Let's look at just one legal benefit of marriage: familial visitation rights. In order to reduce the amount of traffic within the hospital, and in order to protect the safety and privacy of the hospitalized, hospitals have decided to deny admission to visiting non-family members.
This is not so much the government granting or denying a right based on the presence or absence of a marriage, as it does in the case of filing joint tax returns, but another entity legally discrminating based on the marriage status.
The hospital staff can readily determine whether your wife is trying to visit you in the hospital, but how would they determine if she was your girlfriend? The marriage makes it easy to make the determination to allow the visitor to visit.
Other legal benefits, like being allowed to sue for the wrongful death of a spouse, are not available to non-married couples. I'll leave it to the reader to determine how this benefit compensates for the added hardships involved in raising a family.
If the government redefines marriage to only mean the implied legal contract between two people who form a household, it ignores the additional meanings beyond the legal contract.
The additional meaning is only the meaning that you decide to give to it. My marriage has absolutely nothing to do with spirituality. My wife and I are both atheists, and we were married by a captain of a ship during a secular ceremony.
The government has no business concerning itself with our marriage beyond the legal benefits that it confers.
Most people now want the government out of marriage altogether.
Well, that's very interesting. I haven't heard anyone express this sentiment before today.
it is that the government is forcing the "christian right" to also call that a marriage.
If this were true, what would it mean? Would a congregation be forced to recognize the newly married homosexual couple with a bulletin on the notice board? Would they be required to buy gifts for the newlyweds? I don't think that anybody would be forced to change his or her idea of marriage based on the legal definition.
BTW, why is this acceptable but polygamy is not?
Who said polygamy was unacceptable? Of course, the same was said of interracial marriages. "You see, if that black man and that white woman marry, well, it destroys the sanctity of marriage. Next thing you know, polygamy will be fine and dandy, too."
Is the primary thing wrong with gay marriage that it will lead to polygamy? What's so bad about polygamy? I'm very cautious about substituting someone else's judgement for my own.
That's a nice world you live in, where certain beliefs compel other beliefs. In my world, compartmentilization is rampant, and people are quite capable of holding mutually exclusive beliefs.
It is an emotional decision, not a rational one. Rationally, noone should get married.
I'm afraid that I must disagree with you on this point. I did get married for rational reasons, and not for emotional reasons. My then-girlfriend and I had been together for over 6 years, and eventually decided to get married for the legal benefits that marriage confers.
Similarly, when homosexual couples seek to marry, they are not necessarily asking society to recognize the special relationship they share; they are merely asking the state to confer on them the same benefits it confers to other married couples.
Personally I don't care of it is GWB or Hillary that wants to tatoo 666 on my forehead.
I'm with you on that one. Many of us are not represented in the government, and don't care for any of the candidates that are offered. And, many of us don't care for the system itself.
I'm hoping that the shock of a new party in office makes some of them reconsider their patriotism and their jingoism. Maybe it will help a few people to open their eyes to the problems inherent in our system.
Hello, again! I agree that the key is that the parents, and not the politicians, should be responsible for making the decisions that affect them. When people are removed from the effects of their decisions, they tend to make less appropriate decisions for the affected.
I wonder if you might have a study or two that supports your assertion that private and parochial schools are cheaper than government schools. It is commonly assumed that the private sector is more efficient than the public sector, but it is not a given.
I wonder, too, about the curricula of these private and parochial schools. I wonder what fundamentalist Christians would think of subsidizing the cost of Korans in Muslim private schools. Or, would we take the study of religion out of the schools and leave it to the synagogues, churches, mosques, temples, and parents?
You are right about sharing in the responsibility for homeschooling. If I had children, I would certainly jump at the chance. Can you imagine the panic in the government when the people realize that they can work together to solve problems without the government?
I am a "liberal", US-style progressive. However, I believe the reformist approach will only get one so far. I'm also a libertarian communist (read: anarchist.) As an anarchist, I do not believe that freedom is a government created privilege. I wonder how my beliefs fit into your worldview. I am insulted that you would make such a broad generalization that suggests that I do not understand freedom.
I find it is often easier to hold my beliefs when I demonize or ridicule those who disagree with me. I fight this tendency because I find it obstructs the path to the truth.
As I noted before, I don't find the terms 'liberal' and 'conservative' very useful. What is your basic definition of these terms? It is only when these terms are clearly defined that I can engage in conversation about freedom and liberty with regards to political bent.
For instance, my definitions of liberalism and conservatism hinge on the ideas of revolutionaries and reactionaries. That is, liberals would like to see things change (improve), and conservatives would like to see things stay the same (and not devolve.) It's very crude, but, as I mentioned, I believe these are limitations of the terms.
I do believe that you are very astute in your observation that conservatives frequently compromise with liberty. You go on to suggest that this does not imply that conservatives don't want liberty. Well, what does it suggest then?
It has been said that when one says that one agrees with something in principle, it means that he or she does not agree with it in practice. Are you arguing that the converse is true: that is, if one does not agree with something in practice, that one agrees with something in principle?
The bottom line, I suppose, is whether conservative rhetoric is libertarian in nature. What do conservatives think about my behavior in my bedroom with my wife? What if it was with another man? What if we consumed illicit drugs beforehand? Is conservative rhetoric only conservative with respect to business?
Exactly. Now, who should be entrusted with the education of our children? It probably shouldn't be the corporations. You don't think the corporations would teach them what the corporations don't want them to think?
I'm very serious in saying that you are on to something here. I'm just not sure who should be teaching our children under the present conditions. Homeschooling for everyone?
I do not have a problem with kids mentioning God in the classroom. I do not have a problem with prayer in school, either.
I do have a problem when public school officials, whose salaries are paid by my tax dollars, direct students to recite the pledge to "one Nation, under God." If the students want to demonstrate daily their devotion to the Deity, as Eisenhower had hoped they would in presiding over the modification of the pledge, free-speech lovers everywhere will help them to defend this necessary right. If, however, it is not the will of the students, but rather the will of the school administration or the government, I am not interested in forcing conformity on a vulnerable populace.
Actually no student is required to say the Pledge of Allegiance.
You're almost right. You left out the word "officially."
Have you ever heard of politicalcompass.org? They map ideologies along a pair of axes: the x-axis represents the economic scale, and the y-axis represents the social scale. For instance, as a libertarian communist, I fall into the bottom-left quadrant. An authoritarian neo-liberalist would fall into the upper-right quadrant.
I genuinely wonder which quadrant your typical conservative would fall into, and which quadrant your typical KKK member would fall into. I don't mean to suggest that I believe they would fall into the same quadrant. I just think it would be interesting to see where they fall. I think politicalcompass, even with its faults, is very useful in helping to define and categorize political and economic ideologies. It's certainly more sophisticated than liberal and not-liberal, or conservative and not-conservative, the limitations of which you rightly note.
If you have the time, you might find Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States" a very informative read. Although Zinn is not reluctant to offer his own analysis of the source materials, the first and second-hand sources are fascinating and informative.
For instance, you will learn much about the history of corporate involvement in government, which very likely predates the 1970s.
I'd prefer to keep him here. We have his statement that dissent is anti-American. We'll use that against him once the Neocons are out of power.
"What, you don't agree with President Hillary on this issue? That's dissent, and that's anti-American, according to your own Slashdot post from four years ago? Why do you hate America?"
My guess is that his view of dissent will have changed considerably by the time his party is out of power.
I was just reading about U.S. involvement in Latin America this morning. From Zinn's 'A People's History of the United States':
'While demanding an Open Door in China, [the U.S. government] had insisted (with the Monroe Doctrine and many military interventions) on a Closed Door in Latin America -- that is, closed to everyone but the United States. It had engineered a revolution against Colombia and created the "independent" state of Panama in order to build and control the Canal. It sent five thousand marines to Nicaragua in 1926 to counter a revolution, and kept a force there for seven years. It intervened in the Dominican Republic for the fourth time in 1916 and kept troops there for eight years. It intervened for the second time in Haiti in 1915 and kept troops there for nineteen years. Between 1900 and 1933, the United States intervened in Cuba four times, in Nicaragua twice, in Panama six times, in Guatemala once, in Honduras seven times. By 1924 the finances of half of the twenty Latin American states were being directed to some extent by the United States. By 1935, over half of U.S. steel and cotton exports were being sold in Latin America.'
Grenada is just a natural progression of U.S. foreign policy, no?
In a nutshell, Communism and Democracies are great ideals, but tend towards Anarchy.
You say this like it's a bad thing. You must mean 'absence of government, and hence, chaos', and not 'the rejection of hierarchical power structures and the absence of coercion to enforce the will of the privileged.'
Anarchy is considerably more sophisticated than your high school history or government teachers would have you believe. For an excellent introduction to anarchist principles, please consider checking out Emma Goldman's 'Anarchism and Other Essays.' It's a very short and enjoyable read, and it's available at Project Gutenberg. (It looks like the Web Server is temporarily having a problem connecting to the Database Server.)
Except that, even among the orthodox Jews I know, few keep Kosher outside of the home, if at all. Along with my Muslim alcohol-drinking, pork-eating friends, my Buddhist and Hindu meat-eating and cow-eating friends, and my Catholic contraception-using friends, it seems that very few people are dedicated to their belief systems.
Should a Jew be open to investigation because he's not observant? I think pretty much everyone will be suspect then.
Not all major experiments in communism have failed on their own accord. The soviet system in Russia was very effective from an anarcho-syndicalist perspective before the Bolsheviks concentrated power in the Party (i.e. the 'dictatorship of the proletariat.')
The revolution in Russia was incomplete because the Party made sure that the social revolution would never occur. The concept is not 'fundamentally unworkable,' and it need not involve the concentration of power.
In those places where the economic and social revolutions were able to proceed (e.g. Spanish anarcho-syndicalism and the Paris Commune), the freely associating unions were put down forcefully by the state.
Anarchism is often called 'libertarian communism' for a reason. Dictatorships, authority, and coercion have no place in an anarchist society.
I do agree with your analysis of the communist experiment in Russia.
And though Fox News markets Colmes as "a hard-hitting liberal known for his electric commentary" (FoxNews.com), it doesn't even get much help from Colmes himself. "I think I'm quite moderate," Colmes blandly told USA Today (2/1/95), not long before being hired as the show's left-wing counterweight to Hannity.
With regards to the name calling, I think you may find plenty of people have different opinions from your own, and have perfectly good reasons for having them. Please note that this does not mean that you do not have good reasons for holding your beliefs.
I believe that you and I have a legitimate difference of opinion about this matter. I'm just as sure that we could find any number of things to agree upon. It makes it more difficult for me to want to consider your ideas and beliefs when you describe my post as trollish.
I was not trying to 'attract a predictable response' or 'make some assertion that is wrong but not overtly controversial' (troll, n.) I wrote my post to challenge the unchallenged idea that Colmes is a liberal. I'm sorry if my post offended you.
Yeah, those greedy lawyers. Those decent, hard-working tobacco executives were just trying to sell their safe product when they got hammered by scaremongering lawyers.
The "big lie" worked really well. Many people remain convinced that cigarettes are dangerous. Many smokers are trying to quit, and many doctors are recommending their patients quit.
Who gets hurt by this fear campaign? Decent, hard-working tobacco farmers, and decent, hard-working tobacco executives.
Studies have shown for years that nicotine increases the rate at which neurons fire in the brain. Does the liberal media pick up on this? No! They're too busy talking about cancer and second-hand smoke.
*Disclaimer: The author is not responsible if his post caused your sarcasm meter to break.
'...to be ultimately responsible for an action, the agent must be responsible for anything that is a sufficient reason (condition, cause or motive) for the action's occurring. If, for example, a choice issues from, and can be sufficiently explained by, an agent's character and motives (together with background conditions), then to be ultimately responsible for the choice, the agent must be at least in part responsible by virtue of past voluntary choices or actions for having the character and motives he or she now has.'
Why do people 'choose' the things that they 'choose'? Do monopolists encourage apathy?
I can't tell you whether it will rain or snow next week, but I can tell you that, fifteen years from now, it is more likely to snow in January than it is in July (where I live, anyway.)
Slashdot Mirror
Why are there legal benefits to marriage?
Let's look at just one legal benefit of marriage: familial visitation rights. In order to reduce the amount of traffic within the hospital, and in order to protect the safety and privacy of the hospitalized, hospitals have decided to deny admission to visiting non-family members.
This is not so much the government granting or denying a right based on the presence or absence of a marriage, as it does in the case of filing joint tax returns, but another entity legally discrminating based on the marriage status.
The hospital staff can readily determine whether your wife is trying to visit you in the hospital, but how would they determine if she was your girlfriend? The marriage makes it easy to make the determination to allow the visitor to visit.
Other legal benefits, like being allowed to sue for the wrongful death of a spouse, are not available to non-married couples. I'll leave it to the reader to determine how this benefit compensates for the added hardships involved in raising a family.
If the government redefines marriage to only mean the implied legal contract between two people who form a household, it ignores the additional meanings beyond the legal contract.
The additional meaning is only the meaning that you decide to give to it. My marriage has absolutely nothing to do with spirituality. My wife and I are both atheists, and we were married by a captain of a ship during a secular ceremony.
The government has no business concerning itself with our marriage beyond the legal benefits that it confers.
Most people now want the government out of marriage altogether.
Well, that's very interesting. I haven't heard anyone express this sentiment before today.
it is that the government is forcing the "christian right" to also call that a marriage.
If this were true, what would it mean? Would a congregation be forced to recognize the newly married homosexual couple with a bulletin on the notice board? Would they be required to buy gifts for the newlyweds? I don't think that anybody would be forced to change his or her idea of marriage based on the legal definition.
BTW, why is this acceptable but polygamy is not?
Who said polygamy was unacceptable? Of course, the same was said of interracial marriages. "You see, if that black man and that white woman marry, well, it destroys the sanctity of marriage. Next thing you know, polygamy will be fine and dandy, too."
Is the primary thing wrong with gay marriage that it will lead to polygamy? What's so bad about polygamy? I'm very cautious about substituting someone else's judgement for my own.
That's a nice world you live in, where certain beliefs compel other beliefs. In my world, compartmentilization is rampant, and people are quite capable of holding mutually exclusive beliefs.
I like your world better.
It is an emotional decision, not a rational one. Rationally, noone should get married.
I'm afraid that I must disagree with you on this point. I did get married for rational reasons, and not for emotional reasons. My then-girlfriend and I had been together for over 6 years, and eventually decided to get married for the legal benefits that marriage confers.
Similarly, when homosexual couples seek to marry, they are not necessarily asking society to recognize the special relationship they share; they are merely asking the state to confer on them the same benefits it confers to other married couples.
Personally I don't care of it is GWB or Hillary that wants to tatoo 666 on my forehead.
I'm with you on that one. Many of us are not represented in the government, and don't care for any of the candidates that are offered. And, many of us don't care for the system itself.
I'm hoping that the shock of a new party in office makes some of them reconsider their patriotism and their jingoism. Maybe it will help a few people to open their eyes to the problems inherent in our system.
Hello, again! I agree that the key is that the parents, and not the politicians, should be responsible for making the decisions that affect them. When people are removed from the effects of their decisions, they tend to make less appropriate decisions for the affected.
I wonder if you might have a study or two that supports your assertion that private and parochial schools are cheaper than government schools. It is commonly assumed that the private sector is more efficient than the public sector, but it is not a given.
I wonder, too, about the curricula of these private and parochial schools. I wonder what fundamentalist Christians would think of subsidizing the cost of Korans in Muslim private schools. Or, would we take the study of religion out of the schools and leave it to the synagogues, churches, mosques, temples, and parents?
You are right about sharing in the responsibility for homeschooling. If I had children, I would certainly jump at the chance. Can you imagine the panic in the government when the people realize that they can work together to solve problems without the government?
I am a "liberal", US-style progressive. However, I believe the reformist approach will only get one so far. I'm also a libertarian communist (read: anarchist.) As an anarchist, I do not believe that freedom is a government created privilege. I wonder how my beliefs fit into your worldview. I am insulted that you would make such a broad generalization that suggests that I do not understand freedom.
I find it is often easier to hold my beliefs when I demonize or ridicule those who disagree with me. I fight this tendency because I find it obstructs the path to the truth.
As I noted before, I don't find the terms 'liberal' and 'conservative' very useful. What is your basic definition of these terms? It is only when these terms are clearly defined that I can engage in conversation about freedom and liberty with regards to political bent.
For instance, my definitions of liberalism and conservatism hinge on the ideas of revolutionaries and reactionaries. That is, liberals would like to see things change (improve), and conservatives would like to see things stay the same (and not devolve.) It's very crude, but, as I mentioned, I believe these are limitations of the terms.
I do believe that you are very astute in your observation that conservatives frequently compromise with liberty. You go on to suggest that this does not imply that conservatives don't want liberty. Well, what does it suggest then?
It has been said that when one says that one agrees with something in principle, it means that he or she does not agree with it in practice. Are you arguing that the converse is true: that is, if one does not agree with something in practice, that one agrees with something in principle?
The bottom line, I suppose, is whether conservative rhetoric is libertarian in nature. What do conservatives think about my behavior in my bedroom with my wife? What if it was with another man? What if we consumed illicit drugs beforehand? Is conservative rhetoric only conservative with respect to business?
Exactly. Now, who should be entrusted with the education of our children? It probably shouldn't be the corporations. You don't think the corporations would teach them what the corporations don't want them to think?
I'm very serious in saying that you are on to something here. I'm just not sure who should be teaching our children under the present conditions. Homeschooling for everyone?
I do not have a problem with kids mentioning God in the classroom. I do not have a problem with prayer in school, either.
I do have a problem when public school officials, whose salaries are paid by my tax dollars, direct students to recite the pledge to "one Nation, under God." If the students want to demonstrate daily their devotion to the Deity, as Eisenhower had hoped they would in presiding over the modification of the pledge, free-speech lovers everywhere will help them to defend this necessary right. If, however, it is not the will of the students, but rather the will of the school administration or the government, I am not interested in forcing conformity on a vulnerable populace.
Actually no student is required to say the Pledge of Allegiance.
You're almost right. You left out the word "officially."
Have you ever heard of politicalcompass.org? They map ideologies along a pair of axes: the x-axis represents the economic scale, and the y-axis represents the social scale. For instance, as a libertarian communist, I fall into the bottom-left quadrant. An authoritarian neo-liberalist would fall into the upper-right quadrant.
I genuinely wonder which quadrant your typical conservative would fall into, and which quadrant your typical KKK member would fall into. I don't mean to suggest that I believe they would fall into the same quadrant. I just think it would be interesting to see where they fall. I think politicalcompass, even with its faults, is very useful in helping to define and categorize political and economic ideologies. It's certainly more sophisticated than liberal and not-liberal, or conservative and not-conservative, the limitations of which you rightly note.
If you have the time, you might find Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States" a very informative read. Although Zinn is not reluctant to offer his own analysis of the source materials, the first and second-hand sources are fascinating and informative.
For instance, you will learn much about the history of corporate involvement in government, which very likely predates the 1970s.
I'd prefer to keep him here. We have his statement that dissent is anti-American. We'll use that against him once the Neocons are out of power.
"What, you don't agree with President Hillary on this issue? That's dissent, and that's anti-American, according to your own Slashdot post from four years ago? Why do you hate America?"
My guess is that his view of dissent will have changed considerably by the time his party is out of power.
I was just reading about U.S. involvement in Latin America this morning. From Zinn's 'A People's History of the United States':
'While demanding an Open Door in China, [the U.S. government] had insisted (with the Monroe Doctrine and many military interventions) on a Closed Door in Latin America -- that is, closed to everyone but the United States. It had engineered a revolution against Colombia and created the "independent" state of Panama in order to build and control the Canal. It sent five thousand marines to Nicaragua in 1926 to counter a revolution, and kept a force there for seven years. It intervened in the Dominican Republic for the fourth time in 1916 and kept troops there for eight years. It intervened for the second time in Haiti in 1915 and kept troops there for nineteen years. Between 1900 and 1933, the United States intervened in Cuba four times, in Nicaragua twice, in Panama six times, in Guatemala once, in Honduras seven times. By 1924 the finances of half of the twenty Latin American states were being directed to some extent by the United States. By 1935, over half of U.S. steel and cotton exports were being sold in Latin America.'
Grenada is just a natural progression of U.S. foreign policy, no?
In a nutshell, Communism and Democracies are great ideals, but tend towards Anarchy.
You say this like it's a bad thing. You must mean 'absence of government, and hence, chaos', and not 'the rejection of hierarchical power structures and the absence of coercion to enforce the will of the privileged.'
Anarchy is considerably more sophisticated than your high school history or government teachers would have you believe. For an excellent introduction to anarchist principles, please consider checking out Emma Goldman's 'Anarchism and Other Essays.' It's a very short and enjoyable read, and it's available at Project Gutenberg. (It looks like the Web Server is temporarily having a problem connecting to the Database Server.)
Except that, even among the orthodox Jews I know, few keep Kosher outside of the home, if at all. Along with my Muslim alcohol-drinking, pork-eating friends, my Buddhist and Hindu meat-eating and cow-eating friends, and my Catholic contraception-using friends, it seems that very few people are dedicated to their belief systems.
Should a Jew be open to investigation because he's not observant? I think pretty much everyone will be suspect then.
Not all major experiments in communism have failed on their own accord. The soviet system in Russia was very effective from an anarcho-syndicalist perspective before the Bolsheviks concentrated power in the Party (i.e. the 'dictatorship of the proletariat.')
The revolution in Russia was incomplete because the Party made sure that the social revolution would never occur. The concept is not 'fundamentally unworkable,' and it need not involve the concentration of power.
In those places where the economic and social revolutions were able to proceed (e.g. Spanish anarcho-syndicalism and the Paris Commune), the freely associating unions were put down forcefully by the state.
Anarchism is often called 'libertarian communism' for a reason. Dictatorships, authority, and coercion have no place in an anarchist society.
I do agree with your analysis of the communist experiment in Russia.
Colmes described himself as a moderate:
And though Fox News markets Colmes as "a hard-hitting liberal known for his electric commentary" (FoxNews.com), it doesn't even get much help from Colmes himself. "I think I'm quite moderate," Colmes blandly told USA Today (2/1/95), not long before being hired as the show's left-wing counterweight to Hannity.
With regards to the name calling, I think you may find plenty of people have different opinions from your own, and have perfectly good reasons for having them. Please note that this does not mean that you do not have good reasons for holding your beliefs.
I believe that you and I have a legitimate difference of opinion about this matter. I'm just as sure that we could find any number of things to agree upon. It makes it more difficult for me to want to consider your ideas and beliefs when you describe my post as trollish.
I was not trying to 'attract a predictable response' or 'make some assertion that is wrong but not overtly controversial' (troll, n.) I wrote my post to challenge the unchallenged idea that Colmes is a liberal. I'm sorry if my post offended you.
Oh, that's an easy one. Hannity doesn't have a liberal cohost.
Yeah, those greedy lawyers. Those decent, hard-working tobacco executives were just trying to sell their safe product when they got hammered by scaremongering lawyers.
The "big lie" worked really well. Many people remain convinced that cigarettes are dangerous. Many smokers are trying to quit, and many doctors are recommending their patients quit.
Who gets hurt by this fear campaign? Decent, hard-working tobacco farmers, and decent, hard-working tobacco executives.
Studies have shown for years that nicotine increases the rate at which neurons fire in the brain. Does the liberal media pick up on this? No! They're too busy talking about cancer and second-hand smoke.
*Disclaimer: The author is not responsible if his post caused your sarcasm meter to break.
What about Robert Kane's Ultimate Resposibility?
'...to be ultimately responsible for an action, the agent must be responsible for anything that is a sufficient reason (condition, cause or motive) for the action's occurring. If, for example, a choice issues from, and can be sufficiently explained by, an agent's character and motives (together with background conditions), then to be ultimately responsible for the choice, the agent must be at least in part responsible by virtue of past voluntary choices or actions for having the character and motives he or she now has.'
Why do people 'choose' the things that they 'choose'? Do monopolists encourage apathy?
I can't tell you whether it will rain or snow next week, but I can tell you that, fifteen years from now, it is more likely to snow in January than it is in July (where I live, anyway.)
Obligatory Simpsons quote:
(On the subject of the First Annual Montgomery Burns Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence)
Lisa: "This show is the biggest farce i ever saw"
Bart: "What about the Emmys?"
Lisa: "I stand corrected"
Poochie? Is that you?
Scratchy: Ooh, Poochie is one outrageous dude.
Itchy: He's totally in my face.
-- "The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show"
'When 7-Up has got me down,
When Hi-C gets me low...
and I think of it a lot...
I'll sit right down and fill my cup,
with Pepsi,
Drink it up'
The album liner contains a plea to the cola manufacturers to decrease the amount of ads. If you like music with a message, you might enjoy it.