>The US military was never deployed to Nicaragua or El Salvador nor were US special forces in combat in Nicaragua. Did the US fly planes into buildings in Managua? Nope.
So arranging a coup in another country doesn't count as an armed conflict for you because the military wasn't deployed ?
>As for one war, South Africa had troops in Rhodesia, Namibia, Mozambique not to mention the whole killing blacks in the slums things.
The period you stated - Rhodesia became Zimbabwe in 1980, we were only involved for the last year of the independence struggle - on request of the British government. If you don't count El Salvador or Panama, I really won't count Rhodesia. We were never at war with Mozambique - and our troops there were assisting an action by the government of the country at the time (of course, at a later stage the government was much less friendly to us under Machel - but by then - we weren't there anymore).
We never had troops in Namibia. We did have Troops in SWA - but at the time that was our sovereign land under a U.N. resolution. The only actual war we fought was in Angola, and that wasn't even AGAINST Angola but against Cuba - and you guys were right there with us.
As for the "killing blacks in the slums" - yes, there were violent atrocities. No there was NEVER an organised killing attempt or attempt at ethnic cleansing and the military was NEVER involved. It was police abuses - some bad yes, but the worst one was the Bhoipatong masacre where 15 people died. 15 people dying when police shoots a rioters don't count as war - and that makes what those cops did even MORE inexcusable. The issue in the slums was more like Tiananmen Square (on a smaller scale) than a war - though all the more infamous for it. The ANC did plant bombs and frequently targetted civilians but even THEY never actually declared military action - the armed struggle was essentially a contained revolution, that was negotiated into a peaceful settlement. That's why we got 3 Nobel Prizes out of it...
>Once the civil wars were over in Nicaragua and El Salvador they transitioned right into democratic governments, a big part of that was also the Soviet Union failing so the money and weapons for the insurgencies went away.
You are actually attempting to JUSTIFY your involvement there? So these countries elected socialist, maybe even communist leaders. They were ELECTED leaders. Who the hell gave America the right to declare that people in other countries can't choose their own government ? Jefferson would be spinning in his grave. He taught you about "government by consent of the governed" - and you took that away from the citizens of other countries because you didn't agree with the ideology of their chosen leaders. Most of the dictators you've deposed you put in power in the first place. Saddam was just the last in a long chain...
>And you mention Brazil, they've not had a conflict, I think you mean the CIA backed dictatorship of Chile
I hadn't even thought about Chile, but sorry - you're wrong about Brazil. My ex-wife was Brazilian - she LIVED through what the US did there. Make no mistake, the people there KNOW who put Sarney and his military regime in power. And BEFORE Sarney it had been a democratic republic since the late 1800s.
Of course, then things got worse, after Brazil finally got their democracy back in 1985, they had a population of voters with no idea how to vote... and they elected a thief who proceeded to nationalize all savings and pocket it, leading to the (sometimes violent) protests of the early 90's. My ex-wife had participated in those protests. They didn't get a halfway decent president till 5 years later. Interestingly - they chose a liberal socialist AGAIN and reelected him twice. Having been to both your country and Brazil, Brazil is the better country to live in - DESPITE being poorer.
Hypothesis are a dime a dozen, theories are supposed to be hypotheses that have stood the test of time for a while, but the terminology often gets mixed up to the detriment of science (even by scientists).
That said, in this case - the people who made these hypothesis are highly respected phycisists who had genuine puzzles they were attempting to explain. In most cases so far - there ended up being other more plausible explanations, but I just don't imagine serious physicists proposing an alteration to a fundamental constant lightly.
Right now there is some puzzles in cosmology that suggest that the fine structure constant may have been slightly lower in the past, there is further very strong evidence that supports the possibility (notably - the energy of the background cosmic radiation is slightly lower, by almost exactly the amount it would be if this was true). BUT - and this is a big but, in the meantime, two other explanations for the cosmic radiation difference have been proposed. In both cases they don't rely on a different fine structure constant shortly after the big bang. But their supporting evidence is still being tested. In the meantime - neither explains the puzzles that led to the proposal in the first place, so if either is shown to be accurate - cosmology still can't answer those. That puts the weight of evidence currently on the side of a change over time in the FSC, if only because it explains more observations than any other available hypotheses. Downside - if the FSC was different, that means a LOT of other differences, because the FSC is an amalgamation of several other fundamental constants including Planck's. Change that in the past, and it means the physics of the early universe was slightly different to ours, and such a difference is a mathematical singularity, it's impossible from our side of it, to predict what was on the other side.
You know what's sad... I actually agree with your conclusion but your entire argument consists of a call-to-authority. A fallacy.
Don't you think it's a bit of an insult to the discipline that your best defense for it is a false argument ?
Especially since history (even RECENT history) is filled with examples of untrained outsiders spotting a fatal flaw in the work of a discipline, which then needs to be corrected leading to a paradigm shift. Scientists consider the call-to-authority one of the worst fallacies of all, and a hell of a lot of the scientific method is specifically designed to root it out.
Your actual points about how proofs work are informative and accurate. Prepending them with a declaration about how one shouldn't question the authority of the scientists weakens that argument, and if those scientists are any good - they would consider it an insult to be cited as authorities, science by it's very nature despises authority.
That would not be a "discovery" but a confirmation. Many physicists have suggested such hypothesis in the past. Even more have suggested asymetry in time -t that at various ages of the universe the fundamental constants may have been different to what they are now.
There are a few pieces of evidence suggesting this (the rate of decay of Oklo's uranium COULD be explained that way - though a natural fission reactor is a more plausible one), and several physicists have conjectured that the fine-structure-constant may have changed over time, and that would be an explanation for the wrong speed of galaxies that wouldn't require cold-dark-matter.
Our estimates on the age of the universe have changed 4 times in the past 2 decades - generally, it got younger with the current consensus at about 13-Billion years. Of course if any of the fundamental constants had changed over time or in different regions of space - in the end, it's simply a matter of how you travel through space-time, then that means all bets are off. The fundamental constants determine the laws of physics. Thus far, outside of singularities like the big bang or black holes (and Stephen Hawking thinks we don't even need THOSE to be singularities) there is no really strong evidence for it. It's possible, but unlikely - and if true, means it's mathematically impossible for us to understand the universe.
>Oh, well, since the UN requested they be there, it was okay?
I didn't say that. I said that since you had international support to intervene, and had no intention of taking any resources or power over the country, of in fact staying one day after the job was done - it doesn't count as an invasion. Was it a JUST intervention - I think it could be called one. Was it a terrible thing that it needed to happen in the first place ? Undoubtedly - but I don't blame the U.S. for responding to a suffering people's cry for help against an aggressor, quite the contrary I blame them for the times they ignored it - like Rwanda just a short while earlier.
>And this is different from the Pope requesting England intervene in the atrocities taking place in the Levant, how?
The pope != international community. Besides which - I said nothing about whether the politics were justifiable, I consistently said that Christians today believe their own involvement to have been unjust. I doubt that most of them ever cared (or in fact, knew) about the Levant. The crusaders were about retaking Jerusalem from the turks. About the Holy Land being in the hands of Heathens. It was a war of invasion and conquest that repeatedly failed. As a goal - for the Christian church to want to claim pieces of land as holy and then attempt to take that land by force - violates it's own rules. Hence it was an unjust war.
>After you account for differences in time and place, the two are very close parallels.
Allow me to respectfully but UTTERLY disagree. Those "differences in time and place" are 500 years of civilization and learning. It's the difference between a Europe of absolute monarchies and one of mostly constitutional democratic monarchies. It's the difference between the Europe BEFORE world war 2, and the one of today. To be frank, Europe of the middle ages was intensely tribal, and the crusades were an act that screams barbarian. Neither of those counts as civilized behavior and it would be quite some time yet before Europe began to civilize. I'm using these terms in their sociological meanings, not in their offensive folk-meanings. Quite frankly, there were hardly any wars that were ever just anywhere in the world prior to the end of the Victorian age. Remember- pacifist.
>>Seems that in most of the rest of the world, that's been at least the protestant consensus for a long time now.
>Yeah, since the 1960s the consensus has changed on the crusades, though the facts have not. Before, it was considered appropriate to invade to protect a minority population from >being slaughtered, now it is considered inappropriate.
So why was the consensus that way according to the records of my church at it's founding in 1894 ? Again - Americans may have had political reasons to tell a different story, but the protestants elsewhere had changed their minds much earlier. By all accounts, this consensus was *already* the norm when my distant ancestors suffered under the Spanish inquisition in the Netherlands 400 years ago. Again of course, the story depends on the teller. The protestants I descend from saw the Catholics as aggressors, who tortured their FELLOW CHRISTIANS over fairly minor disagreements of interpretation. So it was quite easy for them to form the opinion that the Catholics were also the aggressors in the crusades - the moreso because a fundamental part of those disagreements was the suggestion of a single human church leader. The Crusades would have been a wonderful example of how such a person leads Christianity inevitably to sinful excess through abuse of power. There is even mention to that effect in the writings of Calvin in Vienna so it goes back right to the START of the inquisition. I guess outside the U.S. the protestants never had a reason to believe that Christian-conquest has to be justified, and thus no reason to change their view of that particular example. Outside the U.S. - most protestants still remember too vividly what conversion-by-the-sword MEANT as they descend
Cultural values are regional. Marital Age is a cultural value. The exact quote in Shakespeare reads: "Younger than her are happy mother's made". In South-Africa between 1652 and 1800 few people married older than 17, that was the boys - for girls 16 was about the latest.
And I checked your link... where do you find the idea that Juliette was Dutch then ? Nor was she "Western European". Also it's not England. It's set in Verona (that's in Italy) some two centuries earlier.
My point was about the fact that Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliette, under it's OWN included text, would be illegal under this law. Whether Shakespeare was right about how often women married at age 12 is completely irrelevant to the discussion too - HE wrote about a 12-year old girl getting married and having sex, and described it as typical. The law in Canada bans the greatest love story ever written - you've done nothing to discredit my claims in the least, though you were an interesting distraction for the 5 minutes it took to follow up on your claims.
>In the late 70s and 80s South Africa was involved in more wars than the US. That would be ONE war over a 20 year period... you had Vietnam, at the start of it, and two others before it was over. Then there is the fact that the one war we were in, you were in as well (though of course, you didn't tell anybody that - mind you - neither did we, we were fighting it for over a decade while STILL denying even being at war locally).
You left out: Nicaragua, Brazil and all the others that didn't suit your chosen result. Of course, many of these wars were unofficial - that doesn't change much in my book. A war is defined by what you DO - not by what you call it. Nevermind that you left both countries in the hands of despotic dictators and it took them DECADES to restore their freedom.
Mind you... what you did in Nicaragua (and a few other cases) meets your own DOJ's definition of "terrorist activity" better than anything Bin Laden ever pulled off. But I guess it's only terrorism if it's done to you right, when you do it somebody else, that's big brother loving them.
>Really the only major religion that allows it explicitly is Islam Did I say "major" - just the various religions in Africa is enough to win on number of religions, I explicitely did NOT consider "number of followers". Also keep in mind that Judaism and Christianity were BOTH polygamous in the past - and if they could change once, they can change again.
>US Federal and State laws don't allow one religion to be put above any others and religious practices have to adhere to US laws and societal norms. The Mormons had to "ban" polygamy in order to get statehood and while there are still polygamist Mormons, things that go on may violate the law, like welfare fraud.
A sensible law - but that's just MORE reason why the state should have NO influence on mariage. If you want state involvement, make ALL marriages civil unions in front of the law, regardless number and sex of those entering into the union. Let the religions sort out the religious bit. Now THAT is how you separate church and state.
What can I say - you Americans used to have a saying "immigration is the greatest form of flattery". Well I've been there, the only place in the entire country where I felt REMOTELY like I could EVER fit in was San Francisco and even THERE the complete obsession with consumption was too much... I could NEVER live in the USA. If I ever decide to Emigrate, rest assured, I won't even consider your country. In fact the only two countries I WOULD consider are the Netherlands (I like their sociopolitical system, and I happen to speak a near derivative of the language, close enough to learn it in a few weeks) or Canada.
Somehow... any country where they declare war on a victimless crime has something so seriously wrong with it that I don't want to go anywhere near it, and the sheer amount of religious right there, the power of the moral majority... no way. I am a moral person - but it's MY morals, and when they don't agree with yours, I don't want you to be able to lobby to make mine illegal.
Ultimately... the whole point of why conservatism is a bad idea is right there in the name. It's even spelt out explicitely on the conservapedia website: "the most important values of conservatism is tradition..." The others aren't even important after that. The call to tradition is a falacy. You can never be progressive if you think tradition is a VALUE by itself. "We do it this way because we've always done it this way" is a false argument. Sometimes the way it's always been done may be right, but if you don't question it critically, and seriously consider alternatives you are precluding yourself from critical thought, rational planning and progress. Isn't it ironic - the republicans ended Slavery - but the descendants of those free slaves (coincidentally one of the poorest subsets of the US population) overwhelmingly vote democrats. Because while the republicans have been clinging to tradition - the democrats actually progressed.
In the end they are BOTH pretty stagnant though. You may be among the most warmongering nations on the planet today - the only ones that come even close are truly barbaric societies in my book (like Afghanistan under the Thaliban) in the past 50 years you've been involved in more armed conflicts than any other developed nation - you have never gone more than 5 years without being in a war somewhere and in the overwhelming majority of those wars you deposed a democratically elected leader to replace him with a sockpuppet dictator. Usually because said democratically elected leader DARED to think that his policies should favor his citizens rather than US corporations, though on a few rare occasions you did it to try and change the politics of a region - like when you put Saddam in power mind you...
I guess Bush's war makes SENSE if you look at it that way "We put this maniac in charge of a country, we owe it to the people to get rid of him again." now if that was ALL he did, I may even have supported it, as much as I despise war (did I mention I'm a pacifist ?) - b
>>I don't believe there can EVER be a case where the INVADERS get to claim 'just war'
>Were you for or against our involvement in the Balkans during the Clinton administration? That's >the closest modern day analogy. Since the US was there on REQUEST of the U.N. and had no desire to take over anything or stay behind- merely to end an atrocity and restore peace to the region, I wouldn't call that an invasion at all. It was an involvement in a civil war - on REQUEST of the international community. But I didn't have any say in the matter, I'm not an American.
>And... trick question: Were the Muslims the invaders or the defenders of the Levant? I'd say in the vast majority of the crusades, they were the defenders.
>>In what whacked out place did you go to school that taught any different ?
>Oddly enough, I tend to read lots of primary and secondary sources and determine for myself if what the history being taught in school is accurate or not.
Well, I can't speak for the history books in your country but my country had just about as fundamentalist a government as you can GET when I went to school. Hell ALL school children were legally required to wear uniforms, private schools and homeschooling were banned -just to make sure nobody could skip the indoctrination. We had military training as part of the curiculim to prepare us to be good little soldiers... and WE were taught the crusades was a mistake by misguided leaders of the Christian faith. So were my parents, and THEIR parents. Seems that in most of the rest of the world, that's been at least the protestant consensus for a long time now.
>Believe it or not: America didn't win WWII all by itself, that Christopher Columbus really was a dick, and that the Communist Part of USA back in the McCarthy days really was an appendage of the Soviet Union.
Like I said, I'm not American - but I actually agree with a lot of what you said there. On the other hand, the witchhunt that McCarthy instituted against communism was still very wrong in my book. Sorry, communism is an opinion which your constitution is supposed to protect your right to hold - even if you don't like it.
And the majority of religions are polygamous. It just happens that the majority religion in America is monogamous and straight only.
How does NOT recognize polygamy not count as intrusion on the freedom of religion of members of Islam ? It is.
Like I said, the state should stay out of marriage. A civil union form should be ALL there is, and it should make NO prescriptions about who may enter, or how many - that is an individual decision (I've been in poly relationships too btw.) Leave the morality with the people - let the law take care of their rights, that's my point of view. I actually highly agree with the republican IDEAL of small government, but I also think the government has certain duties - and needs to fullfill those. Firstly to ensure the equality of all before the law, secondly to prevent the exploitation of the weak by the strong - that's why I favor a (highly) regulated market. History has proven that there is no excess corporations won't go to if it makes money. The very first one had a private army and ruled half the world, with no sense of democracy - that's what happens WITHOUT regulation. I don't favor stiffling competition, I favor protection of workers rights (universally) and rules to ensure that corporations cannot abuse their power. And I utterly refuse to accept that corporations should have human rights. Nothing in the bill of rights need to apply to them. They need the right to sign a binding contract, that's it. Take away their free speech (the people INSIDE in their personal capacity keeps it, but not the corporate entity) then you CAN stop them from buying laws, you can demand that they aren't ALLOWED to use advertising that isn't utterly based on verifiable scientific fact (to the extent that such a thing exists). So you can stop homeopathic bullshit from being advertised with false claims.
In my dream ideal state... there IS no government. There is a constitution established with one single law in it: "if it doesn't harm anybody, it's allowed". Then you don't even need to restrict corporations from having that. If you can effectively stop anything they do that causes harm - you've done all you need. Everything EVERYTHING else is common law. Decided by judges - their decision becomes law, and they are ONLY allowed to decided based on that constitution. Every case becomes "is anybody harmed ? If so - ban the activity, if not- allow it." Obviously harm would need to be properly defined to prevent abuse, but that's a matter of detail. You are not harming somebody if you shout an insult at him. You ARE causing harm if you shout fire in a crowded theater... see ? easy.
I believe it has a certain elegance in it's simplicity... and it would be the greatest state in the world to live in... just as long as it's somewhere out of the way enough because if it ever becomes successful, it's less polite neighbors will probably invade. The lack of any military is a bit of a problem there.
>What the hell does "sane" mean in this? No Republican at the national level calls for elimination of >the welfare state, well except Ron Paul and I'm not a Paulite
Sane things like - a Single mother should not need to hold down TWO minimum wage jobs just to qualify for foodstamps (common in Michigan and other wellfare-to-work states). She ought to be able to at least see her child a few hours a day.
>That reply makes no sense. Yes, Republicans want human to have no social interaction. No it makes perfect sense if you don't use reduction to absurdity. Humans are social creatures for a REASON. We survive better if we form communities that care for one another. Socialism is an attempt at building an economy around this principle. So opposing that implies opposing the very REASON we live as groups in the first place.
>Some are, many aren't, as I'm a Neocon, that group is generally OK with birth control. From my >experience with Republicans, the vast majority are pro-birth control, maybe two out of thirty I've >known closely were abstinence only.
So how did the most recent republican president manage to push an abstinence-only sex-ed program then ? That's not the sort of thing a politician does unless he can be sure of significant popular support. Just a thought...
>Oh, sorry, can't have a belief about something based on personal experience without it violating >liberal representative democracy?
Of course you can have the belief - what you CAN'T do is demand it be legislated without violating hte idea of a liberal representative democracy - because that must ALSO represent the people who disagree with you. Best choice here IS for the judicial branch to decide it, they can change their minds much more easily and respond to knew knowledge / social norms better. That's why in my country the judicial branch officially has MORE power than the government and can ORDER them to change laws - all you have to do is win a case in the constitutional court. It gives the man in the street a viable defense against government excess. I'm against abortion myself - but I will NOT make that decision for everybody. Since the nature of this particular issue involves many people, and many issues, the only logical ANSWER is to leave it up to judges.
>Bush was in favor of them, many Republicans are too. With the exact same legal rights as marriage- done like that it's a good option. Hell it's what MY country did after the constitutional court forced the government to give a legal option for gay marriage. If it's any different legally speaking, it's a sham meant to disguise discrimination.
>Yep, let the States legalize if they want, but the Federal Government shouldn't get involved in >that. The States-Rights Republicans are in favor of that. If Oregon wants to have a vote on it, >like they did in 2004, then they may have a vote on it and pass or reject it.
I disagree. The state has an obligation to treat all citizens equally and not discriminate in any way, shape or form. That means - if a particular church doesn't want to do gay marriage, they don't have to. But the legal part of it. The contract recognized by the government, and which the government gives privileges to - that part MUST be equal for all citizens, everywhere. Some things must NOT be democratically decided because that leads to minorities having no rights, being discriminated against - a dictatorship-by-numbers. Some things must simply be fact - like "all people are equal before the law" - no room for exceptions. And yes, I'm also in favor of state recognition of polygamous marriages, hell the president of my country has 5 wives. BUT - I am opposed to how it works HERE. Here it's only allowed in certain cultures, and even for those cultures only the MEN can have multiple wives. That's discrimination on all fronts. If you actually legalize and enforce, at federal level, a civil union that can have any number of (willing) parties to it - and let INDIVIDUALS decide, rather than states or anything else, THEN you are being fair and liberal and democratic. Till then I will fight you every step of the way. I'm not gay, but I AM a minority in my country, one that is much discriminated against at times. I know how it feels.
So according to you his attempt to introduce the 14th amendment did NOT erode the principle of equality before the law then ?
Now I'm done with this - it has no bearing on my actual post. So compared to Stalin Bush would be a lesser evil ? Big whoop... that's not exactly a high bar.
Now either respond to the rest of my comment, of I'll just ignore this thread. I have better things to do with my time than listen to somebody appologize for Bush. At least Obama still has the OPTION to end up more bad than good.
And remember that I look at Bush as a citizen of another country. A poor third world country. Basically - your presidents hold enormous power over my life, which is quite unfair as I don't get to vote in your elections - but nobody ever said life is fair. But that DOES mean that what Bush did for human rights in his FOREIGN policy is FAR more important to me than domestic. And there his record really sucked. Every time he opened his MOUTH my quality of life went down.
>The Civil Rights >First Amendment - Establishment Clause, Free Exercise Clause; freedom of speech, of the press, Freedom of Religion, and of assembly; right to petition - there were some >restrictions, but there have been at other times of war too, Civil War, World War One, World War Two - what happened in the First World War was far more restrictive than what's >happened since 2001 Yes "the atrocities of the past excuse the atrocities of today" almost as good an argument as "the atrocities aren't as bad as we've done in the past" so it's okay. Now lets see... Freedom of Religion: Bush was outspokenly anti-Islam except when he HAD to tone it down. He described the Iraq was as a "crusade"... oh but right, American's don't think that it's wrong for the government to intrude on the civil liberties of people in OTHER countries. As far as I'm concerned, the constraints on the US government should be MY rights as much as yours. If Obama can't censor you - why the hell should he have the right to censor me ? I don't even GET to vote for or against him ! Freedom of Speech and Assembly, right to petition: Free-speech-zones "you critisize if you want, just so long as you say it far away where nobody can hear you.
That's a MAJOR restriction - hell during Vietnam people could protest where the presidents could SEE them !
>Second Amendment - Militia (United States), Sovereign state, Right to keep and bear arms. - This was made less restrictive And more stupid. I'm in favor of the idea, I'm just as in favor of requiring a testing and licensing scheme first - so that before you carry a gun out of a shop, you've shown you can use it safely and proficiently, can prove you have a safe to lock it in etc. You license people to drive CARS don't you ?
>Third Amendment - Protection from quartering of troops. - No changes. What would be the point or justification ? Since the war was in another country. On the other hand - he did rather destroy this for the people of Iraq - with no good reason.
>Fourth Amendment - Protection from unreasonable search and seizure. - Changes for the worse, just an extension of what's happened since the War on Drugs started and what happened >under Clinton A pretty MAJOR extension. Warantless wiretaps. Secret surveilance schemes.
>Fifth Amendment - due process, double jeopardy, self-incrimination, eminent domain. - Retreats, especially with the SCOTUS decision about forcing evictions for economic development These are huge in my book. Not to mention that of course - if you're in gitmo, you don't get ANY Of these because they all rather depend on getting 6 and 8- both of which you're denied.
>Sixth Amendment - Trial by jury and rights of the accused; Confrontation Clause, speedy trial, public trial, right to counsel - no real retreats unless you are caught in a terror >plot, so don't get caught in a terror plot Fuck that. You HAVEN'T been caught in a terror plot until you're found guilty by a court of law in a fair and public trial. Accusation and even arrest does not a crime make. How many people in Gitmo are innocent of any wrongdoing ? For all we know - most of them - yet they could be tortured, denied communications and even at the best of times treated like hardcore felons - with zero chance of proving your innocence or arguing your case.
>Seventh Amendment - Civil trial by jury. - No changes Again, unless you're in Gitmo... sounds like a pretty shitty slippery slope to me.
>Eighth Amendment - Prohibition of excessive bail and cruel and unusual punishment. - No changes, bails have become excessive in the last thirty years, but that's no Bush's fault That is completely unimportant. He "didn't make it worse" is NOT respecting a right. If you could say "but Bush actually reduced it" - THAT would be respecting the civil right. Same
>Ninth Amendment - Protection of rights not specifically enumerated in the Constitution. - Really vague, so sure maybe there were excesses by the Bush
You know - seeing a parallel in behavior and pointing it out is a valid analogy. That Bush wasn't as bad as Stalin still has absolutely NOTHING to do with my point. My point was - that Bush showed a complete lack of respect for individual freedom, single-handedly expanded the power of the executive in the US beyond anything in it's prior history and completely ignored all civil liberties. I thought the DIFFERENCE between the free world and communism was supposed to be those individual freedoms. My point was that - at this time, the democrats seem to be MORE concerned with individual freedom than the republicans and I showed this by example. Now you can keep hammering on the validity of the example all you want - but that is a strawman attack. The truth of the matter is - Bush showed the same callous disregard for individual rights, privacy and freedom as Stalin did. That Stalin abused it worse is besides the point.
Of course, you completely ignore the REST of my post. I backed my assertions up - the onus is now on YOU to prove my evidence wrong. I stand by the most fundamental one - if you legislate morality you are by definition intruding on somebody's liberty.
Right... I show a few specific examples, and you go show me all the ways Bush was NOT like Stalin. You know Bush only had 8 years, Stalin had almost half a century in power. I'm sure Bush could have done a lot better if it wasn't for that annoying term-limit in your constitution.
Even so - the methodology of abuse of power that Bush employed began with the exact same methods Stalin used. Get neighbours to inform on each other. Silence critisizm (protest zones was INSPIRED), keep the prisoners you want to "disappear" outside the official borders (Sibera, Gitmo -- same shit different day), incarceration without trial, legalized torture.
Oh and unjustified war killing thousands...
He did pretty damn good in 8 years - I'm sure Stalin wasn't that far ADVANCED after only 8 years.
Wow... you would almost make sense if you weren't so utterly devoid of compassion, humanity and caring.
I didn't say Sweden by itself, I said Sweden AND Denmark and was using those as examples for the REGION as a whole. I see their government as more liberal, and their economics as more sane. If Sweden specifically is no longer as good an example, I won't mention it next time ( all the worse for me having a mental glitch I constantly have, I always type Sweden when I mean Switzerland - even when talking about my friend who lives in Zurich)
Now here's the clencher... I live in South Africa you insensitive clod. We have much the same policies a you. All that stuff you say I know nothing about ? I live them. I LIVE in a country with a 48% tax burden (though it's gone done a bit the last few budgets). I have every experience you describe - except 5 times worse. Why because OUR official unemployment rate is closer to 50%. 80% of our population earns less than the minimum taxable income. The remaining 20% fund every public service in a country with much the same kind of economic system.
It's hard. Our hospitals are far slower than yours. 4 Hours ? Here a state hospital could easilly not get to you until two days later. We have no public transport to speak off (this is actually improving now, but that's only so we could qualify to host FIFA - before that, it was just not there). We have the worlds highest crime rate.
Basically - we don't get much out of our massive tax contributions... but I wouldn't change it. As much as I can imagine the luxury of doubling my income by not paying that tax... I'd be doing it at the expense of a thousand dead children who couldn't go to hospital because nobody in their family has food. Who can't eat because their parents can't get wellfare.
Our 20% runs an economy and has to create enough wealth in it to support the 80% who have no education, no marketable skills beyond the most basic manual labor (guess what, it's simply not PRACTICAL for 20% of the people to employ 80% to work in our gardens).
And those in the middle, who are not unemployed, but not in top 20% either ? They are mostly farmworkers, mineworkers things like that. They don't contribute to the taxfund because they barely earn enough to survive - less than the point where we start taxing anyway. But they are a large part of why that 20% is able to run the businesses that are our entire survival.
Basically - everything that drives you to want Laizes-faire capitalism, I see at a much, much worse level every day. If *I* can retain compassionate caring for my fellow man, demand that those poor people not starve in a giant huge heap of bodies... and sacrifice halve the money I work so hard to earn to help do it, then you have NO excuse to feel differently. At least in your country almost everybody can read and write. In my country, the MAJORITY can't (or very barely).
Now here's the biggest clencher of all - I'm not so far on the opposite end as you think. I'm not socialist. I'm not liberalist. I'm just not capitalist either. I reject all doctrine by definition. ISM's are always oversimplifications that NEVER work, none of them.
I believe in case-by-case analysis of every social need, and then finding the best sollution for THIS need. Sometimes that solution is state run. Fire and police services spring to mind. Sometimes it's a combination-payment type thing (for healthcare for example I think corporate and state funds should be pooled, and because I'm humane I DO believe the healthy should supplement the unhealthy. Nobody should ever be denied life-saving treatment because they lack the cash. Dumping millions of people thousands of dollars into debt until it's the single largest cause of bankruptcy like the US has done, just because they got sick and couldn't earn money while sick to pay the doctors to get better so they could work... is unforgivable in my book. And sometimes - the solution is to keep the government as far away from the industry as possible - teleco
To the left - your points. To the right - the contradictions in your logic. Where there is no right, you actually sound rational.
Liberal representative democracy. Regulated market economy | The republican party is against this. Private property rights Gun ownership rights Limits on the welfare state | I could almost agree, if you prepended it with the word "sane". Opposition to socialism | Because human's aren't social of course. and communism | You mean like warantless phone-taps, massively expanded copyright, destruction of habeas corpus and other tricks Bush learned from Stalin ? Pro-birth control | (A large section of) The republican party is against this - and favor abstinence-only sex-ed* Anti-abortion | Liberal representative democracy. Civil unions | The republican party is against this. Anti-gay marriage | Liberal representative democracy.
So you see two types of contradiction above. The first is contradictions between your stated beliefs and those of the party you support. The second, much more concerning is contradictions between your stated beliefs and your OTHER stated beliefs. It's a logical consequence of liberal democracy that you cannot discriminate on any grounds, ever- otherwise it is neither liberal nor democratic. So how can treating people differently based on sexual preference NOT be discrimination ? If it's discrimination, liberal democracy demands it be removed. The ultimate logical consequence of actual democracy is the complete seperation of legality and morality. Since morality is personal and varies between cultures even within a society, but legality does not- they must be seperated. Any attempt to legislate morality is by definition an intrusion on the individual freedoms of some members of society. The very liberties republicans claim to want (as long as only other REPUBLICANS get them of course, we can't let GAY people choose how THEY want to live THEIR lives too).
*During Bush's time in office, when high-school sexual education was forced to be almost entirely based on abstinence-only, the rate of teen-pregnancy in the United States skyrocketed to unprecedented levels. By itself, you could claim that the correlation doesn't prove causation but there is strong supporting evidence. Firstly- the levels did not START inclining until the policy had been in place for a while (if the policy was there BECAUSE of an incline, this would be the other way around), secondly the rates started dropping again the moment Obama changed the policy. So what your party wants, and what you want, are directly at odds. In either case this still contradicts your claim to want liberal democracy - for the government to have any OPINION on birth control is already an unforgivable intrusion into civil liberties.
I can't fault your logic, but what you wrote in your original post didn't match what you're saying now.
All history is dependent on context, I specifically pointed out that there is other context I'm NOT currently considering - I considered only what the crusades were, from the point of view of the average crusader. A religious war, meant to spread christianity and wash the heathens clean in a sea of blood.
There is no way that, THAT was just. The rest of the wars of the time, in some ways were related, in some ways were not - but they are not what we are referring to with the word "crusades", nor were they the primary motivation for them. The land barrons and royalty may have contemplated them before going along with the idea of the crusades, but that idea began and was sold from the popes. The powerful of they day went along, in the end, mostly because the justification of their power came FROM the popes - you don't piss off the guy who can cost you your crown with a wave of his hand- if he says "go to war and reclaim the holy land" - you muster your armies and go.
There was nothing just about it. True there was nothing just about the Moorish invasion of Spain either - but they didn't invade Germany, France and Britain after all - and that was where the vast majority of the crusaders came from. It's where the crusades most important remaining historical influences originated too. The modern banking system for example is primarily based on the system created by the knights templar originally in France during the crusade years.
It was a religious war, and it was unjust. Before, during and after there were equally unjust military actions from the Arab nations on Europe as well- but those aren't called 'the crusades', and the atrocity of you enemy has never been a valid excuse for the atrocities of your own side. "Remember Koom valley" says Terry Pratchet and goes on to say that every nation has cries like that, which translates as "remember the atrocity committed by their ancestors on our ancestors which will excuse the atrocity we are about to commit on them today."
His point, in case you missed it, is that it doesn't excuse it - it NEVER does.
Oh, did I mention I'm a pretty hardcore pacifist ?
>No, no you don't. If you really had an understanding you wouldn't call capitalism predation and exploitation. You'd also need to >explain away the insane amounts of wealth humanity has acquired since the 1800's.
No need, we know the wealth was generated. The problem is, ALL of it is in the hands of a tiny minority, NOT in the hands of "humanity". True there was a lot less wealth in the world before the 1800's, but just as true- that wealth was MUCH more evenly distributed, and it was in constant motion. The difference between the rich and the poor was fairly small and nobody HAD to starve.
>You'd need to explain why two people trade voluntarily if there is no benefit for both parties.
Just how naive must you be to think that all, let alone MOST trade in the world today is voluntary ? Do you really think that sweatshop workers CHOOSE to work the way they do ? That there is benefit ? To them ? The whole point of predation and exploitation is to leave the other party with no CHOICE but to trade with you, EVEN at their own detriment.
>You would also clearly state that for wall street and bankers to behave the same way under a metal standard as they do under a >fiat system would require fraud.
I actually side a bit more with you here than with your previous opponent. The reason being that the rich-poor gap has escalated exponentially in the last thirty years - to a degree unprecedented in all of human history (even the WORST times of the industrial revolution). A significant part of the REASON for that was dropping the gold standard. It enabled the ability to obtain wealth without production (or at least, greatly magnified it because frankly - stock market traders do much the same thing and they've been around a LOT longer). But that doesn't mean the system is NOT fundamentally flawed. To me - I say you measure the success of an economy NOT by it's total size. Not by it's corporate profits. None of that shit matters. What matters is - how many people EAT today. How many people got that plate of food with honest labor ? Pure capitalism demands an unemployment rate of around 20% - because that is great for corporate profits (as long as you only care about the really HUGE companies of course). But to me the most successfull economies is countries like Sweden and Denmark where unemployment is around 2%. 98% of the people live a good middle-class life, which they work to earn. They can AFFORD to take care of the other 2% (primarily those who have no OPTION to work - the disabled etc). They can afford to say "if a women is pregnant she gets two years of paid maternity leave, or she and the father can each get one year - whatever works best for the parents" - and make that law. They can afford free healthcare for all -and still have Swedish doctors considered possibly the greatest in the world. And sure they pay higher taxes than you - but since everybody earns - it's not THAT much higher, it doesn't need to be, and even though percentage wise it's more, the actual value of the money they actually take home - the actual quality of life it buys is HIGHER than yours. The again they also have a much longer life expectancy than you do... guess living longer lives makes up for living happier once... or something...
Now true these countries don't have anything like the kind of corporate growth the USA has. Volvo is big, but so what - America has a thousand corporations that size for each one they have... but who cares ? The economy is a human construct, intended to serve humanity, not to be served BY humanity. I reckon those countries with their free-trade socialism rather than capitalist free markets are far more successful at serving their population than American Laizes-faire capitalism has been - particularly in the last three decades.
>So I conclude that you have studied the matter less than most who has such strong opinions.
And I conclude that somebody who has obviously studied as much as you have, should know better than you.
>Yes, but there's no actual fucking on stage, so it should be OK.
So a girl of 12 lying in bed dreaming out loud of her boy fucking her tomorrow is okay. At least some scholars believe that it was Shakespeare's intent to suggest she is masturbating while thinking about it - though of course hidden enough to pass the censhorship of the day. Several later stage productions show her in bed under the blankets with suggestive movements to reinforce this point. Even the 1996 movie with Leo DiCaprio very strongly hinted at the same thing.
But just as long as they don't actually show them fucking, the fact that everybody KNOWS they did doesn't matter...
I see your point. How do you get around inconvenient and obvious problems with a stupid law ? You find a stupid excuse to make it not apply to them. Doesn't change the reality. There is clear suggestion of erotica and sexuality in Romeo and Juliette. Even without the "touching herself" interpretation of Juliette's lament the dialog and plot still makes it blatantly clear that they HAD their wedding night before they died. So lets see where we get now. It's illegal to write about children having sex, but it's legal to write about children talking about having sex ?
> In the 1950s, the crusades were considered a just war... > In honesty, the first is closer to the truth,
Does that include the children's crusade ? Yeah, let's send an army of prepubescent soldiers against an organized military and assume that God will protect them... worked out great too - most of those kids ended up slave laborers.
I was raised in one of the most conservative churches in the world - where the debate on whether women should be allowed to be elders, deacons or ministers has been raging for 20 years and making no major progress. Even in THAT church's "church history lessons" as part of Sunday school the crusades were called "the single biggest collective sin in the history of all Christianity". I don't think there has been anybody who deemed them a "just war" since the Enlightenment. That they were largely unsuccessful, that there was military and political factors involved are asides here. They were not "just" wars (frankly - I don't believe there can EVER be a case where the INVADERS get to claim 'just war' - the invaded sometimes can), not even the deeprouted religious views of those who fought them make them just. The descendents of the crusaders pretty much all decided that what they were doing would NOT be deemed just by God, and thus they stopped DOING it.
In what whacked out place did you go to school that taught any different ?
"a nation chosen by God as a beacon to the world, and free enterprise as the cornerstone of liberty and democracy."
That's EXACTLY the same words that my misguided Afrikaans ancestors used when they were justifying appartheid. Same shit, different country. And before that - it was the exact same words that the Germans used to justify World War 2. I say this at risk of being Godwin'ing myself but I am by no means downplaying the holocaust as horror (in fact, I'm in the process of writing a science fiction story in which the protagonists are descendents of holocaust survivors so I have been doing significant research on the topic). I'm not saying biased schoolbooks = holocaust, I'm just saying the justification is the same they used. Mind you, those Afrikaner's were under significant Nazi influence - that's just historical fact. In the early 50's a huge proportion of the Afrikaner voters were members of the Ossewabrandwag - a Nazi propaganda group founded during world war 2 to try and convince South Africa to switch from allies to axis.
Before that, it was the same words the British used to justify the destruction of two independent republics through the systematic killing of 27 thousand women and children in the South African concentration camps.
Right now, it's the exact same words the Chinese government is using to justify turning a sixth of the worlds population into sweatshop workers that is only one step away from slaves (a step DOWN in many cases). Well "mandate of heaven" is near as makes no difference.
Just how big a set of ideological blinders do you need to be wearing to make the same mistakes yet again, the same arguments that have consistently led to the persecution of individualism and subsequent atrocities, and somehow convince yourself that what you're doing is about individual liberty and freedom. It's like humanity has a predisposed concept that "individual freedom" is the right to live as I please, but other people only get it if they want to use it to live the same way I do - despite the obvious logical error of such thinking. Critical thinking is a good defense against that, but apparently it's a skill more rare than rocket scientists.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh - and just to clarify my point: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazilian_military_government#United_States_involvement
>The US military was never deployed to Nicaragua or El Salvador nor were US special forces in combat in Nicaragua. Did the US fly planes into buildings in Managua? Nope.
So arranging a coup in another country doesn't count as an armed conflict for you because the military wasn't deployed ?
>As for one war, South Africa had troops in Rhodesia, Namibia, Mozambique not to mention the whole killing blacks in the slums things.
The period you stated - Rhodesia became Zimbabwe in 1980, we were only involved for the last year of the independence struggle - on request of the British government. If you don't count El Salvador or Panama, I really won't count Rhodesia.
We were never at war with Mozambique - and our troops there were assisting an action by the government of the country at the time (of course, at a later stage the government was much less friendly to us under Machel - but by then - we weren't there anymore).
We never had troops in Namibia. We did have Troops in SWA - but at the time that was our sovereign land under a U.N. resolution. The only actual war we fought was in Angola, and that wasn't even AGAINST Angola but against Cuba - and you guys were right there with us.
As for the "killing blacks in the slums" - yes, there were violent atrocities. No there was NEVER an organised killing attempt or attempt at ethnic cleansing and the military was NEVER involved. It was police abuses - some bad yes, but the worst one was the Bhoipatong masacre where 15 people died. 15 people dying when police shoots a rioters don't count as war - and that makes what those cops did even MORE inexcusable. The issue in the slums was more like Tiananmen Square (on a smaller scale) than a war - though all the more infamous for it. The ANC did plant bombs and frequently targetted civilians but even THEY never actually declared military action - the armed struggle was essentially a contained revolution, that was negotiated into a peaceful settlement. That's why we got 3 Nobel Prizes out of it...
>Once the civil wars were over in Nicaragua and El Salvador they transitioned right into democratic governments, a big part of that was also the Soviet Union failing so the money and weapons for the insurgencies went away.
You are actually attempting to JUSTIFY your involvement there? So these countries elected socialist, maybe even communist leaders. They were ELECTED leaders. Who the hell gave America the right to declare that people in other countries can't choose their own government ? Jefferson would be spinning in his grave. He taught you about "government by consent of the governed" - and you took that away from the citizens of other countries because you didn't agree with the ideology of their chosen leaders.
Most of the dictators you've deposed you put in power in the first place. Saddam was just the last in a long chain...
>And you mention Brazil, they've not had a conflict, I think you mean the CIA backed dictatorship of Chile
I hadn't even thought about Chile, but sorry - you're wrong about Brazil. My ex-wife was Brazilian - she LIVED through what the US did there. Make no mistake, the people there KNOW who put Sarney and his military regime in power. And BEFORE Sarney it had been a democratic republic since the late 1800s.
Of course, then things got worse, after Brazil finally got their democracy back in 1985, they had a population of voters with no idea how to vote... and they elected a thief who proceeded to nationalize all savings and pocket it, leading to the (sometimes violent) protests of the early 90's.
My ex-wife had participated in those protests. They didn't get a halfway decent president till 5 years later. Interestingly - they chose a liberal socialist AGAIN and reelected him twice. Having been to both your country and Brazil, Brazil is the better country to live in - DESPITE being poorer.
Hypothesis are a dime a dozen, theories are supposed to be hypotheses that have stood the test of time for a while, but the terminology often gets mixed up to the detriment of science (even by scientists).
That said, in this case - the people who made these hypothesis are highly respected phycisists who had genuine puzzles they were attempting to explain. In most cases so far - there ended up being other more plausible explanations, but I just don't imagine serious physicists proposing an alteration to a fundamental constant lightly.
Right now there is some puzzles in cosmology that suggest that the fine structure constant may have been slightly lower in the past, there is further very strong evidence that supports the possibility (notably - the energy of the background cosmic radiation is slightly lower, by almost exactly the amount it would be if this was true).
BUT - and this is a big but, in the meantime, two other explanations for the cosmic radiation difference have been proposed. In both cases they don't rely on a different fine structure constant shortly after the big bang. But their supporting evidence is still being tested. In the meantime - neither explains the puzzles that led to the proposal in the first place, so if either is shown to be accurate - cosmology still can't answer those.
That puts the weight of evidence currently on the side of a change over time in the FSC, if only because it explains more observations than any other available hypotheses.
Downside - if the FSC was different, that means a LOT of other differences, because the FSC is an amalgamation of several other fundamental constants including Planck's. Change that in the past, and it means the physics of the early universe was slightly different to ours, and such a difference is a mathematical singularity, it's impossible from our side of it, to predict what was on the other side.
You know what's sad... I actually agree with your conclusion but your entire argument consists of a call-to-authority. A fallacy.
Don't you think it's a bit of an insult to the discipline that your best defense for it is a false argument ?
Especially since history (even RECENT history) is filled with examples of untrained outsiders spotting a fatal flaw in the work of a discipline, which then needs to be corrected leading to a paradigm shift. Scientists consider the call-to-authority one of the worst fallacies of all, and a hell of a lot of the scientific method is specifically designed to root it out.
Your actual points about how proofs work are informative and accurate. Prepending them with a declaration about how one shouldn't question the authority of the scientists weakens that argument, and if those scientists are any good - they would consider it an insult to be cited as authorities, science by it's very nature despises authority.
Smokie would just ask: Alice ? Who the fuck is Alice ?
Which (for some obscure reason - possibly the incurable lack of good taste of mankind) remains the best selling song ever with "Fuck" in the title.
That would not be a "discovery" but a confirmation. Many physicists have suggested such hypothesis in the past. Even more have suggested asymetry in time -t that at various ages of the universe the fundamental constants may have been different to what they are now.
There are a few pieces of evidence suggesting this (the rate of decay of Oklo's uranium COULD be explained that way - though a natural fission reactor is a more plausible one), and several physicists have conjectured that the fine-structure-constant may have changed over time, and that would be an explanation for the wrong speed of galaxies that wouldn't require cold-dark-matter.
Our estimates on the age of the universe have changed 4 times in the past 2 decades - generally, it got younger with the current consensus at about 13-Billion years.
Of course if any of the fundamental constants had changed over time or in different regions of space - in the end, it's simply a matter of how you travel through space-time, then that means all bets are off. The fundamental constants determine the laws of physics. Thus far, outside of singularities like the big bang or black holes (and Stephen Hawking thinks we don't even need THOSE to be singularities) there is no really strong evidence for it. It's possible, but unlikely - and if true, means it's mathematically impossible for us to understand the universe.
>Also, how has antimatter responded to this bias?
Antimatter has declared the bias to be a clear-cut case of discrimination and has applied for status as a protected minority.
>Oh, well, since the UN requested they be there, it was okay?
I didn't say that. I said that since you had international support to intervene, and had no intention of taking any resources or power over the country, of in fact staying one day after the job was done - it doesn't count as an invasion. Was it a JUST intervention - I think it could be called one. Was it a terrible thing that it needed to happen in the first place ? Undoubtedly - but I don't blame the U.S. for responding to a suffering people's cry for help against an aggressor, quite the contrary I blame them for the times they ignored it - like Rwanda just a short while earlier.
>And this is different from the Pope requesting England intervene in the atrocities taking place in the Levant, how?
The pope != international community.
Besides which - I said nothing about whether the politics were justifiable, I consistently said that Christians today believe their own involvement to have been unjust. I doubt that most of them ever cared (or in fact, knew) about the Levant. The crusaders were about retaking Jerusalem from the turks. About the Holy Land being in the hands of Heathens. It was a war of invasion and conquest that repeatedly failed. As a goal - for the Christian church to want to claim pieces of land as holy and then attempt to take that land by force - violates it's own rules. Hence it was an unjust war.
>After you account for differences in time and place, the two are very close parallels.
Allow me to respectfully but UTTERLY disagree. Those "differences in time and place" are 500 years of civilization and learning. It's the difference between a Europe of absolute monarchies and one of mostly constitutional democratic monarchies. It's the difference between the Europe BEFORE world war 2, and the one of today. To be frank, Europe of the middle ages was intensely tribal, and the crusades were an act that screams barbarian. Neither of those counts as civilized behavior and it would be quite some time yet before Europe began to civilize. I'm using these terms in their sociological meanings, not in their offensive folk-meanings. Quite frankly, there were hardly any wars that were ever just anywhere in the world prior to the end of the Victorian age. Remember- pacifist.
>>Seems that in most of the rest of the world, that's been at least the protestant consensus for a long time now.
>Yeah, since the 1960s the consensus has changed on the crusades, though the facts have not. Before, it was considered appropriate to invade to protect a minority population from >being slaughtered, now it is considered inappropriate.
So why was the consensus that way according to the records of my church at it's founding in 1894 ? Again - Americans may have had political reasons to tell a different story, but the protestants elsewhere had changed their minds much earlier. By all accounts, this consensus was *already* the norm when my distant ancestors suffered under the Spanish inquisition in the Netherlands 400 years ago.
Again of course, the story depends on the teller. The protestants I descend from saw the Catholics as aggressors, who tortured their FELLOW CHRISTIANS over fairly minor disagreements of interpretation. So it was quite easy for them to form the opinion that the Catholics were also the aggressors in the crusades - the moreso because a fundamental part of those disagreements was the suggestion of a single human church leader. The Crusades would have been a wonderful example of how such a person leads Christianity inevitably to sinful excess through abuse of power.
There is even mention to that effect in the writings of Calvin in Vienna so it goes back right to the START of the inquisition. I guess outside the U.S. the protestants never had a reason to believe that Christian-conquest has to be justified, and thus no reason to change their view of that particular example. Outside the U.S. - most protestants still remember too vividly what conversion-by-the-sword MEANT as they descend
Cultural values are regional. Marital Age is a cultural value. The exact quote in Shakespeare reads: "Younger than her are happy mother's made".
In South-Africa between 1652 and 1800 few people married older than 17, that was the boys - for girls 16 was about the latest.
And I checked your link... where do you find the idea that Juliette was Dutch then ? Nor was she "Western European". Also it's not England. It's set in Verona (that's in Italy) some two centuries earlier.
My point was about the fact that Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliette, under it's OWN included text, would be illegal under this law. Whether Shakespeare was right about how often women married at age 12 is completely irrelevant to the discussion too - HE wrote about a 12-year old girl getting married and having sex, and described it as typical.
The law in Canada bans the greatest love story ever written - you've done nothing to discredit my claims in the least, though you were an interesting distraction for the 5 minutes it took to follow up on your claims.
>In the late 70s and 80s South Africa was involved in more wars than the US.
That would be ONE war over a 20 year period... you had Vietnam, at the start of it, and two others before it was over. Then there is the fact that the one war we were in, you were in as well (though of course, you didn't tell anybody that - mind you - neither did we, we were fighting it for over a decade while STILL denying even being at war locally).
You left out: Nicaragua, Brazil and all the others that didn't suit your chosen result. Of course, many of these wars were unofficial - that doesn't change much in my book. A war is defined by what you DO - not by what you call it. Nevermind that you left both countries in the hands of despotic dictators and it took them DECADES to restore their freedom.
Mind you... what you did in Nicaragua (and a few other cases) meets your own DOJ's definition of "terrorist activity" better than anything Bin Laden ever pulled off. But I guess it's only terrorism if it's done to you right, when you do it somebody else, that's big brother loving them.
>Really the only major religion that allows it explicitly is Islam
Did I say "major" - just the various religions in Africa is enough to win on number of religions, I explicitely did NOT consider "number of followers".
Also keep in mind that Judaism and Christianity were BOTH polygamous in the past - and if they could change once, they can change again.
>US Federal and State laws don't allow one religion to be put above any others and religious practices have to adhere to US laws and societal norms. The Mormons had to "ban" polygamy in order to get statehood and while there are still polygamist Mormons, things that go on may violate the law, like welfare fraud.
A sensible law - but that's just MORE reason why the state should have NO influence on mariage. If you want state involvement, make ALL marriages civil unions in front of the law, regardless number and sex of those entering into the union. Let the religions sort out the religious bit. Now THAT is how you separate church and state.
What can I say - you Americans used to have a saying "immigration is the greatest form of flattery". Well I've been there, the only place in the entire country where I felt REMOTELY like I could EVER fit in was San Francisco and even THERE the complete obsession with consumption was too much... I could NEVER live in the USA. If I ever decide to Emigrate, rest assured, I won't even consider your country. In fact the only two countries I WOULD consider are the Netherlands (I like their sociopolitical system, and I happen to speak a near derivative of the language, close enough to learn it in a few weeks) or Canada.
Somehow... any country where they declare war on a victimless crime has something so seriously wrong with it that I don't want to go anywhere near it, and the sheer amount of religious right there, the power of the moral majority... no way. I am a moral person - but it's MY morals, and when they don't agree with yours, I don't want you to be able to lobby to make mine illegal.
Ultimately... the whole point of why conservatism is a bad idea is right there in the name. It's even spelt out explicitely on the conservapedia website: "the most important values of conservatism is tradition..."
The others aren't even important after that. The call to tradition is a falacy. You can never be progressive if you think tradition is a VALUE by itself. "We do it this way because we've always done it this way" is a false argument.
Sometimes the way it's always been done may be right, but if you don't question it critically, and seriously consider alternatives you are precluding yourself from critical thought, rational planning and progress.
Isn't it ironic - the republicans ended Slavery - but the descendants of those free slaves (coincidentally one of the poorest subsets of the US population) overwhelmingly vote democrats. Because while the republicans have been clinging to tradition - the democrats actually progressed.
In the end they are BOTH pretty stagnant though. You may be among the most warmongering nations on the planet today - the only ones that come even close are truly barbaric societies in my book (like Afghanistan under the Thaliban) in the past 50 years you've been involved in more armed conflicts than any other developed nation - you have never gone more than 5 years without being in a war somewhere and in the overwhelming majority of those wars you deposed a democratically elected leader to replace him with a sockpuppet dictator. Usually because said democratically elected leader DARED to think that his policies should favor his citizens rather than US corporations, though on a few rare occasions you did it to try and change the politics of a region - like when you put Saddam in power mind you...
I guess Bush's war makes SENSE if you look at it that way "We put this maniac in charge of a country, we owe it to the people to get rid of him again." now if that was ALL he did, I may even have supported it, as much as I despise war (did I mention I'm a pacifist ?) - b
>>I don't believe there can EVER be a case where the INVADERS get to claim 'just war'
>Were you for or against our involvement in the Balkans during the Clinton administration? That's >the closest modern day analogy.
Since the US was there on REQUEST of the U.N. and had no desire to take over anything or stay behind- merely to end an atrocity and restore peace to the region, I wouldn't call that an invasion at all. It was an involvement in a civil war - on REQUEST of the international community.
But I didn't have any say in the matter, I'm not an American.
>And... trick question: Were the Muslims the invaders or the defenders of the Levant?
I'd say in the vast majority of the crusades, they were the defenders.
>>In what whacked out place did you go to school that taught any different ?
>Oddly enough, I tend to read lots of primary and secondary sources and determine for myself if what the history being taught in school is accurate or not.
Well, I can't speak for the history books in your country but my country had just about as fundamentalist a government as you can GET when I went to school. Hell ALL school children were legally required to wear uniforms, private schools and homeschooling were banned -just to make sure nobody could skip the indoctrination. We had military training as part of the curiculim to prepare us to be good little soldiers... and WE were taught the crusades was a mistake by misguided leaders of the Christian faith. So were my parents, and THEIR parents. Seems that in most of the rest of the world, that's been at least the protestant consensus for a long time now.
>Believe it or not: America didn't win WWII all by itself, that Christopher Columbus really was a dick, and that the Communist Part of USA back in the McCarthy days really was an appendage of the Soviet Union.
Like I said, I'm not American - but I actually agree with a lot of what you said there. On the other hand, the witchhunt that McCarthy instituted against communism was still very wrong in my book. Sorry, communism is an opinion which your constitution is supposed to protect your right to hold - even if you don't like it.
And the majority of religions are polygamous. It just happens that the majority religion in America is monogamous and straight only.
How does NOT recognize polygamy not count as intrusion on the freedom of religion of members of Islam ? It is.
Like I said, the state should stay out of marriage. A civil union form should be ALL there is, and it should make NO prescriptions about who may enter, or how many - that is an individual decision (I've been in poly relationships too btw.)
Leave the morality with the people - let the law take care of their rights, that's my point of view. I actually highly agree with the republican IDEAL of small government, but I also think the government has certain duties - and needs to fullfill those. Firstly to ensure the equality of all before the law, secondly to prevent the exploitation of the weak by the strong - that's why I favor a (highly) regulated market.
History has proven that there is no excess corporations won't go to if it makes money. The very first one had a private army and ruled half the world, with no sense of democracy - that's what happens WITHOUT regulation.
I don't favor stiffling competition, I favor protection of workers rights (universally) and rules to ensure that corporations cannot abuse their power. And I utterly refuse to accept that corporations should have human rights.
Nothing in the bill of rights need to apply to them. They need the right to sign a binding contract, that's it. Take away their free speech (the people INSIDE in their personal capacity keeps it, but not the corporate entity) then you CAN stop them from buying laws, you can demand that they aren't ALLOWED to use advertising that isn't utterly based on verifiable scientific fact (to the extent that such a thing exists).
So you can stop homeopathic bullshit from being advertised with false claims.
In my dream ideal state... there IS no government. There is a constitution established with one single law in it: "if it doesn't harm anybody, it's allowed". Then you don't even need to restrict corporations from having that. If you can effectively stop anything they do that causes harm - you've done all you need.
Everything EVERYTHING else is common law. Decided by judges - their decision becomes law, and they are ONLY allowed to decided based on that constitution. Every case becomes "is anybody harmed ? If so - ban the activity, if not- allow it."
Obviously harm would need to be properly defined to prevent abuse, but that's a matter of detail. You are not harming somebody if you shout an insult at him. You ARE causing harm if you shout fire in a crowded theater... see ? easy.
I believe it has a certain elegance in it's simplicity... and it would be the greatest state in the world to live in... just as long as it's somewhere out of the way enough because if it ever becomes successful, it's less polite neighbors will probably invade. The lack of any military is a bit of a problem there.
>What the hell does "sane" mean in this? No Republican at the national level calls for elimination of >the welfare state, well except Ron Paul and I'm not a Paulite
Sane things like - a Single mother should not need to hold down TWO minimum wage jobs just to qualify for foodstamps (common in Michigan and other wellfare-to-work states). She ought to be able to at least see her child a few hours a day.
>That reply makes no sense. Yes, Republicans want human to have no social interaction.
No it makes perfect sense if you don't use reduction to absurdity. Humans are social creatures for a REASON. We survive better if we form communities that care for one another. Socialism is an attempt at building an economy around this principle. So opposing that implies opposing the very REASON we live as groups in the first place.
>Some are, many aren't, as I'm a Neocon, that group is generally OK with birth control. From my >experience with Republicans, the vast majority are pro-birth control, maybe two out of thirty I've >known closely were abstinence only.
So how did the most recent republican president manage to push an abstinence-only sex-ed program then ? That's not the sort of thing a politician does unless he can be sure of significant popular support. Just a thought...
>Oh, sorry, can't have a belief about something based on personal experience without it violating >liberal representative democracy?
Of course you can have the belief - what you CAN'T do is demand it be legislated without violating hte idea of a liberal representative democracy - because that must ALSO represent the people who disagree with you. Best choice here IS for the judicial branch to decide it, they can change their minds much more easily and respond to knew knowledge / social norms better. That's why in my country the judicial branch officially has MORE power than the government and can ORDER them to change laws - all you have to do is win a case in the constitutional court. It gives the man in the street a viable defense against government excess. I'm against abortion myself - but I will NOT make that decision for everybody.
Since the nature of this particular issue involves many people, and many issues, the only logical ANSWER is to leave it up to judges.
>Bush was in favor of them, many Republicans are too.
With the exact same legal rights as marriage- done like that it's a good option. Hell it's what MY country did after the constitutional court forced the government to give a legal option for gay marriage. If it's any different legally speaking, it's a sham meant to disguise discrimination.
>Yep, let the States legalize if they want, but the Federal Government shouldn't get involved in >that. The States-Rights Republicans are in favor of that. If Oregon wants to have a vote on it, >like they did in 2004, then they may have a vote on it and pass or reject it.
I disagree. The state has an obligation to treat all citizens equally and not discriminate in any way, shape or form. That means - if a particular church doesn't want to do gay marriage, they don't have to. But the legal part of it. The contract recognized by the government, and which the government gives privileges to - that part MUST be equal for all citizens, everywhere. Some things must NOT be democratically decided because that leads to minorities having no rights, being discriminated against - a dictatorship-by-numbers. Some things must simply be fact - like "all people are equal before the law" - no room for exceptions.
And yes, I'm also in favor of state recognition of polygamous marriages, hell the president of my country has 5 wives. BUT - I am opposed to how it works HERE. Here it's only allowed in certain cultures, and even for those cultures only the MEN can have multiple wives. That's discrimination on all fronts.
If you actually legalize and enforce, at federal level, a civil union that can have any number of (willing) parties to it - and let INDIVIDUALS decide, rather than states or anything else, THEN you are being fair and liberal and democratic. Till then I will fight you every step of the way. I'm not gay, but I AM a minority in my country, one that is much discriminated against at times. I know how it feels.
So according to you his attempt to introduce the 14th amendment did NOT erode the principle of equality before the law then ?
Now I'm done with this - it has no bearing on my actual post. So compared to Stalin Bush would be a lesser evil ? Big whoop... that's not exactly a high bar.
Now either respond to the rest of my comment, of I'll just ignore this thread. I have better things to do with my time than listen to somebody appologize for Bush. At least Obama still has the OPTION to end up more bad than good.
And remember that I look at Bush as a citizen of another country. A poor third world country. Basically - your presidents hold enormous power over my life, which is quite unfair as I don't get to vote in your elections - but nobody ever said life is fair. But that DOES mean that what Bush did for human rights in his FOREIGN policy is FAR more important to me than domestic. And there his record really sucked. Every time he opened his MOUTH my quality of life went down.
>The Civil Rights
>First Amendment - Establishment Clause, Free Exercise Clause; freedom of speech, of the press, Freedom of Religion, and of assembly; right to petition - there were some >restrictions, but there have been at other times of war too, Civil War, World War One, World War Two - what happened in the First World War was far more restrictive than what's >happened since 2001
Yes "the atrocities of the past excuse the atrocities of today" almost as good an argument as "the atrocities aren't as bad as we've done in the past" so it's okay.
Now lets see...
Freedom of Religion: Bush was outspokenly anti-Islam except when he HAD to tone it down. He described the Iraq was as a "crusade"... oh but right, American's don't think that it's wrong for the government to intrude on the civil liberties of people in OTHER countries. As far as I'm concerned, the constraints on the US government should be MY rights as much as yours. If Obama can't censor you - why the hell should he have the right to censor me ? I don't even GET to vote for or against him !
Freedom of Speech and Assembly, right to petition: Free-speech-zones "you critisize if you want, just so long as you say it far away where nobody can hear you.
That's a MAJOR restriction - hell during Vietnam people could protest where the presidents could SEE them !
>Second Amendment - Militia (United States), Sovereign state, Right to keep and bear arms. - This was made less restrictive
And more stupid. I'm in favor of the idea, I'm just as in favor of requiring a testing and licensing scheme first - so that before you carry a gun out of a shop, you've shown you can use it safely and proficiently, can prove you have a safe to lock it in etc. You license people to drive CARS don't you ?
>Third Amendment - Protection from quartering of troops. - No changes.
What would be the point or justification ? Since the war was in another country. On the other hand - he did rather destroy this for the people of Iraq - with no good reason.
>Fourth Amendment - Protection from unreasonable search and seizure. - Changes for the worse, just an extension of what's happened since the War on Drugs started and what happened >under Clinton
A pretty MAJOR extension. Warantless wiretaps. Secret surveilance schemes.
>Fifth Amendment - due process, double jeopardy, self-incrimination, eminent domain. - Retreats, especially with the SCOTUS decision about forcing evictions for economic development
These are huge in my book. Not to mention that of course - if you're in gitmo, you don't get ANY Of these because they all rather depend on getting 6 and 8- both of which you're denied.
>Sixth Amendment - Trial by jury and rights of the accused; Confrontation Clause, speedy trial, public trial, right to counsel - no real retreats unless you are caught in a terror >plot, so don't get caught in a terror plot
Fuck that. You HAVEN'T been caught in a terror plot until you're found guilty by a court of law in a fair and public trial. Accusation and even arrest does not a crime make.
How many people in Gitmo are innocent of any wrongdoing ? For all we know - most of them - yet they could be tortured, denied communications and even at the best of times treated like hardcore felons - with zero chance of proving your innocence or arguing your case.
>Seventh Amendment - Civil trial by jury. - No changes
Again, unless you're in Gitmo... sounds like a pretty shitty slippery slope to me.
>Eighth Amendment - Prohibition of excessive bail and cruel and unusual punishment. - No changes, bails have become excessive in the last thirty years, but that's no Bush's fault
That is completely unimportant. He "didn't make it worse" is NOT respecting a right. If you could say "but Bush actually reduced it" - THAT would be respecting the civil right. Same
>Ninth Amendment - Protection of rights not specifically enumerated in the Constitution. - Really vague, so sure maybe there were excesses by the Bush
You know - seeing a parallel in behavior and pointing it out is a valid analogy. That Bush wasn't as bad as Stalin still has absolutely NOTHING to do with my point. My point was - that Bush showed a complete lack of respect for individual freedom, single-handedly expanded the power of the executive in the US beyond anything in it's prior history and completely ignored all civil liberties.
I thought the DIFFERENCE between the free world and communism was supposed to be those individual freedoms. My point was that - at this time, the democrats seem to be MORE concerned with individual freedom than the republicans and I showed this by example. Now you can keep hammering on the validity of the example all you want - but that is a strawman attack. The truth of the matter is - Bush showed the same callous disregard for individual rights, privacy and freedom as Stalin did. That Stalin abused it worse is besides the point.
Of course, you completely ignore the REST of my post. I backed my assertions up - the onus is now on YOU to prove my evidence wrong. I stand by the most fundamental one - if you legislate morality you are by definition intruding on somebody's liberty.
Right... I show a few specific examples, and you go show me all the ways Bush was NOT like Stalin. You know Bush only had 8 years, Stalin had almost half a century in power. I'm sure Bush could have done a lot better if it wasn't for that annoying term-limit in your constitution.
Even so - the methodology of abuse of power that Bush employed began with the exact same methods Stalin used. Get neighbours to inform on each other. Silence critisizm (protest zones was INSPIRED), keep the prisoners you want to "disappear" outside the official borders (Sibera, Gitmo -- same shit different day), incarceration without trial, legalized torture.
Oh and unjustified war killing thousands...
He did pretty damn good in 8 years - I'm sure Stalin wasn't that far ADVANCED after only 8 years.
Wow... you would almost make sense if you weren't so utterly devoid of compassion, humanity and caring.
I didn't say Sweden by itself, I said Sweden AND Denmark and was using those as examples for the REGION as a whole. I see their government as more liberal, and their economics as more sane. If Sweden specifically is no longer as good an example, I won't mention it next time ( all the worse for me having a mental glitch I constantly have, I always type Sweden when I mean Switzerland - even when talking about my friend who lives in Zurich)
Now here's the clencher... I live in South Africa you insensitive clod. We have much the same policies a you. All that stuff you say I know nothing about ? I live them.
I LIVE in a country with a 48% tax burden (though it's gone done a bit the last few budgets). I have every experience you describe - except 5 times worse.
Why because OUR official unemployment rate is closer to 50%. 80% of our population earns less than the minimum taxable income. The remaining 20% fund every public service in a country with much the same kind of economic system.
It's hard. Our hospitals are far slower than yours. 4 Hours ? Here a state hospital could easilly not get to you until two days later. We have no public transport to speak off (this is actually improving now, but that's only so we could qualify to host FIFA - before that, it was just not there). We have the worlds highest crime rate.
Basically - we don't get much out of our massive tax contributions... but I wouldn't change it. As much as I can imagine the luxury of doubling my income by not paying that tax... I'd be doing it at the expense of a thousand dead children who couldn't go to hospital because nobody in their family has food. Who can't eat because their parents can't get wellfare.
Our 20% runs an economy and has to create enough wealth in it to support the 80% who have no education, no marketable skills beyond the most basic manual labor (guess what, it's simply not PRACTICAL for 20% of the people to employ 80% to work in our gardens).
And those in the middle, who are not unemployed, but not in top 20% either ? They are mostly farmworkers, mineworkers things like that. They don't contribute to the taxfund because they barely earn enough to survive - less than the point where we start taxing anyway. But they are a large part of why that 20% is able to run the businesses that are our entire survival.
Basically - everything that drives you to want Laizes-faire capitalism, I see at a much, much worse level every day. If *I* can retain compassionate caring for my fellow man, demand that those poor people not starve in a giant huge heap of bodies... and sacrifice halve the money I work so hard to earn to help do it, then you have NO excuse to feel differently. At least in your country almost everybody can read and write. In my country, the MAJORITY can't (or very barely).
Now here's the biggest clencher of all - I'm not so far on the opposite end as you think. I'm not socialist. I'm not liberalist. I'm just not capitalist either. I reject all doctrine by definition. ISM's are always oversimplifications that NEVER work, none of them.
I believe in case-by-case analysis of every social need, and then finding the best sollution for THIS need.
Sometimes that solution is state run. Fire and police services spring to mind. Sometimes it's a combination-payment type thing (for healthcare for example I think corporate and state funds should be pooled, and because I'm humane I DO believe the healthy should supplement the unhealthy. Nobody should ever be denied life-saving treatment because they lack the cash. Dumping millions of people thousands of dollars into debt until it's the single largest cause of bankruptcy like the US has done, just because they got sick and couldn't earn money while sick to pay the doctors to get better so they could work... is unforgivable in my book.
And sometimes - the solution is to keep the government as far away from the industry as possible - teleco
To the left - your points.
To the right - the contradictions in your logic. Where there is no right, you actually sound rational.
Liberal representative democracy.
Regulated market economy | The republican party is against this.
Private property rights
Gun ownership rights
Limits on the welfare state | I could almost agree, if you prepended it with the word "sane".
Opposition to socialism | Because human's aren't social of course.
and communism | You mean like warantless phone-taps, massively expanded copyright, destruction of habeas corpus and other tricks Bush learned from Stalin ?
Pro-birth control | (A large section of) The republican party is against this - and favor abstinence-only sex-ed*
Anti-abortion | Liberal representative democracy.
Civil unions | The republican party is against this.
Anti-gay marriage | Liberal representative democracy.
So you see two types of contradiction above. The first is contradictions between your stated beliefs and those of the party you support. The second, much more concerning is contradictions between your stated beliefs and your OTHER stated beliefs.
It's a logical consequence of liberal democracy that you cannot discriminate on any grounds, ever- otherwise it is neither liberal nor democratic. So how can treating people differently based on sexual preference NOT be discrimination ?
If it's discrimination, liberal democracy demands it be removed.
The ultimate logical consequence of actual democracy is the complete seperation of legality and morality. Since morality is personal and varies between cultures even within a society, but legality does not- they must be seperated. Any attempt to legislate morality is by definition an intrusion on the individual freedoms of some members of society. The very liberties republicans claim to want (as long as only other REPUBLICANS get them of course, we can't let GAY people choose how THEY want to live THEIR lives too).
*During Bush's time in office, when high-school sexual education was forced to be almost entirely based on abstinence-only, the rate of teen-pregnancy in the United States skyrocketed to unprecedented levels. By itself, you could claim that the correlation doesn't prove causation but there is strong supporting evidence. Firstly- the levels did not START inclining until the policy had been in place for a while (if the policy was there BECAUSE of an incline, this would be the other way around), secondly the rates started dropping again the moment Obama changed the policy.
So what your party wants, and what you want, are directly at odds.
In either case this still contradicts your claim to want liberal democracy - for the government to have any OPINION on birth control is already an unforgivable intrusion into civil liberties.
I can't fault your logic, but what you wrote in your original post didn't match what you're saying now.
All history is dependent on context, I specifically pointed out that there is other context I'm NOT currently considering - I considered only what the crusades were, from the point of view of the average crusader.
A religious war, meant to spread christianity and wash the heathens clean in a sea of blood.
There is no way that, THAT was just. The rest of the wars of the time, in some ways were related, in some ways were not - but they are not what we are referring to with the word "crusades", nor were they the primary motivation for them. The land barrons and royalty may have contemplated them before going along with the idea of the crusades, but that idea began and was sold from the popes.
The powerful of they day went along, in the end, mostly because the justification of their power came FROM the popes - you don't piss off the guy who can cost you your crown with a wave of his hand- if he says "go to war and reclaim the holy land" - you muster your armies and go.
There was nothing just about it. True there was nothing just about the Moorish invasion of Spain either - but they didn't invade Germany, France and Britain after all - and that was where the vast majority of the crusaders came from. It's where the crusades most important remaining historical influences originated too. The modern banking system for example is primarily based on the system created by the knights templar originally in France during the crusade years.
It was a religious war, and it was unjust. Before, during and after there were equally unjust military actions from the Arab nations on Europe as well- but those aren't called 'the crusades', and the atrocity of you enemy has never been a valid excuse for the atrocities of your own side.
"Remember Koom valley" says Terry Pratchet and goes on to say that every nation has cries like that, which translates as "remember the atrocity committed by their ancestors on our ancestors which will excuse the atrocity we are about to commit on them today."
His point, in case you missed it, is that it doesn't excuse it - it NEVER does.
Oh, did I mention I'm a pretty hardcore pacifist ?
>No, no you don't. If you really had an understanding you wouldn't call capitalism predation and exploitation. You'd also need to >explain away the insane amounts of wealth humanity has acquired since the 1800's.
No need, we know the wealth was generated. The problem is, ALL of it is in the hands of a tiny minority, NOT in the hands of "humanity". True there was a lot less wealth in the world before the 1800's, but just as true- that wealth was MUCH more evenly distributed, and it was in constant motion. The difference between the rich and the poor was fairly small and nobody HAD to starve.
>You'd need to explain why two people trade voluntarily if there is no benefit for both parties.
Just how naive must you be to think that all, let alone MOST trade in the world today is voluntary ? Do you really think that sweatshop workers CHOOSE to work the way they do ? That there is benefit ? To them ? The whole point of predation and exploitation is to leave the other party with no CHOICE but to trade with you, EVEN at their own detriment.
>You would also clearly state that for wall street and bankers to behave the same way under a metal standard as they do under a >fiat system would require fraud.
I actually side a bit more with you here than with your previous opponent. The reason being that the rich-poor gap has escalated exponentially in the last thirty years - to a degree unprecedented in all of human history (even the WORST times of the industrial revolution). A significant part of the REASON for that was dropping the gold standard. It enabled the ability to obtain wealth without production (or at least, greatly magnified it because frankly - stock market traders do much the same thing and they've been around a LOT longer).
But that doesn't mean the system is NOT fundamentally flawed.
To me - I say you measure the success of an economy NOT by it's total size. Not by it's corporate profits. None of that shit matters. What matters is - how many people EAT today. How many people got that plate of food with honest labor ?
Pure capitalism demands an unemployment rate of around 20% - because that is great for corporate profits (as long as you only care about the really HUGE companies of course).
But to me the most successfull economies is countries like Sweden and Denmark where unemployment is around 2%. 98% of the people live a good middle-class life, which they work to earn. They can AFFORD to take care of the other 2% (primarily those who have no OPTION to work - the disabled etc). They can afford to say "if a women is pregnant she gets two years of paid maternity leave, or she and the father can each get one year - whatever works best for the parents" - and make that law.
They can afford free healthcare for all -and still have Swedish doctors considered possibly the greatest in the world.
And sure they pay higher taxes than you - but since everybody earns - it's not THAT much higher, it doesn't need to be, and even though percentage wise it's more, the actual value of the money they actually take home - the actual quality of life it buys is HIGHER than yours.
The again they also have a much longer life expectancy than you do... guess living longer lives makes up for living happier once... or something...
Now true these countries don't have anything like the kind of corporate growth the USA has. Volvo is big, but so what - America
has a thousand corporations that size for each one they have... but who cares ?
The economy is a human construct, intended to serve humanity, not to be served BY humanity.
I reckon those countries with their free-trade socialism rather than capitalist free markets are far more successful at serving their population than American Laizes-faire capitalism has been - particularly in the last three decades.
>So I conclude that you have studied the matter less than most who has such strong opinions.
And I conclude that somebody who has obviously studied as much as you have, should know better than you.
>Yes, but there's no actual fucking on stage, so it should be OK.
So a girl of 12 lying in bed dreaming out loud of her boy fucking her tomorrow is okay. At least some scholars believe that it was Shakespeare's intent to suggest she is masturbating while thinking about it - though of course hidden enough to pass the censhorship of the day. Several later stage productions show her in bed under the blankets with suggestive movements to reinforce this point. Even the 1996 movie with Leo DiCaprio very strongly hinted at the same thing.
But just as long as they don't actually show them fucking, the fact that everybody KNOWS they did doesn't matter...
I see your point. How do you get around inconvenient and obvious problems with a stupid law ? You find a stupid excuse to make it not apply to them.
Doesn't change the reality. There is clear suggestion of erotica and sexuality in Romeo and Juliette. Even without the "touching herself" interpretation of Juliette's lament the dialog and plot still makes it blatantly clear that they HAD their wedding night before they died.
So lets see where we get now. It's illegal to write about children having sex, but it's legal to write about children talking about having sex ?
Desk --- head...
> In the 1950s, the crusades were considered a just war...
> In honesty, the first is closer to the truth,
Does that include the children's crusade ? Yeah, let's send an army of prepubescent soldiers against an organized military and assume that God will protect them... worked out great too - most of those kids ended up slave laborers.
I was raised in one of the most conservative churches in the world - where the debate on whether women should be allowed to be elders, deacons or ministers has been raging for 20 years and making no major progress.
Even in THAT church's "church history lessons" as part of Sunday school the crusades were called "the single biggest collective sin in the history of all Christianity".
I don't think there has been anybody who deemed them a "just war" since the Enlightenment. That they were largely unsuccessful, that there was military and political factors involved are asides here.
They were not "just" wars (frankly - I don't believe there can EVER be a case where the INVADERS get to claim 'just war' - the invaded sometimes can), not even the deeprouted religious views of those who fought them make them just. The descendents of the crusaders pretty much all decided that what they were doing would NOT be deemed just by God, and thus they stopped DOING it.
In what whacked out place did you go to school that taught any different ?
"a nation chosen by God as a beacon to the world, and free enterprise as the cornerstone of liberty and democracy."
That's EXACTLY the same words that my misguided Afrikaans ancestors used when they were justifying appartheid. Same shit, different country.
And before that - it was the exact same words that the Germans used to justify World War 2. I say this at risk of being Godwin'ing myself but I am by no means downplaying the holocaust as horror (in fact, I'm in the process of writing a science fiction story in which the protagonists are descendents of holocaust survivors so I have been doing significant research on the topic). I'm not saying biased schoolbooks = holocaust, I'm just saying the justification is the same they used.
Mind you, those Afrikaner's were under significant Nazi influence - that's just historical fact. In the early 50's a huge proportion of the Afrikaner voters were members of the Ossewabrandwag - a Nazi propaganda group founded during world war 2 to try and convince South Africa to switch from allies to axis.
Before that, it was the same words the British used to justify the destruction of two independent republics through the systematic killing of 27 thousand women and children in the South African concentration camps.
Right now, it's the exact same words the Chinese government is using to justify turning a sixth of the worlds population into sweatshop workers that is only one step away from slaves (a step DOWN in many cases). Well "mandate of heaven" is near as makes no difference.
Just how big a set of ideological blinders do you need to be wearing to make the same mistakes yet again, the same arguments that have consistently led to the persecution of individualism and subsequent atrocities, and somehow convince yourself that what you're doing is about individual liberty and freedom.
It's like humanity has a predisposed concept that "individual freedom" is the right to live as I please, but other people only get it if they want to use it to live the same way I do - despite the obvious logical error of such thinking. Critical thinking is a good defense against that, but apparently it's a skill more rare than rocket scientists.