right mostly do not understand the religious right, and see only a caricature of it. Likewise for rural racists. I'm strongly against both the religious right and against white racists. However, I still think its worth trying to see them for what they are, so as to deal with them more realistically, rather than attributing characteristics to them that they don't actually have.

Of course people who try to 'explain' China are going to be annoyingly wrong about a lot of things, but that doesn't mean its not worth trying to understand better anyway.

I used to work in the drone/surveillance/defense industry. I left it, at some sacrifice, because it became clear to me that it was wrong. My Chinese friends and family had no arguments against my views about what that industry is, but all argued against my actually doing something about my part in it. To them, financial advantages for one's own family always trump all other considerations. I realize that Chinese people I know are not a representative sample of Chinese people in China. And I see Americans of European descent to be self-serving, amoral, and cowardly in a similar sort of way. But a significant minority of white Americans at least understand what I did, whereas I haven't interacted with a Chinese person who seems to understand at all.

There's a difference between resenting censorship and actually being willing to do what it takes to change it. And it appears to me that Chinese reflexes about harmony and pragmatism do partially account for why there is censorship, even though there are a lot of other reasons also.

Sadly, I don't think modern American's have enough of what it takes to fight for certain kinds of civil liberties either. I think we're where we are mostly for historical reasons, and as we do loose our freedom there isn't much will to get it back.

Cmon... admit it... you are really just aright winger posting ad a dumb left winger... nobody could be advocating for the left while portraying such a caricature of a left winger.

I am such a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. Thus, I take my leave to wallow in my sophomoric caricature of a man, having ripened my soul under the blistering gaze of.... girlintraining.

A tale of woe and amazement! And lo, the girl did blow the poor distraught man a kiss from across the digital divide, before twirling her hair and skipping away giggling...

All right, well fine. You have utterly destroyed my illusions of being quoted at the bottom of a slashdot page one day.

I am such a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. Thus, I take my leave to wallow in my sophomoric caricature of a man, having ripened my soul under the blistering gaze of.... girlintraining.

How can you parody something as trivial as pop music. It's already a caricature.

I guess Bruno Mars' 15 minutes of fame will have come from a compilation of someone else's work from some other genre. That or royalties will have be paid.

Boo fucking Hoo.

This is utterly insane. Limiting free speech in this way is nothing but an example of the west kowtowing to religious bullies. If you can't handle your disgustingly patriarchal religions being caricatured so much so that you engage in violence as a reaction than you are extremely immature as a religion and as a society.It's aaay-yo-kaaayyy for these bullies to refer to everyone else as infidels in the case of Muslims or as heathens in the case of Christians. No one seems to be stopping those particular form of speech. People of all religions need to keep their silly religious rules and dogma to their own members. I'm a Catholic and although I believe that during the mass the priest turns the wine and bread into the body and blood of Christ, I don't give a damn if you or Martin Luther stomp all over the blessed eucharist in front of me. I don't care if you destroy a cross. Christ is above such things and so should I be. Something tells me Allah is above all of this as well.These savage childlike religious fanatics need to grow up!!! All people have the right to free speech. I'm an artist. If I want to depict mohammed (though why I would bother don't know) I very damn well can!!!

A strawman argument is where you make an argument that is a caricature of the real argument made by your opponent. I have not done that. Anti-abortion folks do in fact equate a blastocyst with a full-grown adult human being, and every stage in between.

On the other hand, you have equated support for abortion rights with justifying murder. That is in fact a strawman argument.

Sure. How about putting a caricature of the Pope in your weekly column or showing a picture of an Iranian woman in bikini? Surely you must have known that it would offend somebody. The problem is that what you described is harassment, stalking etc. All easily handled by different laws in most civilized countries.

Creating a law against 'offending someone' in general would be mostly a tool for powerful groups to shut the critics up. Just look at how the libel laws are being used in the UK: McLibel Simon Singh Case and many more...

I belive you have missed the forest for the trees. I am sorry you got hung up on terminology.

I'm quite aware of the fact that Ayn Rand is pushing political theories as well as philosophical models. She is also pushing certain moral and ethical models. I was referring to the political theory of Libertarianism that is expressed in her work. That is the part of her story which held in my memory, and which formed much of my world view.

A caricature is not a person. The map is not the territory. A caricature is a story, a model, an archetype. Perhaps that model is useful for describing something in the real world, perhaps it is not. Ayn Rand's expression of a socialist economic model has been useful to me, so I subscribe to it, even though certain aspects of her work (sexual relations and atheism) I have felt free to discard.

None of this changes the fact that I have used Libertarian ideas of self-improvement, hard work, and self-value to open my access to both professional work and academic opportunity. Not objectivism, as I don't subscribe to that. Nor atheism, as I don't subscribe to that. Nor free love, as I don't subscribe to that, either. Just Libertarianism, along with a healthy dose of Laissez-Faire economics.

I would like to hear your reasoning behind this statement, "Libertarianism doesn't believe in laissez-faire capitalism." That runs completely contrary to my experience and knowledge. I understand that some left-leaning Libertarians do not subscribe to capitalism, but I have yet to find a Libertarian that does not believe in Laissez-Faire market systems as a foundational premise.

cej102937

Anyone calling on Google to remove the video, wants censorship because they can't handle critique. ..but..

Keep in mind that trolling (bullying) behavior is based on getting a rise out of the victim. I this case, the video surely succeeded and removing it now would do nothing. The Muslim world would at this point be better off producing their own caricature of Jewish God and Christian Jesus from their POV. Well if the countries they live in won't execute them for blasphemous activity. Amazing how the Hindu and Buddists get no mention. But then again they have Idolatry that's been going on for centuries that nobody gets anxious about.

The core problem with Christian Jesus and Muslim Mohammad is that they pull from the same piece of scripture forbidding Idolatry. Christians have somehow managed to get away with making bearded-jesus an idol, despite this (See Cathololics.) Muslims aren't so lucky and they have no point of reference of what their Prophet might look like to explain it to non-believers. The Muslims seriously believe that depicting Mohammad will bring about doom (and all the doom so far has been self-inflicted.)

It's like the Mohammad cartoon problem of several years ago. Who pays the price for Muslim terrorists? Muslims who aren't terrorists. If you want your religion to stop being dragged through the mud, get the loudest ones to shut up non-violently. In America, Westboro Baptist assholes, get away with their terrorist activities because they never kill anyone. They're all lawyers.

If the world were perfect, nobody would be Muslim, Christian or any other religious faith because nobody would believe in the superstitious nature of the Koran or Bible, but would still reference these works when it comes to teaching children about Morality.

We don't need religion to teach Morality, but we can use the stories from their scripture to show our children why not to be a dick. Creating that video = being a dick. Putting it online = bigger dick.