The moment you begin to use your brain to think about creating a universe, you've already failed.
Since the group would be using their God-created minds and bodies to plan and form a new universe and they'd be taking advantage of the existing air to breath and food to eat while they plan, they would already "cheating" at the contest. Also, pertaining to whatever equipment the group constructs, they would have to create the composite substances and elements from nothing and do so without using any physical or mental capacities that are pre-existing or derived from those which are pre-existing.
"If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe." - Carl Sagan
"If you wish to make a universe from scratch, you must first invent yourself in a vacuum." - me
Oooh, now that is some sizzling political/philosophical commentary. He says that moral relativism is good... and implies that you're bad if you disagree with him.;-)
I'm not completely sure that the site isn't a parody. But I have to give credit where credit is due. Those liberal geeks are definitely on the cutting edge of technology.
<title>STEVE KANGAS' LIBERAL FAQ</title> <meta name="GENERATOR" content="Mozilla/2.01Gold (Win32)">
A quick browse of Salon turns up articles on Bush bashing, GOP bashing, business bashing, ultra-sick rap (Eminem), grunge (Kurt Cobain), witchcraft, and actual pornography! It may not be Communist, but it certainly isn't right-wing.
Besides, no right-wing news site would have an entire Sex section. Sorry, the Starr Report doesn't count.:-)
Besides some AM radio talk shows, George Will's column, and a few web sites, what are you talking about? I guess you weren't kidding when you said [only] God knows. Even if you consider Fox News "conservative media" that's a single island in an worldwide ocean of liberal media.
On the liberal side you have ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, the Associated Press (AP), PBS & NPR (taxpayer subsidized), and that doesn't include non-US based international and localized media.
My disagreement with creationism is not about whether the biblical creation account is inspired by God. It is about what it means.
Because of the strong, reasoned evidence we have that life evolved over millions of years, and that the earth, sun, etc. existed far longer than that, I don't believe that the creation account is intended to tell us that everything came into being over a time period of six earth days 6000 years ago.
These two statements reveal a contradiction. Up until the 20th century explosion of evolutionary thinking, all Bible believers, both Jewish and Christian, believed that the creation account does precisely and clearly say that the Earth and all kinds of life were created in six days and that this occurred about 6000 years ago, which is according to the Bible itself, not to mention corroborating scientific evidence. After personally studying the teachings of Jesus Himself, the Creator Incarnate, in the gospels, His words appear to reinforce a literal interpretation of the creation account.
As a Christian (I assume?), to profess the belief that creation occurred over hundreds of millions of years (and is still occurring!!) is to stake out radical, new theology whose ramifications trample on many core Christian doctrines. No follower of God, from Abraham to Isaiah to Jesus to Constantine to Martin Luther to Billy Graham and the Pope believes in evolution (macro). While the idea of evolution was discussed by ancient Greek philosophers as far back as 600 B.C., it has never been part of any Jewish, Catholic, or Protestant doctrine. It is a concept born from atheism, and has ballooned into a full-fledged religion for the avowed "non-religious".
I have posted a few times on the subject of theistic evolution in previous articles:
One thing I try to point out is that the Bible should never be interpreted apart from its historic context
Agreed!
and evolution is the historic context of creation.
I disagree. Evolution is the obfuscation and misrepresentation of the historic context of creation.
God says: Earth created in six days (seventh day established for man as day of rest, i.e., the Sabbath = Saturday = 24 hours), birds before reptiles, whales before reptiles, no death until man (sin), no rain until man, man originally plant-eater, etc.
Soon to appear on eBay: EXTINCT ICE BEARS! (stuffed) Limited supply.
Another boost to the sagging economy. Also, no more attacks on humans by polar bears. Inuit and Siberian children would be able to frolic and play on the tundra without fear. Finally, somebody is thinking about the children.
Religion has caused more misery and death in this world than any other force or disease
First off, religion is not a disease; you're comparing apples to oranges. As for comparing to another "force" (I assume you mean belief system), your comparison is untrue. Christians and Jews have most often been the ones persecuted, not the ones doing the persecution. More Christians were murdered in the 20th century (mostly at the hands of atheistic dictators) than in all previous time. Stalin killed 50 million innocent people. Hitler killed 11 million. Both were atheists.
In particular, Hitler was a champion of Darwinism, which provided him the moral impetus to denigrate Jews as a "disfavoured people." I might agree with you if we can consider Darwinism a religion.
I don't defend non-Christian religion anyway. As far as I'm concerned, their killings can be chalked up to the column that includes atheism. The two categories are not Religion and non-Religion; they are Christian and non-Christian.
With all due respect, the non-sequitur is in your post, not mine. I never said anything about disproving the scientific method.
The point of my post is that the scientific method is not applicable to whatever happened before the Big Bang. To force science to answer questions about what happened between the "dormant" singularity and the Big Bang is to attribute causality to randomness, which encroaches on philosophical conjecture.
Indeed, the problem of distinguishing sense from nonsense goes beyond the Bogdanovs, say some physicists, who worry that far too much junk goes past the referees who vet articles for the scientific journals
No kidding! This has been a major problem in the scientific community for well over a hundred years. I've traced the trend back to this highly speculative publication. I don't know how the deranged author managed to weasel past the referees and examiners.
You sound like a highly educated gentleman, so I'd like to get your take here. Let me relate a conversation between Ravi Zacharias and some scientific scholars.
RZ: If the Big Bang were indeed where it all began, may I ask what preceded the Big Bang?
Sci: The universe was shrunk down to a singularity.
RZ: But isn't it correct that a singularity as defined by science is a point at which all the laws of physics break down?
Sci: That is correct.
RZ: Then, technically, your starting point is not scientific either.
[silent panic]
RZ: When a mechanistic view of the universe had held sway, didn't thinkers like David Hume chide philosophers for taking the principle of causality and applying it to a philosophical argument for the existence of God? Didn't he warn that causality could not be extrapolated from science to philosophy?
RZ: Now, when a quantum theory holds sway, randomness in the subatomic world is made a basis for randomness in life. Are you not making the very same extrapolation that you warned us against?
[awkward silence, self-deprecating smile]
Sci: We scientists do seem to retain selective sovereignty over what we allow to be transferred to philosophy and what we don't.
Ah, the dark truth is snookered into revealing itself. Science plays the charade of pursuing truth while spurning the open-mindedness that is necessary to find ultimate truth.
Again, in the words of Zacharias, "The person who demands a sign [from God, a miracle] and at the same time has already determined that anything that cannot be explained scientifically [naturalistically] is meaningless is not merely stacking the deck; he is losing at his own game." (words in brackets in this quote added by me)
Exactly. If the evil isn't brought into the light, people will stop opposing it.
Saddam Hussein and these war protesters comprise a prime example. The reports of his tyranny and mass murder fall on deaf ears. They don't see the beheadings and bodies ripped apart at the orders of Czar Hussein on TV.
Exposure of evil incites opposition to it, which is what we need. If there is no exposure, the guilty will come to be perceived as innocent, and they will be defended from prosecution rather than pushed into the authorities' hands, as is fortunately the case with the Klan.
Whenever the KKK has a rally, there are mobs of people who physically attack them. That sounds awfully hawkish to me. *cough* That seems like a war-mongering attitude. Why are there no anti-violence PEACE rallies against fighting the Ku Klux Klan? The answer is: it is politically correct for the media to expose the sins of only "right wing" groups like the Klan but not the atrocities of Saddam, Arafat, Castro, and other liberal-media-buddy despots.
HTML is for wusses. I miss the days of Gopher when everything was text files. The web should be nothing but.txt files and GNU binaries. And who needs this new-fangled "Goggle" (or whatever)? Archie and Veronica ought to good enough for anybody. Posted with ssh to port 80.
The lawsuit targets technology, not a specific product. Isn't MSN Explorer just IE + extra fluff? I think MSN Explorer is mainly used for DellNet(tm) and other MS/OEM/ISP tie-ins.
when will China reach the moon, and what will they find there? Will they find the footprints and detritus of the N(A)SA agents who purportedly reached the moon?
Yes, then they could fake their own photographs and video to "prove" that the Americans had never been there. (How hard could it be to smooth out a footprint on the moon?) Even if astronaut footprints showed up in photos, it's nothing that a minute with the GIMP on Red Flag Linux couldn't fix.:-) In the photos, the Chinese flag would be drooping and still. There would be thousands of stars in the background. The only light source would be the camera flash.
Commies around the world (mostly China and Berkeley): HA HA! Look at high and mighty Uncle Sam! He cheated to win Space Race. Just a paper tiger like we always knew.
If America pulled a hoax, wouldn't China be just as capable? As untrustworthy as some of our leaders have been, I definitely wouldn't be more inclined to put faith in proclamations made by their Marxist government officials.
who's going to explicitly ask for the three religious channels
You can't be serious. There are more than 3000 churches in my county. I think the religious channels would be the most popular in many parts of the U.S.
No, it unzips just fine on Windows too. No reboot needed. In fact, you can write a batch file to: download the latest build using Windows' command line FTP program, delete the current bin directory, and unzip the new zip file. A CLI zip program is required.
There are two files in my D:\mozupd, which are mozupd.bat and mozupd.scr.
Here's the mozupd.bat file (WinZip CLI component required):
@echo off REM Download Mozilla update automatically from Mozilla D: cd \mozupd if exist mozilla-win32-talkback.zip del mozilla-win32-talkback.zip>nul ftp -s:D:\mozupd\mozupd.scr if not exist mozilla-win32-talkback.zip goto exit del/s/q C:\Progra~1\Mozilla\bin C:\Progra~1\Winzip\wzunzi p D:\mozupd\mozilla-win32-talkback.zip -d C:\Progra~1\Mozilla
echo All done! :exit
And the mozupd.scr file for FTP:
open ftp.mozilla.org anonymous you@your-domain.com b in hash get/pub/mozilla/nightly/latest/mozilla-win32-talkback.zip quit
If you see b in a few lines above, that is supposed to be bin as in binary. I don't know why Slashdot is splitting the word. The word wzunzip is split too in the first script.
Let me clarify something quickly. I mean no offense against the Spanish or any Latin peoples. My only intent is to show how ridiculous it would be if Spain were to claim that Florida was its "occupied territory."
And yeah, the analogy has a big hole. Spain is obviously a real country. Palestine (in modern news media parlance) is more closely comparable with Atlantis: Nobody can agree on where either of them is actually located or if they even exist.
maybe you haven't heard about Israel firing a rocket into an apartment building full of children, or bulldozing away people's homes?
It's a different world over there. The children are terrorists. It's a shame the Israelis didn't finish the job.
Or forcing people out of there own land because of their religion?
Excuse me, what Muslim countries is Israel attacking? Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Yemen, Sudan, Iraq, Iran, Quatar, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Morocco, Chad, Libya, Lebanon, Jordan, Indonesia, the Phillipines? Hmmm, there must be some other factor (Google News: 13 hours ago) that you're missing. Israel's not attacking any Muslim country. Just some Arab-Israeli ("Palestinian") misfits wanting an overthrow of Israel.
In other news, there was another suicide bombing this afternoon on the West Bank in the settlement of Tampa. "When I arrived I saw body parts lying on the road," said a woman who witnessed the blast. "I went into the shop and saw some remains covered in blood and nearby a severed leg which belonged to another body." The street was crowded with schoolchildren and shoppers on their way home from work.
The Spanish Authority has condemned the bombing. The Español Inquisition-Jihad is claiming responsibility for this attack, which is in protest of the illegal American settlements on the occupied territory owned by the Spaniards. Gov. Jeb Bush was unavailable for comment as he was attending a funeral of a victim of last week's suicide bomber.
I assume you meant to reply to me and not to kometes. I don't back up my claims when they're based on what I consider to be common knowledge. Well... now that I think about it, the 50% figure definitely isn't common knowlege, but I don't remember where I heard it. It must have come from a source that I trust since I remembered it. More on this later...
The main point about Democrats is that they appear to be doing more that encourages terrorism than that which prevents it. They appear to view conservatives as greater enemies than terrorists whose primary goal in life is to destroy us. True, my statement about the solidarity rally with Saddam was a little over the top (I'm glad you laughed), but the effect of what Democrats are doing really does help Saddam's regime at our expense.
For all we know attacking Iraq could be the downfall of the United States.
Restraint is a sign of weakness and is a big, bright GREEN LIGHT for groups waiting to attack. Cowardice to use our own weapons is akin to self-disarmament. It does nothing but embolden our enemies. Based on what we know, a more accurate prediction would be that failing to attack Iraq would lead to the downfall of the United States. "The history, the logic, and the facts lead to one conclusion: Saddam Hussein's regime is a grave and gathering danger. To suggest otherwise is to hope against the evidence."
The preceding quote is from the Bush speech to the U.N. two months ago. Click on the link above, and you can read the transcript, listen to the audio, or watch the video. It was all over the news. This is what I mean by common knowledge. I don't have time to deal with willful ignorance or categorical disbelief of information that you don't want to believe. A Slashdot post is just a Slashdot post. I don't have the time to compose a comprehensive dissertation on National Security & Terrorism complete with footnotes and full bibliography section. When I say things like I did in my previous post, I'm expecting readers to recall information that they should already have stored in their memory. If you don't have that store of knowledge to pull up, then you're not getting (or refusing to receive) all the facts. I didn't state any opinions that aren't in the mainstream, so there was no pressing need to direct you to supporting information.
I was going to write a little satire in response to your statement that conservatives are the real enemy. Then I realized that your beliefs are every bit as absurd as any sarcasm I could come up with. The humor would've been lost.
Look, we are living in historic times. The opening shots of World War III may have already occurred. (It's hard to interpret history when you're in the midst of it.) Conservatives are trying to cajole the nation into doing what must be done for our survival. Liberals are aligning with Stalinist dictators. Democrats are campaigning from Baghdad, apparently holding a solidarity rally with Saddam Hussein, a supporter of al-Qaeda and a bona fide terrorist himself...... And you're telling me that whoever supports the Communications Decency Act represents the biggest evil in the world?! This is why I have trouble taking any this DMCA/CDA/COPA/CBDTPA controversy seriously. It's blown up so big that I tend to shrug off the whole thing out of incredulity. Besides, anything that puts liberals in tizzy must be good.:-)
The CDA et al are peanuts compared with the towering issues of our time. National security, economic policy, and social security should be receiving far more of our attention. (I know this is/., but we are talking about real life elections.) The relevance of the first two issues should be obvious, but SS is important too and not just to old people. If current policies remain, income taxes will have to be increased to 50% to keep SS afloat. How's that for being consumer friendly? You'll have nothing to buy anything with after making your necessary expenditures. We'll be facing a colossal economic disaster if SS isn't fixed.
If the topic of this story is a major political concern to you, ask yourself whether it's in your best interest to be a single-issue voter based on this. Don't get tunnel vision. There are many important issues out there.
Slashdot Mirror
Since the group would be using their God-created minds and bodies to plan and form a new universe and they'd be taking advantage of the existing air to breath and food to eat while they plan, they would already "cheating" at the contest. Also, pertaining to whatever equipment the group constructs, they would have to create the composite substances and elements from nothing and do so without using any physical or mental capacities that are pre-existing or derived from those which are pre-existing.
"If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe." - Carl Sagan
"If you wish to make a universe from scratch, you must first invent yourself in a vacuum." - me
"If you wish to make an apple pie truly from scratch, you must first invent the universe." -- Carl Sagan
I'm not completely sure that the site isn't a parody. But I have to give credit where credit is due. Those liberal geeks are definitely on the cutting edge of technology.
<title>STEVE KANGAS' LIBERAL FAQ</title>
<meta name="GENERATOR" content="Mozilla/2.01Gold (Win32)">
A quick browse of Salon turns up articles on Bush bashing, GOP bashing, business bashing, ultra-sick rap (Eminem), grunge (Kurt Cobain), witchcraft, and actual pornography! It may not be Communist, but it certainly isn't right-wing.
Besides, no right-wing news site would have an entire Sex section. Sorry, the Starr Report doesn't count. :-)
On the liberal side you have ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, the Associated Press (AP), PBS & NPR (taxpayer subsidized), and that doesn't include non-US based international and localized media.
Because of the strong, reasoned evidence we have that life evolved over millions of years, and that the earth, sun, etc. existed far longer than that, I don't believe that the creation account is intended to tell us that everything came into being over a time period of six earth days 6000 years ago.
These two statements reveal a contradiction. Up until the 20th century explosion of evolutionary thinking, all Bible believers, both Jewish and Christian, believed that the creation account does precisely and clearly say that the Earth and all kinds of life were created in six days and that this occurred about 6000 years ago, which is according to the Bible itself, not to mention corroborating scientific evidence. After personally studying the teachings of Jesus Himself, the Creator Incarnate, in the gospels, His words appear to reinforce a literal interpretation of the creation account.
As a Christian (I assume?), to profess the belief that creation occurred over hundreds of millions of years (and is still occurring!!) is to stake out radical, new theology whose ramifications trample on many core Christian doctrines. No follower of God, from Abraham to Isaiah to Jesus to Constantine to Martin Luther to Billy Graham and the Pope believes in evolution (macro). While the idea of evolution was discussed by ancient Greek philosophers as far back as 600 B.C., it has never been part of any Jewish, Catholic, or Protestant doctrine. It is a concept born from atheism, and has ballooned into a full-fledged religion for the avowed "non-religious". I have posted a few times on the subject of theistic evolution in previous articles:
My comment in Cyclic Universe a Possibility
My comment in Evolution - Beyond the Popular Science
I posted two more times closely below this comment in the same thread.
AiG: Genesis FAQ
Agreed!
and evolution is the historic context of creation.
I disagree. Evolution is the obfuscation and misrepresentation of the historic context of creation.
God says: Earth created in six days (seventh day established for man as day of rest, i.e., the Sabbath = Saturday = 24 hours), birds before reptiles, whales before reptiles, no death until man (sin), no rain until man, man originally plant-eater, etc.
You can be an evolutionist or a creationist.
This is yet a another benefit of global warming.
Soon to appear on eBay: EXTINCT ICE BEARS! (stuffed) Limited supply.
Another boost to the sagging economy. Also, no more attacks on humans by polar bears. Inuit and Siberian children would be able to frolic and play on the tundra without fear. Finally, somebody is thinking about the children.
I think the Florida media is still counting chads from the 2000 election.
I don't believe in evolution.
Religion has caused more misery and death in this world than any other force or disease
First off, religion is not a disease; you're comparing apples to oranges. As for comparing to another "force" (I assume you mean belief system), your comparison is untrue. Christians and Jews have most often been the ones persecuted, not the ones doing the persecution. More Christians were murdered in the 20th century (mostly at the hands of atheistic dictators) than in all previous time. Stalin killed 50 million innocent people. Hitler killed 11 million. Both were atheists.
In particular, Hitler was a champion of Darwinism, which provided him the moral impetus to denigrate Jews as a "disfavoured people." I might agree with you if we can consider Darwinism a religion.
I don't defend non-Christian religion anyway. As far as I'm concerned, their killings can be chalked up to the column that includes atheism. The two categories are not Religion and non-Religion; they are Christian and non-Christian.
The point of my post is that the scientific method is not applicable to whatever happened before the Big Bang. To force science to answer questions about what happened between the "dormant" singularity and the Big Bang is to attribute causality to randomness, which encroaches on philosophical conjecture.
No kidding! This has been a major problem in the scientific community for well over a hundred years. I've traced the trend back to this highly speculative publication. I don't know how the deranged author managed to weasel past the referees and examiners.
RZ: If the Big Bang were indeed where it all began, may I ask what preceded the Big Bang?
Sci: The universe was shrunk down to a singularity.
RZ: But isn't it correct that a singularity as defined by science is a point at which all the laws of physics break down?
Sci: That is correct.
RZ: Then, technically, your starting point is not scientific either.
[silent panic]
RZ: When a mechanistic view of the universe had held sway, didn't thinkers like David Hume chide philosophers for taking the principle of causality and applying it to a philosophical argument for the existence of God? Didn't he warn that causality could not be extrapolated from science to philosophy?
RZ: Now, when a quantum theory holds sway, randomness in the subatomic world is made a basis for randomness in life. Are you not making the very same extrapolation that you warned us against?
[awkward silence, self-deprecating smile]
Sci: We scientists do seem to retain selective sovereignty over what we allow to be transferred to philosophy and what we don't.
Ah, the dark truth is snookered into revealing itself. Science plays the charade of pursuing truth while spurning the open-mindedness that is necessary to find ultimate truth.
Again, in the words of Zacharias, "The person who demands a sign [from God, a miracle] and at the same time has already determined that anything that cannot be explained scientifically [naturalistically] is meaningless is not merely stacking the deck; he is losing at his own game." (words in brackets in this quote added by me)
Is that an absolute Truth?
Saddam Hussein and these war protesters comprise a prime example. The reports of his tyranny and mass murder fall on deaf ears. They don't see the beheadings and bodies ripped apart at the orders of Czar Hussein on TV.
Exposure of evil incites opposition to it, which is what we need. If there is no exposure, the guilty will come to be perceived as innocent, and they will be defended from prosecution rather than pushed into the authorities' hands, as is fortunately the case with the Klan.
Whenever the KKK has a rally, there are mobs of people who physically attack them. That sounds awfully hawkish to me. *cough* That seems like a war-mongering attitude. Why are there no anti-violence PEACE rallies against fighting the Ku Klux Klan? The answer is: it is politically correct for the media to expose the sins of only "right wing" groups like the Klan but not the atrocities of Saddam, Arafat, Castro, and other liberal-media-buddy despots.
HTML is for wusses. I miss the days of Gopher when everything was text files. The web should be nothing but .txt files and GNU binaries. And who needs this new-fangled "Goggle" (or whatever)? Archie and Veronica ought to good enough for anybody. Posted with ssh to port 80.
The lawsuit targets technology, not a specific product. Isn't MSN Explorer just IE + extra fluff? I think MSN Explorer is mainly used for DellNet(tm) and other MS/OEM/ISP tie-ins.
Yes, then they could fake their own photographs and video to "prove" that the Americans had never been there. (How hard could it be to smooth out a footprint on the moon?) Even if astronaut footprints showed up in photos, it's nothing that a minute with the GIMP on Red Flag Linux couldn't fix. :-) In the photos, the Chinese flag would be drooping and still. There would be thousands of stars in the background. The only light source would be the camera flash.
Commies around the world (mostly China and Berkeley): HA HA! Look at high and mighty Uncle Sam! He cheated to win Space Race. Just a paper tiger like we always knew.
If America pulled a hoax, wouldn't China be just as capable? As untrustworthy as some of our leaders have been, I definitely wouldn't be more inclined to put faith in proclamations made by their Marxist government officials.
The link above is for XP only! If you have a non-XP Windows, search for the version of TweakUI for Win9x (v1.33) at C|Net.
You can't be serious. There are more than 3000 churches in my county. I think the religious channels would be the most popular in many parts of the U.S.
There are two files in my D:\mozupd, which are mozupd.bat and mozupd.scr.
Here's the mozupd.bat file (WinZip CLI component required):
And the mozupd.scr file for FTP:
If you see b in a few lines above, that is supposed to be bin as in binary. I don't know why Slashdot is splitting the word. The word wzunzip is split too in the first script.And yeah, the analogy has a big hole. Spain is obviously a real country. Palestine (in modern news media parlance) is more closely comparable with Atlantis: Nobody can agree on where either of them is actually located or if they even exist.
It's a different world over there. The children are terrorists. It's a shame the Israelis didn't finish the job.
Or forcing people out of there own land because of their religion?
Excuse me, what Muslim countries is Israel attacking? Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Yemen, Sudan, Iraq, Iran, Quatar, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Morocco, Chad, Libya, Lebanon, Jordan, Indonesia, the Phillipines? Hmmm, there must be some other factor (Google News: 13 hours ago) that you're missing. Israel's not attacking any Muslim country. Just some Arab-Israeli ("Palestinian") misfits wanting an overthrow of Israel.
In other news, there was another suicide bombing this afternoon on the West Bank in the settlement of Tampa. "When I arrived I saw body parts lying on the road," said a woman who witnessed the blast. "I went into the shop and saw some remains covered in blood and nearby a severed leg which belonged to another body." The street was crowded with schoolchildren and shoppers on their way home from work.
The Spanish Authority has condemned the bombing. The Español Inquisition-Jihad is claiming responsibility for this attack, which is in protest of the illegal American settlements on the occupied territory owned by the Spaniards. Gov. Jeb Bush was unavailable for comment as he was attending a funeral of a victim of last week's suicide bomber.
The main point about Democrats is that they appear to be doing more that encourages terrorism than that which prevents it. They appear to view conservatives as greater enemies than terrorists whose primary goal in life is to destroy us. True, my statement about the solidarity rally with Saddam was a little over the top (I'm glad you laughed), but the effect of what Democrats are doing really does help Saddam's regime at our expense.
For all we know attacking Iraq could be the downfall of the United States.
Restraint is a sign of weakness and is a big, bright GREEN LIGHT for groups waiting to attack. Cowardice to use our own weapons is akin to self-disarmament. It does nothing but embolden our enemies. Based on what we know, a more accurate prediction would be that failing to attack Iraq would lead to the downfall of the United States. "The history, the logic, and the facts lead to one conclusion: Saddam Hussein's regime is a grave and gathering danger. To suggest otherwise is to hope against the evidence."
The preceding quote is from the Bush speech to the U.N. two months ago. Click on the link above, and you can read the transcript, listen to the audio, or watch the video. It was all over the news. This is what I mean by common knowledge. I don't have time to deal with willful ignorance or categorical disbelief of information that you don't want to believe. A Slashdot post is just a Slashdot post. I don't have the time to compose a comprehensive dissertation on National Security & Terrorism complete with footnotes and full bibliography section. When I say things like I did in my previous post, I'm expecting readers to recall information that they should already have stored in their memory. If you don't have that store of knowledge to pull up, then you're not getting (or refusing to receive) all the facts. I didn't state any opinions that aren't in the mainstream, so there was no pressing need to direct you to supporting information.
Look, we are living in historic times. The opening shots of World War III may have already occurred. (It's hard to interpret history when you're in the midst of it.) Conservatives are trying to cajole the nation into doing what must be done for our survival. Liberals are aligning with Stalinist dictators. Democrats are campaigning from Baghdad, apparently holding a solidarity rally with Saddam Hussein, a supporter of al-Qaeda and a bona fide terrorist himself. ..... And you're telling me that whoever supports the Communications Decency Act represents the biggest evil in the world?! This is why I have trouble taking any this DMCA/CDA/COPA/CBDTPA controversy seriously. It's blown up so big that I tend to shrug off the whole thing out of incredulity. Besides, anything that puts liberals in tizzy must be good. :-)
The CDA et al are peanuts compared with the towering issues of our time. National security, economic policy, and social security should be receiving far more of our attention. (I know this is /., but we are talking about real life elections.) The relevance of the first two issues should be obvious, but SS is important too and not just to old people. If current policies remain, income taxes will have to be increased to 50% to keep SS afloat. How's that for being consumer friendly? You'll have nothing to buy anything with after making your necessary expenditures. We'll be facing a colossal economic disaster if SS isn't fixed.
If the topic of this story is a major political concern to you, ask yourself whether it's in your best interest to be a single-issue voter based on this. Don't get tunnel vision. There are many important issues out there.