Dude, you're *seriously* misunderstanding the idea of a one time pad. A one time pad is not generated algorithmically (e.g. generate a pad of binary nonsense by flipping a fair coin) and is thus not breakable because the number of possible values it is limited only by the number of bits in the stream. What you're describing is a particular class of stream cipher. It is breakable because the number of possible values is limited by the number of bits in the key used to generate the stream. A real OTP cipher cannot be broken simply because any ciphertext of length N can map to any plaintext of length N with equal probability. This is not true for the schemes you described.
Of course, there are those who would argue that recent courts have basically changed this, turning them into lifetime-appointed legislators.
Yes, but those people rarely have data to back up the claim and are frequently just whining because their preferred unconstitutional legislation didn't pass the smell test.
I can think of a number of (minor) crims that I would be more likely to commit were it not for fear of punishment. I might park more than 20 minutes in a 20 minute parking space, for example. Certainly, a person who is willing to murder somebody is going to have a different behavior profile and probably be more likely to take risks, but the idea that deterrence means nothing is contradicted by any number of basic facts.
Then again, maybe we have the death penalty for the wrong crimes. I bet that illegal parking would drop to darn near 0% if we started giving people the chair for it.
This has been an exhaustingly long discussion. I admire your endurance, especially when looking at this in retrospect it becomes clear to me that I haven't always been fully engaged.
I've been spending a lot of time waiting for long builds to complete.:) Of course, it's probably best to let it trail off. This is probably the last I'll post on the topic.
Honestly, I've been dismissive, because I don't have the time to check the validity of your claims. There's so many lies out there that are pushed as truth that it would be impossible to verify or debunk each one without it becoming a full time job. I'm not arguing that the cases weren't accurately documented, I'm only skeptical of the way they're being characterized.
Understandable. To save you the trouble of digging through Kuo's book, the Washington Post has relevant excerpts here. Note that this was an example of systematic bias that just tends to creep in when one group is in charge. Probably nothing too inherently malicious, but definitely something in need of correction. As for (then) Governor Bush's remarks, the expanded quote is, "I don't think witchcraft is a religion. I would hope the military officials would take a second look at the decision they made." The context is, he was asked about it in an interview with ABC News in June of 1999 in response to Senator Thurmond's push to have the military reverse its stance on accomodating Wiccan ceremonies. I suppose it's just as valid to point out that Senator Thurmand was... well... pushing to have those accomodations removed essentially because they weren't Christian. The example is the same and the actor is different.
However, I think it's all in fairness since you dismissed my example of the ACLU using extortion, when the practice has been admitted by an ex-ACLU lawyer as one of the main reasons they left the organization. Don't take my word for it, lookup "Rees Lloyd" and PERA (H.R.2679).
Not surprisingly, I strongly disagree with the idea behind HR 2679. I don't disagree with you that the ACLU frequently barks up the wrong tree, but HR 2769 is simply silly. It essentially says that some amendments are OK for the government to violate. The burden of paying for a violation of the Constitution should *always* be paid by the organization that violates the Constitution. I shouldn't have to pay legal fees to defend my Constitutional rights if I'm in the right. If I'm wrong, that's a totally different matter, but that's not what PERA addresses in its current form. The solution to not paying the plantiff's fees in these cases is not to be found in violation of the Constitution. Remember, it takes more than an accusation to get legal fees paid. It takes a finding in favor of the plaintiff--a finding made by a person who amounts to a professional Constitutional analyst. If you're right and it's actually important enough for you to want legislation to protect you, fight the claim in court. If it's not that important for you to have a picture of Jesus in your school hallway, maybe it's better just to remove it. Of course, you rarely hear complaints about the legal fee structure when a group like the ADF wins a case and demands fees to pay their lawyers.
It's true that many people are upset at religion because they're naive enough to believe that we wouldn't be at war in the first place if religion never existed.
Yes, I happen to think that those people are nuts and have no serious perspective. We might have fewer laws on the books that have no rational social benefit other than pleasing a particular diety, but IMO, wars are generally factional and all about power. Religion is just a good excuse. Atheistic societies would just come up with a different excuse.
Yes, gold is becoming more valuable while the dollar is depreciating. Yes, if we were using gold as currency that would mean falling prices. No, that would not imply "suffering" unless the government and union leaders, acting on fallacious economic fantasies, instituted strict price controls like they did during the Depression.
Well, that and it makes debt phenomenally difficult to get out of, dries up the availability of credit, reduces spending, and generally creates a self-fulfilling prophecy of further deflation, dragging the entire financial system down.
You are also ignoring the fact that currencies tend to be more stable over time than regular commodities, being less subject to speculation and better distributed throughout the economy. Assuming a lack of government interference, the only speculation there would be on the value of gold currency would be the potential for the discovery of new mineable gold deposits, a fairly rare event. Present "gold speculation" is mostly speculation on the future value of the dollar, not the future value of gold. The significant increase in value in the past five years follows decades of government interference and misrepresentation of the amount of gold in government reserves.
Yes, that would probably stabilize the price to some extent, but it also puts a rather firm upper limit on the speed at which we can grow our economy without forcing steady deflation into the picture. Not to mention the fact that the price of gold assumes a certain rate of discovery of new deposits, and any short (and completely unpredictable) dry spells would result in spikes of deflation capable of knocking the wind out of even a robust economy.
All of this to avoid a minimal amount of generally well controlled inflation. I really think that a lot of the pining for the gold standard is simply a result of people being vaguely morally outraged that their hard-earned money is decreasing in value.
Because they have an understanding of what effects inflation has on an economy.
Please elaborate. And be sure to compare and contrast with the effects the same rate of deflation would have.
I think we're all for currency stability. Some of us just accept that it's not a reasonable propsition, and it't safer to err on one side than on the other.
No, but it's clear that you're assuming the worst of religion! The preferential treatment you speak of is called heritage! It's obvious that your idea of Utopia is obviously a godless one. That's fine, but I think your expectations are unrealistic.
Well, welcome to the 21st century when the question is no longer "What sect of Christian are you?" but "What is your religion of choice?" Heritage is great, but what we're talking about is preferential treatment. I've given examples of high government officials advocating the removal of protections from one specific religion and government organizations designed to equitably support charitable faith-based organizations denying claims solely due to groups being non-Christian. Perhaps I'm assuming the worst, but this isn't fantasy. These are documented cases of honest abuse of government power, not just conspiracy theories.
I'm not asking for government to push atheism. I don't even think that a godless future is a good future. I just think that the government should get out of the business of favoring one religion over the others, and that since it's clearly not possible to elect representatives who can act equitably, we are forced to look to protection from private advocacy groups like the ACLU. There's a big step between "I acknowledge that the Founding Fathers were predominantly Christian" to "Your religion isn't a real religion and shouldn't be treated the same way we treat real religions like mine."
You still haven't really answered my question. Is it OK for an executive to simply declare a religion "not real" and advocate that it not receive treatment commensurate with his own preferred religion? Does the Constitution only apply to freedom of Christianity? Simply put, is Mr. Bush wrong? Likewise, is it acceptable for a government program designed to fund faith based charities deny funding to non-Christian groups for no reason other then non-Christianity? If you answered no to either one, how then is it a problem when private advocacy organizations step up to fight those types of abuses when elected officials have clearly failed to do so?
Perhaps you missed the question mark. I was fishing for your opinion of what freedom-of-speech means to you. You see, I hate it when someone superimposes their own characterization of who they're debating by putting words in their mouth. I'm sure the accuser is just as guilty, but at least I called it. *Why not* then just debate our imaginary opponents?:P
To me, freedom of speech is freedom to say anything at all, whether popular or not with very few restrictions. The current restrictions involving libel, incitement to violence, fraud, etc. are all quite reasonable. My point about speech was simply that the test of whether or not rules protecting freedoms really matter is whether or not the majority only applies them when convenient to them. "We'll have freedom of speech when we agree with the speech, but not when we don't like the speech" the same hypocritical garbage as, "We'll forbid the government from favoring one religion unless they're favoring our religion." If we apply the rules like that, why having the rules at all?
Perhaps you're arguing that because there are exceptions to free speech, there should be exceptions to the establishment clause. If so, that's sensible. We don't allow speech that incites violence. We don't allow disclosure of classified information. We don't allow libel. Fair enough. Religions can't perform human sacrifice. You can't steal stuff just because your religion says you should. But these are cases of a compelling state interest. The examples I give are really just arbitrary favoritsm and a blatant disregard for responsible treatment of religion in a pluralistic society.
Well, I think you've done a fine job of exaggerating the dangers and negatives of religion throughout your examples too.
I was marvelling at the Jefferson / Adams letters a while ago noting the fact that Jefferson had, for his time, a tremendous intuitive understanding of what was formalized in economics only in the 20th century. Some of those men seemed to be at home in practically every subject, and it's interesting to think about the fact that at the time, it was quite possible to have an excellent understanding of a huge chunk of mankind's knowledge if you were intelligent and well-read. I found myself wondering, what would they be doing now? My guess is that there would be a lot of academics and professionals among the founding fathers, but very few leaders. These days, people with that kind of brainpower are able to focus it so tightly that they often end up spending their entire lives studying the lifecycle of a particular species of worm, or developing a deep understanding of an obscure branch of legal philosophy.
In some ways, it's a great thing for mankind's depth of knowledge to be increasing in so many areas and in such detail, but at the same time, it's sad to think that so many of the brilliant people doing research and winning Nobel prizes might have been the Renaissance man leaders of yesterday if they had been born in a different time or place. How many geniuses like Jefferson ended up becoming economics professors who spend every day studying corn prices rather than moving into public service? I just don't think that our society is designed to produce those kinds of leaders any more.
The idea that NPR is "non-commercial" is laughable at best.
OK, if you prefer "non-profit" we can use that. That's technically the most accurate. Any "begging" they do is purely to cover operating costs.
Besides, if they were really non-commercial, why would they be so interesting in punishing their competitors in the satellite radio business by filing frivolous lawsuits?
Because it costs money to get a license and broadcast on a certain frequency, and their competitors are essentially jamming those frequencies? Complaining that their rightfully licensed frequencies are being illegally stomped on and disrupting their service isn't exactly what I'd call "frivolous." If they weren't complaining, I would be complaining about their poor stewardship of the donations they receive.
I already mentioned the "all religions are fake" issue.
I'm sure you did...somewhere. So what are your criteria for deciding whether a religion is good enough to be protected? I personally am not big on the if(religion == Abrahamic) { ok; } else { fake; } test, but it seems more and more like it's just me these days.
Yes it does. Just because it is "popular" does not mean you won't get someone trying to censor it.
I suppose that's logically true but rarely true in reality. Note that I'm not against protecting popular speech either. I'm just bringing up a common (and possibly cliche) point that it's idiotic to say that suppressing free speech as long as it's unpopular is OK, just as it's silly to dump on a religion because it's unpopular because it generally DEFEATS THE WHOLE PURPOSE of having protections written into the Constitution.
He has a point on Wicca. Regardless of the point of whether or not ALL religions are fake, if there ever was a fake religion, Wicca is one. It was made up rather recently, just like Scientology. It certainly does not belong in the same category as any of the actual, valid, real cultural spiritual traditions.
Well, I'm glad Krell is here to sort that out for us. I was under the impression that all religions were made up like Scientology was at one point or another. They can't all be right, so logically most of them are completely wrong (even allowing that there is one religion that is actually true). The government has no business deciding which ones are silly and which ones are legitimate. I think that the critereon that the courts typically use makes more sense than how new the religion is or how crazy the beliefs are. Courts have typically asked, "Does this religion occupy the same place in this person's life as Christianity does in a Christian's life or Judaism does in a Jew's life?" If so, it's a religion like all the others. That's about as far as the government should be able to go. The day the government has the power to say, "Eh. Your religion sucks," is the day the 1st Amendment becomes meaningless.
Ahem... it is not. It is about protecting speech, period. No Constitutional preference is given to "unpopular" speech.
What I meant by that is that popular speech never needs to be protected. It's unpopular speech that tends to be repressed and needs the Constitution to protect it. Speech that the government agrees with or that makes the majority of the people happy never really ends up in court. The same is true for religions. Why do people think that the 1st Amendment should not have exceptions for unpopular speech, but exceptions for unpopular religions are perfectly OK?
I think your Wiccan challenge misses the point. Besides, treating all religion equally regardless of violence or popularity is a very unrealistic and simplistic approach to a very real and complex problem.
So can I assume that you think it's OK for a President or Unitary Executive or whatever Bush wants to call himself now to declare your religion to be "not a real religion" and strip any 1st Amendment protections from it? How far does that go, exactly? My point is that the government treats Christianity as the one special religion, Judaisim as a reasonably acceptable alternative, and everything else as nothing particularly important, and my examples of the government doing just that miss the point?!
I'm not sure where violence comes into this. That's not really the ACLU's purview, and there's no allowance for violence in the Constitution. Violence in religion is a law enforcement problem, and I would expect anybody wrapping themselves up in Constitutional protection over religious violence to be laughed out of court and into jail. Please correct me if I've missed an important example.
I believe I said that you were "insinuating." It's not an exaggeration of your position it's a criticism. And now you are insinuating that Christians are more capable of "crossing the line" than Secularists, but the line cuts both ways! Nevermind, that I think you're grossly misinterpreting what Thomas Jefferson meant by Seperation of Church and State.
I hate it when people insinuate something in written debate and then deny it when caught, but I sincerely wasn't trying to do that. I think that you may have captured what I meant, but your sentence has two meanings. I agree with you that Christians are "more capable" of crossing the line, but not in the sense that they're more predisposed to do so. By "more capable" I mean they control every branch of government at every level. I think that other religious groups are just as capable of being abusive toward minority groups. I just think that they don't actually do so in the US because they don't have any power to do so. It's no conspiracy. It's not some sort of evil predisposition. It's just the simple fact that Christians happen to be running the place these days. In countries where another religion is in charge, you see the abuses running in other directions.
As for Jefferson, try reading Madison instead. Madison was instrumental in the Constitution's treatment of religion, and his works are quite clear. Jefferson wasn't the only one involved (although arguments could certainly be made about his position as well).
I was only expressing how I feel about the ACLU. I'm glad that you mentioned Muslims, because I seriously doubt that the ACLU will ever challenge Muslims. For one, if they attacked Muslims or offended them in anyway they risk being murdered by their violent Muslim counterparts!
I seriously doubt that. The ACLU has historically not had any problem offending violent terrorist groups (e.g. white supremacist groups who threatened and killed civil rights workers). Fortunately, the religion in charge is fairly benign and can be fought in the courts with only minimal worry about nutty folks getting violent.
I agree. It's fair to fault me for not mentioning that our freedoms didn't come at a high cost of life and personal sacrifice. But, I have no idea what meddling or benefits you speak of since you offer no specifics.
Specific exmaple: David Kuo's new book (remember, Kuo was Deputy Director of Bush's Faith Based Initiative...not exactly an ACLU shill) points out how the office of Faith Based Initiatives often gave rejected non-Christian religious groups for no reason other than their being non-Christian. You yourself admit that Bush thinks it's OK for Christian prayer groups and ceremonies to use US military property, but not Wiccan groups. My point is, the government shou
Coincidentally, I was just talking to our a hardware manufacturing engineer at the office about PC power supplies today, and he said (without my prompting), "I had never heard of any computer manufacturer using 150 watt power supplies in PCs until I opened an eMachines system." I don't know how common it is, but that could go a long way toward explaining complaints of unreliable hardware operation. Of course, it's probably also a clear indication of the average amount of skimping that goes into the selection of parts for off-the-shelf PCs.
Anyway, in my experience, just installing plain vanilla Windows XP on a machine that was unreliable running whatever customized OEM abomination they ship with the system often does wonders for stabilizing the system. I've learned not to trust things like "Bob's Wizz-O Problem Reporter Service" that come pre-installed and use up 20% of my system resources straight from the factory. The phrase "more harm than good" comes to mind.
Okay, let me refresh your memory. You were insinuating that Christians are a threat to our freedom. I'm not sure what world you live in when you suggest that Christians are insensitive to other people's beliefs when Christians have been exceedingly tolerant and respectful of other's beliefs. You must be thinking about some crazy cult that claims to be Christian, but is completely intolerant of other people's lifestyles or beliefs. Allow me to be the first to inform you that they're not _real_ Christians and probably spend their time misquoting the Holy Bible!:)
So it would be OK for a Wiccan to perform an opening prayer at a Congressional session? Saying that Christians are a threat to freedom is a definite exaggeration of my position. Saying that the Christians who are in charge of the goverment cross the line of separation of church and state and go so far as to endorse their own religion over those of others would be more accurate. Of course, No True Scotsman...errr...Christian would ever do such a thing, so I suppose the whole argument is moot, no?
I'm not thinking of a crazy cult blowing people up. I'm thinking of people putting up the 10 Commandments in a courthouse to the exclusion of other historical laws. I'm thinking of the myriad organizations who want organized prayer in public schools. I'm thinking of the push to get creationist teachings into public schools. I'm thinking of the people who want to ban un-Christian books from public libraries. They're not dangerous violent extremists, but they're out there, they have politicians who pander to them, and when the government wrongly takes up their cause against minority interests, the ACLU is there to protect them.
In Vermont the opposite is happening, judges are the ones being ridiculously soft on rapist and pediphiles by enabling them to continue their heinous acts literally months after their sentence.
I'm not sure what case(s) you're referring to here. I doubt it's a "cruel and unusual punishment" case. Are you sure it's not just a case of judges enforcing the laws that were given to them? That's what they normally do for a living.
So, you believe that the ACLU is being fair when they specifically target Christianity over all other religions, fine. You think that judges should have the final say on our most pressing social issues, fine.
NO! Are you reading what I'm writing? I'm saying they *don't* target Christianity over other religions. I'm saying that they target whatever religion is being foisted on the people by their government. It just happens that Christians are the ones in charge right now. If Muslims or Jews or Buddhists are ever in charge, you'll be hearing from those groups that the ACLU hates them. It's simply nonsense.
"We're all for Christianity, but keep the other stuff out." You're mischaracterizing the Christian religion as one of intolerance and I'm afraid the only evidence you'll find points to extreme isolated examples, like someone blowing up abortion clinics and claiming to be Christian.
So when President Bush said (as Governor of Texas at the time), that the military should not allow Wiccan ceremonies because they're not a real religion and don't deserve the same constitutional protections as other religions, that was a fringe belief in line with blowing up abortion clinics? You get all the freedom of religion you want as long as the government agrees that your religion is OK?
In reality, the majority of Christians are more tolerant than both deism and atheism combined. How do you think America became the melting pot that it is today? It's because America has been a Christian nation that not only has tolerated, but encouraged multiculturalism for centuries.
I think that's a bit of a whitewashing of the centur
I think we agree here, as long as we agree to the simple act of expressing one's belief or the traditional prayer that's offered before each session of Congress doesn't translate to some warped idea of proselytizing.
I suppose that really depends on how it's done. Can Muslims offer a prayer before Congress opens? Buddhists? If not, I think it's pretty clear that the government is saying something along the lines of We're all for Christianity, but keep the other stuff out. That's walking pretty close to pushing one religion over the others, don't you think?
As for abusing office, I'm of the opinion that every single member of Congress is already guilty to a number of various offenses, probably all money related. Which I hope points out the obvious, that abuse of power isn't limited to religion.
No, definitely not. But that doesn't mean that government endorsement of religion isn't an abuse of power.
Nobody's buying anything. The history of the ACLU speaks volumes against any meager efforts they made to defend our religious freedoms. Do you just turn a blind eye when the ACLU uses extortion against small towns to force them to concede to such extremes as stripping religious symbols from their community logos? That may be your idea of America and protecting our civil liberties, but it's certainly not mine!
Really, have you actually looked at the long list of cases that the ACLU has taken up, or are you just picking up snippets of facts from conservative blogs? I agree that the ACLU goes overboard sometimes, but those cases are *very much* the exception and not the norm. In fact, most of those ridiculous sounding cases fall apart on further inspection. What you refer to as "meager efforts" is simply an a result of the fact that Christians are *very* rarely discriminated against by the government. It's like asking why civil rights organizations rarely stood up for white people in the Jim Crow era. There just weren't any serious cases when they had to.
Please, *real* Islamic fascists that use _violence_ to hijack governments and break the will of the people are a much more valid and credible threat than your imagined Christian fascists.
I'm not sure how that follows from what I pointed out. Do you really think that there are that many cases of the government violating the religious rights of Christians that the ACLU is ignoring? Or does the fact that the Christian majority in the US isn't violent excuse the fact that they're sometimes insensitive to people with other beliefs?
Call me crazy, but I thought the Consitution was designed to limit the power of the government not the people.
When the people are the government, yes you're crazy. If 55% of Californians wanted to reinstitute slavery and passed a ballot initiative, would the Supreme Court be wrong in striking it down?
And it's very contradictive of you to claim that Christians run the government "top to bottom" yet fear losing "their power" to a Christian influenced Constitution.
How so? The government has to follow the Constitution and it frequently wants to violate it in silly ways. The Constitution doesn't say, "It's OK for the government to establish religion as long as it's Abrahamic," or, "Establishment of religion is great as long as you're not violent about it." Does the fact that the government can't glorify your particular religion over the others really make life that hard? Can't the government just stay neutral on the topic?
Of course the reality is that the various branches of our government are in constant need of balance. Some are more right leaning where others are more left leaning.
Over the course of history, that's certainly true. One thing that doesn't change (and shouldn't) is the fact that the judiciary's job is
Sorry, but you are fundamentally wrong. When a government official on government property expresses their love for their creator or prays in the name of "Jesus" - that's freedom of speech! It is neither an establishment of religion nor a government endorsement or sponsorship of religion!
I think that there's a very fine line to walk. If you're using your office specifically to promote a particular religion, you're abusing your power. If you want to prostelytize, feel free, but don't do it with government resources, and don't even try to imply that the government is behind you on it. Don't abuse your office. That's all that's being asked.
They have consistently alienated Christians by seeking to demonize their religion as a threat to our society.
It's amazing to me that so many people buy into this "ACLU has an anti-Christian agenda" crap. The ACLU defends Christian speech and rights on a regular basis. I doubt that the typical ACLU-bashers ever mention those cases, though. The perceived anti-Christian bias may be due to two simple facts interacting with one another:
1) The ACLU's job is to protect the rights of individuals against abuse of power by the government.
2) The government is run, from top to bottom in every branch, by Christians.
I'm not saying that fact #2 is a bad thing. I'm just pointing out that when there is a case of government sponsored religion violating the Constitution, it's almost certainly going to be in a pro-Christian way. When somebody else is in power, you can bet that the ACLU will be all over them. Until then, American Christians need to get over their bizarre persecution complex and live with the fact that the Constitution limits their power.
In my state back in 2004 there was a vote to make marriage between a man and a women and it passed like 80%. However some people didn't like this and took it to court and had it thrown out. Why bother voting anymore when a hand full of people get to impose what they want even though the majority of the people don't want it?
Perhaps to protect minority groups from abusive majority groups who get whipped up into a frenzy over nonsense like "protecting marriage" whenever some politicians want to get out the vote? Think of how great these sorts of protections will be if you're ever in the minority.
I believe that what people vote should come above anything else even the courts (unless there is is error or fixing in the vote that could change the outcome and can be proven) and can not be overturned unless by another vote from the people.
That doesn't work so well when the majority of people aren't black and happen to think that blacks should be slaves. Or when the majority of people aren't Jewish and think that something really should be done about the "Jewish Problem." Or when the majority of people arne't involved in interracial relationships and think that such activities are against What Nature Intended and should be outlawed.
Seriously, is not being able to dump on people who are different from you cramping your style that badly?
Question: If a private US citizen managed to acquire the equipment, materials, and knowhow to create a low-yield nuclear weapon and keep it in his house, would his right to do so be protected by the 2nd Amendment?
In my experience, they come from the factory configured in a very fragile way. Like most major manufacturers, they pump up one particular spec (mabye a fast clock rate on the processor) and skimp on everything else, but that's not the core of the issue. My experience with eMachines has always been that they ship with drivers that are easily broken and a generally weird OEM Windows deployment. When I worked at a university help desk, we keep statistics on makes and models to do recommendations for future students, and eMachines absolutely dominated the complaints lists.
Dude, it has everything to do with it. The whole idea is that private is "better" because of competition. People who make that argument consistently point to the high performance numbers of private school students. If it turns out that private schools do *not* inherently provide a better education due to their much vaunted competitive market but rather due to simple selection bias, the whole driving idea behind vouchers is sort of nullified.
I'm not anti-market at all. I think that private industry does a great job of providing lots of services. I went to a private college and got a top notch education. Based on what I remember about public high school, though, the maximum pace of a class and quality of education was mainly hampered by people who were disrupting the class and had to be socially promoted anyway, not due to some sort of systemic flaw in how the education was provided. There are a lot of reasons to believe that a market will not necessarily solve the problems, and when you're talking about something as drastic as essentially dismantling the public school system, it's a good idea to be relatively sure of what you're doing first.
Only if you think that a good education is the right of only a tiny handful of elite achievers.
Err... you miss the point. He was pointing out that you're assumign causation. Private schools bring in "better" students (on average) to begin with. The fact that the students there are "better" should come a no surprise and is not necessarily an indicator that they're somehow producing better students.
A friend of mine who went to a top university once said essentially, "It's good to be in the business of being an elite university. You comb the applications for the best of the best and then weed them out further over the course of four years. Finally, when the strongest, smartest, and hardest working of an initially elite group emerge, you can pat yourself on the back and say, 'Look what we produced!'"
And to say we will spend 15 years cleaning up Iraq is dumb, the most pessimistic projections by anyone who could be considered knowledgeable indicate Iraqis will be able to take over all security in their country within two years.
Are these the same knowledgeable peoplle who failed to predict the total meltdown of law and order in the country to begin with?
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Dude, you're *seriously* misunderstanding the idea of a one time pad. A one time pad is not generated algorithmically (e.g. generate a pad of binary nonsense by flipping a fair coin) and is thus not breakable because the number of possible values it is limited only by the number of bits in the stream. What you're describing is a particular class of stream cipher. It is breakable because the number of possible values is limited by the number of bits in the key used to generate the stream. A real OTP cipher cannot be broken simply because any ciphertext of length N can map to any plaintext of length N with equal probability. This is not true for the schemes you described.
I can think of a number of (minor) crims that I would be more likely to commit were it not for fear of punishment. I might park more than 20 minutes in a 20 minute parking space, for example. Certainly, a person who is willing to murder somebody is going to have a different behavior profile and probably be more likely to take risks, but the idea that deterrence means nothing is contradicted by any number of basic facts.
Then again, maybe we have the death penalty for the wrong crimes. I bet that illegal parking would drop to darn near 0% if we started giving people the chair for it.
I've been spending a lot of time waiting for long builds to complete. :) Of course, it's probably best to let it trail off. This is probably the last I'll post on the topic.
Understandable. To save you the trouble of digging through Kuo's book, the Washington Post has relevant excerpts here. Note that this was an example of systematic bias that just tends to creep in when one group is in charge. Probably nothing too inherently malicious, but definitely something in need of correction. As for (then) Governor Bush's remarks, the expanded quote is, "I don't think witchcraft is a religion. I would hope the military officials would take a second look at the decision they made." The context is, he was asked about it in an interview with ABC News in June of 1999 in response to Senator Thurmond's push to have the military reverse its stance on accomodating Wiccan ceremonies. I suppose it's just as valid to point out that Senator Thurmand was... well... pushing to have those accomodations removed essentially because they weren't Christian. The example is the same and the actor is different.
Not surprisingly, I strongly disagree with the idea behind HR 2679. I don't disagree with you that the ACLU frequently barks up the wrong tree, but HR 2769 is simply silly. It essentially says that some amendments are OK for the government to violate. The burden of paying for a violation of the Constitution should *always* be paid by the organization that violates the Constitution. I shouldn't have to pay legal fees to defend my Constitutional rights if I'm in the right. If I'm wrong, that's a totally different matter, but that's not what PERA addresses in its current form. The solution to not paying the plantiff's fees in these cases is not to be found in violation of the Constitution. Remember, it takes more than an accusation to get legal fees paid. It takes a finding in favor of the plaintiff--a finding made by a person who amounts to a professional Constitutional analyst. If you're right and it's actually important enough for you to want legislation to protect you, fight the claim in court. If it's not that important for you to have a picture of Jesus in your school hallway, maybe it's better just to remove it. Of course, you rarely hear complaints about the legal fee structure when a group like the ADF wins a case and demands fees to pay their lawyers.
Yes, I happen to think that those people are nuts and have no serious perspective. We might have fewer laws on the books that have no rational social benefit other than pleasing a particular diety, but IMO, wars are generally factional and all about power. Religion is just a good excuse. Atheistic societies would just come up with a different excuse.
Yes, that would probably stabilize the price to some extent, but it also puts a rather firm upper limit on the speed at which we can grow our economy without forcing steady deflation into the picture. Not to mention the fact that the price of gold assumes a certain rate of discovery of new deposits, and any short (and completely unpredictable) dry spells would result in spikes of deflation capable of knocking the wind out of even a robust economy.
All of this to avoid a minimal amount of generally well controlled inflation. I really think that a lot of the pining for the gold standard is simply a result of people being vaguely morally outraged that their hard-earned money is decreasing in value.
I think we're all for currency stability. Some of us just accept that it's not a reasonable propsition, and it't safer to err on one side than on the other.
Well, welcome to the 21st century when the question is no longer "What sect of Christian are you?" but "What is your religion of choice?" Heritage is great, but what we're talking about is preferential treatment. I've given examples of high government officials advocating the removal of protections from one specific religion and government organizations designed to equitably support charitable faith-based organizations denying claims solely due to groups being non-Christian. Perhaps I'm assuming the worst, but this isn't fantasy. These are documented cases of honest abuse of government power, not just conspiracy theories.
I'm not asking for government to push atheism. I don't even think that a godless future is a good future. I just think that the government should get out of the business of favoring one religion over the others, and that since it's clearly not possible to elect representatives who can act equitably, we are forced to look to protection from private advocacy groups like the ACLU. There's a big step between "I acknowledge that the Founding Fathers were predominantly Christian" to "Your religion isn't a real religion and shouldn't be treated the same way we treat real religions like mine."
You still haven't really answered my question. Is it OK for an executive to simply declare a religion "not real" and advocate that it not receive treatment commensurate with his own preferred religion? Does the Constitution only apply to freedom of Christianity? Simply put, is Mr. Bush wrong? Likewise, is it acceptable for a government program designed to fund faith based charities deny funding to non-Christian groups for no reason other then non-Christianity? If you answered no to either one, how then is it a problem when private advocacy organizations step up to fight those types of abuses when elected officials have clearly failed to do so?
To me, freedom of speech is freedom to say anything at all, whether popular or not with very few restrictions. The current restrictions involving libel, incitement to violence, fraud, etc. are all quite reasonable. My point about speech was simply that the test of whether or not rules protecting freedoms really matter is whether or not the majority only applies them when convenient to them. "We'll have freedom of speech when we agree with the speech, but not when we don't like the speech" the same hypocritical garbage as, "We'll forbid the government from favoring one religion unless they're favoring our religion." If we apply the rules like that, why having the rules at all?
Perhaps you're arguing that because there are exceptions to free speech, there should be exceptions to the establishment clause. If so, that's sensible. We don't allow speech that incites violence. We don't allow disclosure of classified information. We don't allow libel. Fair enough. Religions can't perform human sacrifice. You can't steal stuff just because your religion says you should. But these are cases of a compelling state interest. The examples I give are really just arbitrary favoritsm and a blatant disregard for responsible treatment of religion in a pluralistic society.
My examples we
I was marvelling at the Jefferson / Adams letters a while ago noting the fact that Jefferson had, for his time, a tremendous intuitive understanding of what was formalized in economics only in the 20th century. Some of those men seemed to be at home in practically every subject, and it's interesting to think about the fact that at the time, it was quite possible to have an excellent understanding of a huge chunk of mankind's knowledge if you were intelligent and well-read. I found myself wondering, what would they be doing now? My guess is that there would be a lot of academics and professionals among the founding fathers, but very few leaders. These days, people with that kind of brainpower are able to focus it so tightly that they often end up spending their entire lives studying the lifecycle of a particular species of worm, or developing a deep understanding of an obscure branch of legal philosophy.
In some ways, it's a great thing for mankind's depth of knowledge to be increasing in so many areas and in such detail, but at the same time, it's sad to think that so many of the brilliant people doing research and winning Nobel prizes might have been the Renaissance man leaders of yesterday if they had been born in a different time or place. How many geniuses like Jefferson ended up becoming economics professors who spend every day studying corn prices rather than moving into public service? I just don't think that our society is designed to produce those kinds of leaders any more.
Because it costs money to get a license and broadcast on a certain frequency, and their competitors are essentially jamming those frequencies? Complaining that their rightfully licensed frequencies are being illegally stomped on and disrupting their service isn't exactly what I'd call "frivolous." If they weren't complaining, I would be complaining about their poor stewardship of the donations they receive.
I suppose that's logically true but rarely true in reality. Note that I'm not against protecting popular speech either. I'm just bringing up a common (and possibly cliche) point that it's idiotic to say that suppressing free speech as long as it's unpopular is OK, just as it's silly to dump on a religion because it's unpopular because it generally DEFEATS THE WHOLE PURPOSE of having protections written into the Constitution.
What I meant by that is that popular speech never needs to be protected. It's unpopular speech that tends to be repressed and needs the Constitution to protect it. Speech that the government agrees with or that makes the majority of the people happy never really ends up in court. The same is true for religions. Why do people think that the 1st Amendment should not have exceptions for unpopular speech, but exceptions for unpopular religions are perfectly OK?
So can I assume that you think it's OK for a President or Unitary Executive or whatever Bush wants to call himself now to declare your religion to be "not a real religion" and strip any 1st Amendment protections from it? How far does that go, exactly? My point is that the government treats Christianity as the one special religion, Judaisim as a reasonably acceptable alternative, and everything else as nothing particularly important, and my examples of the government doing just that miss the point?!
I'm not sure where violence comes into this. That's not really the ACLU's purview, and there's no allowance for violence in the Constitution. Violence in religion is a law enforcement problem, and I would expect anybody wrapping themselves up in Constitutional protection over religious violence to be laughed out of court and into jail. Please correct me if I've missed an important example.
I hate it when people insinuate something in written debate and then deny it when caught, but I sincerely wasn't trying to do that. I think that you may have captured what I meant, but your sentence has two meanings. I agree with you that Christians are "more capable" of crossing the line, but not in the sense that they're more predisposed to do so. By "more capable" I mean they control every branch of government at every level. I think that other religious groups are just as capable of being abusive toward minority groups. I just think that they don't actually do so in the US because they don't have any power to do so. It's no conspiracy. It's not some sort of evil predisposition. It's just the simple fact that Christians happen to be running the place these days. In countries where another religion is in charge, you see the abuses running in other directions.
As for Jefferson, try reading Madison instead. Madison was instrumental in the Constitution's treatment of religion, and his works are quite clear. Jefferson wasn't the only one involved (although arguments could certainly be made about his position as well).
I seriously doubt that. The ACLU has historically not had any problem offending violent terrorist groups (e.g. white supremacist groups who threatened and killed civil rights workers). Fortunately, the religion in charge is fairly benign and can be fought in the courts with only minimal worry about nutty folks getting violent.
Specific exmaple: David Kuo's new book (remember, Kuo was Deputy Director of Bush's Faith Based Initiative...not exactly an ACLU shill) points out how the office of Faith Based Initiatives often gave rejected non-Christian religious groups for no reason other than their being non-Christian. You yourself admit that Bush thinks it's OK for Christian prayer groups and ceremonies to use US military property, but not Wiccan groups. My point is, the government shou
Coincidentally, I was just talking to our a hardware manufacturing engineer at the office about PC power supplies today, and he said (without my prompting), "I had never heard of any computer manufacturer using 150 watt power supplies in PCs until I opened an eMachines system." I don't know how common it is, but that could go a long way toward explaining complaints of unreliable hardware operation. Of course, it's probably also a clear indication of the average amount of skimping that goes into the selection of parts for off-the-shelf PCs.
Anyway, in my experience, just installing plain vanilla Windows XP on a machine that was unreliable running whatever customized OEM abomination they ship with the system often does wonders for stabilizing the system. I've learned not to trust things like "Bob's Wizz-O Problem Reporter Service" that come pre-installed and use up 20% of my system resources straight from the factory. The phrase "more harm than good" comes to mind.
So it would be OK for a Wiccan to perform an opening prayer at a Congressional session? Saying that Christians are a threat to freedom is a definite exaggeration of my position. Saying that the Christians who are in charge of the goverment cross the line of separation of church and state and go so far as to endorse their own religion over those of others would be more accurate. Of course, No True Scotsman...errr...Christian would ever do such a thing, so I suppose the whole argument is moot, no?
I'm not thinking of a crazy cult blowing people up. I'm thinking of people putting up the 10 Commandments in a courthouse to the exclusion of other historical laws. I'm thinking of the myriad organizations who want organized prayer in public schools. I'm thinking of the push to get creationist teachings into public schools. I'm thinking of the people who want to ban un-Christian books from public libraries. They're not dangerous violent extremists, but they're out there, they have politicians who pander to them, and when the government wrongly takes up their cause against minority interests, the ACLU is there to protect them.
I'm not sure what case(s) you're referring to here. I doubt it's a "cruel and unusual punishment" case. Are you sure it's not just a case of judges enforcing the laws that were given to them? That's what they normally do for a living.
NO! Are you reading what I'm writing? I'm saying they *don't* target Christianity over other religions. I'm saying that they target whatever religion is being foisted on the people by their government. It just happens that Christians are the ones in charge right now. If Muslims or Jews or Buddhists are ever in charge, you'll be hearing from those groups that the ACLU hates them. It's simply nonsense.
So when President Bush said (as Governor of Texas at the time), that the military should not allow Wiccan ceremonies because they're not a real religion and don't deserve the same constitutional protections as other religions, that was a fringe belief in line with blowing up abortion clinics? You get all the freedom of religion you want as long as the government agrees that your religion is OK?
I think that's a bit of a whitewashing of the centur
I suppose that really depends on how it's done. Can Muslims offer a prayer before Congress opens? Buddhists? If not, I think it's pretty clear that the government is saying something along the lines of We're all for Christianity, but keep the other stuff out. That's walking pretty close to pushing one religion over the others, don't you think?
No, definitely not. But that doesn't mean that government endorsement of religion isn't an abuse of power.
Really, have you actually looked at the long list of cases that the ACLU has taken up, or are you just picking up snippets of facts from conservative blogs? I agree that the ACLU goes overboard sometimes, but those cases are *very much* the exception and not the norm. In fact, most of those ridiculous sounding cases fall apart on further inspection. What you refer to as "meager efforts" is simply an a result of the fact that Christians are *very* rarely discriminated against by the government. It's like asking why civil rights organizations rarely stood up for white people in the Jim Crow era. There just weren't any serious cases when they had to.
I'm not sure how that follows from what I pointed out. Do you really think that there are that many cases of the government violating the religious rights of Christians that the ACLU is ignoring? Or does the fact that the Christian majority in the US isn't violent excuse the fact that they're sometimes insensitive to people with other beliefs?
When the people are the government, yes you're crazy. If 55% of Californians wanted to reinstitute slavery and passed a ballot initiative, would the Supreme Court be wrong in striking it down?
How so? The government has to follow the Constitution and it frequently wants to violate it in silly ways. The Constitution doesn't say, "It's OK for the government to establish religion as long as it's Abrahamic," or, "Establishment of religion is great as long as you're not violent about it." Does the fact that the government can't glorify your particular religion over the others really make life that hard? Can't the government just stay neutral on the topic?
Over the course of history, that's certainly true. One thing that doesn't change (and shouldn't) is the fact that the judiciary's job is
No, they don't, but that's not the question. Do you think that nuclear weapons would be covered by the 2nd Amendment? If not, why not?
It's amazing to me that so many people buy into this "ACLU has an anti-Christian agenda" crap. The ACLU defends Christian speech and rights on a regular basis. I doubt that the typical ACLU-bashers ever mention those cases, though. The perceived anti-Christian bias may be due to two simple facts interacting with one another:
1) The ACLU's job is to protect the rights of individuals against abuse of power by the government.
2) The government is run, from top to bottom in every branch, by Christians.
I'm not saying that fact #2 is a bad thing. I'm just pointing out that when there is a case of government sponsored religion violating the Constitution, it's almost certainly going to be in a pro-Christian way. When somebody else is in power, you can bet that the ACLU will be all over them. Until then, American Christians need to get over their bizarre persecution complex and live with the fact that the Constitution limits their power.
That doesn't work so well when the majority of people aren't black and happen to think that blacks should be slaves. Or when the majority of people aren't Jewish and think that something really should be done about the "Jewish Problem." Or when the majority of people arne't involved in interracial relationships and think that such activities are against What Nature Intended and should be outlawed.
Seriously, is not being able to dump on people who are different from you cramping your style that badly?
Question: If a private US citizen managed to acquire the equipment, materials, and knowhow to create a low-yield nuclear weapon and keep it in his house, would his right to do so be protected by the 2nd Amendment?
In my experience, they come from the factory configured in a very fragile way. Like most major manufacturers, they pump up one particular spec (mabye a fast clock rate on the processor) and skimp on everything else, but that's not the core of the issue. My experience with eMachines has always been that they ship with drivers that are easily broken and a generally weird OEM Windows deployment. When I worked at a university help desk, we keep statistics on makes and models to do recommendations for future students, and eMachines absolutely dominated the complaints lists.
So the disaster that was Katrina was the result of the *lack* of Presidential powers? Do tell.
Dude, it has everything to do with it. The whole idea is that private is "better" because of competition. People who make that argument consistently point to the high performance numbers of private school students. If it turns out that private schools do *not* inherently provide a better education due to their much vaunted competitive market but rather due to simple selection bias, the whole driving idea behind vouchers is sort of nullified.
I'm not anti-market at all. I think that private industry does a great job of providing lots of services. I went to a private college and got a top notch education. Based on what I remember about public high school, though, the maximum pace of a class and quality of education was mainly hampered by people who were disrupting the class and had to be socially promoted anyway, not due to some sort of systemic flaw in how the education was provided. There are a lot of reasons to believe that a market will not necessarily solve the problems, and when you're talking about something as drastic as essentially dismantling the public school system, it's a good idea to be relatively sure of what you're doing first.
A friend of mine who went to a top university once said essentially, "It's good to be in the business of being an elite university. You comb the applications for the best of the best and then weed them out further over the course of four years. Finally, when the strongest, smartest, and hardest working of an initially elite group emerge, you can pat yourself on the back and say, 'Look what we produced!'"