Opening your talk by touting your own credentials and begging the question ("X% of people believe in angels, and any smart person knows that there are no angels [because religion is wrong]") isnt really a win for science. Its what we call a massive ego, and logical fallacy.
You might want to listen to the talk before crowing "victory", it doesnt exactly make Coyne look good (in fact, neither does the exchange between Coyne and Haught on his blog). His talk is summed up as "talking about how all smart people today are agnostic" and "why youre stupid if you believe in religion". Im only about 5 minutes in, of course, so its possible he completely reverses direction.
I would also note that his claim that "you get nowhere [in knowledge] by a belief in god" completely ignores that the foundations for modern science came out of religious institutions and from a large number of religious people.
I thought I was going to get a Creationist being roasted but instead got a reasonable sounding theologian being attacked somewhat irrationally by Coyne.
If you read the exchange between Coyne on his blog and Haught in the comments (comment 122 i think), you get the same impression. Haught says that the attacks and irrationality are why he did not want to release the video.
But Slashdot scores a win here, as it can drop the word "censorship" and "religion" and out come all the militant athiests to ridicule the idiot theologians. Its a win for them, because they KNOW people cant help starting a flamewar when theres an opportunity to attack religion. I mean, how many people in this very discussion actually READ Coyne's post, and Haught's response? Or watched the video? Or even asked themselves if there was any side of the story other than Coynes? No, 80% of the posters here have an axe to grind, rationality be damned.
Anyone who doubts this, would be well served to read Coynes initial post, and Haughts response. Coyne has been going off about "censorship" (and shame on you slashdot for reiterating it), despite admitting that there was never an agreement to post the video. His entire beef, the reason he stirred up his fanbase to attack Haught and other UofK professors with hatemail, was that he ASSUMED it would be released and was disappointed when Haught decided that the video was too obnoxious (adhominems, etc) and unprofessional to release.
Not correct. I believe out of the box the "administrator" account is disabled on Vista and 7. They forced people to do non-admin, which was what the entire UAC debacle in vista was about.
The reason isn't necessarily that they Christian side is right, but that the Christian side generally has the better public debating skills: they dominate and frame the questions.
That may also have something to do with the incredibly long history of philosophical and rational thought coming from theologians over the years: Kant, Pascal, Descartes, Augustine, Lewis, Kierkegaard, and many more.
Surprise, christians have long been interested in rational argument, going all the way back to Paul on Mars Hill.
Each time I see one of these debates he seems to have extraordinary amounts of patience with his opponents. What are you referring to, really?
How about opening the book "The God Delusion" by launching into a tirade about how religion was the cause of all the world's evils (guess the 20th century didnt get THAT memo)? Or how he lambasts christians for being too small minded about the grandeur of the universe, on page 2 (despite many psalms--essentially poetry-- in the bible speaking to the wonder and size of the universe: "what is man that you should be mindful of him")?
Yea, thats really a patient, even mannered man. The guy is a militant athiest, and what you take to be patience is phenomenal arrogance and condescension.
blatant ad hominem attacks that would get the guy in trouble with friends / family / job being the first that comes to my mind. (And no, you don't have to be 'guilty' for such attacks to work)
According to HAUGHT (that is, the theologian), Coyne himself resorted to ad hominems, and Haught did not feel the video to be worth releasing. You should really read both Coyne's post, and Haught's response.
When you say "censorship", are you implying that they had agreed or were obligated to release the video?
Because both Coyne and Haught say thats not the case. Coyne's complaint is that he assumed there was such an agreement-- but you know what they say about assumptions.
If they can discard parts as allegory, but others as truth, then how do they decide?
I see this complaint so much, and each time it half makes me chuckle, and half makes me worry the state of education these days. How did you get through 8th grade english if you were unable to tell what was allegory, and what is narrative? I mean, theyre indistinguishable, right?
And we dont "discard parts as allegory"; as with the parables which were CLEARLY not about literal seeds, or vines, or tenants, or debtors, we take from them the lesson that they were meant to convey-- again, using those valuable 8th grade reading skills.
That people need to create new explanations for why the Bible says something that they decided it doesn't mean to say anymore makes me think that the book wasn't right in the first place and people are desperate to keep it relevant.
Those are what we either call "catholics" (what with their "Scripture + Tradition"), or "Liberal Theologians"-- those fine folk who will deny that ANY of the bible (the basis of christianity) is either true or meant to be taken literally (because a good deal of it is). Theyre not what you would call the leaders of the evangelical world, honestly.
If 'god' didn't want people to think the world was 6,000 years old, why say it was in the book?
It didnt, and so I think thats a good place to end my remarks. If you cant be bothered to even see if your accusations are grounded in reality, theres not much point arguing with you about whose philosophy is truer-- you dont seem to care what is true in the first place.
Im a christian, but protestant, and though I am a firm believer in science, I get wary when I hear a catholic theologian from Georgetown talk about reconciling the two-- I dont have a disagreement with the idea, but it often seems to be code for "we're going to deny 90% of our faith so that we can avoid any serious confrontation". For instance, I would be curious if he would affirm biblical inerrancy; if not, one might wonder what his faith was IN.
All that aside, him being catholic and myself being protestant accounts for most of the difference.
Incidentally, I love how "fundamentalist" (which essentially means "we're not going to stray from what we have affirmed to be absolute truths") has become a derogatory term these days. If we were willing and able to just change our faith every 50 years to meet the latest fashionable trends in academia, what on earth would that say about our claims to truth?
Slashdot never disappoints: Apparently noone here has, nor intends to read the article.
If you did, you would see that (as one might have expected) there was more to the story than Coyne gave. You can read Haught's response here. Additionally, he has posted the video, after recieving some apparently quite nasty emails (way to show them how reasonable athiesm is, by personally attacking people with hatemail!)
The issues seemed to be as follows:
1) There was never an agreement to post the video, and Coyne does not argue this. Courts of law often are recorded too, but that does not mean the videos will see the light of day. Coyne, however, went on to state that there was an implied agreement to release the video. Thats his complaint-- that he assumed the video would be released. Guess he was wrong.
2) Haught indicates that the format was supposed to be two sides presenting their cases. Coyne decided to start attacking Haught's views (which was not part of the plan, says Haught), quoting from his books, and according to Haught resorting to ad hominems-- none of which, aside from potential logical problems, were part of the agreed upon format. Hence why Coyne remarks that
Haught didn’t seem to have prepared for the debate, merely rolling out his tired old trope.... I prepared pretty thoroughly, reading half a dozen of Haught’s books
-- It was because (if Haught is correct) that the format WAS to present what your views were.
3) Haught also claims that the conclusion to Coyne's talk, rather than being a summary of what he had said, was a tirade about how Catholicism is the cause of all evil in the world. Myself, I dont find that to really be "debate material"; you can get into an endless debate about which religion or ideology causes the worst evil, but its not really germane in the setting they were in.
Personally, having read Coyne's initial post, he comes off as rather unpleasant-- despite no agreement in place, and no reasonable cause to think the video would be posted or recorded for anything other than archival purposes, he refuses to take no for an answer and stirs up his readers to send hatemail to two professors at a university. He continues to pester them for quite some time, and doesnt even mention on the initial post that the video is being released-- its a separate blog entry, but is easily missed if you arent browsing his entries, and means that people will likely continue attacking Haught because they do not realize that the "issue" is over. He also comes off as quite "humble", declaring himself the victor, and saying "if I were in his situation, _I_ wouldnt have acted badly".
And then what is slashdot's response? To take Coyne at his word and declare him the victor-- despite noone having seen the video. Claiming that censorship is being attempted-- despite no agreement to post the video. Claiming the video isnt being released-- even though it has since been OK'd. Its almost like the editors WANT to stir up a flamewar for no reason.
Well, at least I know that Slashdot will stay classy, read the articles, and make relevant comments, rather than mindlessly bashing how stupid and ignorant Haught must be. Way to keep that standard high.
Disclaimer-- I probably disagree with about 80% of what Haught believes.
It doesnt help when you try to resist extradition on really flaky grounds (as if it would be easier to bring him from Sweden to the US than from the UK, if that were the goal). Hes really making all of this a zillion times bigger than it needed to be by trying to make a tragic hero out of himself. We all knew he would end up in court over the rape allegations eventually.
It seems like there are a lot of people who would continue to deny any possibility that Assange has personal failings no matter what the courts find, or what the evidence is, or anything else, and I guess naievity is a personal choice. Myself, I can believe that Assange would get himself into this situation without needing the help of shady CIA operatives (or whoever your shadow organization of choice is).
RIM is dying of the disease of trying to be too many things to too many people. They are trying to focus on content consumption now, and touch screens, to the detriment of a really rock solid OS with rock solid hardware.
I just upgraded to BBOS 6, and it looks optimized for a zillion things, except for stability and really good messaging. Guess what the only reason I chose a Blackberry over an Android was? Hint, it wasnt to watch youtube.
Maybe im the minority here, but I feel like RIM needs to make sure their phones remain the absolute best in messaging and calling, and worry about the other stuff on the side; as it is, theyre becoming more mediocre in every category.
Well, its a good thing the network protocol sanitizes the files you share with it. Its very reassuring that the virus cant simply place that infected document onto NFS and spread that way.
Seriously, do you really think that has any relevance to the issue?
So those WinNuke etc network-based attacks are known as "privilege escalation"? In school we were taught that those were categorized as DoS, not escalation.
Wait, what does the OS have to do with the mail client, or with what you can embed into what documents? I mean, if you want to discuss awful clients, we could talk about Mac Mail, or I could simply remind you that Outlook and Word are both available for OSX too and hardly count as MS OS features.
As for "random native code on the internet", Im pretty sure Safari et al support NPAPI plugins, which are essentially the same thing, and perhaps a little easier to install than an ActiveX program in IE9.
The reason is because of crap that listens to undocumented TCP/IP ports, onto which an single UDP packet can take over and start spewing itself all over the internet.
If you want to deserve an informative mod, you might want to cite a source on that. Pics, or it didnt happen.
Also, if OSX is so much better, how come at Pwn2Own EverySingleYear, OSX / Safarifalls first? (2010 MIGHT have been a tie, or someone else first, but OSX was done on day 1 regardless-- couldnt find the exact order). You will also note that this is DESPITE Apple's attempt to slip in last-minute fixes prior to the contest.
Listen, if you want to rely on your OS to provide "Security" and "Hacker Prevention", go right ahead. The more folks you convince to use your platform, the more quickly the playing field is leveled, and the quicker we see the reality of the situation with regard to OS security. Hope you have your bootkit removal tools ready.
Because it's a kernel vulnerability, it's quite unlikely privilege separation will help you.
Im not seeing why it follows that kernel vulns do not require root to do their worst. The kernel interacts with userland as much as anything else, right?
and it's still not horribly uncommon that users have local Admin rights due to some old junk software they are trying to run that will only run with Admin privileges locally.
Someone wasnt paying attention during the Vista / 7 coverage. Neither one lets you "just have admin" unless you do a ton of tinkering to completely disable UAC, which in my experience (covering a rather large user base over many companies and households) is incredibly niche. Even if you log in as Administrator, you do not have root unless you go through a UAC prompt.
On XP, you are right, but I believe the XP marketshare is getting smaller every day.
If nature wants to wreck your nuclear reactor or hydroelectric dam or coal plant, theres a limit to how much mitigation you can do, I think is the most salient point. Yes, there is more that could have been done, but those conversations tend to spin off into how this must be proof that nuclear is inherently unsafe. Funny that noone ever mentions that about hydro dams, even though FAR FAR more people have died from burst dams in the last ten years than have died to nuclear disasters in the last 50.
To clarify "dem TSA" and "dem DHS"-- I mean DHS and TSA folks who are appointed by a democrat.
You are correct in that the folks who implemented them were appointed under Bush. However, Im still not sure you can clearly say that it was "republicans who did it", since AFAIK Obama would have had the power to prevent their roll-out, as he is the head of the executive, under which both DHS, and by extension the TSA, fall.
Well, waiting until the rights you have left are similar to the rights they have in china before you complain might not be the best strategy.
I am always amused by the sentiment that Americans still live in the land of the free, because the government does not abuse you as badly as they do in china.
Neither of which is what I said. I was attacking GP's insistence that other countries are so much more free than ours, when we live in one of the freest in the world. I fully agree that it is necessary to preserve what we have, but pretending that we dont have any freedoms takes the discussion down a ridiculous path.
In order to have any kind of productive discussion, people need to be grounded in reality, which is that we have a number of problems in this country, not least of which is that the government (as always) has a tendency to buck against the restraints placed upon them; but nevertheless we still enjoy a huge number of freedoms. What other country in the world has a provision allowing citizens to keep weapons for the express purpose of non-governmental military use?
Again, I recognize issues with our process, and our government. I enjoy seeing discussion on how to fix it. And I sincerely hope people will pay attention during the upcoming election, and remember how significant their vote is-- that voting isnt about "who gives me the most stuff" but "who will best lead and defend our country, and preserve the freedoms we have worked for for so long". I just want the discussion to be realistic, and not an unproductive railing about how awful we have it in the US.
Slashdot Mirror
Opening your talk by touting your own credentials and begging the question ("X% of people believe in angels, and any smart person knows that there are no angels [because religion is wrong]") isnt really a win for science. Its what we call a massive ego, and logical fallacy.
You might want to listen to the talk before crowing "victory", it doesnt exactly make Coyne look good (in fact, neither does the exchange between Coyne and Haught on his blog). His talk is summed up as "talking about how all smart people today are agnostic" and "why youre stupid if you believe in religion". Im only about 5 minutes in, of course, so its possible he completely reverses direction.
I would also note that his claim that "you get nowhere [in knowledge] by a belief in god" completely ignores that the foundations for modern science came out of religious institutions and from a large number of religious people.
I thought I was going to get a Creationist being roasted but instead got a reasonable sounding theologian being attacked somewhat irrationally by Coyne.
If you read the exchange between Coyne on his blog and Haught in the comments (comment 122 i think), you get the same impression. Haught says that the attacks and irrationality are why he did not want to release the video.
But Slashdot scores a win here, as it can drop the word "censorship" and "religion" and out come all the militant athiests to ridicule the idiot theologians. Its a win for them, because they KNOW people cant help starting a flamewar when theres an opportunity to attack religion. I mean, how many people in this very discussion actually READ Coyne's post, and Haught's response? Or watched the video? Or even asked themselves if there was any side of the story other than Coynes? No, 80% of the posters here have an axe to grind, rationality be damned.
Anyone who doubts this, would be well served to read Coynes initial post, and Haughts response. Coyne has been going off about "censorship" (and shame on you slashdot for reiterating it), despite admitting that there was never an agreement to post the video. His entire beef, the reason he stirred up his fanbase to attack Haught and other UofK professors with hatemail, was that he ASSUMED it would be released and was disappointed when Haught decided that the video was too obnoxious (adhominems, etc) and unprofessional to release.
My understanding was that the entire point was to bring him to trial, based on the accusations leveled at him.
Not correct. I believe out of the box the "administrator" account is disabled on Vista and 7. They forced people to do non-admin, which was what the entire UAC debacle in vista was about.
The reason isn't necessarily that they Christian side is right, but that the Christian side generally has the better public debating skills: they dominate and frame the questions.
That may also have something to do with the incredibly long history of philosophical and rational thought coming from theologians over the years: Kant, Pascal, Descartes, Augustine, Lewis, Kierkegaard, and many more.
Surprise, christians have long been interested in rational argument, going all the way back to Paul on Mars Hill.
Each time I see one of these debates he seems to have extraordinary amounts of patience with his opponents. What are you referring to, really?
How about opening the book "The God Delusion" by launching into a tirade about how religion was the cause of all the world's evils (guess the 20th century didnt get THAT memo)? Or how he lambasts christians for being too small minded about the grandeur of the universe, on page 2 (despite many psalms--essentially poetry-- in the bible speaking to the wonder and size of the universe: "what is man that you should be mindful of him")?
Yea, thats really a patient, even mannered man. The guy is a militant athiest, and what you take to be patience is phenomenal arrogance and condescension.
If the opponent is basing their argument on their own self, like saying "god spoke to me" or "I know this is true" (ie trust me)
I would be very surprised if you could find someone stating that as their argument in a debate. I would be astonished if you could find more than one.
Count on the slashdot mods to mod a rather vulgar ad hominem "+5 interesting".
Wasnt the plan to show how illogical the theologian was, not make logical fallacies yourself?
blatant ad hominem attacks that would get the guy in trouble with friends / family / job being the first that comes to my mind. (And no, you don't have to be 'guilty' for such attacks to work)
According to HAUGHT (that is, the theologian), Coyne himself resorted to ad hominems, and Haught did not feel the video to be worth releasing. You should really read both Coyne's post, and Haught's response.
When you say "censorship", are you implying that they had agreed or were obligated to release the video?
Because both Coyne and Haught say thats not the case. Coyne's complaint is that he assumed there was such an agreement-- but you know what they say about assumptions.
If they can discard parts as allegory, but others as truth, then how do they decide?
I see this complaint so much, and each time it half makes me chuckle, and half makes me worry the state of education these days. How did you get through 8th grade english if you were unable to tell what was allegory, and what is narrative? I mean, theyre indistinguishable, right?
And we dont "discard parts as allegory"; as with the parables which were CLEARLY not about literal seeds, or vines, or tenants, or debtors, we take from them the lesson that they were meant to convey-- again, using those valuable 8th grade reading skills.
That people need to create new explanations for why the Bible says something that they decided it doesn't mean to say anymore makes me think that the book wasn't right in the first place and people are desperate to keep it relevant.
Those are what we either call "catholics" (what with their "Scripture + Tradition"), or "Liberal Theologians"-- those fine folk who will deny that ANY of the bible (the basis of christianity) is either true or meant to be taken literally (because a good deal of it is). Theyre not what you would call the leaders of the evangelical world, honestly.
If 'god' didn't want people to think the world was 6,000 years old, why say it was in the book?
It didnt, and so I think thats a good place to end my remarks. If you cant be bothered to even see if your accusations are grounded in reality, theres not much point arguing with you about whose philosophy is truer-- you dont seem to care what is true in the first place.
Im a christian, but protestant, and though I am a firm believer in science, I get wary when I hear a catholic theologian from Georgetown talk about reconciling the two-- I dont have a disagreement with the idea, but it often seems to be code for "we're going to deny 90% of our faith so that we can avoid any serious confrontation". For instance, I would be curious if he would affirm biblical inerrancy; if not, one might wonder what his faith was IN.
All that aside, him being catholic and myself being protestant accounts for most of the difference.
Incidentally, I love how "fundamentalist" (which essentially means "we're not going to stray from what we have affirmed to be absolute truths") has become a derogatory term these days. If we were willing and able to just change our faith every 50 years to meet the latest fashionable trends in academia, what on earth would that say about our claims to truth?
Slashdot never disappoints: Apparently noone here has, nor intends to read the article.
If you did, you would see that (as one might have expected) there was more to the story than Coyne gave. You can read Haught's response here. Additionally, he has posted the video, after recieving some apparently quite nasty emails (way to show them how reasonable athiesm is, by personally attacking people with hatemail!)
The issues seemed to be as follows:
Haught didn’t seem to have prepared for the debate, merely rolling out his tired old trope .... I prepared pretty thoroughly, reading half a dozen of Haught’s books
-- It was because (if Haught is correct) that the format WAS to present what your views were.
Personally, having read Coyne's initial post, he comes off as rather unpleasant-- despite no agreement in place, and no reasonable cause to think the video would be posted or recorded for anything other than archival purposes, he refuses to take no for an answer and stirs up his readers to send hatemail to two professors at a university. He continues to pester them for quite some time, and doesnt even mention on the initial post that the video is being released-- its a separate blog entry, but is easily missed if you arent browsing his entries, and means that people will likely continue attacking Haught because they do not realize that the "issue" is over. He also comes off as quite "humble", declaring himself the victor, and saying "if I were in his situation, _I_ wouldnt have acted badly".
And then what is slashdot's response? To take Coyne at his word and declare him the victor-- despite noone having seen the video. Claiming that censorship is being attempted-- despite no agreement to post the video. Claiming the video isnt being released-- even though it has since been OK'd. Its almost like the editors WANT to stir up a flamewar for no reason.
Well, at least I know that Slashdot will stay classy, read the articles, and make relevant comments, rather than mindlessly bashing how stupid and ignorant Haught must be. Way to keep that standard high.
Disclaimer-- I probably disagree with about 80% of what Haught believes.
It doesnt help when you try to resist extradition on really flaky grounds (as if it would be easier to bring him from Sweden to the US than from the UK, if that were the goal). Hes really making all of this a zillion times bigger than it needed to be by trying to make a tragic hero out of himself. We all knew he would end up in court over the rape allegations eventually.
It seems like there are a lot of people who would continue to deny any possibility that Assange has personal failings no matter what the courts find, or what the evidence is, or anything else, and I guess naievity is a personal choice. Myself, I can believe that Assange would get himself into this situation without needing the help of shady CIA operatives (or whoever your shadow organization of choice is).
RIM is dying of the disease of trying to be too many things to too many people. They are trying to focus on content consumption now, and touch screens, to the detriment of a really rock solid OS with rock solid hardware.
I just upgraded to BBOS 6, and it looks optimized for a zillion things, except for stability and really good messaging. Guess what the only reason I chose a Blackberry over an Android was? Hint, it wasnt to watch youtube.
Maybe im the minority here, but I feel like RIM needs to make sure their phones remain the absolute best in messaging and calling, and worry about the other stuff on the side; as it is, theyre becoming more mediocre in every category.
Well, its a good thing the network protocol sanitizes the files you share with it. Its very reassuring that the virus cant simply place that infected document onto NFS and spread that way.
Seriously, do you really think that has any relevance to the issue?
This just in-- OSX and Linux have no kernel bugs.
Except for the ones used to pwn them every year at pwn2own, of course.
So those WinNuke etc network-based attacks are known as "privilege escalation"? In school we were taught that those were categorized as DoS, not escalation.
Wait, what does the OS have to do with the mail client, or with what you can embed into what documents? I mean, if you want to discuss awful clients, we could talk about Mac Mail, or I could simply remind you that Outlook and Word are both available for OSX too and hardly count as MS OS features.
As for "random native code on the internet", Im pretty sure Safari et al support NPAPI plugins, which are essentially the same thing, and perhaps a little easier to install than an ActiveX program in IE9.
The reason is because of crap that listens to undocumented TCP/IP ports, onto which an single UDP packet can take over and start spewing itself all over the internet.
If you want to deserve an informative mod, you might want to cite a source on that. Pics, or it didnt happen.
Also, if OSX is so much better, how come at Pwn2Own Every Single Year, OSX / Safari falls first?
(2010 MIGHT have been a tie, or someone else first, but OSX was done on day 1 regardless-- couldnt find the exact order). You will also note that this is DESPITE Apple's attempt to slip in last-minute fixes prior to the contest.
Listen, if you want to rely on your OS to provide "Security" and "Hacker Prevention", go right ahead. The more folks you convince to use your platform, the more quickly the playing field is leveled, and the quicker we see the reality of the situation with regard to OS security. Hope you have your bootkit removal tools ready.
Because it's a kernel vulnerability, it's quite unlikely privilege separation will help you.
Im not seeing why it follows that kernel vulns do not require root to do their worst. The kernel interacts with userland as much as anything else, right?
and it's still not horribly uncommon that users have local Admin rights due to some old junk software they are trying to run that will only run with Admin privileges locally.
Someone wasnt paying attention during the Vista / 7 coverage. Neither one lets you "just have admin" unless you do a ton of tinkering to completely disable UAC, which in my experience (covering a rather large user base over many companies and households) is incredibly niche. Even if you log in as Administrator, you do not have root unless you go through a UAC prompt.
On XP, you are right, but I believe the XP marketshare is getting smaller every day.
If nature wants to wreck your nuclear reactor or hydroelectric dam or coal plant, theres a limit to how much mitigation you can do, I think is the most salient point. Yes, there is more that could have been done, but those conversations tend to spin off into how this must be proof that nuclear is inherently unsafe. Funny that noone ever mentions that about hydro dams, even though FAR FAR more people have died from burst dams in the last ten years than have died to nuclear disasters in the last 50.
To clarify "dem TSA" and "dem DHS"-- I mean DHS and TSA folks who are appointed by a democrat.
You are correct in that the folks who implemented them were appointed under Bush. However, Im still not sure you can clearly say that it was "republicans who did it", since AFAIK Obama would have had the power to prevent their roll-out, as he is the head of the executive, under which both DHS, and by extension the TSA, fall.
Well, waiting until the rights you have left are similar to the rights they have in china before you complain might not be the best strategy.
I am always amused by the sentiment that Americans still live in the land of the free, because the government does not abuse you as badly as they do in china.
Neither of which is what I said. I was attacking GP's insistence that other countries are so much more free than ours, when we live in one of the freest in the world. I fully agree that it is necessary to preserve what we have, but pretending that we dont have any freedoms takes the discussion down a ridiculous path.
In order to have any kind of productive discussion, people need to be grounded in reality, which is that we have a number of problems in this country, not least of which is that the government (as always) has a tendency to buck against the restraints placed upon them; but nevertheless we still enjoy a huge number of freedoms. What other country in the world has a provision allowing citizens to keep weapons for the express purpose of non-governmental military use?
Again, I recognize issues with our process, and our government. I enjoy seeing discussion on how to fix it. And I sincerely hope people will pay attention during the upcoming election, and remember how significant their vote is-- that voting isnt about "who gives me the most stuff" but "who will best lead and defend our country, and preserve the freedoms we have worked for for so long". I just want the discussion to be realistic, and not an unproductive railing about how awful we have it in the US.