Missile defense is an _offensive_ weapon. It takes away the worries of mutually assured destruction.
While the context was tactical nuclear weapons, this statement by George W. Bush makes clear the mindset of those in power in the U.S., "I want nuclear weapons I can use."
This is utter stupidity. It's the equivalent of saying "We can't have an army, or we'll spook that guy that already has one".
The only reason the science is being contested is the same reason evolution is: because some people have agendas that don't care about facts.
This is complete and utter crap. This kind of arrogance is why people are pushing back against you. You've created a theory that, rather conveniently can't be disproven. Too hot? Climate change. Too cold? Climate change.Unseasonably wet? Climate change. Long dry spell? Climate change. Never mind all of the predictions that haven't come true... the islands and coasts under water, the ice-free arctic, the drowning polar bears. And your answer to that? See, climate change is so severe that even our models can't get it right. Get rid of your car, now.
It's over. We're tired of the charade. We're tired of the guilt trips. We're tired of the threats. Just like "dark matter", a bunch of scientists set themselves up as a priesthood and made predictions they can't back up, and the rest of us are luddites if we don't go along. Worse, we're "deniers", equivalent to people that ignored Jews in Dachau. Well, you know what? Tough. Scream all you want from now on. Point and sneer, and call us every name in the book. We're not listening anymore. We...the vast majority are tuning you out now. Make all of the disaster movie references you like. Compare the Earth to Krypton right before it went because those fools wouldn't listen to Jor-El. More CO2 is being pumped than ever, especially with China and India's rapid industrialization, and warming essentially stopped 15 years ago. It's actually cooled in some places. The models are wrong. Admit it. Or don't. We don't care anymore. The rest of us are going to go on with our lives while you scream that the sky is falling. We've learned to tune you out.Further, we've learned not to trust you in the first place now. You're not scientists. You're a cult making dire threats.
The government wants cars to be unaffordable. They want to ladle so many requirements on building them that you'll need a six figure income to buy one. Sheesh.
I grew up in the 70's with a VW beetle as our family car. It didn't have anti-lock brakes, a third brake light, air conditioning, air-bags, a computer, or annoying "Door Ajar" voice. It had thin doors. Hell, it didn't even have a radiator.Those old bug engines were air-cooled. They were so light and easy to maintain, my dad overhauled one in our yard. He literally unbolted the engine from the motor mounts, lifted it up and out with his own hands, worked on it, then put it back. All without the help of pulleys, computer analysis kits, or microchips. You could drive to forever and back on a tank of gas. It was the most reliable car we ever owned.
And now, you couldn't build one in America if you wanted to, because the government would forbid it. "Inherently unsafe", they'd call it. They'd produce 3,000 pages of requirements to be filled before you could actually make one. And yet my family drove one for almost two decades, and it was safe, cheap, and reliable. So yeah, I do think that the government wants to price Americans out of the auto market sometimes.
Wow. Because when I want an opinion on climate change, I automatically turn to astronauts, shuttle leading edge system managers, and pogo prevention panel chairs.
The majority of scientists speaking in favor of AGW are not climatologists either. Proponents of global warming don't seem to mind that, though. Canada's leading climate change crusader... David Suzuki... is a zoologist. We've heard for years that you only need a background in STEM to understand climate issues, since most such people speaking to the media in favor had such backgrounds. Being a "generic scientist" was enough, if you were on the right side. So now that critics with STEM backgrounds speak up... oh, now you have to be a climatologist?
Yeah, it's great that this is somehow your big issue now. But would it pain you all too much to get together and maybe concentrate on making the U.S. a country capable of putting a man into space again?
China has more people than the USA China has more raw materiel than the USA China has more money than the USA China has more academics than the USA
This is a no win situation, unless you are China
China does not have more money than the US. They're not even the number one economy yet (though they're projected by some to be so by 2016). Also, China has a huge problem. While they've made great strides in bettering their economy, out of their 1+ billion people, the vast majority are still poor. I mean really poor, not American Poor with cable TV, cell phones, free school lunch for the kids, and two cars. There's beginning to be some problems with envy among their rural populace. And China has some financial issues in the structure of their economy that could be quite catastrophic, at least in the long term. So yes, China is our biggest potential adversary, but things are not perfect in the Middle Kingdom either, and it's going to get very interesting there.
The war on the academic sector. One more nail in our coffin.
You speak as if this is ridiculous, unprecedented, or illogical. But the Soviets did this for years, poking around in colleges looking for kids ripe for their cause. Take youthful rebellion, gather those youths in a place where that rebellion is nurtured and encouraged, and it's a perfect recipe to recruit. And we're talking about people that are young enough to be angry but not old enough to be worldly or wise, smart and capable and yet putty in the hands of those that know what they're doing. Perfect place to find passionate recruits ready to fight "the system".
That's like living in Detroit and saying "Hey, my house was never burglarized, so this town's bad rap is undeserved". Just because you were lucky doesn't change the stats.
Like a lot of these types of things, it's really a CLASS issue, not a race issue.
Actually, I disagree. The problem isn't class OR race, but rather culture. "Tribal" can be cultural as well as racial or geographic, and sometimes more so.
Wait, which religion has a zombie god? That sounds awesome! I might convert from Celestia worship for that.
I know you say that to get a rise of out Christians, but if you're going to do so, at least remember that Zombies are mindless. Maybe "undead" would be a little more accurate for your purposes. After all, the Bible said that Christ told the witnesses "Be not afraid", not "Braaaiiiinnnnss!".
The ministers were afraid people would become curious with all those pretty printed symbols and tried to learn how to read them. Then they'd lose their minister jobs. Ignorance and superstition are close friends.
Once again, the old "educate them and they'll lose faith" saw.
Except... it's not true, and never has been. The spread of literacy and Christianity went hand-in-hand in the West. You're more likely to be deeply faithful if you can read your own scriptures, not less. And especially in the case of Americans that are religious, they tend to be especially more so the higher their level of education:
"
Many in the pundit class identify religion as something of a regressive tendency, embraced by the less enlightened, the less skilled, intelligent and educated...Some might be surprised to learn that religious affiliation grows with education levels. A new University of Nebraska study finds that with each additional year of education, the odds of attending religious services increased by 15%. The educated, the study found, may not be eschewing religion, as social science has long maintained, even if their spiritual views tend to be less narrow, and less overtly tied to politics, than among the less schooled.
I've noted here in past posts that the 9/11 hijackers were all educated, and that the London bombers were British-born, with a lifetime of Western liberal educations and economic and political opportunity. Their immigrant parents were poor and uneducated when they came to the UK, and were much more moderate. And yet their Westernized, educated children chose Jihad.
disk and installed in on a spare latop not too long ago. Shit that thing flies even compared to lxde distros.
There are a couple of anti-virus vendors that support Win2K with current versions, but no browsers that I know of (again, with current versions). Otherwise, I'd be perfectly happy using Win2K on some boxes.
But if there was a "Life-Sized" enterprise in which I could book passage (rent a room) and visit 10-Forward or see the bridge, I would make the "trek" to vegas. I am sure I am not the only tight ass that would do this... Flop? I don;t thin it would be, espesially if they built the Emporer's imperial cruiser next door and they had weekly geek fights to see which would win.:-)
That was my thinking. An Enterprise hotel that looked just like the sets on the inside would be a huge attraction. If you could build something as massive as the D model, then wow at the hotel possibilities, with a Ten Forward bar and restaurant, and quarters that looked like the ones from the series.
the F-18 still has a better combat record than the F-22.
(I only joke because there were no fatalities!)
And this will remain the case as long as F-22's are so expensive... around $150 million apiece, flyaway... that we're reluctant to risk them in, you know, actual combat.
Anyone have an idea why this happened? Pilot error? Mechanical failure?
A witness was quoted as saying that the engine sounded like it was dying. The problem there is that the Hornet is a twin engine plane. If it was an engine going out, then they could have just shut it down and flew home on the remaining engine. The Navy has had a policy of two engines for decades now precisely because of the safety factor (and this is why there's some grumbling about the F-35C being a single engine bird). Unless it was the world's biggest birdstrike and FOD-ed up both intakes, it had to be something else... loss of power, internal fire, something.
Nobody actually WANTS to pay for all those shopping, religious nut, cable access bullshit channels.
And yet someone has to pay for them. Because we can't just tell those channel execs 'your channel sucks and nobody wants it, we're dropping it'.
So they stay. And we all get to pay for crap we never wanted.
I think you're operating under a delusion here. Most of the country is quite religious, and thus the "religious nut" channels would do just fine under a "pick and pay" plan. So would the shopping channels (You think the shopping channels would die? Do you know any women at all?). Public access would probably be thrown in for free anyway, as they don't really cost much. You seem to think that the rest of the country thinks and feels as you do, and... I doubt that the case. Things like religious networks and sports networks would thrive.
No, what would have a harder time surviving are narrow interest, boutique channels. Things like "The International Film Channel" and such. Even the SyFy network might tank, as people would have to ask themselves "do I really want to pay for stuff like Megacroc vs. Giantshark"?
I've long wanted a cable cafeteria plan, as I'd pay for maybe three dozen channels and chuck the rest. I don't find anything on network TV worth watching anyway, so my DVR is filled with classic films from TCM, and things like certain sporting events and documentaries. I think there are more cable customers like me than you in the United States. Your MTV2's and CurrentTV would be in Heap Big Trouble in a market where people had to actually pay for them individually, methinks. If you like the boutique channels, maybe you should be thankful for the current system.
So mute people don't have the right to express their ideas protected in the First Amendment?
Of course they do. They can write and type, can't they? Again, the framers defined speech by content and purpose, not by means of transmission. They viewed newspapers and pamphlets as speech, not just the guy yelling "Down with the King!"in the public square.
I think your viewpoint is a bit narrow. The "Arab Spring" was indeed about freedom from tyrannies, not about religious revolutions. But opportunistic religious groups have used the power vacuums to insert themselves.
Sorry, I think this is naivete. I think a relatively small group of people wanted what in the west is considered freedom, and that the majority did want religious rule. One of these days we'll learn that "freedom" doesn't mean the same thing to different people.
There's no doubt that many Egyptians are conservative, but there is more of a split between the conservative (and less educated) rural areas and the cities like Cairo that generally have more progressive populaces.
That may be so, but.... so what? The former still outnumber the later considerably. And as for the "less educated" thing, that's a falsehood. The most radical, and most committed Islamists in both Arab nations and the West tend to be the best educated. It's the least educated types that tend to be the most moderate, the guys that just want to earn a living. The 9/11 hijackers were all well educated, and the London bombers were British citizens, the children of immigrants that grew up in Britain and had all the advantages of a liberal Western education. They choose Jihad, not had it imposed on them. The old "if we just get more of them in school, they'll be less radical" is an old saw that simply isn't true.
On top of that, you have the two religious Islamist groups, the fairly moderate Muslim Brotherhood, and the Sharia Law-loving Salafists, who are in discussions behind-the-scenes as to how radical to go.
Do you really think the Muslim Brotherhood is "moderate"? Seriously? By what standard?
I find it ridiculous when Americans act superior about Islamist states though;
I think you misunderstand me here. I'm not acting superior. If Islamism is what they want, then I really mean that they should have it. I'm not condemning them for it. I'm saying we should stop expecting that they're going to be a western democracy when they clearly aren't.
look at all the religion-motivated laws being passed in America lately that are taking women's rights back to the Mad Men days.
Religion-motivated laws, as you put it, are and always have been, part and parcel of American law. It's not like this is anything new. Religious influence in a law is not necessarily the same thing as a law being a religious law.
We're just as much in the hands of a conservative Christian cabal as Egypt is with Islam
Really? We can ban religions other than Christianity? We can jail people for apostasy? I bet that's news to the Christian Cabal that just watched the ban on homosexuals serving in the military to get lifted. Having a religious people, and certain laws influenced by religious tradition, is not the same thing as a theocratic state.
If you want to be a strict, "only the precise wording," kind of person for rights you may well find that you lose rights you wanted.
You're correct to an extent. I'm not so much for completely literal wording so much as I'm against a nonsense interpretation of the wording that takes original intent completely out of context, which the modern interpretation of "expression" does. The very people that wrote the Constitution wouldn't recognize a Hustler centerfold as "speech". If we want to define that as a right, then we have an amendment process to do so (and I don't think you'd ever see a more enthusiastic movement on Slashdot than a Freedom of Nekkid amendment). Speech was clearly understood by the framers as both the content of political speech and the right to publish that speech for public distribution. As someone else has pointed out, the 9th and 10th Amendments might give a "right to porn", but it still isn't speech as intended by the framers in the First Amendment. Ultimately, a little common sense would go a long way here.
For free speech to truly be free, it has to protect the really unpopular stuff.
On this, we completely agree. It's not freedom of speech unless unpopular speech is allowed. You should be free to publish both Common Sense AND the Communist Manifesto. We're just arguing about what speech is, in a Constitutional context.
>>>I don't think porn should be banned outright, but to call it "speech" is ridiculous. To call it "the press" is even moreso
Well then read the 9th and 10th amendment. 9 - The enumeration of certain rights shall not be construed to deny the People of other rights (such as the right to pronographic entertainment).
10 - Congress shall exercise no power that has not been granted to it. It does not hold the power to ban things (such as porn). Said power is reserved to the States and the People.
I'm heartened by your enthusiastic support of the 9th and 10th amendments... a relative rarity on Slashdot... but I have to ask what you would do if a state banned pornography? Assume for the sake of argument here that the ban had sufficient support from state voters.
"Speech" means expression, and "the press" means publication. Put another way, Congress shall not prohibit the expression of ideas, or the publication thereof. And expression can be for entertainment just as it can for serious communication.
Except that the framers didn't guarantee a right to "expression". They guaranteed a right to speech, and they were pretty clear about speech being, specifically, political speech. "Expression" is a modern mutation by the courts that the founders didn't intend, a case of judges stretching a word far beyond its original meaning.
After a year of bitching about it, Egypt realises they can still get it without too much hard work, and are getting a bunch more done these days. Plus, real naked people rock!
The Muslim Brotherhood won't be able to completely eliminate it, but they'll succeed to a greater extent than you think. The Taliban had things pretty well nailed down in Afghanistan, after all. It stinks for the minorities of Egypt... the Coptic Christian Church might well be extinct in Egpyt in our lifetime the way things are going over there... but ultimately, their fate is their own, made by their own choice. If Egyptians pick rulers that are going to do things like ban Internet access, let them live by their own choices.
Egyptians clearly wanted Islamism. They clearly wanted Sharia law. Let them have it. Maybe naive Americans that kept hyping the "Arab Spring" will finally realize that it was nothing of the sort, it was an Islamist Spring. What's going on in North Africa is Iran in 1979 all over again. "Freedom" for these people means "No one can stop us from becoming an Islamist state now". This is why I have little sympathy for the Iranians. They're protesting now, but you have to ask "What did you think you were getting when you demanded rule by Ayatollah?"
Slashdot Mirror
Missile defense is an _offensive_ weapon. It takes away the worries of mutually assured destruction.
While the context was tactical nuclear weapons, this statement by George W. Bush makes clear the mindset of those in power in the U.S., "I want nuclear weapons I can use."
This is utter stupidity. It's the equivalent of saying "We can't have an army, or we'll spook that guy that already has one".
The only reason the science is being contested is the same reason evolution is: because some people have agendas that don't care about facts.
This is complete and utter crap. This kind of arrogance is why people are pushing back against you. You've created a theory that, rather conveniently can't be disproven. Too hot? Climate change. Too cold? Climate change.Unseasonably wet? Climate change. Long dry spell? Climate change. Never mind all of the predictions that haven't come true... the islands and coasts under water, the ice-free arctic, the drowning polar bears. And your answer to that? See, climate change is so severe that even our models can't get it right. Get rid of your car, now.
It's over. We're tired of the charade. We're tired of the guilt trips. We're tired of the threats. Just like "dark matter", a bunch of scientists set themselves up as a priesthood and made predictions they can't back up, and the rest of us are luddites if we don't go along. Worse, we're "deniers", equivalent to people that ignored Jews in Dachau. Well, you know what? Tough. Scream all you want from now on. Point and sneer, and call us every name in the book. We're not listening anymore. We...the vast majority are tuning you out now. Make all of the disaster movie references you like. Compare the Earth to Krypton right before it went because those fools wouldn't listen to Jor-El. More CO2 is being pumped than ever, especially with China and India's rapid industrialization, and warming essentially stopped 15 years ago. It's actually cooled in some places. The models are wrong. Admit it. Or don't. We don't care anymore. The rest of us are going to go on with our lives while you scream that the sky is falling. We've learned to tune you out.Further, we've learned not to trust you in the first place now. You're not scientists. You're a cult making dire threats.
The government wants cars to be unaffordable. They want to ladle so many requirements on building them that you'll need a six figure income to buy one. Sheesh.
I grew up in the 70's with a VW beetle as our family car. It didn't have anti-lock brakes, a third brake light, air conditioning, air-bags, a computer, or annoying "Door Ajar" voice. It had thin doors. Hell, it didn't even have a radiator.Those old bug engines were air-cooled. They were so light and easy to maintain, my dad overhauled one in our yard. He literally unbolted the engine from the motor mounts, lifted it up and out with his own hands, worked on it, then put it back. All without the help of pulleys, computer analysis kits, or microchips. You could drive to forever and back on a tank of gas. It was the most reliable car we ever owned.
And now, you couldn't build one in America if you wanted to, because the government would forbid it. "Inherently unsafe", they'd call it. They'd produce 3,000 pages of requirements to be filled before you could actually make one. And yet my family drove one for almost two decades, and it was safe, cheap, and reliable. So yeah, I do think that the government wants to price Americans out of the auto market sometimes.
Wow. Because when I want an opinion on climate change, I automatically turn to astronauts, shuttle leading edge system managers, and pogo prevention panel chairs.
The majority of scientists speaking in favor of AGW are not climatologists either. Proponents of global warming don't seem to mind that, though. Canada's leading climate change crusader... David Suzuki... is a zoologist. We've heard for years that you only need a background in STEM to understand climate issues, since most such people speaking to the media in favor had such backgrounds. Being a "generic scientist" was enough, if you were on the right side. So now that critics with STEM backgrounds speak up... oh, now you have to be a climatologist?
Yeah, it's great that this is somehow your big issue now. But would it pain you all too much to get together and maybe concentrate on making the U.S. a country capable of putting a man into space again?
Space is only half of NASA's mission.
The other half is "outreach to the Muslim world". Priorities, man, priorities.
The simple facts:
China has more people than the USA
China has more raw materiel than the USA
China has more money than the USA
China has more academics than the USA
This is a no win situation, unless you are China
China does not have more money than the US. They're not even the number one economy yet (though they're projected by some to be so by 2016). Also, China has a huge problem. While they've made great strides in bettering their economy, out of their 1+ billion people, the vast majority are still poor. I mean really poor, not American Poor with cable TV, cell phones, free school lunch for the kids, and two cars. There's beginning to be some problems with envy among their rural populace. And China has some financial issues in the structure of their economy that could be quite catastrophic, at least in the long term. So yes, China is our biggest potential adversary, but things are not perfect in the Middle Kingdom either, and it's going to get very interesting there.
The war on the academic sector. One more nail in our coffin.
You speak as if this is ridiculous, unprecedented, or illogical. But the Soviets did this for years, poking around in colleges looking for kids ripe for their cause. Take youthful rebellion, gather those youths in a place where that rebellion is nurtured and encouraged, and it's a perfect recipe to recruit. And we're talking about people that are young enough to be angry but not old enough to be worldly or wise, smart and capable and yet putty in the hands of those that know what they're doing. Perfect place to find passionate recruits ready to fight "the system".
I know you say that to get a rise of out Christians,
Actually, no, I didn't, as shown by my comments above how Jesus != zombie, IMHO.
Unless you meant the Celestia part because some evangelicals consider unicorns evil.
I misread you then, and apologize.
Only assholes got jumped.
That's like living in Detroit and saying "Hey, my house was never burglarized, so this town's bad rap is undeserved". Just because you were lucky doesn't change the stats.
Like a lot of these types of things, it's really a CLASS issue, not a race issue.
Actually, I disagree. The problem isn't class OR race, but rather culture. "Tribal" can be cultural as well as racial or geographic, and sometimes more so.
After 3000+ years, religion has finally finished with hides, scrolls, codices and books, and moved back to tablets?
"The Lord Jehovah gives you these 15 *crash!*... 10... 10 Commandments!"
Wait, which religion has a zombie god? That sounds awesome! I might convert from Celestia worship for that.
I know you say that to get a rise of out Christians, but if you're going to do so, at least remember that Zombies are mindless. Maybe "undead" would be a little more accurate for your purposes. After all, the Bible said that Christ told the witnesses "Be not afraid", not "Braaaiiiinnnnss!".
The ministers were afraid people would become curious with all those pretty printed symbols and tried to learn how to read them. Then they'd lose their minister jobs. Ignorance and superstition are close friends.
Once again, the old "educate them and they'll lose faith" saw.
Except... it's not true, and never has been. The spread of literacy and Christianity went hand-in-hand in the West. You're more likely to be deeply faithful if you can read your own scriptures, not less. And especially in the case of Americans that are religious, they tend to be especially more so the higher their level of education:
"
Many in the pundit class identify religion as something of a regressive tendency, embraced by the less enlightened, the less skilled, intelligent and educated...Some might be surprised to learn that religious affiliation grows with education levels. A new University of Nebraska study finds that with each additional year of education, the odds of attending religious services increased by 15%. The educated, the study found, may not be eschewing religion, as social science has long maintained, even if their spiritual views tend to be less narrow, and less overtly tied to politics, than among the less schooled.
I've noted here in past posts that the 9/11 hijackers were all educated, and that the London bombers were British-born, with a lifetime of Western liberal educations and economic and political opportunity. Their immigrant parents were poor and uneducated when they came to the UK, and were much more moderate. And yet their Westernized, educated children chose Jihad.
The two of them?
There are more Vista desktops than Linux desktops out there.
disk and installed in on a spare latop not too long ago. Shit that thing flies even compared to lxde distros.
There are a couple of anti-virus vendors that support Win2K with current versions, but no browsers that I know of (again, with current versions). Otherwise, I'd be perfectly happy using Win2K on some boxes.
But if there was a "Life-Sized" enterprise in which I could book passage (rent a room) and visit 10-Forward or see the bridge, I would make the "trek" to vegas. I am sure I am not the only tight ass that would do this... Flop? I don;t thin it would be, espesially if they built the Emporer's imperial cruiser next door and they had weekly geek fights to see which would win. :-)
That was my thinking. An Enterprise hotel that looked just like the sets on the inside would be a huge attraction. If you could build something as massive as the D model, then wow at the hotel possibilities, with a Ten Forward bar and restaurant, and quarters that looked like the ones from the series.
the F-18 still has a better combat record than the F-22.
(I only joke because there were no fatalities!)
And this will remain the case as long as F-22's are so expensive... around $150 million apiece, flyaway... that we're reluctant to risk them in, you know, actual combat.
Anyone have an idea why this happened? Pilot error? Mechanical failure?
A witness was quoted as saying that the engine sounded like it was dying. The problem there is that the Hornet is a twin engine plane. If it was an engine going out, then they could have just shut it down and flew home on the remaining engine. The Navy has had a policy of two engines for decades now precisely because of the safety factor (and this is why there's some grumbling about the F-35C being a single engine bird). Unless it was the world's biggest birdstrike and FOD-ed up both intakes, it had to be something else... loss of power, internal fire, something.
Of course they lobby aginst it..
Nobody actually WANTS to pay for all those shopping, religious nut, cable access bullshit channels.
And yet someone has to pay for them. Because we can't just tell those channel execs 'your channel sucks and nobody wants it, we're dropping it'.
So they stay. And we all get to pay for crap we never wanted.
I think you're operating under a delusion here. Most of the country is quite religious, and thus the "religious nut" channels would do just fine under a "pick and pay" plan. So would the shopping channels (You think the shopping channels would die? Do you know any women at all?). Public access would probably be thrown in for free anyway, as they don't really cost much. You seem to think that the rest of the country thinks and feels as you do, and... I doubt that the case. Things like religious networks and sports networks would thrive.
No, what would have a harder time surviving are narrow interest, boutique channels. Things like "The International Film Channel" and such. Even the SyFy network might tank, as people would have to ask themselves "do I really want to pay for stuff like Megacroc vs. Giantshark"?
I've long wanted a cable cafeteria plan, as I'd pay for maybe three dozen channels and chuck the rest. I don't find anything on network TV worth watching anyway, so my DVR is filled with classic films from TCM, and things like certain sporting events and documentaries. I think there are more cable customers like me than you in the United States. Your MTV2's and CurrentTV would be in Heap Big Trouble in a market where people had to actually pay for them individually, methinks. If you like the boutique channels, maybe you should be thankful for the current system.
So mute people don't have the right to express their ideas protected in the First Amendment?
Of course they do. They can write and type, can't they? Again, the framers defined speech by content and purpose, not by means of transmission. They viewed newspapers and pamphlets as speech, not just the guy yelling "Down with the King!"in the public square.
I think your viewpoint is a bit narrow. The "Arab Spring" was indeed about freedom from tyrannies, not about religious revolutions. But opportunistic religious groups have used the power vacuums to insert themselves.
Sorry, I think this is naivete. I think a relatively small group of people wanted what in the west is considered freedom, and that the majority did want religious rule. One of these days we'll learn that "freedom" doesn't mean the same thing to different people.
There's no doubt that many Egyptians are conservative, but there is more of a split between the conservative (and less educated) rural areas and the cities like Cairo that generally have more progressive populaces.
That may be so, but.... so what? The former still outnumber the later considerably. And as for the "less educated" thing, that's a falsehood. The most radical, and most committed Islamists in both Arab nations and the West tend to be the best educated. It's the least educated types that tend to be the most moderate, the guys that just want to earn a living. The 9/11 hijackers were all well educated, and the London bombers were British citizens, the children of immigrants that grew up in Britain and had all the advantages of a liberal Western education. They choose Jihad, not had it imposed on them. The old "if we just get more of them in school, they'll be less radical" is an old saw that simply isn't true.
On top of that, you have the two religious Islamist groups, the fairly moderate Muslim Brotherhood, and the Sharia Law-loving Salafists, who are in discussions behind-the-scenes as to how radical to go.
Do you really think the Muslim Brotherhood is "moderate"? Seriously? By what standard?
I find it ridiculous when Americans act superior about Islamist states though;
I think you misunderstand me here. I'm not acting superior. If Islamism is what they want, then I really mean that they should have it. I'm not condemning them for it. I'm saying we should stop expecting that they're going to be a western democracy when they clearly aren't.
look at all the religion-motivated laws being passed in America lately that are taking women's rights back to the Mad Men days.
Religion-motivated laws, as you put it, are and always have been, part and parcel of American law. It's not like this is anything new. Religious influence in a law is not necessarily the same thing as a law being a religious law.
We're just as much in the hands of a conservative Christian cabal as Egypt is with Islam
Really? We can ban religions other than Christianity? We can jail people for apostasy? I bet that's news to the Christian Cabal that just watched the ban on homosexuals serving in the military to get lifted. Having a religious people, and certain laws influenced by religious tradition, is not the same thing as a theocratic state.
If you want to be a strict, "only the precise wording," kind of person for rights you may well find that you lose rights you wanted.
You're correct to an extent. I'm not so much for completely literal wording so much as I'm against a nonsense interpretation of the wording that takes original intent completely out of context, which the modern interpretation of "expression" does. The very people that wrote the Constitution wouldn't recognize a Hustler centerfold as "speech". If we want to define that as a right, then we have an amendment process to do so (and I don't think you'd ever see a more enthusiastic movement on Slashdot than a Freedom of Nekkid amendment). Speech was clearly understood by the framers as both the content of political speech and the right to publish that speech for public distribution. As someone else has pointed out, the 9th and 10th Amendments might give a "right to porn", but it still isn't speech as intended by the framers in the First Amendment. Ultimately, a little common sense would go a long way here.
For free speech to truly be free, it has to protect the really unpopular stuff.
On this, we completely agree. It's not freedom of speech unless unpopular speech is allowed. You should be free to publish both Common Sense AND the Communist Manifesto. We're just arguing about what speech is, in a Constitutional context.
>>>I don't think porn should be banned outright, but to call it "speech" is ridiculous. To call it "the press" is even moreso
Well then read the 9th and 10th amendment.
9 - The enumeration of certain rights shall not be construed to deny the People of other rights (such as the right to pronographic entertainment).
10 - Congress shall exercise no power that has not been granted to it. It does not hold the power to ban things (such as porn). Said power is reserved to the States and the People.
I'm heartened by your enthusiastic support of the 9th and 10th amendments... a relative rarity on Slashdot... but I have to ask what you would do if a state banned pornography? Assume for the sake of argument here that the ban had sufficient support from state voters.
"Speech" means expression, and "the press" means publication. Put another way, Congress shall not prohibit the expression of ideas, or the publication thereof. And expression can be for entertainment just as it can for serious communication.
Except that the framers didn't guarantee a right to "expression". They guaranteed a right to speech, and they were pretty clear about speech being, specifically, political speech. "Expression" is a modern mutation by the courts that the founders didn't intend, a case of judges stretching a word far beyond its original meaning.
After a year of bitching about it, Egypt realises they can still get it without too much hard work, and are getting a bunch more done these days. Plus, real naked people rock!
The Muslim Brotherhood won't be able to completely eliminate it, but they'll succeed to a greater extent than you think. The Taliban had things pretty well nailed down in Afghanistan, after all. It stinks for the minorities of Egypt... the Coptic Christian Church might well be extinct in Egpyt in our lifetime the way things are going over there... but ultimately, their fate is their own, made by their own choice. If Egyptians pick rulers that are going to do things like ban Internet access, let them live by their own choices.
Egyptians clearly wanted Islamism. They clearly wanted Sharia law. Let them have it. Maybe naive Americans that kept hyping the "Arab Spring" will finally realize that it was nothing of the sort, it was an Islamist Spring. What's going on in North Africa is Iran in 1979 all over again. "Freedom" for these people means "No one can stop us from becoming an Islamist state now". This is why I have little sympathy for the Iranians. They're protesting now, but you have to ask "What did you think you were getting when you demanded rule by Ayatollah?"