Copy a CD and you have something of a specific dollar value (Best Buy's loss leader price for example) for free.
Copy a dollar bill and you have some thing of a specific dollar value (the face value of the bill) for free.
The copied dollar is still valuable and hasn't lost anything. Same with a CD. The government who produced the dollar hasn't really lost anything. Same with the artist who prodeced the record as the copier probably would not have bought the CD in the first place.
Now if there are enough copied dollars in circulation or if the problem becomes known as rampant it can devalue currency. I guess the same thing is probable with media of all types. Maybe that is what the RIAA sees as the big problem. Ease of access to copyrighted media leads to overall devaluation and reduces their profit margins as they try to seek out the magical equilibrium point of supply and demand with respect to pricing.
Of course analogies always break down, as you can't go into a store and offer to buy something with a stack of home-burned backstreet boys CDs, but it is a better analogy then theft.
They are right there, for the most part, watching what their children are doing.
What I notice is that there are many parents who allow their children to do anything they want to. They unlock all 800 cable channels and let their child have access to all of them. They buy them what I would call "age innapropriate" movies, games, and magazines for their kids. They allow them unfettered net access, unmonitored email accounts, and IM access. They allow them to speak in whatever manner they want using any words that they want.
You may not see this, but because I live in a high population density area and have 3 highly social children, I do.
Here is the kicker. My oldest child is only 10 years old. Her contemporaries are getting their heads filled with the most vile contents of the net and television imaginable and their "parents" are just standing by and watching, usually encouraging it. The results are obvious. Some 8 year old boy asked may 10 year old daughter to "flash her titties" and he would give her 85 cents the other day at school. That action, as obscene and disgusting as it may be, was overshadowed by the reaction from the school which was basically nothing. A digression but, IMHO, a symptom of the times and directly linked to what we are talking about.
The government is an arm of the people. The people in certain places are concerned with the propensity for some parents to allow children to experience the aforementioned materials and the ease with which children can access them themselves and the ultimate effects this will have on society. They are trying to prevent what they see as a social and moral problem of huge proportions from materializing in the next generation. With the attitudes of many of the parents I have seen it is not unexpected that some people will react in this way.
Many parents do not fall into the categories you are proposing, ie. not home, workin hard to pay off unnecessary debt, etc. They are just not what you would call "good parents." Ask them and they will say, "I spend lots of time with my kids! My 6 year old and I played GTA for 8 hours together on Saturday! Then we watched the Simpsons and South Park. I'm a GREAT parent!"
So you see there is a rift between your morals and what I see as the up and coming moral attitude. Just like you see people over 40 as having antiquated ideas about technology, many parents see your attitudes about sex, violence, and other "purient" topics as outdated and overly restrictive.
Not that I agree with those parents. Far be it. I just think that there is a strong undercurrent in our society that says "anything goes." Without some kind of intervention or, dare I say it, revolution there will be large changes in moral attitudes and what is socially acceptable generation after next.
The thirt time I ever experienced goatse.cx was on a frontpage slashdot story. It looked like a credible link to a major news outlet.
Unfortunately I was trying to help a friend's family to understand how a news site like slashdot worked at the time. I had a conservative 40ish couple and a 19 year old girl looking on as I clicked this link.
It was very difficult to explain just exactly what happened as the site came up. I haven't been able to sort it all out even to this day.
SEE!!!! Modded me flamebait...damn those sneaky Lucasites.
No one will admit it now! NO ONE!!!
Lucas goes bonkers and wants to change the freaking world and now he's even got the whole slashdot community modding me down because I SPEAK THE TRUTH!
HAN SHOT FIRST and I have the REAL video to prove it!
Bitches!
(Really...if you're going to mod, read the post and consider that phrases like "ugly, green freak" are about GUIDO, not some member of Al Quedia)
"Most of the world would be happy if Americans left THEM alone"
Silly little man. Everyone wants the money and aid that the US government doles out. They want us to bail them out when they falter on their loans.
They want us to get involved in their little border disputes. They want our support in their military (mis)adventures. They want our military technology, too.
They want access to our exuberant, spend-happy consumers with their penchant to overpay for cheap shit. They want our lifestyle, our culture, our baseline level of luxury that even our poor enjoy.
Nations come to our door like beggars to a church run soup kitchen. They extract promises and sign treaties. Then they run home and break their promises before we get a chance to do the same.
The world would be really upset if the US left them alone. However I think it is just what we should do.
"All preemptive strikes are preventive, but not all preventive strikes are "
Blah blah blah blah....What a crock.
This pontification is meaningless in the face of the facts. Theres a dangerous person there. What do you do? Preventive, preventative those are just words that small minded people use to make their point. Damn those revisionists and their altered history. Damn them to hell!
I am so tired of all you people and your rose tinted world. This action was necessary!
You can mince words and try to massage this point until it looks like a fuzzy bunny rabbit but you know, yes you KNOW, in youir hear of hearts that that ugly, green freak was gonna blow him away any second. Han was totally justified and you and those who think just like you had to go and ruin it...RUINED I SAY! RUINED!
"We must move promptly toward the elimination--or near elimination--of all nuclear weapons"
This idea, if made policy, would mean the eruption of many small wars that could escalate drastically.
There would be a witch hunt against every nation with a burgeoning nuclear program, much like you see in Iraq now. Also imagine trying to disarm India and Pakistan of their nuclear weapons. Next consider trying to get China and Korea to drop their nuclear programs at the same time! Throw in some former Soviet Union and some Israel action and you have a global mess.
Yes, doomsday is right. McNamara's idea of trying to disarm the world of their nuclear weapons would precipitate a nuclear war of global proportions.
What? Sureley you didn't expect unilateral disarmament by the US, did you? Or by anyone else for that matter, I hope, because it will never, ever, ever happen. As long as there are nukes in other countries there will be a necessity for them in the US.
Oh, but it is so much more fun to watch them get run down in the street, and then lie there gushing blood and bodily fluids, screaming from the agonzing pain, twitching spasmotically in their remaining extremeties, and then finally muttering repeatedly in a broken and horse gurgling voice "I can't feel my legs...."
Ah yes the age old technique: If you don't like the answers, question the questions (or questioners!).
Recognition of disparity is a GOOD thing. It can lead to more questions that reveal enlightening and relevant answers. It could expose systematic problems that disadvantage women unfairly. It could reveal problems with teaching techniques. Or it could reveal genetic traits that indicate different predispositions, much to the joy of the trans-humans and eugenicists everywhere.
It seems there are a lot of people who want to make this about competition and as a result end up questioning the motives of the people who wrote the test, rather than the validity and implications of the data. If the data shows this is true, and that it is repeatable and verifiable, then more questions are raised than answered. Asking those next questions should be the next step in the logical line.
But, go ahead, close your mind. Block out anything that doesn't fit with your preconceived notions and God forbid anyone to present proof of something that you don't agree with. They must have an agenda and they rigged the test to "get" you and make you unhappy.
Thankfully not everyone couches this study in those schoolyard terms and (when it is fully released) there might actually be some meaningful results from exploring the data and taking it to its logical conclusion.
"and often these studies are inquiries so heavy-burdened with emotionally charged issues that even if they're handled properly, the findings will probably do more harm than good"
The only reason that something like this would do more harm than good is lack of humility and inability to see where your own faults are and think critically about them without slaying the messenger.
I think of it as the "my team" connundrum. If there is a controversial call in sports people will see and believe what supports their team in many circumstances. They have so much emotional investment in the subject matter, and lack the ability to compartmentalize, that they cannot accept the truth of what they are seeing. Their reality filters are processing data through the emotion port.
What I am saying is that in most circumstances data is just data. One person will see it as a condemnation of a certain group, while another group will see it as a ploy to subjugate and demean them by another group, when the truth is almost invariably something entirely different.
The problem is that everyone is so ready to point fingers, shuffle blame, and fight about it that no one wants to confront the facts impartially and dig for the answers, especially a party that feels slighted by the implications of the study.
Of course you can imagine that if some people don't like the data to begin with they sure as hell aren't going to like the answers.
"Women are groomed to be cute, pretty and attract a rich..."
It seems like that, however I can't agree with how you phrase this. You seem to put the blame on society and/or parents in this, as if there is an undue external influence that causes women to act/think like they do.
What in the world is wrong with people admitting that women and men are fundamentally differnet in the way that they think, act, and what activities they gravitate to, and not because of how they are raised, but because of how they are put together physically?
People need to stop blaming outside forces and realize that brainwashing 52% of the population is simply not possible! Women and men have had similar characteristics in societies dating back to the beginning of recorded history. You think that the roles they play in society are determined by only societal influence? That has to be the biggest conspiracy theory EVAR!
The reason that most women act in historically similar roles is because of their physical and mental makeup resulting from their sex. The same goes for men.
Oh, but if you mention it this, or even ask about it in an intillectual discussion, you get condemned as a sexist bigot and have to apologize. For some reason everyone wants to turn a blind eye to the differences between men and women, play like they don't exist, then gasp in shock and horror when someone points out the obvious differences.
Sure women and men have the same potential, but I bet that if you take a close look, unburdened by PC clouded pseudo-thought and preconception, you will realize that the potential expresses itself in different aptitudes and propensities that can be seen to be more common in one sex or the other.
You think it is because of society's influence that more men are theoretical physicists and wrestlers than women? Next people will be wondering why women seem to have all the children. Sheesh!
I met a guy who actually has had his biology/cell research on some of the shuttle missions.
His experiments are part of his exploration of how very small magnetic fields affect cells. He said that you would be surprised at how much you can affect a cell, especially during division, by small perturbations of a magnetic field around the cell.
With that in mind, consider the activity of high energy particles (most would still be ablated by the atmosphere though) during a geomagnetic flip in conjunction with the effects of magnetic fields on cell division and you have a highly plausible justificaion for "fast" evolution on a widespread scale.
I think that the whole idea of the "movie" is becoming a bit dated; played out if you will. The media, format, and formula is becoming something so trite that even if you see a movie of considerable quality it still feels a little stale because it is still a movie.
I could be wrong, but I think that it is time for a new experience in the realm of entertainment. Something new needs to replace the old, tired movie format.
In a way, video games are doing just that. The same $30 can net the spender an interactive adventure that provides tens of hours of experiences. To some people there is no comparison. The video game industry already makes more money than the movie industry. Unfortunately they are still constrained by the same fomulaic approach that hollywood is. Forr example they turn out conceptually similar games, only changing the package and giving better "eye candy." Nothing revolutionary has been done since the MMORPG caught on, IMHO.
I personally hope some smart Sony exec figures out how to entertain me soon, it's getting boring around here!
"It is impossible for most psyches to kill a human they have not dehumanized
You give people alot of credit where none is due. People do not have to dehumanize anyone to kill them. Case in point? Most murders (76%) are comitted by people that know the victim. 22% of the murders in 2002 were comitted by family members.
Logically it would semm to be much more difficult to "dehumanize" (whatever the $%^@ that referrs to in a psychological sense) someone that you know personally than a total stranger. Seems to me like it takes knowing someone to be able to to kill them, not the other way around.
"they knew first hand what kind of problems limiting religious freedom generated"
Actually, I think it was their religious beliefs that made this so important to them.
They knew that the Bible itself says that religion and politics are incompatible.
Government is, according to the Bible, a system designed to provide freedom for the people who live under it. Free will, tempered by responsibility to law, family, and society is the goal of government. It definitely is not a way to make people believe what you want them to believe or act in ways that are inconsistent with their character or free will.
Therefore, when a religious controlled government is considered in light of what the Bible says, it can be said that it is similar to a government designed to systematically deprive its citizens of liberty. Both are immoral and could even be considered evil.
The Bible never proclaims, "Thou shalt control their lives. Then, once thou hast controlled their lives thou shalt ramrod Christianity down their heathen gullets." Of course, some Christians see it that way, but I think we can all agree that there are a lot of self serving morons in this world, Christian and non-Christian alike.
If a government is controlled by a certain religion it will limit the freedom of the people who live under it. In the same way that the government has a responsibility to maintain law so that people's freedom is not impinged upon by a criminal group, so also the government must prevent religious groups from controlling government and destroying the freedom of those who are not of that religious persuasion.
In other words, the founding fathers understood what the politically active members of the Christian community do not. Namely it is that trying exerting religious control over the government and introducing religious based and supporting laws is antithetical to the structure and purpose of government as described by God in the Bible. This makes hypocrites of all of those who claim to believe in the Bible yet continue to try to dominate and control people with Christian views.
Sure, Christian virtues are a good thing in my opinion, however, those people aren't practicing those virtues themselves. They just make it really easy for other people to point to them and say, "If that is what it is to be a Christian I don't want any part of it."
Slashdot Mirror
THEM!?!? What about ME? I never will get that dark matter tea set I've been wanting.
And I guess the bedroom suite is right out, too.
So it is more like counterfeiting.
Copy a CD and you have something of a specific dollar value (Best Buy's loss leader price for example) for free.
Copy a dollar bill and you have some thing of a specific dollar value (the face value of the bill) for free.
The copied dollar is still valuable and hasn't lost anything. Same with a CD. The government who produced the dollar hasn't really lost anything. Same with the artist who prodeced the record as the copier probably would not have bought the CD in the first place.
Now if there are enough copied dollars in circulation or if the problem becomes known as rampant it can devalue currency. I guess the same thing is probable with media of all types. Maybe that is what the RIAA sees as the big problem. Ease of access to copyrighted media leads to overall devaluation and reduces their profit margins as they try to seek out the magical equilibrium point of supply and demand with respect to pricing.
Of course analogies always break down, as you can't go into a store and offer to buy something with a stack of home-burned backstreet boys CDs, but it is a better analogy then theft.
"WHERE ARE THE PARENTS", you ask?
They are right there, for the most part, watching what their children are doing.
What I notice is that there are many parents who allow their children to do anything they want to. They unlock all 800 cable channels and let their child have access to all of them. They buy them what I would call "age innapropriate" movies, games, and magazines for their kids. They allow them unfettered net access, unmonitored email accounts, and IM access. They allow them to speak in whatever manner they want using any words that they want.
You may not see this, but because I live in a high population density area and have 3 highly social children, I do.
Here is the kicker. My oldest child is only 10 years old. Her contemporaries are getting their heads filled with the most vile contents of the net and television imaginable and their "parents" are just standing by and watching, usually encouraging it. The results are obvious. Some 8 year old boy asked may 10 year old daughter to "flash her titties" and he would give her 85 cents the other day at school. That action, as obscene and disgusting as it may be, was overshadowed by the reaction from the school which was basically nothing. A digression but, IMHO, a symptom of the times and directly linked to what we are talking about.
The government is an arm of the people. The people in certain places are concerned with the propensity for some parents to allow children to experience the aforementioned materials and the ease with which children can access them themselves and the ultimate effects this will have on society. They are trying to prevent what they see as a social and moral problem of huge proportions from materializing in the next generation. With the attitudes of many of the parents I have seen it is not unexpected that some people will react in this way.
Many parents do not fall into the categories you are proposing, ie. not home, workin hard to pay off unnecessary debt, etc. They are just not what you would call "good parents." Ask them and they will say, "I spend lots of time with my kids! My 6 year old and I played GTA for 8 hours together on Saturday! Then we watched the Simpsons and South Park. I'm a GREAT parent!"
So you see there is a rift between your morals and what I see as the up and coming moral attitude. Just like you see people over 40 as having antiquated ideas about technology, many parents see your attitudes about sex, violence, and other "purient" topics as outdated and overly restrictive.
Not that I agree with those parents. Far be it. I just think that there is a strong undercurrent in our society that says "anything goes." Without some kind of intervention or, dare I say it, revolution there will be large changes in moral attitudes and what is socially acceptable generation after next.
The thirt time I ever experienced goatse.cx was on a frontpage slashdot story. It looked like a credible link to a major news outlet.
Unfortunately I was trying to help a friend's family to understand how a news site like slashdot worked at the time. I had a conservative 40ish couple and a 19 year old girl looking on as I clicked this link.
It was very difficult to explain just exactly what happened as the site came up. I haven't been able to sort it all out even to this day.
Funny, but I always thought that turning the whole thing into an Orion vehicle would be more fruitful.
SEE!!!! Modded me flamebait...damn those sneaky Lucasites.
No one will admit it now! NO ONE!!!
Lucas goes bonkers and wants to change the freaking world and now he's even got the whole slashdot community modding me down because I SPEAK THE TRUTH!
HAN SHOT FIRST and I have the REAL video to prove it!
Bitches!
(Really...if you're going to mod, read the post and consider that phrases like "ugly, green freak" are about GUIDO, not some member of Al Quedia)
"Most of the world would be happy if Americans left THEM alone"
Silly little man. Everyone wants the money and aid that the US government doles out. They want us to bail them out when they falter on their loans.
They want us to get involved in their little border disputes. They want our support in their military (mis)adventures. They want our military technology, too.
They want access to our exuberant, spend-happy consumers with their penchant to overpay for cheap shit. They want our lifestyle, our culture, our baseline level of luxury that even our poor enjoy.
Nations come to our door like beggars to a church run soup kitchen. They extract promises and sign treaties. Then they run home and break their promises before we get a chance to do the same.
The world would be really upset if the US left them alone. However I think it is just what we should do.
"All preemptive strikes are preventive, but not all preventive strikes are "
Blah blah blah blah....What a crock.
This pontification is meaningless in the face of the facts. Theres a dangerous person there. What do you do? Preventive, preventative those are just words that small minded people use to make their point. Damn those revisionists and their altered history. Damn them to hell!
I am so tired of all you people and your rose tinted world. This action was necessary!
You can mince words and try to massage this point until it looks like a fuzzy bunny rabbit but you know, yes you KNOW, in youir hear of hearts that that ugly, green freak was gonna blow him away any second. Han was totally justified and you and those who think just like you had to go and ruin it...RUINED I SAY! RUINED!
Han shot first....Bitches!
"We must move promptly toward the elimination--or near elimination--of all nuclear weapons"
This idea, if made policy, would mean the eruption of many small wars that could escalate drastically.
There would be a witch hunt against every nation with a burgeoning nuclear program, much like you see in Iraq now. Also imagine trying to disarm India and Pakistan of their nuclear weapons. Next consider trying to get China and Korea to drop their nuclear programs at the same time! Throw in some former Soviet Union and some Israel action and you have a global mess.
Yes, doomsday is right. McNamara's idea of trying to disarm the world of their nuclear weapons would precipitate a nuclear war of global proportions.
What? Sureley you didn't expect unilateral disarmament by the US, did you? Or by anyone else for that matter, I hope, because it will never, ever, ever happen. As long as there are nukes in other countries there will be a necessity for them in the US.
Imagine combining that with seamless speech-to-text and you have a keyboardless system.
Add a stylus with an OCR that can drag and drop to the screen from handwritten or typeface hardcopy and I am in heaven.
For more research and detail on this phenomena than you ever thought was available please see this book by Joseph Campbell: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0691 017840/102-8735635-8866503?v=glance
Innovate or get out of the way.
Oh, but it is so much more fun to watch them get run down in the street, and then lie there gushing blood and bodily fluids, screaming from the agonzing pain, twitching spasmotically in their remaining extremeties, and then finally muttering repeatedly in a broken and horse gurgling voice "I can't feel my legs...."
Figuratively speaking, of course.
For a US cost analysis you will need to include the vast exposure due to one wrongful/negligent death lawsuit.
If you do that this system becomes cheap insurance, rather than an expensive upgrade.
The RIAA wouldn't mess with the senators for the same reason that sharks don't eat lawyers.
Professional courtesy.
"How many times do you keep rebuilding before you say enough is enough?
Lets start with ONCE in the case of New Orleans.
Speaking of other kinds of women, I read a statistic in the paper yesterday that said that there are more than 20,000 battered women in my city alone.
And to think, all this time I have been eating them plain.
How about:
Justin Thyme
Ben Dover and Phil McCracup
Will E. Wakov
and my all time favorite bucause there is actually at least one guy with this name....
DICK EATON
Ah yes the age old technique: If you don't like the answers, question the questions (or questioners!).
Recognition of disparity is a GOOD thing. It can lead to more questions that reveal enlightening and relevant answers. It could expose systematic problems that disadvantage women unfairly. It could reveal problems with teaching techniques. Or it could reveal genetic traits that indicate different predispositions, much to the joy of the trans-humans and eugenicists everywhere.
It seems there are a lot of people who want to make this about competition and as a result end up questioning the motives of the people who wrote the test, rather than the validity and implications of the data. If the data shows this is true, and that it is repeatable and verifiable, then more questions are raised than answered. Asking those next questions should be the next step in the logical line.
But, go ahead, close your mind. Block out anything that doesn't fit with your preconceived notions and God forbid anyone to present proof of something that you don't agree with. They must have an agenda and they rigged the test to "get" you and make you unhappy.
Thankfully not everyone couches this study in those schoolyard terms and (when it is fully released) there might actually be some meaningful results from exploring the data and taking it to its logical conclusion.
"and often these studies are inquiries so heavy-burdened with emotionally charged issues that even if they're handled properly, the findings will probably do more harm than good"
The only reason that something like this would do more harm than good is lack of humility and inability to see where your own faults are and think critically about them without slaying the messenger.
I think of it as the "my team" connundrum. If there is a controversial call in sports people will see and believe what supports their team in many circumstances. They have so much emotional investment in the subject matter, and lack the ability to compartmentalize, that they cannot accept the truth of what they are seeing. Their reality filters are processing data through the emotion port.
What I am saying is that in most circumstances data is just data. One person will see it as a condemnation of a certain group, while another group will see it as a ploy to subjugate and demean them by another group, when the truth is almost invariably something entirely different.
The problem is that everyone is so ready to point fingers, shuffle blame, and fight about it that no one wants to confront the facts impartially and dig for the answers, especially a party that feels slighted by the implications of the study.
Of course you can imagine that if some people don't like the data to begin with they sure as hell aren't going to like the answers.
"Women are groomed to be cute, pretty and attract a rich..."
It seems like that, however I can't agree with how you phrase this. You seem to put the blame on society and/or parents in this, as if there is an undue external influence that causes women to act/think like they do.
What in the world is wrong with people admitting that women and men are fundamentally differnet in the way that they think, act, and what activities they gravitate to, and not because of how they are raised, but because of how they are put together physically?
People need to stop blaming outside forces and realize that brainwashing 52% of the population is simply not possible! Women and men have had similar characteristics in societies dating back to the beginning of recorded history. You think that the roles they play in society are determined by only societal influence? That has to be the biggest conspiracy theory EVAR!
The reason that most women act in historically similar roles is because of their physical and mental makeup resulting from their sex. The same goes for men.
Oh, but if you mention it this, or even ask about it in an intillectual discussion, you get condemned as a sexist bigot and have to apologize. For some reason everyone wants to turn a blind eye to the differences between men and women, play like they don't exist, then gasp in shock and horror when someone points out the obvious differences.
Sure women and men have the same potential, but I bet that if you take a close look, unburdened by PC clouded pseudo-thought and preconception, you will realize that the potential expresses itself in different aptitudes and propensities that can be seen to be more common in one sex or the other.
You think it is because of society's influence that more men are theoretical physicists and wrestlers than women? Next people will be wondering why women seem to have all the children. Sheesh!
I met a guy who actually has had his biology/cell research on some of the shuttle missions.
His experiments are part of his exploration of how very small magnetic fields affect cells. He said that you would be surprised at how much you can affect a cell, especially during division, by small perturbations of a magnetic field around the cell.
With that in mind, consider the activity of high energy particles (most would still be ablated by the atmosphere though) during a geomagnetic flip in conjunction with the effects of magnetic fields on cell division and you have a highly plausible justificaion for "fast" evolution on a widespread scale.
"just click and the world will be yours!"
! !!!!!!
click...
Clickety, Click...
CLICKLCLICKCLICKETYCLICKCLICKCLICKCLICKCLICKCLICK
Hmmmmm.
Damn liars!
I think that the whole idea of the "movie" is becoming a bit dated; played out if you will. The media, format, and formula is becoming something so trite that even if you see a movie of considerable quality it still feels a little stale because it is still a movie.
I could be wrong, but I think that it is time for a new experience in the realm of entertainment. Something new needs to replace the old, tired movie format.
In a way, video games are doing just that. The same $30 can net the spender an interactive adventure that provides tens of hours of experiences. To some people there is no comparison. The video game industry already makes more money than the movie industry. Unfortunately they are still constrained by the same fomulaic approach that hollywood is. Forr example they turn out conceptually similar games, only changing the package and giving better "eye candy." Nothing revolutionary has been done since the MMORPG caught on, IMHO.
I personally hope some smart Sony exec figures out how to entertain me soon, it's getting boring around here!
"It is impossible for most psyches to kill a human they have not dehumanized
You give people alot of credit where none is due. People do not have to dehumanize anyone to kill them. Case in point? Most murders (76%) are comitted by people that know the victim. 22% of the murders in 2002 were comitted by family members.
Logically it would semm to be much more difficult to "dehumanize" (whatever the $%^@ that referrs to in a psychological sense) someone that you know personally than a total stranger. Seems to me like it takes knowing someone to be able to to kill them, not the other way around.
"Their religious beliefs are irrelevant."
"they knew first hand what kind of problems limiting religious freedom generated"
Actually, I think it was their religious beliefs that made this so important to them.
They knew that the Bible itself says that religion and politics are incompatible.
Government is, according to the Bible, a system designed to provide freedom for the people who live under it. Free will, tempered by responsibility to law, family, and society is the goal of government. It definitely is not a way to make people believe what you want them to believe or act in ways that are inconsistent with their character or free will.
Therefore, when a religious controlled government is considered in light of what the Bible says, it can be said that it is similar to a government designed to systematically deprive its citizens of liberty. Both are immoral and could even be considered evil.
The Bible never proclaims, "Thou shalt control their lives. Then, once thou hast controlled their lives thou shalt ramrod Christianity down their heathen gullets." Of course, some Christians see it that way, but I think we can all agree that there are a lot of self serving morons in this world, Christian and non-Christian alike.
If a government is controlled by a certain religion it will limit the freedom of the people who live under it. In the same way that the government has a responsibility to maintain law so that people's freedom is not impinged upon by a criminal group, so also the government must prevent religious groups from controlling government and destroying the freedom of those who are not of that religious persuasion.
In other words, the founding fathers understood what the politically active members of the Christian community do not. Namely it is that trying exerting religious control over the government and introducing religious based and supporting laws is antithetical to the structure and purpose of government as described by God in the Bible. This makes hypocrites of all of those who claim to believe in the Bible yet continue to try to dominate and control people with Christian views.
Sure, Christian virtues are a good thing in my opinion, however, those people aren't practicing those virtues themselves. They just make it really easy for other people to point to them and say, "If that is what it is to be a Christian I don't want any part of it."
It's downright shameful.