Only so far as I am ashamed of being a part of the human race.
Any other country would do the same thing (and have, and are) to maintain itself. Furthermore, any country that would just roll over and die rather than do what it can to support itself is just asking to be exterminated.
I am a realist: I know the thin veneer of civilization that we all profess to love and support is only as deep as our own convenience. Take away or threaten that convenience and you will see the violent and savage genetic heritage of mankind come rushing in to fill the void. (There are any number of examples of this on CNN right now, take your pick for verification purposes.) Justifications are just there to placate our semi-evolved sense of rational thought. The reason that justificaion is so easy to perpetrate is that our hindbrains know what is going on and they, lacking the hindrance of the rational mind, just need the cooperation of the higher ups to get to the business they were evolved for.
You may call it brutal on my part, and I can accept that. However by entertaining the idea that I should be ashamed, you are appealing to a higher motivation or ideal. I repsect that and am even motivated by higher callings myself. Unfortunately there are so few examples of any country acting in a manner consistent with higher ideals and motivations that is seems the ideal is unattainable and contrary to the nature of mankind. To pursue ideals is noble but to ignore the reality of history is naive and irrational. To point fingers when everyone is capable of the same degenerate behavior and furthermore is descendant from stock that are here only because of this lack of civilized ideology and MO is disingenuous.
Peace treaties are signed when the winning force has to send out a search party to find someone on the opposing side that isn't dead and still has fingers to sign with.
Anything short of unconditional surrender means a "cease fire."
No we don't declare war anymore. I think they are saving this one for our next (last?) total war. If the USA ever does officially declare war on another country I think that the whole world will have rather they not have.
As for the term bully, well I think you misuse the term. Bullies throw their weight around on the playground because of insecurity and only when the teacher isn't looking. The US works like a predatory animal, taking what it needs to feed itself and its young. Give the US a little credit in that if they could stop their interventions without losing the economic ascendence they have achieved they probably would.
Wanna stop the US from messing with everyone? Invent a way to power our cars and cities that is renewable, abundant, cheap, and easily attainable. As long as scarcity prevails our predations will continue. All we require is someone with the ability to stand in the oval office and tell us why we are justified in our actions.
You think you have seen the bully? Just wait till we start to run dangerously low on oil. You haven't seen shit yet.
"One common law I have a problem with: denying those with previous felony convictions the right to vote."
I agree wholeheartedly. These people have been through the fire, figuratively speaking, and they should have their votig rights restored. Treating them with some semblance of dignity, respect, and reacceptance after their incarceration could even help them integrate into normal society. That is unless you feel that "rehabilitation" is synonymous with "lifelong ostracism" as many people do.
It is outrageous that dead people and illegal aliens get to vote while someone with the same name as a registered felon who completed their prison term 20 years ago gets turned away from the voting booth. Selective enforcement of sufferage rights is tantamount to vote tampering and reeks to hell.
"You can't gain ground in this battle. There is no big leader, no key figure, no enemy headquarter to be conquered to end the battle."
You are correct in that statement to a point, however the enemy we face is a socioeconomic structure that when coupled with vast religion-governemnt integration and opressive tactics results in an entire region of the world being militarized around intolerant religious principles. The idea is to remove the base of support by rearanging the political structure around well established secular principles. This in turn will lead (hopefully) to alleviation of the pressure on the population in the form of religious oppression and (what some see as) undue pressure. Essentially the prospect is modernization (political, social, and economic) and Westernization of the middle East.
In spite of all that, even if that objective is achieved, the idea that is being fought will still exist. So in truth the war can still be waged into perpetuity.
"to reduce unemployment (as hard as it sounds, but killing people (or having them killed) reduces your workforce"
If this is part of the goal for Iraq we need to get busy killing more Americans. This has been a total wash out in terms of losing American lives. One of the least bloody (for Americans) offensives in our history. The fact that so many people are appaled at the relatively low number of lives lost is curious to me. I fear that if we ever had a truly formidable enemy, even in a conflict without as much controversey and dissent, that many in the US would quail before the prospect of troop losses proportional to historical wars.
In complete agreement with your comment I will posit that the unspoken word you need to concisely discribe this is Aristocracy.
That is what the US government is devolving into. Not only in that the select few will govern, but that they will comprise a class of people above the law of the commoners. You have no farther to look than the laws Bush is passing to make himself immune to prosecution after his term(other presidents are thinking "why didn't I think of that?!"), or the inter-party back scratching that results in Sandy Berger walking free after defrauding the American people of vital information from the National Archives.
The trappings of party division and political strife are the handwaving of a magician to distract the public while they systematically orchestrate the removal of our constitutional rights. Anyone else find it interesting that the two parties can be so divided on issues, yet when it comes time to yank the rug out from under the population they find a way to come together? See the votes on the DMCA, or the Patriot Act to get a whif of what I'm smelling.
If things have gotten this bad this fast, just imagine what will happen in the next 10 years. Especially if there is another event like 9/11. Emperor of the US anyone?
Show me even "two sides" of genocide, or homophobically motivated violence, racial prejudice, or slavery, much less this circle plot you refer to.
I won't apologize for stating that there are some things that I put in the category of "right" or "wrong" and I won't accept some high minded excuse for not making a value judgement and sticking to it. Principles can be as clear as black and white, even though the whole world may dissent.
Sure gray has a place. There are many complex issues (most of them) that deserve a gray/in-between rating. However to deny that some things are strictly wrong or inherently right invalidates the whole idea of value judgement and evaluation on a moral basis. If that is invalidated just go with what feels good and what profits you most, with every other concern to be damned.
With all these things going on that hamper his career it seems as if someone may have missed an installment on their eternal contrat with the Dark Lord. How else can you explain his devilishly incisive social commentary and comedic genius?
Fork over the rest of your soul Mr. Adams and lets all get back to laughing.
Because the use of embryonic stem cells has become the cause celebre for many political endeavors. The push to use them and find a working, even miraculous, treatment methodology that requires embryonic stem cells is not based only on the desire of scientists to explore their options in medicine and treat people more effectively. It is also the lynchpin in a political campaign that has money flowing around it like a vortex. That ethical baggage you refer to is, in many ways, the entire reason for the support of a (so far) failed medical technology.
I am not saying that the scientists themselves are complicit in some politically motivated effort. Far from it. However, the reason there is so much attention paid to embryonic stem cell research is this: if doctors can find a way to use it to, say, cure cancer, or diabetes, or lung disease, it would solidify a political victory on multiple fronts for many interested parties. Think og it as a gigantic "I told you so!" Therefore, it gets lots of media attention, and lots of funding, and undue scrutiny that is not based on the science itself or even the ethics of it, but a bastardized politicization of all those valid efforts and concerns.
Your comment seems rather obtuse to me as I have never seen a murderer with earmuffs singing "LALALALALA" while stabbing someone to death or shooting them in the face. Not even metaphorically.
Howerver I can only assume you are referring to those hot button categories of action (like wartime killing and capitol murder) that so many people point to and scream "hipocrisy!" about.
Fortunately the Bible is one of the most precise documents ever written and it makes clear the distinction between murder and other types of justifiable and necessary homocide. Anyone who reads the 10 commandments in context will understand this, as the scriptural discussion of what constitutes murder is voluminous and pretty hard to miss, even if you are trying.
The Bible dictates that self defense, wartime, and the excercise of the law are not only permissible reasons for homocide but in some cases they are required. So unless you are referring to Christians who routinely kill humans outside those boundaries I think you may be doing a little singing yourself.
He didn't define it as that in his post. What he said was that having a position where you can observe your enemy's movements is beneficial and many times one of the key factors in military victory.
As for Lagrange points, they are indefensible. Tactically I could understand covering those points with long range weapons to prevent your opponent from using them to their advantage, but occupying them would be suicide. Space based kinetic weapons or even a ground based one could fling stuff at the relatively stationary Lagrange points and eradicate whatever was there.
He didn't attack the current administration and say "Bush is a n00b" in his post. Also he didn't state that the US was going to kick off a space based arms race that will lead to the creation of more terrorists and the ultimate destruction of the US. Hmmm, he also left off the part where Katrina had something to do with this.
What I am trying to say is that with so many +5 moderated posts in this thread that are completely off topic, I think the moderators (all of whom didn't RTFA) have lost sight of just what the fuck we were supposed to be talking about.
MAn, have we all grown up in a society so conditioned by the 7 minute commercial interval that we can't look at the future.
There are most likely more than a million pieces of space junk orbiting the Earth. Give it some time and that number is likely to skyrocket. Some of them are good sized, but with relative velocity from aomething orbiting counter the direction of a craft's travel even a small object could do some major damage.
Even our most recent space flight was marred by an impact with possible space debris.
Give it 10 more years of increased space flight and it could become so hazardous around the Earth that satelites would be impossible to keep up. Even before it became impossible people would stop sending them up, as the risk factors would be too large. You do like having your satellite TV, and weather prediction, don't you?
IF commercial spaceflight becomes even one tenth as prevalent as standard airflight we could have a massive space trash crisis on our hands in very short order. Some sort of regulation is necessary and now is way past the time to start thinking about it and getting other nations on board with us.
Sorry if I came on a bit strong in my comment. I am acutely aware of hypocritical action by those self same people you describe and how, as a Christian myself, I get lumped in with them. It leads to hair trigger reactions on my part which is neither mature nor endearing. Sorry, I can be kind of a jerk sometimes.
I thought you meant that these people were specifically commissioned by the words of the Bible to do these things. I now understand better what you are saying and I agree with your ideas for the most part. I will posit that, even though they may think that this action is justified by their religious beliefs it is indeed not sanctioned. In fact it is condemned by the same book that they claim to believe in, defend, and represent.
I care about what I believe in and I study it like most scientists study their field of specialization. The crux of my angst is that I see Christians in the mainstream constantly misrepresenting the Bible and Christianity in their power hungry, self serving, politicization of religion and their holier-than-thou attitude. Then I see those people who, not knowing the Bible, react to those (self proclaimed yet hypocritical) Christians and, without other examples, use them as a representation of God, the Bible, and all Christians. So to distill it down yet again, my argument is that those Christians that you are obviously (and justifiably) upset about are as ignorant of the Bible as someone who has never read it. They use it more as a bludgeon than a textbook.
This sets up the age old dichotomy of the self-proclaimed "holy" acting arrogant and superior and trying to control everyone. Then those non-Christians watching them say "if that is what it is to be a Christian, I want nothing to do with it." Again, Christianity is poorly represented (or not at all) by those you speak of.
In my haste to judge those hypocritical Christians I lumped you in with them in ignorance of the Bible. I apologize. You obviously know something about it, though you might be happy to learn more. The greatest indictment of those "warrior for Christ" is the Bible itself. In numerous places it states that both pastors and the rank and file Christians should separate themselves from government. A Christian state is the sole right of Jesus to set up and create on Earth, not the work of mankind before He returns. It also says that trying to "help God" is analogous (in my terms) to trying to shorten your trans-Atlantic flight by getting out to push. There are many more doctrinal subjects that would show these impostors in the most unfavorable light imaginable, but I think you get the point and I ain't here to preach.
I wouldn't fret too much about them though. If they overstep their boundaries too much they won't last long. Yes the Dark Ages sucked, but without the power structure created by the "divine right of kings" where the people believe that sovereign power is on loan from God (and where the church knows it and takes advantage of the fact) the reaction to a religious oligarchy would be immediate revolt.
I think you will see the seeds of that rejection in '08 when the Dems will most likely achieve domination in the US government. Even Christians get tired of the government telling them what is right and wrong.
"the Dems have become quite considerably less evil in comparison"
Agreed and conceeded. However, it remains to be seen just what new and interesting evils we will suffer at the hands of the Democrats in 2008 and beyond.:)
"(As a perhaps-partially-related aside: With "
Nicely put. A government that has unrestricted use of torture against enemies is just one small step away from using it on their own citizens. To allow it without a strong system of oversight and checks and balances as you descrice is profoundly short sighted and tantamount to inviting domestic trouble of the worst sort.
I will not disagree with you that those are some of the things espoused and sought after by the Republican party. However, as a military history buff, I would say your second point has been predicted br great military minds as a necessary policy for the continued sovrenty of modern nations since the beginning of the last century. The arguments for and against are deeper and more nuianced than you may think, and the permutations have been explored almost endlessly.
That being said, my point is this: point to one of those powers that, if made legal by a Republican controlled government, would be immediately repealed by a Democrat controlled government.
You may think that they wouldn't use them, you may think that they would repeal them, or you may think as I do. I think once the cat is out of the bag, or Pandora's box is opened as it were, it is too late. The slope down to a fractured government that resembles our grand experiment in name only is slippery indeed.
"What's more, their confidence will actually be higher than "secularists," because the secular worldview always entails the awareness of our own fallibility, thus an element of self-doubt"
Have you ever heard anything about the Bible at all? The entirety of the Bible is filled with tales of human fallaciousness. The moral of every story in there is "man fucks up, man tries to fix it and fucks it up more in the process. Then man blames God for everything that is actually his own fault, and even though He had nothing to do with it God steps in and makes every thing right."
The fallibility of man is a core component of the Bible. Much of the message of God in the Bible is based on this. The fact that you do not know this makes you as ignorant of the Bible's contents as most self proclaimed Christians. And that, my friend, is just sad.
From registered corpses, to voting non-citizens, and from compromised locations to voter intimidation each and every election has had it's share of "hacking." You can bet that every part of the system involved in accounting for the votes of the electorate will be assaulted by members of all political affiliations in an attempt to gain unfair advantage. The controversies will be even more intense each election we have. If things continue as they are the faith in the system we have will reach a crisis point and every close election will be perpetually in dispute.
So the question remains not "Will it" but "How" and "where" and most importantly, "how can we stop it?" Surely not by creating insecure electronic voting boxes, is the most immediate answer, but that still leaves the same vulnerabilities and flaws that we have always had in the system.
Anyone got any good ideas on how to remove the human element from an entirely human process? I'm fresh out.
"But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."
The symetry is beautiful. The seeds of a new government are within the inception of the current one.
"Think about it this light. How many times have we praised a movie or say a book like 1984, Brave New World, Gentleman's Agreement, Uncle Tom's cabin, or of a number of other acts of fiction because they made us think?"
What you fail to explore is that the reader can identify with the protagonist or with the antagonist. Maybe the reader likes the actions of the elite that run the society that Huxley created, or maybe they think that being the tormentor in room 101 would be fantastic.
What I mean by this is that, yes, fiction can change people; however, the way that they interpret the fiction will determine what the change is. The individual is responsible for that interpretation and the resulting change, regardless of how powerful the message is or what intent the author had.
Thanks for a good post that I can use a s a springoard to topical research what will increase my understanding of the article and subject of String Theory.
Every president has sought to increase the scope and power of the office. This is nothing new. Though it helps to demonize the party currently in power to state that this started right after Nixon and is being carried out in some sinister conspiratorial manner it doesn't shed any light on the facts. Presidents of all parties have historically flexed their muscle in the attempt to overhsadow the other houses of government and to fill in the gaps that they see in the Constitutionally granted powers.
The two parties in the US constantly bicker about hot button issues and the media complex supports their third grade playground antics with ample spotlight and sound bytes galore. Voters are becoming more and more polarized and irate, all the while the two parties are growing more and more similar. And, while the population is distracted by the hollywood style infighting the two paties vote unanimously to pass legislation that circumvents our rights.
Consider: The DMCA was signed by Clinton and voted on by high profile Democrats and had unanimous support in the Senate. The Patriot Act was voted in almost unanimously (1 dissent vote) in the Senate and had few dissenters in the house.
Also note that the parties which come of as sooooo inimical are washing eachother's backs. When Sandy Berger waltzes out of the National Archives with stolen documents in his skivvies, thereby defrauding the American public of thier own history and excersise of rights under the Freedom of Information act, who comes to his rescue? Why his old buddy George Bush. What happens when a Democrat gets caught with 90K cash in his fridge in a huge international scandal? Good 'ol Bushy helps him out too by covering the evidence witha cloak of secrecy. On the flipside, after repeated polls to discover the intent of their constituents, Democrtats fail to support Conyers bid to censure and/or impeach Bush, even though they know that more than 70% of the people who voted them into office support this. The list of these strange decisions goes on and on, but I think you get my point.
All those ditto-dumbasses and move-on-morons are doing is helping the government strip away what it is to be an American. The more inflamed and antagonistic they become the less likely they are to rationally consider what their own party is doing. What I can't believe (and continually see) is how seemingly intelligent and logical people will ignore the evidence in front of them when their preferred party is in view. Don't you think that it's time to realize that for the most part all of our politicians are arrogant, self-serving, power-hungry, would-be aristocrats?
The things you dispise in Bush and his cronies are resident in every politician, they are just waiting for their chance to sieze power to express them.
Sure he made a joke, maybe an innapropriate one. I swear to logic though, you need to put down the Rube Goldberg device for shifting responsibility. Realize that if that was unwise and inappropriate to say that in the first place (I am not saying that it is, only that you say that it is), then it was unbelievably even more moronic to publicise it to the world. Compound that with the fact that the people who heard it in the studio knew without a doubt that it was a joke and specifically not meant for broadcast, and yet had the malicious forethought to make sure that everyone who heard it broadcast had no such assurances.
I will surmise that doing that is so stupid that no stupid person would be caught dead doing it. The only other answer is malice. And the malice associated with that kind of action (orders of magnitude more serious than cracking a joke) speaks volumes about the mental state of people who would broadcast such a thing.
As for your analogy, it would be more like the pilot of the plane telling a joke to his copilot about a bomb. Then a flight attendant records the punchline plays it over the intercom completely out of context.
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Only so far as I am ashamed of being a part of the human race.
Any other country would do the same thing (and have, and are) to maintain itself. Furthermore, any country that would just roll over and die rather than do what it can to support itself is just asking to be exterminated.
I am a realist: I know the thin veneer of civilization that we all profess to love and support is only as deep as our own convenience. Take away or threaten that convenience and you will see the violent and savage genetic heritage of mankind come rushing in to fill the void. (There are any number of examples of this on CNN right now, take your pick for verification purposes.) Justifications are just there to placate our semi-evolved sense of rational thought. The reason that justificaion is so easy to perpetrate is that our hindbrains know what is going on and they, lacking the hindrance of the rational mind, just need the cooperation of the higher ups to get to the business they were evolved for.
You may call it brutal on my part, and I can accept that. However by entertaining the idea that I should be ashamed, you are appealing to a higher motivation or ideal. I repsect that and am even motivated by higher callings myself. Unfortunately there are so few examples of any country acting in a manner consistent with higher ideals and motivations that is seems the ideal is unattainable and contrary to the nature of mankind. To pursue ideals is noble but to ignore the reality of history is naive and irrational. To point fingers when everyone is capable of the same degenerate behavior and furthermore is descendant from stock that are here only because of this lack of civilized ideology and MO is disingenuous.
Peace treaties are signed when the winning force has to send out a search party to find someone on the opposing side that isn't dead and still has fingers to sign with.
Anything short of unconditional surrender means a "cease fire."
No we don't declare war anymore. I think they are saving this one for our next (last?) total war. If the USA ever does officially declare war on another country I think that the whole world will have rather they not have.
As for the term bully, well I think you misuse the term. Bullies throw their weight around on the playground because of insecurity and only when the teacher isn't looking. The US works like a predatory animal, taking what it needs to feed itself and its young. Give the US a little credit in that if they could stop their interventions without losing the economic ascendence they have achieved they probably would.
Wanna stop the US from messing with everyone? Invent a way to power our cars and cities that is renewable, abundant, cheap, and easily attainable. As long as scarcity prevails our predations will continue. All we require is someone with the ability to stand in the oval office and tell us why we are justified in our actions.
You think you have seen the bully? Just wait till we start to run dangerously low on oil. You haven't seen shit yet.
"One common law I have a problem with: denying those with previous felony convictions the right to vote."
I agree wholeheartedly. These people have been through the fire, figuratively speaking, and they should have their votig rights restored. Treating them with some semblance of dignity, respect, and reacceptance after their incarceration could even help them integrate into normal society. That is unless you feel that "rehabilitation" is synonymous with "lifelong ostracism" as many people do.
It is outrageous that dead people and illegal aliens get to vote while someone with the same name as a registered felon who completed their prison term 20 years ago gets turned away from the voting booth. Selective enforcement of sufferage rights is tantamount to vote tampering and reeks to hell.
"You can't gain ground in this battle. There is no big leader, no key figure, no enemy headquarter to be conquered to end the battle."
You are correct in that statement to a point, however the enemy we face is a socioeconomic structure that when coupled with vast religion-governemnt integration and opressive tactics results in an entire region of the world being militarized around intolerant religious principles. The idea is to remove the base of support by rearanging the political structure around well established secular principles. This in turn will lead (hopefully) to alleviation of the pressure on the population in the form of religious oppression and (what some see as) undue pressure. Essentially the prospect is modernization (political, social, and economic) and Westernization of the middle East.
In spite of all that, even if that objective is achieved, the idea that is being fought will still exist. So in truth the war can still be waged into perpetuity.
"to reduce unemployment (as hard as it sounds, but killing people (or having them killed) reduces your workforce"
If this is part of the goal for Iraq we need to get busy killing more Americans. This has been a total wash out in terms of losing American lives. One of the least bloody (for Americans) offensives in our history. The fact that so many people are appaled at the relatively low number of lives lost is curious to me. I fear that if we ever had a truly formidable enemy, even in a conflict without as much controversey and dissent, that many in the US would quail before the prospect of troop losses proportional to historical wars.
In complete agreement with your comment I will posit that the unspoken word you need to concisely discribe this is Aristocracy.
That is what the US government is devolving into. Not only in that the select few will govern, but that they will comprise a class of people above the law of the commoners. You have no farther to look than the laws Bush is passing to make himself immune to prosecution after his term(other presidents are thinking "why didn't I think of that?!"), or the inter-party back scratching that results in Sandy Berger walking free after defrauding the American people of vital information from the National Archives.
The trappings of party division and political strife are the handwaving of a magician to distract the public while they systematically orchestrate the removal of our constitutional rights. Anyone else find it interesting that the two parties can be so divided on issues, yet when it comes time to yank the rug out from under the population they find a way to come together? See the votes on the DMCA, or the Patriot Act to get a whif of what I'm smelling.
If things have gotten this bad this fast, just imagine what will happen in the next 10 years. Especially if there is another event like 9/11. Emperor of the US anyone?
Yes they do.
It is more commonly called "cellmate swap day."
Show me even "two sides" of genocide, or homophobically motivated violence, racial prejudice, or slavery, much less this circle plot you refer to.
I won't apologize for stating that there are some things that I put in the category of "right" or "wrong" and I won't accept some high minded excuse for not making a value judgement and sticking to it. Principles can be as clear as black and white, even though the whole world may dissent.
Sure gray has a place. There are many complex issues (most of them) that deserve a gray/in-between rating. However to deny that some things are strictly wrong or inherently right invalidates the whole idea of value judgement and evaluation on a moral basis. If that is invalidated just go with what feels good and what profits you most, with every other concern to be damned.
With all these things going on that hamper his career it seems as if someone may have missed an installment on their eternal contrat with the Dark Lord. How else can you explain his devilishly incisive social commentary and comedic genius?
Fork over the rest of your soul Mr. Adams and lets all get back to laughing.
"Why not use adult stem cells?"
Because the use of embryonic stem cells has become the cause celebre for many political endeavors. The push to use them and find a working, even miraculous, treatment methodology that requires embryonic stem cells is not based only on the desire of scientists to explore their options in medicine and treat people more effectively. It is also the lynchpin in a political campaign that has money flowing around it like a vortex. That ethical baggage you refer to is, in many ways, the entire reason for the support of a (so far) failed medical technology.
I am not saying that the scientists themselves are complicit in some politically motivated effort. Far from it. However, the reason there is so much attention paid to embryonic stem cell research is this: if doctors can find a way to use it to, say, cure cancer, or diabetes, or lung disease, it would solidify a political victory on multiple fronts for many interested parties. Think og it as a gigantic "I told you so!" Therefore, it gets lots of media attention, and lots of funding, and undue scrutiny that is not based on the science itself or even the ethics of it, but a bastardized politicization of all those valid efforts and concerns.
Your comment seems rather obtuse to me as I have never seen a murderer with earmuffs singing "LALALALALA" while stabbing someone to death or shooting them in the face. Not even metaphorically.
Howerver I can only assume you are referring to those hot button categories of action (like wartime killing and capitol murder) that so many people point to and scream "hipocrisy!" about.
Fortunately the Bible is one of the most precise documents ever written and it makes clear the distinction between murder and other types of justifiable and necessary homocide. Anyone who reads the 10 commandments in context will understand this, as the scriptural discussion of what constitutes murder is voluminous and pretty hard to miss, even if you are trying.
The Bible dictates that self defense, wartime, and the excercise of the law are not only permissible reasons for homocide but in some cases they are required. So unless you are referring to Christians who routinely kill humans outside those boundaries I think you may be doing a little singing yourself.
Right on man.
For instance, have you ever gotten head from a catholic school girl?
I don't know if the priests are teaching them or what but thye're DAMNED GOOD!
"Courts generally have better things to do than defenestrate annoying lawyers."
Well they may have better things to do, but I don't.
Better clear my calendar...
He didn't define it as that in his post. What he said was that having a position where you can observe your enemy's movements is beneficial and many times one of the key factors in military victory.
As for Lagrange points, they are indefensible. Tactically I could understand covering those points with long range weapons to prevent your opponent from using them to their advantage, but occupying them would be suicide. Space based kinetic weapons or even a ground based one could fling stuff at the relatively stationary Lagrange points and eradicate whatever was there.
He didn't attack the current administration and say "Bush is a n00b" in his post. Also he didn't state that the US was going to kick off a space based arms race that will lead to the creation of more terrorists and the ultimate destruction of the US. Hmmm, he also left off the part where Katrina had something to do with this.
What I am trying to say is that with so many +5 moderated posts in this thread that are completely off topic, I think the moderators (all of whom didn't RTFA) have lost sight of just what the fuck we were supposed to be talking about.
MAn, have we all grown up in a society so conditioned by the 7 minute commercial interval that we can't look at the future.
There are most likely more than a million pieces of space junk orbiting the Earth. Give it some time and that number is likely to skyrocket. Some of them are good sized, but with relative velocity from aomething orbiting counter the direction of a craft's travel even a small object could do some major damage.
Even our most recent space flight was marred by an impact with possible space debris.
Give it 10 more years of increased space flight and it could become so hazardous around the Earth that satelites would be impossible to keep up. Even before it became impossible people would stop sending them up, as the risk factors would be too large. You do like having your satellite TV, and weather prediction, don't you?
IF commercial spaceflight becomes even one tenth as prevalent as standard airflight we could have a massive space trash crisis on our hands in very short order. Some sort of regulation is necessary and now is way past the time to start thinking about it and getting other nations on board with us.
Sorry if I came on a bit strong in my comment. I am acutely aware of hypocritical action by those self same people you describe and how, as a Christian myself, I get lumped in with them. It leads to hair trigger reactions on my part which is neither mature nor endearing. Sorry, I can be kind of a jerk sometimes.
I thought you meant that these people were specifically commissioned by the words of the Bible to do these things. I now understand better what you are saying and I agree with your ideas for the most part. I will posit that, even though they may think that this action is justified by their religious beliefs it is indeed not sanctioned. In fact it is condemned by the same book that they claim to believe in, defend, and represent.
I care about what I believe in and I study it like most scientists study their field of specialization. The crux of my angst is that I see Christians in the mainstream constantly misrepresenting the Bible and Christianity in their power hungry, self serving, politicization of religion and their holier-than-thou attitude. Then I see those people who, not knowing the Bible, react to those (self proclaimed yet hypocritical) Christians and, without other examples, use them as a representation of God, the Bible, and all Christians. So to distill it down yet again, my argument is that those Christians that you are obviously (and justifiably) upset about are as ignorant of the Bible as someone who has never read it. They use it more as a bludgeon than a textbook.
This sets up the age old dichotomy of the self-proclaimed "holy" acting arrogant and superior and trying to control everyone. Then those non-Christians watching them say "if that is what it is to be a Christian, I want nothing to do with it." Again, Christianity is poorly represented (or not at all) by those you speak of.
In my haste to judge those hypocritical Christians I lumped you in with them in ignorance of the Bible. I apologize. You obviously know something about it, though you might be happy to learn more. The greatest indictment of those "warrior for Christ" is the Bible itself. In numerous places it states that both pastors and the rank and file Christians should separate themselves from government. A Christian state is the sole right of Jesus to set up and create on Earth, not the work of mankind before He returns. It also says that trying to "help God" is analogous (in my terms) to trying to shorten your trans-Atlantic flight by getting out to push. There are many more doctrinal subjects that would show these impostors in the most unfavorable light imaginable, but I think you get the point and I ain't here to preach.
I wouldn't fret too much about them though. If they overstep their boundaries too much they won't last long. Yes the Dark Ages sucked, but without the power structure created by the "divine right of kings" where the people believe that sovereign power is on loan from God (and where the church knows it and takes advantage of the fact) the reaction to a religious oligarchy would be immediate revolt.
I think you will see the seeds of that rejection in '08 when the Dems will most likely achieve domination in the US government. Even Christians get tired of the government telling them what is right and wrong.
"the Dems have become quite considerably less evil in comparison"
:)
Agreed and conceeded. However, it remains to be seen just what new and interesting evils we will suffer at the hands of the Democrats in 2008 and beyond.
"(As a perhaps-partially-related aside: With "
Nicely put. A government that has unrestricted use of torture against enemies is just one small step away from using it on their own citizens. To allow it without a strong system of oversight and checks and balances as you descrice is profoundly short sighted and tantamount to inviting domestic trouble of the worst sort.
I will not disagree with you that those are some of the things espoused and sought after by the Republican party. However, as a military history buff, I would say your second point has been predicted br great military minds as a necessary policy for the continued sovrenty of modern nations since the beginning of the last century. The arguments for and against are deeper and more nuianced than you may think, and the permutations have been explored almost endlessly.
That being said, my point is this: point to one of those powers that, if made legal by a Republican controlled government, would be immediately repealed by a Democrat controlled government.
You may think that they wouldn't use them, you may think that they would repeal them, or you may think as I do. I think once the cat is out of the bag, or Pandora's box is opened as it were, it is too late. The slope down to a fractured government that resembles our grand experiment in name only is slippery indeed.
"What's more, their confidence will actually be higher than "secularists," because the secular worldview always entails the awareness of our own fallibility, thus an element of self-doubt"
Have you ever heard anything about the Bible at all? The entirety of the Bible is filled with tales of human fallaciousness. The moral of every story in there is "man fucks up, man tries to fix it and fucks it up more in the process. Then man blames God for everything that is actually his own fault, and even though He had nothing to do with it God steps in and makes every thing right."
The fallibility of man is a core component of the Bible. Much of the message of God in the Bible is based on this. The fact that you do not know this makes you as ignorant of the Bible's contents as most self proclaimed Christians. And that, my friend, is just sad.
They left out one word from the summary blurb.
It's not "Will the next election be hacked?"
Its "How Will the next election be hacked?"
From registered corpses, to voting non-citizens, and from compromised locations to voter intimidation each and every election has had it's share of "hacking." You can bet that every part of the system involved in accounting for the votes of the electorate will be assaulted by members of all political affiliations in an attempt to gain unfair advantage. The controversies will be even more intense each election we have. If things continue as they are the faith in the system we have will reach a crisis point and every close election will be perpetually in dispute.
So the question remains not "Will it" but "How" and "where" and most importantly, "how can we stop it?" Surely not by creating insecure electronic voting boxes, is the most immediate answer, but that still leaves the same vulnerabilities and flaws that we have always had in the system.
Anyone got any good ideas on how to remove the human element from an entirely human process? I'm fresh out.
The answer is already written down for you:
"But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."
The symetry is beautiful. The seeds of a new government are within the inception of the current one.
"Think about it this light. How many times have we praised a movie or say a book like 1984, Brave New World, Gentleman's Agreement, Uncle Tom's cabin, or of a number of other acts of fiction because they made us think?"
What you fail to explore is that the reader can identify with the protagonist or with the antagonist. Maybe the reader likes the actions of the elite that run the society that Huxley created, or maybe they think that being the tormentor in room 101 would be fantastic.
What I mean by this is that, yes, fiction can change people; however, the way that they interpret the fiction will determine what the change is. The individual is responsible for that interpretation and the resulting change, regardless of how powerful the message is or what intent the author had.
Where's my "+1 damn this dude is smart" mod?
Thanks for a good post that I can use a s a springoard to topical research what will increase my understanding of the article and subject of String Theory.
Every president has sought to increase the scope and power of the office. This is nothing new. Though it helps to demonize the party currently in power to state that this started right after Nixon and is being carried out in some sinister conspiratorial manner it doesn't shed any light on the facts. Presidents of all parties have historically flexed their muscle in the attempt to overhsadow the other houses of government and to fill in the gaps that they see in the Constitutionally granted powers.
The two parties in the US constantly bicker about hot button issues and the media complex supports their third grade playground antics with ample spotlight and sound bytes galore. Voters are becoming more and more polarized and irate, all the while the two parties are growing more and more similar. And, while the population is distracted by the hollywood style infighting the two paties vote unanimously to pass legislation that circumvents our rights.
Consider: The DMCA was signed by Clinton and voted on by high profile Democrats and had unanimous support in the Senate. The Patriot Act was voted in almost unanimously (1 dissent vote) in the Senate and had few dissenters in the house.
Also note that the parties which come of as sooooo inimical are washing eachother's backs. When Sandy Berger waltzes out of the National Archives with stolen documents in his skivvies, thereby defrauding the American public of thier own history and excersise of rights under the Freedom of Information act, who comes to his rescue? Why his old buddy George Bush. What happens when a Democrat gets caught with 90K cash in his fridge in a huge international scandal? Good 'ol Bushy helps him out too by covering the evidence witha cloak of secrecy. On the flipside, after repeated polls to discover the intent of their constituents, Democrtats fail to support Conyers bid to censure and/or impeach Bush, even though they know that more than 70% of the people who voted them into office support this. The list of these strange decisions goes on and on, but I think you get my point.
All those ditto-dumbasses and move-on-morons are doing is helping the government strip away what it is to be an American. The more inflamed and antagonistic they become the less likely they are to rationally consider what their own party is doing. What I can't believe (and continually see) is how seemingly intelligent and logical people will ignore the evidence in front of them when their preferred party is in view. Don't you think that it's time to realize that for the most part all of our politicians are arrogant, self-serving, power-hungry, would-be aristocrats?
The things you dispise in Bush and his cronies are resident in every politician, they are just waiting for their chance to sieze power to express them.
Sure he made a joke, maybe an innapropriate one. I swear to logic though, you need to put down the Rube Goldberg device for shifting responsibility. Realize that if that was unwise and inappropriate to say that in the first place (I am not saying that it is, only that you say that it is), then it was unbelievably even more moronic to publicise it to the world. Compound that with the fact that the people who heard it in the studio knew without a doubt that it was a joke and specifically not meant for broadcast, and yet had the malicious forethought to make sure that everyone who heard it broadcast had no such assurances.
I will surmise that doing that is so stupid that no stupid person would be caught dead doing it. The only other answer is malice. And the malice associated with that kind of action (orders of magnitude more serious than cracking a joke) speaks volumes about the mental state of people who would broadcast such a thing.
As for your analogy, it would be more like the pilot of the plane telling a joke to his copilot about a bomb. Then a flight attendant records the punchline plays it over the intercom completely out of context.