Slashdot Mirror
What You Can't Say
dtolton writes "Paul Graham has an excellent article posted on the subject of things you can't say. His article explores what ideas are generally considered heresy, and whether or not those ideas might be true nonetheless. He also presents advice for handling heretical ideas. Considering that many of the ideas in technology in general and Open Source specifically are near heresy, it's well worth a read."
My favorite example is why some African-Americans can & do use the term "nigger" to describe themselves without inpunity or shame, but if a white person does so, they can/will be fired and their lives ruined. Why is it a double standard, and it's a negative hateful word. Why do blacks in certain circles constantly use it?
(and there's no need to mod me down for *actually* saying things you cant say - if thats the case then /. is worthless.)
Ironic that this should be slashdotted, since ./ is more-or-less the last bastion of the kind of free-speech, open-debate that exists.
... the list goes on. I am astonished as to the level of thought conformity that goes on here, under the guise of free speech.
Since your uid is about half of mine, I guess I can't call you a n00b. However, this is pretty much the opposite of my experience with Slashdot.
There are all kinds of sacred cows here, that you criticize at your peril: the effectiveness of Linux, the evil of copyright in general and the recording industry in particular; the lack of merit to SCO's lawsuit
Outside commentators (such as those from Forbes) have referred to Slashdot and like sites as "echo chambers", where the same ideas bounce around ad infinitum. For example, just look at any article critical of Linux and you will see that every response is basically the same, and that high moderation is given to anything that restores the proper groupthink. I wonder if this is because a certain type of person is attracted to Slashdot, or if Slashdot transforms people's opinions? Perhaps a little of both.
I think this is one of the ironies of internet communication -- in an environment which supposedly promotes universal communication, people only seem to communicate in enclaves of like minds, reinforcing each other's narrow world views.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
- Masturbatory habits ("Hey Chuck, what'd you do last night?" "Oh, I stayed home and surfed for porn - had two great orgasms!")
- Fetishes ("So Julie, what did you get for Christmas?" "Oh! A batman cape? I can't reach orgasm unless my lover is wearing one!")
- Adultery (although this might be legitimate)
Violence:- "Sure I hit my wife - when she deserves it!" (this is probably less of a taboo than it should be)
Religion:- In most of middle america, announcing that you're an atheist is pretty eyebrow-raising.
Language:- You can't say 'nigger', unless you're black.
- You can't usually use a racial slur at all unless you're either kidding or in a particular bigoted crowd.
You know, most taboos are only taboo in a particular circle you're in. For example, announcing that the War on Drugs is destroying this country would be applauded in one circle I travel in, and ignored or shrugged off in several others.It's a double standard and it's called reverse discrimination. It's idiotic, and the black people who continue to behave like this are only hurting their cause. If you don't practice what you preach, how can we take you seriously?
* I refuse to put a disclaimer on this message. I feel that the continued use of that word by black culture is absolutely sickening. I am white.
[I realise your post was intended as humour, but it sparked the flame :-]
:-(
This is after-all a site for "stuff that matters". What the author is trying to express is that blind obedience to society norms is a bad thing. Effectively, he's saying "distrust Authority", an old maxim, but one that needs reiteration from time to time.
I have to say that I identify closely with a lot of his ideas, nothing depresses me more than the continued conversion of people into "consumers" told what to "consume", when to do it, how much to do it, and presumably when to stop.
The only way out of the cycle is education - but not facts and figures, instead the freedom to think and postulate, debate and conclude. The sort of education that we (at least in the UK) tend to reserve for the 18+ year-olds who go to college.
We live in an ever-more complex society, with ever-more subtle distinction between right and wrong, between do and do-not. It is a crying shame that most are incapable of distinguishing those distinctions. The "system" has failed these people.
I wonder if we are indeed moving into the "Corporate state" governmental model (anyone who played 'elite' will know that these are the most stable of governments), which simply exist to exist. Life should be more
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
Why is it a double standard, and it's a negative hateful word.
Same reason your wife can say "I am so fat", but you get in trouble if you say "honey, you are fat". I don't see why that is so hard to understand why the difference.
Sadly, universities are becoming the places where free speech is the *least* tolerated. Orwellian indoctrination classes and speech codes are the norm. Punishment for controversial speech is becoming more severe. College newspapers exposing "dangerous" thoughts are being stolen or banned. Anyone who speaks up is labeled a "racist conservative Nazi facist".
If you want detailed specifics check out the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.
Brian Ellenberger
If everyone wasn't so politically correct there wouldnt be a need for an article like this. It appears that everyone has become so sensitive to anything that comes out of peoples mouths, that we all have to watch what we say otherwise the PC demons will come and take our souls back to buzzword land. A joke is taken out of context and suddenly you find yourself in court for slander. What's the point in speaking when you have to watch what you say all the time. What's the point in activism when people get offended so easily.
What is, of course, also true, is that there are many things that could be said - both which are considered acceptable or indeed 'gospel', and which are not - which are blatantly wrong.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it", as Voltaire may have said - and equally, just because it has been said, doesn't mean anyone has to listen. That includes listening to the conspiracy-theorists who will no doubt be having a field-day here all evening...
-Chris
1) Never heard of that, and it sounds really implausible on the surface. Have a link?
2) I know a lot of people who are openly outspoken against the war on drugs, including myself. But genocide has a very specific meaning: The eradication of a selected group of people. Who is this group of people the war on drugs is intended to wipe out, and how is it being accomplished?
3) If Rush Limbaugh is saying it, and 20 million Americans are nodding their heads in unison, it's not really unsayable, is it?
Unpopular opinions aren't the same as heresies. Dig deeper. You have to have others.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
There are all kinds of sacred cows here, that you criticize at your peril:
First of all, if you consider being flamed/modded down "peril", you really ought to get out more.
Now, I don't know what you're talking about. In every story, I see a wide range of opinions, usually modded up based on merit. I've seen plenty of +5 pro-Microsoft posts that simply made good points.
Implication: he doesn't yet have kids.
"...and they're all trying not to use words like "fuck" and "shit" within baby's hearing, lest baby start using these words too. But these words are part of the language, and adults use them all the time. So parents are giving their kids an inaccurate idea of the language by not using them. Why do they do this? Because they don't think it's fitting that kids should use the whole language. We like children to seem innocent. [7]"
Nonsense. There's a saying I know from a film, don't know if it has any other derivation, "rules are for the obeyance of fools and the guidance of the wise". In this context, the children are (figuratively) the 'fools' - they haven't yet gained enough wisdom to know the implications of what they're saying. If they have, well then they're old enough to use the words. If they haven't...they're still the children being referred to.
I have two children, one just months but the other coming up to her second birthday and with her use of language exploding all over the place. She doesn't yet know enough to check herself, has little conception of context - if she starting using swear words now honestly, would I have done that kid a favour? At some point in her life she's going to start swearing, but at two? No. She'll do so when she learns about them, at first way too much and then later with a bit more understanding of context. And that's why the parents are self-censoring themselves - to help their children, not to molly-coddle them from reality.
Cheers,
Ian
I think the point he was trying to make was that every new fashion or idea starts out as something outrageous in the current context, and then goes on to become "right" some time later, and either goes on to be proven "wrong" even later or goes on to be a long-standing "correct" meme. Like the men's tie or natural selection. Authority of the person making the outrageous leap can lend to quicker adoptions, but any new fashion or idea will be met with resistance by people who have buy-in to the current system. I think the fashion analogy holds.
Error: PANTS NOT FOUND. Press <F1> to continue.
This is going to turn into a debate about conservatism vs. liberalism real soon. There are many people that believe thinking outside the box is a bad idea. Sucks, but people are stupid.
Equally stupid are those that think that because they "think outside the box" that they are automatically correct.
Paul Graham is emphasizing the need to be open-minded, but he is ignoring the need to be "active-minded". If your "outside the box" idea have failed the test, they need to be rejected.
Not nudity - sexuality. And the reasons are part moral choice but mostly practical. Children are inquisitive and will copy much of what they see. However, they are children, not miniature adults. Morally, they do not yet possess emotional complexity of the kind required to handle sex. Practically, they are unable to handle the consequences of being pregnant by twelve.
I have kids, and it's an amazing learning experience. Forget programming, debugging humans is where it's at. From your post I am guessing that you aren't yet in this situation - please correct me if I'm wrong. However, I humbly suggest to you that the kind of lessons you learn after having kids are only available through experience. The me of three years ago knew far less about reasoning such as the kind you're describing than the me of today does.
Cheers,
Ian
try dracula, not the story-book vampire, but the real person; quitre possibly he was personaly invovled with the execution of more human beings than any other person. He did this in a relatively short period, in defense of the catholic church from the ottoman threat and is probably resonsable more than anyone else for europeans being christian rather than islamic.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
3) I disagree with this, but I'd still like to hear your arguments (if you or any other slashdotters present actually want to make that argument)
About feminism:
Feminism was once needed, back in a time when 50% of the population's potential was stiffled from birth, being a woman meant that you couldn't do many things simply because you were a woman, and not because you actually couldn't do them. No woman doctors, no woman mathematicians, etc.
That was bad, feminism fought that, and that was good.
But since feminism reached its goals (enjoy that voting and education girls), feminism has stagnated and has decayed into nothing more than a form of sexism.
Now feminist dogma is that men are evil, that every "macho" characteristic are bad. And it both enforces unrealistic feminisation of men and masculinisation of women.
You can't take the sky from me...
Since your uid is about half of mine, I guess I can't call you a n00b.
My uid is 1/10th his, and I'll call him a n00b.
You're absolutely right. Slashdot is a bastion defense for a wide array of sacred cows, many of which you mention, and slashdot is largely an echo chamber where people can go to pat themselves on the back for thinking they are smart.
This article by Paul Graham says this at one point, "Ask anyone, and they'll say the same thing: they're pretty open-minded, though they draw the line at things that are really wrong. "
The interesting thing about group think is that any slightly differing opinion is "really wrong", and therefore not worth listening to or properly rebutting. It's a fascinating world, where people pat themselves on the back for being open minded and adopting a new fashion, but at the same time ignore or deflect any criticism of their position.
Graham talks about this as he goes on to say, "But when people are bad at open-mindedness they don't know it. In fact they tend to think the opposite."
It's an interesting article, and I definately agree with your last sentence...
"I think this is one of the ironies of internet communication -- in an environment which supposedly promotes universal communication, people only seem to communicate in enclaves of like minds, reinforcing each other's narrow world views."
I follow a number of political websites in addition to tech, and I'm finding the internet is really doing more to polarize society than anything else. It's allowing people who might otherwise be exposed to various opinions within their communities, to find like minded people on the internet and commiserate.
I'm not saying that's a bad thing. Sometimes it's a good thing. One just has to remember to keep it in perspective.
One of the things that causes this phenomenon is that most people can't tell the difference between truth and fact. Facts are information that is independently provable, whereas Truths are just what we accept as reality. Most people are absolutely insistent that their Truths are really Facts, and get really upset when you disagree with them.
Oddly enough, the less realistic a truth is, the more likely a person is to get upset at someone who is contradicting it. Look at anybody in history who has been burned, fired, hanged, or crucified for stating a truth, and you'll see what I mean.
While you're at it, you might notice that attempting to repeal laws which support certain popular truths is tantamount to breaking those laws in most people's eyes. Gives you something to chew on, eh?
Wake up - the future is arriving faster than you think.
First, none of the things that 'Bob Robertson' said are heresies anymore - they're all neo-conservative dogma.
'Mark' wasn't trying to censor him, he was just saying, pretty much flat-out, that 'Bob' was wrong. Which is pretty much what Paul Graham is saying - if you're just calling something incorrect, that's fine. It's when you start inventing labels for it (like, for instance, neo-conservative... ;) ) and using just the labels, and not addressing why or what is wrong, that you have left the path of wisdom.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
Quite honestly, I believe you are taking a series of randomly connected concidences and trying to spin this into a conspiracy theory. Police frequently have to filter through all the random events that occur leading up to a crime to find the ones which are directly connected.
This goes back to one of my old arguments about probable and possible. You're not doing the filtering to deselect the probable out of the possible grouping.
And it's not like I'm a big fan of Ariel Sharon or the neocons controlling the White House either. I think there was a horrible failure of analyzing intelligence leading up to 9/11, the focus wasn't in the right place. I said it back then, that the Bush administration, despite warnings from the CIA, was more focused on the least probable risk(rogue nations with ICBMs) versus the most likely risk.(someone sending a bomb via FedEx or some other common every day thing, like an airplane)
So my views are already semi-favorable to your cause, and I still doubt your claims without more solid evidence.
Hell, there's stronger evidence that the Bush family planned the Reagan assassination than what you have linking Israel to 9/11, and I don't believe that was anything other than a coincidence.
I know I'm feeding a troll, but:
You can say anything you want to. But you should be prepared to back it up. Carl Sagan once said something like "Extraordinary ideas require extraordinary proof". If you could reference specific repudable works (not just general things), we might believe you. Ignoring facts is one thing. But if you have quite a bit of stuff, and nothing to back it up, there isn't any reason why we should believe you. It's not simply pointing and yelling "heresy", it's saying "you have a claim that most people would ignore and laugh at, but if you can show us some proof, we'll look at it" Also, just becuase you think you have proof, it doesn't mean we'll believe it.
It's particularly strange to think that people think being a good orator is a positive characteristic which it is shocking to attribute to anyone who commits atrocities. In fact, it takes a whole lot of skill at something to commit any atrocities, and oratory is about the most common thing, because it can get you a mob, which is just the thing for committing atrocities.
Being a good orator (or being convincing in some medium) is necessary for doing anything on a large scale. Of course Hitler was a fantastic orator. If he weren't, he couldn't have caused much trouble.
It's not just poorly-supported fringe opinions or racist comments that are frowned upon in modern universities. It's ANYTHING that doesn't toe the line with the established orthodoxy. Supported non-racist opinions that are not orthodox WILL be denounced as unsupported or racist.
Two good examples. First, casually mention anything that counters the current tenets of environmentalism. Dispute the data supported global warming. Or suggest that it isn't caused by human activity. Or that electric cars cause as much pollution as gasoline cars. But first make sure you're wearing asbestos underwear! The creed of environmentalism CANNOT be questioned. It's heretical to do so. It's not because anything else is a "poorly-supported fringe opinion", because there are plenty of scientists and climatologists that offer support to contrarian views. It's merely a difference in interpreting the data, or using different models. Much of environmentalism still rests on untested and inviolate premises. Question these and your career as a university researcher is finished.
Second example. Mention that you hold a conservative view on an issue. Any issue. It doesn't matter if you are liberal on every other issue. Just this one will get your branded as a racist or reactionary. I'm not talking about extremist conservatism. Mainstream conservatism is equally despised. Suggest that capital gains taxes should be lowered, as an example, and see how fast you're ostracized.Go to Berkeley and argue against rent control if you really want to see how intolerant the capital of tolerance really is. Sidenote: I'm not claiming that modern universities are "liberal" though. They're something else entirely.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
though the vast majority of his haters are overseas
:)
Yeah but that's only because the vast majority of all people are overseas.
It goes from God, to Jerry, to me.
But since feminism reached its goals (enjoy that voting and education girls), feminism has stagnated and has decayed into nothing more than a form of sexism.
There are all kinds of things wrong with the way the modern feminist movement has approached the problem of gender inequality. But the notion that the feminist movement achieved its goals is, at best, fantasy.
Yes, women have the right to vote, and I don't know of any evidence that they are unable to use it, though the still terribly few number of women in the political arena suggests we still have a long way to go there. Yes, women are no longer barred from most educational institutions, but in spite of massive evidence showing that test like the SAT and ACT are biased against women (as well as minorities and the poor), they are still used by most colleges to determine admittance. Years ago, when I was an undergrad, a not-too-suprising article in the Daily Bruin noted that GRE scores were a lousy predictor of performance in grad school, especially for women vs. men. Women with the same GRE scores could be expected to get significantly higher grades.
Furthermore, all that education (which is really only beginning to actually balance out, and is doing so fastest among minorities), isn't really repairing the disparities in employment and pay. When you control for experience and education, women still only earn 81% of what men earn.
There are a lot of explanations for this. Most common is that women are more likely to take lower-paying jobs that offer more flexibility, so that they can be available for child-care duties. However, men with children don't seem to experience a similar pay disparity, so this indicates a disparity in how child-care duties are distributed in households. It's still the case in most US states that, if a couple divorces, the mother generally gets the lion's share of custody of the kids. (My cousin in Arkansas raised his three kids singlehandedly *and* paid court-mandated child support to his ex-wife, because a mother who was a prescription drug addict wasn't, in the court's opinion, less fit to care for the kids than their father.)
But the fact that, as a society, we assume that women take care of the children affects women who aren't in this situation. My husband and I are having our first child in July. Since I'll (theoretically) be getting a master's degree in June, I can probably make more than he currently makes. So, after a few months to recover, I'll start looking for a job and, assuming I find one, he will quit his job to be a full-time dad. However, I'm already carefully considering how I'm going to handle my job-seeking, because if an employer knows that I just had a baby it will probably hurt my chances of getting hired, no matter how illegal that is. It's also very difficult to prove.
Then there are just general societal notions about what women can and can't do, as well as what they do and don't want to do. Women who are into computers and technology find this all the time. I had a classmate in my graduate program start "testing" me when I said that I was a computer geek. (He starts off with "Well, then, if I want to get a new Pentium 4 computer..." to which I responded "Why a Pentium? Why not AMD instead?" I tried to engage him in a conversation on what uses might indicate one over the other, and the issue of motherboard chipsets to support each processor, but he quickly changed the subject.)
Frankly, I'm angry with the feminist movement for getting rid of the compensations that we had without *first* fixing the problems we have. Why did men always pay for dates? Because they generally make more money. (It was always my policy to pay if I made more, and let him pay if he made more, and alternate if it was about the same.) Why did men open doors for women? Well, that's harder to answer, but maybe because women are more likely to be loaded down with kids and their accoutrements.
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
I have to agree.
A little drink for a young teen at a family meal == teaching good drinking habits.
Keeping all alchahol away until 21 == making it more desireable than it should be, with habits formed at underage unsupervised parties.
No matter how obvious this is, it still gets people upset.
You appear to be advocating not trusting moral beliefs that are effective in doing good.
What alternative do you propose, people not wanting to "save the world" as you put it? Ignoring helping or not helping others altogether? You aren't seriously suggesting that the British being the driving force in ending world-wide slavery is a bad thing, are you?
I prefer to think that if a group or individual does something good, like ending slavery world-wide, they should be complimented on that, not denigrated.
Since we're on the topic of unspeakable things, perhaps we're dealing now with the current U.S. school taboo of never praising anything done by white males?
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
You have to pretend that men and women are equal...
Patently untrue. People love talking about the differences between genders. The best selling Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus series of books, published at the height of so-called political correctness (1993, 1996, 1997 & 1999) are just one example. For more examples, visit cocktail parties, dinner tables, and talkshows around the nation: sexual difference is one of our culture's favorite topics for discussion. There is also a whole branch of feminism called "Difference feminism" precisely because it focuses on how men and women are different.
Perhaps a better question would be why attacks on sexism are so often labelled "feminist" or "political" (both modern synonyms for "heretical", in my book) or misrepresented as outrageous claims of absolute "equality" (which only serves to cloud the real issue of equal rights).
You have to avoid commenting on any difference between the races, even though it's obvious that some races tend to be better at some things than others (maybe it's ok to say that), and ergo unavoidably some races are worse at some things than others (and it's not okay to say that).
The 1992 flick titled White Men Can't Jump would suggest racial difference isn't as off-limits as you suggest.
However, I would agree that talking about race is something of a tabboo, but only among white people. This tabboo, however, is clearly not because people of color somehow police white people (the white people I know, myself included, police themselves when in all-white company). More likely, it has to do with the discomfort many whites feel mentioning race at all. Perhaps this is because for centuries whites talked openly from a standpoint of racial supremacy, and now that we've (hopefully) realized that this history is shameful, we're uncomfortable bringing up race at all.
Then we watched your elections being rigged and a fascist clique rising to power, like the USA was some two-bit eastern european or african nation.
Yeah, well, um, this sort of reinforces my point. I voted for Gore (would've voted for McCain, but he didn't last long enough) and didn't think much of the 2000 election, but I don't think the election was "rigged" or that the Bush administration is a fascist clique. (Actually, most of the reports I've seen in mainstream publications have indicated that Bush probably would have won anyway - very narrowly, of course, and possibly still without a national majority - if a fair count was done.) Since I've lived here, I got to hear the same things about Clinton, coming from what Bob Dole called the "double-Y chromosome crowd." This ranting sounds just as dumb coming from Democrats or snotty Europeans.
Let's keep things in perspective; the USA has experienced many crises, but our system of government and our free and open society has proven resilient in the past, albeit with changes. There have been far worse threats to liberty and democracy in the past 225 years than Bush and Ashcroft, and scarred though we may be we've survived them all. This doesn't mean we shouldn't be constantly on the lookout for new threats like the Patriot Act or the illegal detentions, but I don't view these as heralding the end of American democracy. They're just another crisis we'll have to work out, without meddling from snotty EU bureaucrats.
We do NOT hate the people of the USA as a whole (but we do wish they'd learn a little logical and rhetorical skills so they can see through the lies and bluster of their glorious leaders)
This illustrates my point even better. You assume that the majority (okay, 49% or so, but even more voted for Republicans in 2002) voted for Bush because they're ignorant dolts easily wowed by a cowboy act. Most Democrats appear to believe this as well, hence the NASCAR/Wal-Mart allusion. In fact, a great deal of the people here really do support Bush's policies, and, more importantly, don't like snobby outsiders telling them what to think. I'm very sympathetic towars the latter view, especially after reading too much Chomsky and having too many run-ins with snobby Europeans and lefty Democrats, both of which tend to be just as insular and ignorant as the rubes they mock.
Frankly, we don't need advice from the Europeans on running a stable, pluralistic democracy.
"Not nudity - sexuality. And the reasons are part moral choice but mostly practical. Children are inquisitive and will copy much of what they see. However, they are children, not miniature adults. Morally, they do not yet possess emotional complexity of the kind required to handle sex."
If sexuality in front of children (as opposed to "with" or "to" children) were as harmful as you suggest, none of us would be here today to debate it. Humans were having sex millenia before it was considered unacceptable to do it in front of children, much like other mammals.
Besides, there are other, potentially more deadly things that we do in front of children that we don't want them to imitate too closely, like cooking. We survive as a species not by making sure there are no children around to see us cooking, but by making sure that the children learn things like "don't touch a hot stove."
"Practically, they are unable to handle the consequences of being pregnant by twelve."
Only after the Industrial Revolution. Or we would be the only species emotionally incapable of handling parenthood despite being capable biologically. Most psychologists seem to believe that the current gap we see between biological and emotional maturity is because survival now requires at least a high school education in order to hold down a job and such.
Besides, this is the Twenty-First Century; you can have sex without getting pregnant and vice versa (unless you pay too much attention to John Paul II). If three-year-olds are capable of understanding "don't touch a hot stove," a child old enough to have reached sexual maturity should be capable of understanding "use a condom."
In my personal (anecdotal) experience, it seems that the children from whom sexuality is hidden from the longest are the ones most likely to be a parent at an early age. I'm sure everybody here has heard stories of children growing up in strictly asexual households only to get (somebody) pregnant in their freshman year at an out-of-state college.
Is it harmful to children, or is it simply embarassing to the adults?
I have already pointed this out once in this thread, however I dont mind Repeating myself.
...) Please do yourself a favor and ask average joe if he knows what the Patriot Act is, or ask them what the US gov't spent more money on investigating monica lewinsky or investigating enron. I could go on, but rather than list off a ton of things about this president I dislike I would point to the biggest hypocracy his tenure has yeilded:
"Frankly, we don't need advice from the Europeans on running a stable, pluralistic democracy."
Actually since europe has been dealing with a large amount of the same issues as us for a much longer time it might be wise to shut the fuck up and listen. Most of europe has been plagued by terrorism for years, and one attack doesnt make the US or its gov't the authority on dealing with such things. this is proved by the sad fact that they passed laws to protect the people rather than taking action.
The rest of your post refers to euro's as snobby/snotty and lefties as dolts. Yet you seem to think that the average american has some sense of what bush has done in the past three years. (other than arrest Saddam bin-laden
We are moving our jobs and economy to a "Globilized" state, relying more on other countries to produce goods and provide services. This makes the Rich Richer and as such feeds the ultra-capitalist republican machine. Yet Bush ignores what the world wants has a whole and refuses to respect the authority of worldwide governing bodies. At the rate we are going how long will it be until foriegn countries and citizens refuse to work for american companies ? or buy american products ? what effect will that have on this country ?
Oh and i might also point out that never in the modern history of this country have we faced so much internal corruption and greed. Never has the gov't been forced to approve laws that help ailing industries, and stood idly by and watched hundreds of thousands of jobs sent overseas in the up coming industries, all while restricting the freedomds of the american people, going against the very nature of this country and its founding princaples.
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe." --Albert Einstein
Christianity isn't based on fact (other than the fact that the bible was written down). It's based on faith. Faith is the belief in something absent proof. If you think that fact is the basis of Christianity, then I think you misunderstand the teachings of Christ.
There's nothing wrong with faith, but presuming/demanding that someone with a different background than you accept your articles of faith is no less unreasonable than expecting you to accept theirs. This is part of the reason for the constitutional separation of church and state... too many of the founding fathers' forbears had been persecuted, prosecuted, exiled and even murdered because they had dared to disagree with the religious views of the then-current government leadership.
It's not that they hated religion -- quite to the contrary -- They just hated the idea of being forced to accept someone else's religion. They also hated the corruption that power-politics could inject into religious issues if the two were too closely bound.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
How about this as something unthinkable: white males aren't being oppressed.
I'm a white male. It rocks to be a white, straight, native-English-speaking male in America. I can wake up in the morning, just pull on whichever pant/shirt combination is handy in the closet, and go to work where no one ever talks trash about me having worn the same color for three days in a row, no one ever gets nervous around me for fear of saying some offensive remark about "my people", and no one ever is worried that I'm secretly stealing office supplies. I can walk around my neighborhood with minimal fear of personal violence, and if, God forbid, something did happen I can have complete confidence in rapid and reasonable response from our local police force. I never have to take a personal day for my religion's holidays; when my religion has a high feast or fast day, the markets close.
If my contribution is ever overlooked on something, I know it's because I didn't speak up loudly enough, or early enough. I know it's never my race. I can walk into any store I want to, look at items, handle those that are out, and security doesn't automatically start tailing me. When I walk into Philadelphia's diamond district, the assumption is that I'm looking for a anniversary present, not that I'm casing the joint.
When I look at the people in power - pretty much anywhere - I see, by and large, men who look like me, albeit usually older. When I pick up any high school or elementary school textbook, and look to see what historical figures they're studying, I see other white males. Sure, I may also see people who weren't white males, but let's face it - George Washington isn't getting written out of American history classrooms any time soon. I know that the child of Mung immigrants going to a public school half-way across the country is going to learn about a winter in 1777 in Valley Forge where some distant ancestor of mine died. My daughter, were she to attend a public school here, would be far from certain of learning of the great service that child's grandparents gave to this country.
White males have it good. Our position is not in any danger. We can stop shouting "help, help, I'm being oppressed" at every imagined slight. (remember when the standard joke was that radical feminists were thin-skinned?)
Political correctness is either dead or, as the trolls say, dying.
The biggest social fallouts of this era aren't going to be the direct result of the actions of suicide bombers and 'terrorists'. They're going to be the resul of the actions of those who are using the (relatively minor but spectacular) attacks as an excuse to squash civil and human rights in currently 'democratic' societies.
Technically: Terrorism is the use of terror to achieve ones's ends. In that context, the legislators who used the Sept. 11 bombings as an excuse to pass legislation what would have otherwise beeen tossed out as unconstitutional and un-democratic are as much terrorists as Bin Laden and friends.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
it's called reverse discrimination
As long as we have a topic dedicated to ranting, I'd like to say that if I could remove one phrase from the English language, it would be "reverse discrimination." Descrimination is discrimination. If you are a Japanese store owner who charges me more because I'm Korean, that's discrimination. If I am an African-American employer who won't hire you because you are white, that's discrimination.
"Reverse" discrimination would be not discriminating against someone.
Your fantasies contain the seeds of important concepts.