The motive doesn't have to be getting someone in trouble. It wouldn't be hard to subvert the system, and make the school administrators look like incompetent morons, by large-scale posting under other people's names, preferrably those of students whose parents are prominent and/or wealthy. The first time a student is expelled or otherwise harassed for something they can later prove they didn't do, it'll be legal nightmare for the school, and both expensive and embarassing. This could even be arranged--the student could just not try very hard to prove they didn't make the post in question, and then after they were expelled, provide an airtight alibi, and make a huge, loud, boisterous issue of it. It isn't as if schools are big on due process, so this would be easy to do. Let the school hang itself.
Fortunately, we know that teenagers don't enjoy causing their school authorities embarassment and undue expense. So the above scenario probably won't happen. I for one certainly hope it doesn't. I can only hope no teenagers from the school think of this. Ahem.
On a less vengeful tangent, if the kids shared a master list of usernames and passwords, and cross-posted constantly to each other's names, it would make it pretty much impossible to enforce anyway. It would be a fun exercise in annoying the hell out of the administrators, though it wouldn't be as fun as watching the school blunder into an expensive lawsuit.
Ah, so even the "Communist News Network" used the wrong word to avoid admitting that Limbaugh plea-bargained in a criminal drug case. The leftist bias of our media is breathtaking.
And I admit I sort of knew that pundits never had integrity. I just keep trying to be more optimistic than my username, but I always keep coming back to misanthropy. Sigh.
I'm sorry, I'm not a scientist and perhaps that's why I can't graps how the hell they came to this genius conclusion.
Yes, your assessment of your own abilities is more accurate than your assessment of the science involved in what they are doing. What I don't see is how you started out so well, acknowledging the fact that you didn't know what you were talking about, and then stumbled on anyway to decide that they were making it all up and it was actually, as you called it, "garbage." It's as if you don't think that your own admitted, acknowledged ignorance diminishes the validity of your analysis. Are you really that arrogant? And if you are, might you not want to re-think something in your intellectual approach to science, and in fact to rational thought? Just an idea.
No, I'm not calling you stupid. I don't understand quantum mechanics, among other subjects. However, I realize that my ignorance means that I am extremely unqualified to dismiss any article on quantum mechanics as "garbage." That doesn't mean that I have to believe everything, or that I am suffering from the "argument from authority" fallacy, only that I recognize that science has been a very productive, very successful mental process, and the bare fact that I don't understand something scientists are saying doesn't mean that they're making it all up. Just saying "Zeuss did it" is just making it up, but flying a freaking spaceship out to the edge of the solar system to gather data to analyze proves that the thought process is based on something rational and dependable, even if I don't understand all the aspects of the science.
I know my response is disproportionate to your original post. The reason I wrote it is that too many people, knowing full well that they don't know what they're talking about, still feel eminently qualified to have a passionate opinion on scientific subjects. Usually their assessment is that the science is "garbage," that scientists are "just making it all up," and that it's just a "secular religion" used to explain away God, or some such crap. Meanwhile I'm sitting in an air-conditioned room, wearing glasses, looking at my car keys, and otherwise surrounded by things that were all created by science, none of which were created by prayer or chanting. Hearing people denigrate the scientific method, even while being surrounded by the fruits of that method, is starting to chafe my hide.
Drudge cracks me up--I look at his site every day. A few weeks ago one of his headlines was "Rush Limbaugh Reaches Settlement." Of course, Rush Limbaugh didn't reach a settlement, but a plea bargain in his criminal drug case. Plea bargains are common in criminal drug cases, but they are not settlements, because settlements happen in civil cases, not criminal. But Drudge didn't want to call it what it was, so he used the wrong word. He couldn't very well say "Rush Limbaugh pleads guilty to drug charge to keep out of jail and end his ordeal" and still keep his readership happy. There is a line between being biased and being a liar, and I'm not sure which side Drudge is on. Without even the pretense of objectivity, it's hard to tell--does integrity matter at all?
I think it's funny that any time any Republican at all is in trouble, he dredges through history for a "flashback" link to a Democrat in trouble, be it ever so long ago. But the same "context" isn't provided if a Democrat is in trouble. Drudgereport is an interesting barometer of the Republican mindset. It isn't pretty, but then again the Daily Kos isn't pretty either. Did pundits ever have integrity, or have I just gotten old and disillusioned?
A third option button could be a Googlesque "I'm feeling lucky." The outcome could be somewhat randomized, but probability-weighted by the number of times you've already infected yourself. To separate out the posers, there should be a, say,.11 probability that someone actually comes to your home and punches you. But to keep them playing there should be a, say,.063 probability that you get a free ice cream. The permutations are endless. It's just more fun if you keep the net pain higher than the net gain, but low enough that they don't notice that they're doomed to, on balance, always lose over the long term. Sort of like Vegas. That seems to be a good model to shoot for.
The breathing impulse is driven by an excess of carbon dioxide, not a shortage of oxygen. It doesn't change the conclusion, but the distinction is interesting.
1) If noticing that ice melts when the temperature rises above freezing makes me a Nazi, then... oh screw it, you're just an idiot. You really are a nutcase if you bring up the Nazis and eugenics just because someone pointed out we can deduce from melting ice that temperature has risen. I'm getting a very black-helicopter, New-World-Order vibe from the connections you've made. Is that you, Randy Weaver?
Yeah, I agree, that's such a mystery. Ice melts when it's getting colder, too. Only not. Glaciers and ice shelfs are melting. Everywhere. Now. If an ice cube has remained frozen for 10,000 years and then it starts to melt, you'd consider it idiotic to say we can't be sure if the temperature was rising or not. You'd consider it idiotic, because that is idiotic. People only act mystified because they don't like the conclusions to be drawn, or perhaps they don't want to be seen on the side of the Greenpeace wackos.
Is it a long-term trend?
Let's wait 20,000 years to find out. It's not like we're doing any damage in the meantime. Why reduce pollutants now when we don't know conclusively, definitively, that polluting our environment causes the precise ill effects we're being warned of, to the precise degree that we're being warned? How do we really know that poison is poisonous? Needs more study--jury is still out.
Is the observed change man-made?
If I start a fire, is the resulting damage from me, or from the chemical reaction that would have occasionally taken place anyway? Tough to say--probably a question for the philosophers, really. Though we know that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases will raise the temperature in all of our experiments, and we know that we're pumping record amounts of these gases into the environment, there is zero reason to extrapolate what we know to be true to the larger scale, where the conclusion would be inconvenient. Better to do absolutely nothing than to spend one dime on trying to prevent irreversible damage. It's not like we'll be here, anyway. The rapture is due any day now, and the liberals can save the owls once we're gone, right? Hey, let's attack Iran next! What were we talking about again?
The problem is that IDers are not just a bunch of harmless backwater hicks. They are actively trying to redefine the meaning of the word science. That statement is not hyberbole. The Kitzmiller decision is one good example -- it was admitted on the stand (by Behe) that for ID to qualify as science, then the definition of science would have to change. What it would change to would also include (also according to Behe) astrology.
They are attempting to undermine the very basis of rational thought just because it doesn't align with what they think the Bible says. This is NOT new -- Luther himself called reason "Satan's whore." There is a long and rich tradition of anti-intellectualism in this movement, and the denial of global warming (and then the backup position, that humans aren't involved) goes hand-in-hand with Intelligent Design. Also involved here is the fact that most evengelicals (who make up the vast bulk of the ID movement) believe that Jesus is coming back during their lifetime--i.e. end-times are nigh. If you literally believe that you and yours will be raptured to Jesus in the next few decades, then don't you think that might just influence your views on the necessity of environmental activism? So flinging about the label of religious nutjob, while entertaining, is not by any means gratuitious.
ID and "skepticism" over global warming are both integral parts of the same movement. This linkage is not figurative or polemical--we're talking about two fronts being fought by the same army. So bringing up ID in this context is nothing at all like calling someone a Nazi just because you don't like them.
Yes, moderators land hard on ID proponents, just as they would if someone said "I don't buy it that germs cause disease," or, "I don't believe in continental drift--it's just a theory." The astounding arrogance and willful ignorance of ID proponents deserves to be modded down. Would you be for "teaching the controversy" to placate a group that wanted to displace the germ theory in favor of the idea that demonic possession causes illness? No, eventually you'd get snippy and start humiliating them in public, because it's just a stupid position to take.
...I hope that the goverment would do something if this was forced on the employees working in the datacenter
This is the USA, the land of the free. No one would ever or could ever force this or any other condition of employment on citizens. We will always have the freedom to starve to death instead. All other "freedoms" were concocted by activist judges who hate America.
Look at the instituion of slavery which did not die out because it stopped being profitable or convient. People began to change their minds on how they viewed slavery and it became unpopular.
Slavery did stop being profitable and convenient for the North. The north had more highly developed industry, more factories, and other ways of making money that no longer depended on slavery, so they could conveniently, and with no threat to their own livelihoods, find slavery unacceptable. The less necessary it was for them financially, the more objectionable it was. Eventually it became so unacceptable that they wanted it illegal throughout the country, but the South was still economically dependent on slavery. In the South, where the wealth of the most prominent citizens was still dependent on slavery, slavery was accepted.
The U.S. Civil War was very much about money. Morality was there too, but it only took the forefront when, again, doing the wrong thing was no longer profitable or convenient. Yes, there are exceptions, like the Quakers, who put morality first, but those are the exception, not the rule.
Capitalism isn't just the magical fount of universal goodness that Ayn Rand made it out to be. Corporations are essentially psychopathic, and will always do what will bring them financial profits, and only do what is legal and moral when doing so contributes to the bottom line. This isn't some well-kept secret or cryptic insight into modern history.
IBM and Ford Motor Co., among many others, helped the Nazis. Today, Haliburton is involved in slave lavor and also trades with Iran, a known sponsor of state terrorism, and the U.S. Vice President has stock in the company. Who do you think armed the dictators of the world, socialist peace activists?
Does this makes capitalism horrible? No, because it's only as good as we are. People like to do the right thing, and will do the right thing, when doing the wrong thing is no longer profitable or convenient. But when you work in a corporation where your job is to make profit for said corporation, and easy and convenient rationalizations abound for doing what you know would be wrong if you personally were doing it, you can still do it with a clean conscience, because it isn't you, it's the corporation.
It isn't as if there are evil people out there somewhere doing evil things, and if only we could stop them, the world would be okay. That counts for a relatively small percentage of the badness in the world. Most of it comes from normal, decent people rationalizing their asses off so they can do what is profitable and convenient.
I didn't say I hated my job. You assumed I hate it because I don't love it. You also assumed that I'm unhappy there. That's the problem with the "love what you do" Nazis. They always think they have attained some deep insight into your psyche based not on the quality of your work, but on whether or not you like it.
I don't hate my job, nor am I unhappy there. It's a job. I don't love my car, but to follow your logic I must hate it, and be miserable driving it. I don't, and I'm not. It's transportation, an efficient method for getting from A to B. My car works for the task I ask from it, as does my job. That is an important point, and bears thinking about. My job gets me the money and benefits I want, and asks from me things I am willing to do. What I do is largely boring and unfulfilling, but I don't hate it. Doing what I do allowed me to live in Tokyo for 5 years, and it's shortly taking me to Korea, and then to Italy for 3+ years. But if you want the cool stuff then you have to do what the man wants. The snowflakes bitch more than I do, because they want the cool benefits but they also expect to find the work a spiritual odyssey or some such crap. I'd clean toilets for the pay and benefits I'm getting. The job is only a way of bringing money and benefits my way. It is a means to an end.
My nickname is a bit of hyperbole. But I find it vindicated more often than not. And my co-workers like having me around, because I have more of a sense of humor than the stick-up-the-ass snowflake nazis.
It's great if you can find self-actualization in your work, but the world is full of flakes who expect too much satisfaction from what they do. If it isn't interesting, challenging, rewarding, and fulfilling, then they can't be bothered, but it still has to be done, and they are the ones standing there getting paid to do it, not to placate their inner unique snowflake. Trained workers don't spring into existence to take the place of the ones who won't work because they feel that they're "not really into it." I work with some of these people, and mostly they just have a high sense of entitlement.
I have a totally bleak outlook on work--to me, it's just an exchange of time/effort for money/benefits. But the strange thing is, I do the work. I work longer hours, more willingly, than some of those around me who claim to take "pride" in what they do, because I figure if I'm going to be a whore, at least I'll be a good whore and earn the man's money.
The only hard part is faking the orgasm, because the boss-people don't want to hear that you work there for money and benefits. So I occasionally have to act as if it was great, the best I've ever had, wow may I have another, just to appease the "love what you do!" Nazis. God how I hate them.
Support of the second amendment does not imply disregard for the rest of the Bill of Rights.
Then support of the other nine amendments doesn't imply disregard for the second amendment. However, that isn't what I hear from gun aficionados. I didn't say that NRA types hated the other nine amendments, only that they dedicate 1/9 as much attention to the Bill of Rights as do the ACLU types. If you support both, then you're 100% covered, and I respect that.
Yeah, the ACLU is so inconsistent it drives me nuts. I worked with a guy who said that he didn't respect the ACLU, because they were so selective with what parts of the Constitution they suppored. He was a card-carrying member of the NRA, however. So we did a little math exercise. Here's a word problem:
If the ACLU supports all of the Constitution but the 2nd Amendment, that means they support only 9/10 of the Bill of Rights. How deplorable! The NRA supports the 2nd Amendment zealously, and in my opinion, rightly. The math question for the day is this -- which number is bigger, 9/10 or 1/10? So gun-nuts, who habitually hate the ACLU, are a whopping 1/9th (.1 vs.9) as supportive of the Bill of Rights as those America-hating ACLU-weenies, but that makes them more patriotic? Isn't that a bit odd? Or is my math wrong here?
I had a great time with this, since this co-worker cast himself as such a patriot. I wrote the numbers 1/10 and 9/10 on a piece of paper and went around the office asking people at random which number was bigger. I was scratching my head, muttering "but that can't be right...." He wasn't too amused.
Moral: if you like guns, just say that you like guns. Don't try to pretend that it's because of your fealty to the Consitution. This especially applies if you happen to be a quasi-totalitarian in all other aspects of your politics.
A few people were warned by an individual officer.
All officers are individual officers. And when you ignore the individual officer's warning, you can be arrested for something unrelated but vaguely sinister, such as causing a disturbance, resisting an officer, blocking a thoroughfare, etc. Even if it isn't overtly sinister, you're still a criminal, and who's going to believe a criminal?
If they really don't like you, they can say you threatened them and arrest you for that. If they push you and you reflexively grab their wrists, you might get shot, and at the very least you've now assaulted an officer of the law. They can provoke you with impunity, because no one will believe you. Everyone will take their word for it, because you're just a schmuck with a camera, while they were putting their life on the line to protect and serve. Cops are heroes, and you're just a suspect who stopped them from keeping us safe. Who told you you have these "rights" to take pictures? Wow, another bleeding heart liberal. Haven't you done enough damage to our country without berating the poor police officers?
The ideal situation for cops is where there just about everything is illegal if they want it to be, so they can tell you "move along" and you have no choice. Cops are people, people like power, and people also generally have trouble dealing well with power. It tends to go to their heads. But as long as we always give the cops the benefit of the doubt, we will be falling headlong into a police state. Of course that won't matter until you're the one who gets the stern "move along," and by then it's too late. The only way to protect freedom is to be skeptical of, even slightly hostile to, government power. If abuse of power is considered innocuous, then we're pretty much done with the whole freedom thing.
It has to do with very long-term world strategy and stability.
So you're calling it an outright failure, I take it? Terrorism worldwide is higher than it's been at any other point since terrorism has been tracked. Iraq is on the verge of civil war. Before the war, Iraq was neither a source of terrorism nor a source of regional instability. Now, the opposite is true on both counts. Your perspicacity is daunting.
The PNAC spelled out explicitly why they wanted to invade Iraq, and then they did it. Those reasons wouldn't have convinced your average American, so we hired some public relations firms to convince American to go to war. None of this is secret or mysterious. Americans have always been easy to whip into a war-frenzy, and this was no exception. Yawn.
I did like your tone of condescension and implied superior knowledge, though. Facts and logic aside, you had some good points.
The current situation didn't arise out of a vacumn, but occured over many presidencies, several of which were Democrat presidencies...
Yes, that's true. But the Right exclusively, since 9-11, has characterized anyone who even questioned them as terrorist sympathizers. The erosion of freedom has accelerated under the neo-conservatives, has it not? Clinton was no libertarian poster-boy, but it was only after his tenure that the President has claimed the power to hold American citizens indefinitely without charges, to wiretap Americans in explicit violation of written law, etc. President Bush does not believe his actions and decisions are rightly subject to either judicial or legislative oversight. He is openly repudiating the separation of powers, the system of checks and balances that limit the power of one branch of government. No, he hasn't suspended American elections and imprisoned his critics, but the trend is disturbing, don't you think? Do you know of a Democratic president who tried to repudiate the separation of powers?
No matter what the government does, a large swath of the population, not to mention the powers-that-be themselves, will always consider it legal and appropriate. The President could outright suspend habeus corpus, conduct summary executions, and carpet-bomb cities, and he would still have the utmost certitude that what he was doing is right, and millions of Americans would agree wholeheartedly. Probably half, perhaps more, of Americans don't really care about freedom in any substantive way, and to them civil rights are "liberal" issues only ACLU-types would favor over the security and safety of even one (American) life. And they all know that the ACLU is a bunch of wacko far-leftists hellbent on undermining all that is good about the United States.
So let's stop pretending that if only Americans knew exactly what the government was doing that they would demand change, much less accountability. The Right has won by demonizing anyone who is skeptical of government power as anti-American, liberal, terrorist-sympathizing, and so on. By the time that whitebread, middle-class Americans are pissed off by the "show me your papers or go to jail for an indefinite length of time, and no we don't have to charge you with anything" state that America is moving towards, that apparatus will be too entrenched by precedent and public apathy and it will be too late to undo it completely. There may be a symbolic backlash a few years from now, but the recovery of civil rights will be less than the loss, and the progression will be ever downward.
Freedom requires a skepticism of government power. Every law, every prerogative of the police, every restriction, has to be greeted with a raised eyebrow and "why do you need that power?" for freedom to survive in society. That spirit is hard to find in Americans, and you can't kindle it in someone who doesn't have it.
One of my first jobs was with an electronics company that made circuit boards for cameras that went in police cars. If the flashing lights were on, then the camera was on. My second week on the job I remember the boss saying that the police departments had requested a modification--they wanted a way to turn off the camera while the flashing lights were still on. The first thing that popped into my mind was "why would they want to turn off the camera?" My entire political philosophy is built up from that question, but if your instincts are more trusting and credulous when it comes to government, then the question would never occur to you. Freedom requires skepticism of government motives. People have to understand and believe that, like Lord Acton said, power does corrupt. Not might or could, but does.
Corporations exist to make money. They are motivated not by morality, decency, ethics, but only by what is profitable. The documentary The Corporation captures this insight perfectly. A corporatation, to the extent that it is a virtual, legal "person," is a psychopath. Psychopaths are motivated by their own profit and convenience, and morality is a lesser, largely irrelevant concern. This doesn't mean that they are always evil, only that they are good when and only when it is financially profitable to be good. Nor does this mean that the profit motive is evil, only that elevating it to the dominant value makes conventional morality irrelevant. Do you want to live in a world where morality is irrelevant next to profit? If so, then applaud Google's decision loudly.
Then there is the fact that universities, even most private universites, are funded by the government. This pre-disposes professors to a big-government pro-social-spending world view.
So why is the military, which is much more socialistic than the universities, so much more right-wing? Unlike the universities, the military is 100% dependent on taxpayer money, so they must be really socialist. Pinkos galore. Only not. Also, if your reasoning were true, CEOs of companies that subsist because of military/government contracts, like Haliburton, McDonnel-Douglas, etc, would be borderline socialist in their outlook, but they aren't. The right wing is full of people who love large government spending projects, who love social engineering and big government. Yes, they say that the believe in small government, but if you want the government to define "marriage" and ban weed, then you don't really believe in small government.
And if professors loved big-government pro-social-spending worldview, then they would support the Iraq war, wouldn't they? That's a government (our) using money (ours) to try to build a democracy from scratch, while also trying to rebuild the entire infrastructure. Social spending galore! Only they don't support it.
Or are you saying that Republicans are liberals? You've confused me. You do know that "critical of government decisions" doesn't mean "communistic liberal traitor" just because a Republican is in the White House, right?
I really don't think "the signatory agrees to never say or do anything we disagree with or find objectionable, forever and ever" is really an actionable contractual clause. Even if the contract said "Thou shalt not dishonor the profession" there isn't enough specificity there to apply to calling an unspecified someone a "cockmaster." Perhaps he was a cockmaster. One never knows. You're assuming that being a cockmaster is a bad thing. Perhaps the blog in question was meant as a fictional account. Perhaps the cockmaster in question is a composite character based only very loosely on real personages, past or future.
And I didn't make it a civil rights issue. I didn't invoke the Constitution. I just said, in so many words, that as soon as you give people a little power then turn into petty demi-gods, and want to smite anyone who offends them. They had this guy's professional future hanging by a thread, so they think they can make him bark like a dog if it amuses them. Doing something isn't right just because you can get away with it.
As I said originally, the AMA et al are not guarantors of competence and knowledge. Try to sue the AMA because a card-carrying member is incompetent, or drunk, or molests his patients, and you will find out in short order that they do not consider themselves responsible. That alone undermines the brunt of your argument.
And I didn't characterize them as "dirty little guilds," but the characterization is halfway apt. The AMA has been instrumental in barring chiropractors, midwives, homeopaths, osteopaths, etc from the market, as much as they could manage. I'm sure the AMA would tell you it was about safety (what else would they say?) but when self-interest is involved, I can't discount that as the primary motive. Their long-term, systematic actions have served to keep the field small, which has the effect of keeping prices high.
I agree that they take their position of trust seriously. But the student in question wasn't smuggling kiddie porn laced with drugs--he was just venting, verbally, without directly naming anyone. The choices we're facing aren't total 24/7 control vs. total anarchy. I can understand the professional organization or school weeding out the criminals and perverts, or those with clearly bad ethics, but this is just an issue of "we can squeeze him if he says something we dislike, so we will."
Stalking is illegal, and is a different issue from criticism. I wouldn't cry foul if he was expelled for stalking, child pornography, murder-for-hire, etc. He criticised some people without naming names, and they landed on him for it. That isn't in the same league. Making non-specific rants on a web page is not of the same nature as stalking, rape, robbery, etc.
And I work with doctors every day. For most it is precisely a job. And as a job it is very worth it. A guy I work with just got accepted to a plastic surgery residency. After the training, he'll essentially be rich. Where you and I differ is that I don't think viewing something as a job is bad. A job is a service provided for money and benefits. Hospitals are businesses, as are dental offices. True, some (not all) like their job--some even feel that they were called to it. I know one guy who went so he could work only a couple of days a week (in Emergency Med) and still make a good living. I know many who went just because their family pressured them into it. I know a few who went on a whim. I don't know any who would feel lessened in their 'profession' by the rantings of this student on a web page.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah, so even the "Communist News Network" used the wrong word to avoid admitting that Limbaugh plea-bargained in a criminal drug case. The leftist bias of our media is breathtaking.
And I admit I sort of knew that pundits never had integrity. I just keep trying to be more optimistic than my username, but I always keep coming back to misanthropy. Sigh.
A third option button could be a Googlesque "I'm feeling lucky." The outcome could be somewhat randomized, but probability-weighted by the number of times you've already infected yourself. To separate out the posers, there should be a, say, .11 probability that someone actually comes to your home and punches you. But to keep them playing there should be a, say, .063 probability that you get a free ice cream. The permutations are endless. It's just more fun if you keep the net pain higher than the net gain, but low enough that they don't notice that they're doomed to, on balance, always lose over the long term. Sort of like Vegas. That seems to be a good model to shoot for.
The breathing impulse is driven by an excess of carbon dioxide, not a shortage of oxygen. It doesn't change the conclusion, but the distinction is interesting.
1) If noticing that ice melts when the temperature rises above freezing makes me a Nazi, then... oh screw it, you're just an idiot. You really are a nutcase if you bring up the Nazis and eugenics just because someone pointed out we can deduce from melting ice that temperature has risen. I'm getting a very black-helicopter, New-World-Order vibe from the connections you've made. Is that you, Randy Weaver?
2) You misspelled amateur, Einstein.
They are attempting to undermine the very basis of rational thought just because it doesn't align with what they think the Bible says. This is NOT new -- Luther himself called reason "Satan's whore." There is a long and rich tradition of anti-intellectualism in this movement, and the denial of global warming (and then the backup position, that humans aren't involved) goes hand-in-hand with Intelligent Design. Also involved here is the fact that most evengelicals (who make up the vast bulk of the ID movement) believe that Jesus is coming back during their lifetime--i.e. end-times are nigh. If you literally believe that you and yours will be raptured to Jesus in the next few decades, then don't you think that might just influence your views on the necessity of environmental activism? So flinging about the label of religious nutjob, while entertaining, is not by any means gratuitious.
ID and "skepticism" over global warming are both integral parts of the same movement. This linkage is not figurative or polemical--we're talking about two fronts being fought by the same army. So bringing up ID in this context is nothing at all like calling someone a Nazi just because you don't like them.
Yes, moderators land hard on ID proponents, just as they would if someone said "I don't buy it that germs cause disease," or, "I don't believe in continental drift--it's just a theory." The astounding arrogance and willful ignorance of ID proponents deserves to be modded down. Would you be for "teaching the controversy" to placate a group that wanted to displace the germ theory in favor of the idea that demonic possession causes illness? No, eventually you'd get snippy and start humiliating them in public, because it's just a stupid position to take.
The U.S. Civil War was very much about money. Morality was there too, but it only took the forefront when, again, doing the wrong thing was no longer profitable or convenient. Yes, there are exceptions, like the Quakers, who put morality first, but those are the exception, not the rule.
IBM and Ford Motor Co., among many others, helped the Nazis. Today, Haliburton is involved in slave lavor and also trades with Iran, a known sponsor of state terrorism, and the U.S. Vice President has stock in the company. Who do you think armed the dictators of the world, socialist peace activists?
Does this makes capitalism horrible? No, because it's only as good as we are. People like to do the right thing, and will do the right thing, when doing the wrong thing is no longer profitable or convenient. But when you work in a corporation where your job is to make profit for said corporation, and easy and convenient rationalizations abound for doing what you know would be wrong if you personally were doing it, you can still do it with a clean conscience, because it isn't you, it's the corporation.
It isn't as if there are evil people out there somewhere doing evil things, and if only we could stop them, the world would be okay. That counts for a relatively small percentage of the badness in the world. Most of it comes from normal, decent people rationalizing their asses off so they can do what is profitable and convenient.
I don't hate my job, nor am I unhappy there. It's a job. I don't love my car, but to follow your logic I must hate it, and be miserable driving it. I don't, and I'm not. It's transportation, an efficient method for getting from A to B. My car works for the task I ask from it, as does my job. That is an important point, and bears thinking about. My job gets me the money and benefits I want, and asks from me things I am willing to do. What I do is largely boring and unfulfilling, but I don't hate it. Doing what I do allowed me to live in Tokyo for 5 years, and it's shortly taking me to Korea, and then to Italy for 3+ years. But if you want the cool stuff then you have to do what the man wants. The snowflakes bitch more than I do, because they want the cool benefits but they also expect to find the work a spiritual odyssey or some such crap. I'd clean toilets for the pay and benefits I'm getting. The job is only a way of bringing money and benefits my way. It is a means to an end.
My nickname is a bit of hyperbole. But I find it vindicated more often than not. And my co-workers like having me around, because I have more of a sense of humor than the stick-up-the-ass snowflake nazis.
I have a totally bleak outlook on work--to me, it's just an exchange of time/effort for money/benefits. But the strange thing is, I do the work. I work longer hours, more willingly, than some of those around me who claim to take "pride" in what they do, because I figure if I'm going to be a whore, at least I'll be a good whore and earn the man's money.
The only hard part is faking the orgasm, because the boss-people don't want to hear that you work there for money and benefits. So I occasionally have to act as if it was great, the best I've ever had, wow may I have another, just to appease the "love what you do!" Nazis. God how I hate them.
If the ACLU supports all of the Constitution but the 2nd Amendment, that means they support only 9/10 of the Bill of Rights. How deplorable! The NRA supports the 2nd Amendment zealously, and in my opinion, rightly. The math question for the day is this -- which number is bigger, 9/10 or 1/10? So gun-nuts, who habitually hate the ACLU, are a whopping 1/9th (.1 vs .9) as supportive of the Bill of Rights as those America-hating ACLU-weenies, but that makes them more patriotic? Isn't that a bit odd? Or is my math wrong here?
I had a great time with this, since this co-worker cast himself as such a patriot. I wrote the numbers 1/10 and 9/10 on a piece of paper and went around the office asking people at random which number was bigger. I was scratching my head, muttering "but that can't be right...." He wasn't too amused.
Moral: if you like guns, just say that you like guns. Don't try to pretend that it's because of your fealty to the Consitution. This especially applies if you happen to be a quasi-totalitarian in all other aspects of your politics.
If they really don't like you, they can say you threatened them and arrest you for that. If they push you and you reflexively grab their wrists, you might get shot, and at the very least you've now assaulted an officer of the law. They can provoke you with impunity, because no one will believe you. Everyone will take their word for it, because you're just a schmuck with a camera, while they were putting their life on the line to protect and serve. Cops are heroes, and you're just a suspect who stopped them from keeping us safe. Who told you you have these "rights" to take pictures? Wow, another bleeding heart liberal. Haven't you done enough damage to our country without berating the poor police officers?
The ideal situation for cops is where there just about everything is illegal if they want it to be, so they can tell you "move along" and you have no choice. Cops are people, people like power, and people also generally have trouble dealing well with power. It tends to go to their heads. But as long as we always give the cops the benefit of the doubt, we will be falling headlong into a police state. Of course that won't matter until you're the one who gets the stern "move along," and by then it's too late. The only way to protect freedom is to be skeptical of, even slightly hostile to, government power. If abuse of power is considered innocuous, then we're pretty much done with the whole freedom thing.
The PNAC spelled out explicitly why they wanted to invade Iraq, and then they did it. Those reasons wouldn't have convinced your average American, so we hired some public relations firms to convince American to go to war. None of this is secret or mysterious. Americans have always been easy to whip into a war-frenzy, and this was no exception. Yawn.
I did like your tone of condescension and implied superior knowledge, though. Facts and logic aside, you had some good points.
So let's stop pretending that if only Americans knew exactly what the government was doing that they would demand change, much less accountability. The Right has won by demonizing anyone who is skeptical of government power as anti-American, liberal, terrorist-sympathizing, and so on. By the time that whitebread, middle-class Americans are pissed off by the "show me your papers or go to jail for an indefinite length of time, and no we don't have to charge you with anything" state that America is moving towards, that apparatus will be too entrenched by precedent and public apathy and it will be too late to undo it completely. There may be a symbolic backlash a few years from now, but the recovery of civil rights will be less than the loss, and the progression will be ever downward.
Freedom requires a skepticism of government power. Every law, every prerogative of the police, every restriction, has to be greeted with a raised eyebrow and "why do you need that power?" for freedom to survive in society. That spirit is hard to find in Americans, and you can't kindle it in someone who doesn't have it.
One of my first jobs was with an electronics company that made circuit boards for cameras that went in police cars. If the flashing lights were on, then the camera was on. My second week on the job I remember the boss saying that the police departments had requested a modification--they wanted a way to turn off the camera while the flashing lights were still on. The first thing that popped into my mind was "why would they want to turn off the camera?" My entire political philosophy is built up from that question, but if your instincts are more trusting and credulous when it comes to government, then the question would never occur to you. Freedom requires skepticism of government motives. People have to understand and believe that, like Lord Acton said, power does corrupt. Not might or could, but does.
Corporations exist to make money. They are motivated not by morality, decency, ethics, but only by what is profitable. The documentary The Corporation captures this insight perfectly. A corporatation, to the extent that it is a virtual, legal "person," is a psychopath. Psychopaths are motivated by their own profit and convenience, and morality is a lesser, largely irrelevant concern. This doesn't mean that they are always evil, only that they are good when and only when it is financially profitable to be good. Nor does this mean that the profit motive is evil, only that elevating it to the dominant value makes conventional morality irrelevant. Do you want to live in a world where morality is irrelevant next to profit? If so, then applaud Google's decision loudly.
And if professors loved big-government pro-social-spending worldview, then they would support the Iraq war, wouldn't they? That's a government (our) using money (ours) to try to build a democracy from scratch, while also trying to rebuild the entire infrastructure. Social spending galore! Only they don't support it.
Or are you saying that Republicans are liberals? You've confused me. You do know that "critical of government decisions" doesn't mean "communistic liberal traitor" just because a Republican is in the White House, right?
And I didn't make it a civil rights issue. I didn't invoke the Constitution. I just said, in so many words, that as soon as you give people a little power then turn into petty demi-gods, and want to smite anyone who offends them. They had this guy's professional future hanging by a thread, so they think they can make him bark like a dog if it amuses them. Doing something isn't right just because you can get away with it.
And I didn't characterize them as "dirty little guilds," but the characterization is halfway apt. The AMA has been instrumental in barring chiropractors, midwives, homeopaths, osteopaths, etc from the market, as much as they could manage. I'm sure the AMA would tell you it was about safety (what else would they say?) but when self-interest is involved, I can't discount that as the primary motive. Their long-term, systematic actions have served to keep the field small, which has the effect of keeping prices high.
I agree that they take their position of trust seriously. But the student in question wasn't smuggling kiddie porn laced with drugs--he was just venting, verbally, without directly naming anyone. The choices we're facing aren't total 24/7 control vs. total anarchy. I can understand the professional organization or school weeding out the criminals and perverts, or those with clearly bad ethics, but this is just an issue of "we can squeeze him if he says something we dislike, so we will."
And I work with doctors every day. For most it is precisely a job. And as a job it is very worth it. A guy I work with just got accepted to a plastic surgery residency. After the training, he'll essentially be rich. Where you and I differ is that I don't think viewing something as a job is bad. A job is a service provided for money and benefits. Hospitals are businesses, as are dental offices. True, some (not all) like their job--some even feel that they were called to it. I know one guy who went so he could work only a couple of days a week (in Emergency Med) and still make a good living. I know many who went just because their family pressured them into it. I know a few who went on a whim. I don't know any who would feel lessened in their 'profession' by the rantings of this student on a web page.