it wouldn't surprise me if anti-obama spinsters would repeatedly request denied items just to contrive this story. out of context it's meaningless.
Not sure why your post was marked troll, even if it's a little paranoid. It's quite likely that teabaggers and other anti-obama people have affected these nnumbers, even if unintentionally.
So this is all just a giant conspiracy? A vast, right-wing secret attack on Obama? A backhand way to make him look bad? "Hey boys, lets fill out another hundred or so of those FOIA requests today! We're almost at our goal".
Have you seen what he's up against? The Democrats were never as obstructive to President Bush. The problem is that Obama's main idea of change - bipartisanship - is the least productive way of making change in America.
That is demonstratively false. Democrats fought bitterly against most of Bush's domestic initiatives, especially Social Security reform, and the big one, reform of Fannie and Freddie ("I just don't see what the problem is here" - Barney Frank).
They also filibustered on judges continously. As for bipartisanship, President Obama has been pretty clear that bipartisanship means knuckling under to the majority ("I won, didn't I?".
Bullshit. You're giving attention and ad revenue to a political operative. As others have indicated, Slashdot could have linked to a "neutral" reproduction of the AP article.
And why isn't Breitbart's very same AP article neutral? His Big Hollywood/Government/Journalism sites are advocacy sites. Breitbart dot com is not. It's just a news aggregator, with no editorial content. Google News does the same thing. If there was editorial content by Andrew Breitbart himself somewhere in the article, please, point it out to us. I saw none. It's just an AP piece. If you're going to complain about who owns the site, what was your stance when CNN was founded and run by a politically active billionaire? What do you say when MSNBC prints an AP article?
In the media, everyone is a political operative. everyone. The media is filled with ex-employees, cabinet members, and Congressmen from both parties. George Stephanopolous hosts the number one Sunday news discussion show. He's a former Clinton Administration officer. Just who do we start ignoring in news because we don't like their political backgrounds? If the Slashdot story had been linked from the Huffington Post, would you still be upset? Because Arianna Huffington is most definitely not neutral.
Oh, I'll grant you there are some differences in the comparison, but the central point still stands. The same people that argue against copyright protections for things like music are making the same arguments that the government is making about email. The issue here is the notion that because the file is not "tangible"... a paper letter or a plastic CD... then the electronic file doesn't have the same legal protections, even though it has the same content. That's the argument of both parties in a nutshell. And while on the one hand we're talking about constitutional rights, and on the other, intellectual property, both are legal arguments. Which is what this all comes down to.
I agree with Lessig on this... copyright is too long at present. But how many people here crusade against any copyright whatsoever? It's all "phantom property", they say.
I'm not arguing that copyright doesn't need reform. Far from it, it most certainly does. Copryright is too long, and there aren't enough fair use provisions right now. But that's irrelevant to my argument, which still stands. Anti-copyright partisans (not limited copyright partisans, mind you, but the people that say no such thing should exist at all) are making the same kind of argument that the government is; since the items in question aren't tangible, they're not protected.
EMail is modern mail; and mail is one case of the "papers" mentioned in the 4th amendment.
First off, I actually agree with you here in that email should have the same status as written mail. But I also find it deliciously ironic that while many Slashdotters laugh at the very idea of copyright protection, they become enraged at the email issue. And yet the government is making the same argument that they are. Piracy should be OK because MP3's are just electrons, files are reproduced at no cost, so there should be no protection for them. Obviously it's not the same thing as physical recordings. And yet Uncle Same is making the same argument about email; it's just electrons, reproducible at no cost. Obviously it's not the same thing as "real" letters.
These Asian folks think long term, unlike short-sighted Western politicians.
Rubbish. China is one of the oldest civilizations on Earth, and yet it's just now climbing out of a third world status that it's been in for centuries. They're human, fallible as anyone else. They have no more wisdom, insight, or patience than any of their competitors. Looking at their industrial pollution situation, and the race to catch up to the West, they may well have less. They slaughtered and starved hundreds of thousands of their own people... perhaps millions, considering their great famines... in their "Great Leap Forward". The Chinese are not any more wise or farsighted than anyone else. What they are, right now, is driven.
Last I checked, Japan attacked the USA in WW2 for stopping oil exports.
AND for cutting off the supply of scrap. Ironic that some of the weapons American forces faced in the Pacific were made from steel imported from the United States. I think of that often when I contemplate all of the money and technology we're sending to China.
More trade, which then possibly leads to more stability. History has shown that economic interdependence helps to foster peaceful, albeit sometimes tense, negotiations. It's the only reasonable hope we humans have to world peace.
I keep seeing this argument, and it's absolutely ludicrous. Guess who France's number one trading partner was before 1941? You may have heard of that country's leader. He's invoked here a lot on Slashdot.
This is just another variant of the "prosperity = peace" argument. While the two often go together, one does not ensure the other. Most of the prosperous nations in the history of man have been so while invading their neighbors, or even across the other side of the world. We had this same prediction 20 years ago... the increased trade with China would make it a free country and bring political liberalism. How'd that work out?
I'm all for expanded trade and opening more markets. But that just brings wealth, not freedom, and certainly not utopia.
Since insuring everyone can actually save money, we can do both.
No, it wont. More coverage equals more cost, period. Even the Congressional Budget Office has come to that conclusion.
Two of the biggest false promises being made about universal care are that universal coverage and more testing will save money. Neither do. The more people you cover, the more its going to cost. There are some savings to be had from having a bigger pool, but the biggest costs in care won't be affected.
The only way universal care could actually cut costs is to limit services.
With 1960's technology. He said in the video that it was impractical to do it back then. But using modern technology it could be.
>
It's still impractical. Even with newer technology, living under the sea is hugely impractical. This is a neat idea that's a lot like rocket packs or flying cars; perhaps doable, but so impractical as to ensure that it never becomes widespread.
" Just try to imagine Christ at a Tea Party rally, protesting tax dollars spent on the ill and the needy, and then signing up to join the Army the next day. The evangelicals have no idea which way is north. They don't even have a coherent set of values left. They are just following orders. "
Funny, conservatives... including religious conservatives... say the same thing about liberals. "They just take orders from their leaders". Not only is that silly, but GOP strategists probably hope that you really believe that, and that you trumpet it loudly. It makes their jobs much easier when its time to try and motivate voters.
They're not mindless, not in any way. Sounds like you're irked because, if anything, they are more organized and dedicated that you'd like. But if you can't counter their efforts with your own, then that's your problem, not theirs.
"While the legislature is dominated by Democrats, there is a very strong Republican political machine in the state that's able to deadlock the legislative process."
That has little to do with numbers of Republicans, and everything to do with the very structure of government in California.
"They've also elected quite a few governors, Nixon, Reagan, Wilson."
In the distant past, yes. And Wilson was a pro-choice moderate. New England was once staunchly Republican. Changing demographics and changing politics change elections.
"The policies that are implemented are not strongly liberal."
Really, how are you coming to this conclusion? California has their own blends of gasoline because of the state government. The state government is, by far, the largest employer in the state. Look also at individual employers. The list is also heavily dominated by state and local agencies, or institutions paid for with state tax dollars, like universities. The single fastest growing employment sector, by percentage of employment, is for government. Only Connecticut is outpacing CA in growth of government jobs vs. private sector jobs by percentage.
"And for those non-residents reading along at home, most Hollywood execs (from agents to production houses to studio heads) have political philosophies more in line with rural Kansas or Texas than those associated with our liberal enclaves. You heard it right, folks. Most of "Hollywood" is conservative. Shouldn't be a surprise, given the amount of money at stake in a given deal or project."
I'm sorry, but that's laughable. While execs may not be as liberal as, say, George Clooney or Michael Moore, to say that they're like people in Kansas or Texas is silly. I'll agree that there are more people that aren't liberal than you might think in Hollywood, but that doesn't necessarily make them conservative either.
The money issue is another thing as well. I don't see Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, or David Geffen giving all they own to the poor. They're quite adamant in defending their wealth. That idea that if someone is out to make money then they aren't liberal is ludicrous. Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and Steve Jobs are all Democrats, after all.
If this cabal of studio executives are conservatives, why are they continually greenlighting a string of anti-war movies that are hemorrhaging money? Execs may be sometimes scared of offending the bourgeois, but conservative? Uh, no.
"Clearly you don't live in California. Only outside CA is the political system perceived as Liberal. Those of us who live within the state have learned that there are a few enclaves of urban liberalism, surrounded by by vast areas of rural conservatism rivaling those of Kansas or Texas."
True, and yet absolutely meaningless. Kansas doesn't have a San Francisco or Los Angeles. California's population has a much heavier urban concentration than either of those states, both in absolute terms and as a percentage of population. It doesn't matter if large rural areas in California are conservative when their biggest cities with the bulk of the state's population is leftist. California is a liberal state because California liberals have King Numbers on their side. The conservatives do not.
Funny you should mention New York, as a NYC area legislator pressed to have the NYC area secede from the rest of the state. They were too conservative for his tastes. And he's right in that if you take NYC away, NY suddenly becomes a purple state that's up for grabs every election.
Also, last month there was a Facebook meme going around that MLK, Jr. was a Republican and isn't the GOP awesome for always championing liberties, etc., you get the idea.
The purveyors of this meme shut up rather quickly when it was pointed out that MLK was a liberal & as such would be unwelcome in the current GOP.
My mind threatens to break every time I try to understand where these people are coming from.
So I can expect the Democrats to stop championing Thomas Jefferson as one of their founders? The whole "government that governs best is that which governs least" thing is heavily out of step with the modern Democratic Party, after all. Or will your mind break on that too?
Much of that is for demographic reasons, though. The areas of Texas considered worse than average are heavily concentrated along the border with Mexico. That's an immigration issue, not an issue with the quality of Texas schools. The other areas where stats are similar are in central California... ground zero of winter agriculture, again, an immigration issue.... and in the southern Mississippi valley, where there is a huge population of elderly black people whose education years were pre-civil rights era, and in Appalachia, where there's a heavy concentration of poor white elderly that had almost no access to schooling pre-WWII.
In 30 years, those two areas will look largely like the rest of the country, simply because the elderly have died off. But unless we adopt draconian immigration controls, southern Texas and central California will largely be the same.
"Do you like the fire department? The public library? Public education? Guess what...you like socialism!"
That's a pretty disingenuous argument, and assumes that if you support any level of public funding for something, that you should support all levels. Because I find my post office and fire department necessary in no way means that I find government ownership of banks, automakers, and medicine necessary. The founders wanted things like a postal service, and at the same time said "the government that governs best is that which governs least". Kind of hard to govern least if the government pays for everything, no?
"e really need to throw away the false dichotomy between Capitalism and Socialism."
The dichotomy isn't false, and is in fact, pretty stark.
Our entire culture is based on Judeo-Christian traditions.
Really? "Jesus waterboards!" "Jesus saves - at CitiBank - so it's God's will to bail them out!" "Jesus healed the sick - so you don't need universal healthcare. You need to PRAY more."
So while you're being effusive in pointing out the fallibility of the people you're satirizing, do you also deny that the ideas of the individual worth of every human in western culture was influenced by Jewish and Christian scriptures? If you're going to condemn the religious for their failings, do you also deny them credit for their contributions as well? Most of the things that progressives cherish... including the notion that healthcare is a right... arose from the work of people that were influenced by the Second Great Awakening. The people that came up with the idea of things like social insurance were not just religious, but deeply religious. The genesis of the whole progressive movement, somewhat ironically, came from how a generation of believers interpreted their scripture.
BTW - Jesus never said a word against gays or lesbians. Not one. So do like Jesus would - approve same-sex marriage.
How do you knew Jesus of Nazareth would approve of it? He never condemned slavery either. For that matter, he never said a cross word about jaywalking or smoking or grand theft auto. But he did say that he came to fulfill the scriptures, not invalidate them. And the Hebrew scriptures were pretty clear on the subject, wouldn't you say? He also told his apostles that would they declared on Earth would also hold in heaven. And they were pretty clear on the subject as well. Altogether, a theological argument for your position probably isn't your best bet for swaying people. And it's kind of hard to condemn Christianity on one hand, then then try to use it to justify your argument on the other.
" Like England is? Last I looked, they were a pretty secular, post-xian society"
And? They're also increasingly being smothered by the nanny state. In government jobs, you literally have to have "stepladder" training before you can use a stepladder. Just last week, we were discussing... right here in Slashdot... about how the government of the UK was thinking about placing monitoring devices in people's garbage cans. Post-Christian societies all seem to be sliding more and more into a kind of micro-managed, hyper-PC existence. Is that a better existence?
Don't make the mistake of thinking that eliminating religion will suddenly bring about utopia. That's hasn't been the case throughout history. Very, very few people are truly anarchists, or even independent. More than likely, toss out the religious influence that you loathe so much, and in return, you'll get rule by experts that know what's good for you, and will enforce it.
Perhaps the uncensored internet is the fad coming already to a close?
Maybe, but I think this is going to be a country by country thing. In America, the concern won't be things like child porn, it'll be bandwidth and piracy. I don't think you'll see ISP's blocking what you can get, as much as throttling what you can get if you spend all night downloading DVD's. While in places like Europe and Australia and NZ, it'll be less of a broadband concern and more of a nanny state thing. People will download movies relatively freely, but their ISP's... at the behest of their governments... will monitor and report all "uncorrect" browsing.
The Americas will have politically uncensored but commerce-throttled Internet, and Europe and Asia will have free wheeling downloading with heavy censorship. Russia and China will eventually all but lock down their gateways to only government-approved sites.
While this may surprise people, it shouldn't. New Zealand is one of the most liberal countries in the world... a no nukes policy, an Air Force with no fighter planes, etc.... but along with that comes a nanny state attitude by leaders.
Slashdot Mirror
"Being given a sack of barley, a dizzying array of hops, some yeast, and water. Derision from self-taught master brewers comes at no extra charge."
Free BSD:
No longer available, as the liquor store confirms that Free BSD is dead.
Not sure why your post was marked troll, even if it's a little paranoid. It's quite likely that teabaggers and other anti-obama people have affected these nnumbers, even if unintentionally.
So this is all just a giant conspiracy? A vast, right-wing secret attack on Obama? A backhand way to make him look bad? "Hey boys, lets fill out another hundred or so of those FOIA requests today! We're almost at our goal".
Wow. There's paranoia, and then there's you guys.
Have you seen what he's up against? The Democrats were never as obstructive to President Bush.
The problem is that Obama's main idea of change - bipartisanship - is the least productive way of making change
in America.
That is demonstratively false. Democrats fought bitterly against most of Bush's domestic initiatives, especially Social Security reform, and the big one, reform of Fannie and Freddie ("I just don't see what the problem is here" - Barney Frank).
They also filibustered on judges continously. As for bipartisanship, President Obama has been pretty clear that bipartisanship means knuckling under to the majority ("I won, didn't I?".
breitbart is utterly irrelevant
Bullshit. You're giving attention and ad revenue to a political operative. As others have indicated, Slashdot could have linked to a "neutral" reproduction of the AP article.
And why isn't Breitbart's very same AP article neutral? His Big Hollywood/Government/Journalism sites are advocacy sites. Breitbart dot com is not. It's just a news aggregator, with no editorial content. Google News does the same thing. If there was editorial content by Andrew Breitbart himself somewhere in the article, please, point it out to us. I saw none. It's just an AP piece. If you're going to complain about who owns the site, what was your stance when CNN was founded and run by a politically active billionaire? What do you say when MSNBC prints an AP article?
In the media, everyone is a political operative. everyone. The media is filled with ex-employees, cabinet members, and Congressmen from both parties. George Stephanopolous hosts the number one Sunday news discussion show. He's a former Clinton Administration officer. Just who do we start ignoring in news because we don't like their political backgrounds? If the Slashdot story had been linked from the Huffington Post, would you still be upset? Because Arianna Huffington is most definitely not neutral.
Oh, I'll grant you there are some differences in the comparison, but the central point still stands. The same people that argue against copyright protections for things like music are making the same arguments that the government is making about email. The issue here is the notion that because the file is not "tangible"... a paper letter or a plastic CD... then the electronic file doesn't have the same legal protections, even though it has the same content. That's the argument of both parties in a nutshell. And while on the one hand we're talking about constitutional rights, and on the other, intellectual property, both are legal arguments. Which is what this all comes down to.
Touched a nerve, did I Nick?
I agree with Lessig on this... copyright is too long at present. But how many people here crusade against any copyright whatsoever? It's all "phantom property", they say.
I'm not arguing that copyright doesn't need reform. Far from it, it most certainly does. Copryright is too long, and there aren't enough fair use provisions right now. But that's irrelevant to my argument, which still stands. Anti-copyright partisans (not limited copyright partisans, mind you, but the people that say no such thing should exist at all) are making the same kind of argument that the government is; since the items in question aren't tangible, they're not protected.
EMail is modern mail; and mail is one case of the "papers" mentioned in the 4th amendment.
First off, I actually agree with you here in that email should have the same status as written mail. But I also find it deliciously ironic that while many Slashdotters laugh at the very idea of copyright protection, they become enraged at the email issue. And yet the government is making the same argument that they are. Piracy should be OK because MP3's are just electrons, files are reproduced at no cost, so there should be no protection for them. Obviously it's not the same thing as physical recordings. And yet Uncle Same is making the same argument about email; it's just electrons, reproducible at no cost. Obviously it's not the same thing as "real" letters.
These Asian folks think long term, unlike short-sighted Western politicians.
Rubbish. China is one of the oldest civilizations on Earth, and yet it's just now climbing out of a third world status that it's been in for centuries. They're human, fallible as anyone else. They have no more wisdom, insight, or patience than any of their competitors. Looking at their industrial pollution situation, and the race to catch up to the West, they may well have less. They slaughtered and starved hundreds of thousands of their own people... perhaps millions, considering their great famines... in their "Great Leap Forward". The Chinese are not any more wise or farsighted than anyone else. What they are, right now, is driven.
Last I checked, Japan attacked the USA in WW2 for stopping oil exports.
AND for cutting off the supply of scrap. Ironic that some of the weapons American forces faced in the Pacific were made from steel imported from the United States. I think of that often when I contemplate all of the money and technology we're sending to China.
More trade, which then possibly leads to more stability. History has shown that economic interdependence helps to foster peaceful, albeit sometimes tense, negotiations. It's the only reasonable hope we humans have to world peace.
I keep seeing this argument, and it's absolutely ludicrous. Guess who France's number one trading partner was before 1941? You may have heard of that country's leader. He's invoked here a lot on Slashdot.
This is just another variant of the "prosperity = peace" argument. While the two often go together, one does not ensure the other. Most of the prosperous nations in the history of man have been so while invading their neighbors, or even across the other side of the world. We had this same prediction 20 years ago... the increased trade with China would make it a free country and bring political liberalism. How'd that work out?
I'm all for expanded trade and opening more markets. But that just brings wealth, not freedom, and certainly not utopia.
Religious nutbags become ineffectual when you introduce prosperity and equality to their followers at the expense of meddling, war and neocolonialism.
Yes, because Saudi Arabia is an Oasis of secular humanism now. The very model of a modern enlightenment.
That's in Sweden which is the country next door to Norway.
Not only did R.J. MacReady escape the clutches of The Thing, he's posting on Slashdot now, apparently
Mac: "Hey Sweden!"
Doc: "They're Norwegian, Mac"
Since insuring everyone can actually save money, we can do both.
No, it wont. More coverage equals more cost, period. Even the Congressional Budget Office has come to that conclusion.
Two of the biggest false promises being made about universal care are that universal coverage and more testing will save money. Neither do. The more people you cover, the more its going to cost. There are some savings to be had from having a bigger pool, but the biggest costs in care won't be affected.
The only way universal care could actually cut costs is to limit services.
With 1960's technology. He said in the video that it was impractical to do it back then. But using modern technology it could be.
>
It's still impractical. Even with newer technology, living under the sea is hugely impractical. This is a neat idea that's a lot like rocket packs or flying cars; perhaps doable, but so impractical as to ensure that it never becomes widespread.
" Just try to imagine Christ at a Tea Party rally, protesting tax dollars spent on the ill and the needy, and then signing up to join the Army the next day. The evangelicals have no idea which way is north. They don't even have a coherent set of values left. They are just following orders.
"
Funny, conservatives... including religious conservatives... say the same thing about liberals. "They just take orders from their leaders". Not only is that silly, but GOP strategists probably hope that you really believe that, and that you trumpet it loudly. It makes their jobs much easier when its time to try and motivate voters.
They're not mindless, not in any way. Sounds like you're irked because, if anything, they are more organized and dedicated that you'd like. But if you can't counter their efforts with your own, then that's your problem, not theirs.
"While the legislature is dominated by Democrats, there is a very strong Republican political machine in the state that's able to deadlock the legislative process."
That has little to do with numbers of Republicans, and everything to do with the very structure of government in California.
"They've also elected quite a few governors, Nixon, Reagan, Wilson."
In the distant past, yes. And Wilson was a pro-choice moderate. New England was once staunchly Republican. Changing demographics and changing politics change elections.
"The policies that are implemented are not strongly liberal."
Really, how are you coming to this conclusion? California has their own blends of gasoline because of the state government. The state government is, by far, the largest employer in the state. Look also at individual employers. The list is also heavily dominated by state and local agencies, or institutions paid for with state tax dollars, like universities. The single fastest growing employment sector, by percentage of employment, is for government. Only Connecticut is outpacing CA in growth of government jobs vs. private sector jobs by percentage.
"And for those non-residents reading along at home, most Hollywood execs (from agents to production houses to studio heads) have political philosophies more in line with rural Kansas or Texas than those associated with our liberal enclaves. You heard it right, folks. Most of "Hollywood" is conservative. Shouldn't be a surprise, given the amount of money at stake in a given deal or project."
I'm sorry, but that's laughable. While execs may not be as liberal as, say, George Clooney or Michael Moore, to say that they're like people in Kansas or Texas is silly. I'll agree that there are more people that aren't liberal than you might think in Hollywood, but that doesn't necessarily make them conservative either.
The money issue is another thing as well. I don't see Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, or David Geffen giving all they own to the poor. They're quite adamant in defending their wealth. That idea that if someone is out to make money then they aren't liberal is ludicrous. Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and Steve Jobs are all Democrats, after all.
If this cabal of studio executives are conservatives, why are they continually greenlighting a string of anti-war movies that are hemorrhaging money? Execs may be sometimes scared of offending the bourgeois, but conservative? Uh, no.
"Clearly you don't live in California. Only outside CA is the political system perceived as Liberal. Those of us who live within the state have learned that there are a few enclaves of urban liberalism, surrounded by by vast areas of rural conservatism rivaling those of Kansas or Texas."
True, and yet absolutely meaningless. Kansas doesn't have a San Francisco or Los Angeles. California's population has a much heavier urban concentration than either of those states, both in absolute terms and as a percentage of population. It doesn't matter if large rural areas in California are conservative when their biggest cities with the bulk of the state's population is leftist. California is a liberal state because California liberals have King Numbers on their side. The conservatives do not.
Funny you should mention New York, as a NYC area legislator pressed to have the NYC area secede from the rest of the state. They were too conservative for his tastes. And he's right in that if you take NYC away, NY suddenly becomes a purple state that's up for grabs every election.
Also, last month there was a Facebook meme going around that MLK, Jr. was a Republican and isn't the GOP awesome for always championing liberties, etc., you get the idea.
The purveyors of this meme shut up rather quickly when it was pointed out that MLK was a liberal & as such would be unwelcome in the current GOP.
My mind threatens to break every time I try to understand where these people are coming from.
So I can expect the Democrats to stop championing Thomas Jefferson as one of their founders? The whole "government that governs best is that which governs least" thing is heavily out of step with the modern Democratic Party, after all. Or will your mind break on that too?
Much of that is for demographic reasons, though. The areas of Texas considered worse than average are heavily concentrated along the border with Mexico. That's an immigration issue, not an issue with the quality of Texas schools. The other areas where stats are similar are in central California... ground zero of winter agriculture, again, an immigration issue.... and in the southern Mississippi valley, where there is a huge population of elderly black people whose education years were pre-civil rights era, and in Appalachia, where there's a heavy concentration of poor white elderly that had almost no access to schooling pre-WWII.
In 30 years, those two areas will look largely like the rest of the country, simply because the elderly have died off. But unless we adopt draconian immigration controls, southern Texas and central California will largely be the same.
"Do you like the fire department? The public library? Public education? Guess what...you like socialism!"
That's a pretty disingenuous argument, and assumes that if you support any level of public funding for something, that you should support all levels. Because I find my post office and fire department necessary in no way means that I find government ownership of banks, automakers, and medicine necessary. The founders wanted things like a postal service, and at the same time said "the government that governs best is that which governs least". Kind of hard to govern least if the government pays for everything, no?
"e really need to throw away the false dichotomy between Capitalism and Socialism."
The dichotomy isn't false, and is in fact, pretty stark.
Really? "Jesus waterboards!" "Jesus saves - at CitiBank - so it's God's will to bail them out!" "Jesus healed the sick - so you don't need universal healthcare. You need to PRAY more."
So while you're being effusive in pointing out the fallibility of the people you're satirizing, do you also deny that the ideas of the individual worth of every human in western culture was influenced by Jewish and Christian scriptures? If you're going to condemn the religious for their failings, do you also deny them credit for their contributions as well? Most of the things that progressives cherish... including the notion that healthcare is a right... arose from the work of people that were influenced by the Second Great Awakening. The people that came up with the idea of things like social insurance were not just religious, but deeply religious. The genesis of the whole progressive movement, somewhat ironically, came from how a generation of believers interpreted their scripture.
BTW - Jesus never said a word against gays or lesbians. Not one. So do like Jesus would - approve same-sex marriage.
How do you knew Jesus of Nazareth would approve of it? He never condemned slavery either. For that matter, he never said a cross word about jaywalking or smoking or grand theft auto. But he did say that he came to fulfill the scriptures, not invalidate them. And the Hebrew scriptures were pretty clear on the subject, wouldn't you say? He also told his apostles that would they declared on Earth would also hold in heaven. And they were pretty clear on the subject as well. Altogether, a theological argument for your position probably isn't your best bet for swaying people. And it's kind of hard to condemn Christianity on one hand, then then try to use it to justify your argument on the other.
" Like England is? Last I looked, they were a pretty secular, post-xian society"
And? They're also increasingly being smothered by the nanny state. In government jobs, you literally have to have "stepladder" training before you can use a stepladder. Just last week, we were discussing... right here in Slashdot... about how the government of the UK was thinking about placing monitoring devices in people's garbage cans. Post-Christian societies all seem to be sliding more and more into a kind of micro-managed, hyper-PC existence. Is that a better existence?
Don't make the mistake of thinking that eliminating religion will suddenly bring about utopia. That's hasn't been the case throughout history. Very, very few people are truly anarchists, or even independent. More than likely, toss out the religious influence that you loathe so much, and in return, you'll get rule by experts that know what's good for you, and will enforce it.
Perhaps the uncensored internet is the fad coming already to a close?
Maybe, but I think this is going to be a country by country thing. In America, the concern won't be things like child porn, it'll be bandwidth and piracy. I don't think you'll see ISP's blocking what you can get, as much as throttling what you can get if you spend all night downloading DVD's. While in places like Europe and Australia and NZ, it'll be less of a broadband concern and more of a nanny state thing. People will download movies relatively freely, but their ISP's... at the behest of their governments... will monitor and report all "uncorrect" browsing.
The Americas will have politically uncensored but commerce-throttled Internet, and Europe and Asia will have free wheeling downloading with heavy censorship. Russia and China will eventually all but lock down their gateways to only government-approved sites.
While this may surprise people, it shouldn't. New Zealand is one of the most liberal countries in the world... a no nukes policy, an Air Force with no fighter planes, etc. ... but along with that comes a nanny state attitude by leaders.
You may be to young to remember when people actually bought albums for the express purpose of actually listening to them in their entirety.
I don't recall that these same bands ever stopped selling singles though...
So, why can they sell vinyl singles... and they did for years... but not MP3 singles? Again, artistic integrity has nothing to do with their position.