1. Do you really think the FDA is going to allow hospitals to use an medical equipment made from a webcam? The laws to "protect" you require rigorous testing, documentation, and a lengthy approval process. That cost money. LOTS of money. And that money must be recouped in the cost of the item.
2. If even the slightest thing goes wrong, the doctor and hospital are going to be sued into oblivion for using the equipment. Insurance companies are not going to insure doctors and hospitals unless they know the equipment meets absolutly insane limits of profection.
It could easily be replaced by smaller non-government institutions, similiar to Underwriters Laboratories, or CSA.
As for us eating poison pills without the FDA, there are many countries without any sort of government drug protection racket like the FDA, and there isn't really a problem. Check out this article for an example: http://www.reason.com/links/links020205.shtml
And even the horror stories you heard in school about before the US "government was protecting us" are mostly urban legend, or highly exasurated at best.
Actually, it costs about a billion dollars to comply with regulations for the FDA. Eliminate the miles of red tape, and hundreds of millions in graft to government officials, and it could be orders of magnitude cheaper. Jonas Salk certainly didn't need a billion dollars.
Who wants to bet that in addition to trying to screen "adult" sites (which will 100% be the case, because such screening is required by federal law) and those other sites that inadvertantly are also screened out (safe sex sites, gay rights sites, art sites, etc.), that it will be very difficult to connect to a site that critizes the major, or city government or could "cause potential problems"?
And who wants to bet that every political group with an agenda will also try to get the city to screen out sites that they don't like?
Oh, and what happens when the city wireless network and your wireless network are messing with each other? Thats right, sorry, but your wireless network is a "public nuisance". Shut it down or go to jail!
But free-speech, freedom of choice, and freedom to run your own wireless network is a small price to pay for the illusion of free wireless (you still pay quite a bit for it, you just pay it through taxes or reduced services somewhere lese... but it sure FEELS free). Ahhh! Isn't socialism grand? I am sure this is exactly what Marx had in mind!
San Franscisco is near Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley people sell technology. A big technology contract (hopefully to local technology companies) means big campaign donations (kickbacks) from said companies to the politicians responsible.
It is not a way to get more votes directly, it is a way to get more money, and hence more votes.
The big technology companies win because they get a big overpriced contract, the mayor wins because he get big campaign donations, and hey, low income people win, because everyone knows that poor people are standing around saying to themselves "Damn, if only I had wireless high-bandwidth internet service so I could check the Dow on the way to my buisness luncheon".
How can anyone take serious this Cosmo-magazine pop psychology bullshit? This test is about as useful as your typical online "Purity Test". (Actually, the "Purity Test" is much more scientific because it asks about actual behavior, instead of completly subjective opinion from someone who is likely to be biased.
Of course it is white, upper-class, bourgeoise who think that modern packaged foods have become too bland, mediocre, and homogenous. Since food has become so cheap to produce on an industrial scale, there is no longer an element of conspicuous consumption to food. So the designer clothes wearing upper class will drive their BMWs over to the "Whole Foods Market", and buy "organic" and "macrobiotic" foods for 5-10 times the price of regular stuff, and tell their friends how wonderful it is and how everyone should do it.
The 95%+ of the other people on the planet, who have real problems to worry about, would be happy to eat our "bland, mediocre, and homogenous" food.
And in true "Let them eat cake" irony, it is these same upper-class fashionable bourgeoise are leading the fight to stop geneticaly-modified food, industrial farming, the use of pesticides, and all the things that make food abundant, cheap, and sustainable... and doing it in the name of "enviornmentalism" and "socialism", and against the "evil-capitalists".
Now, I believe in the free-market and I think that these people should be allowed to throw away their money on whatever they want. But the real reason people have issues with food nowadays is because mass-produced food is considered declasse.
Maybe parents are not lazy... maybe a normal person doesn't find low-poly people having PG sex, and cartoon style violence, to not really be that bad.
I see no reason why a normal 12 year old shouldn't be allowed to play GTA. I don't understand what is the big deal. Its make-believe. Lighten up people.
It seems like Amazon is up to something sneaky by paying for this frivolous pantent portfolio, when Amazon surely has the legal clout to fight this kind of thing.
Big companies like Amazon can afford to pay for these patents, but small companies cannot. They are losing money by paying for these things, but if they raise the cost of doing buisness beyond a certain point (if everyone has to pay millions to use patented technology in order to run an eccommerce site), they can knock out a lot of competition. There will be no chance for the mom and pop store selling used books can hope to compete with Amazon, because they won't be able to afford the startup cost or liability.
I think a lot of big companies are encouraging this abuse of patent laws in order to squash competition from smaller companies who don't have a few million to spare.
You are saying that the information comes from people you may disagree with (you don't know for sure, since you don't bother reading such information), so it isn't a valid point of discussion? "Oh god, I must not expose myself to ideas that don't cofirm my previously held viewpoints... must not keep an open mind...". A free-thinking, non-brainwashed individual will happilly pull information from all over the political spectrum. I think your statements illustrate perfectly the growing facism in the western world.
The Heritage Foundation is clearly neo-con and pro-Bush, and tends to distort its figures to be pro-American, and pro-Republican. So when the Heritage Foundation says that the U.S. has rappidly dropped in it's Index of Economic Freedom since G. W. Bush has become president and there has been a Republican majority in Congress, that information is extremly interesting. You would think that the left would use that information to make a compelling case against Bush that could win over a lot of people on the right. What more convincing information could someone use to discredit Bush than figures from a right-wing think-tank showing that Bush has actually made the U.S. LESS free-market. Someone who is intelligent and open-minded would read information from people with opposing viewpoints, and use it for their own ends.
But unfortunatly, the left nowadays is brain-dead, which is why Bush and his cronies have taken over the United States.
Actually, Sweden and the United States spend roughly the same percentage of GDP on social spending... and are close in rank on the Heritage Foundations Index of Economic Freedom. It is a myth that western European countries are somehow more socialist that the United States. Socialist programs in Europe sometimes appear to work better than in the U.S. because those countries have small populations, cover small geographic areas, and are culturally and socially homogenous (like in your example of Sweden).
And socialism doesn't gaurantee medical care. When you talk about "medical coverage" what you are talking about is a piece of paper or rhetoric that says "you will recieve that medical care". That promise doesn't translate into reality. People who live under socialized medicine (I am one of them) do not have any assurance of medical care. People often times have to wait for critical treatment well beyond what they will survive (meaning, you need a heart operation immediatly or you will die... you are put on a two year waiting list. The government is going through the beurocratic motions of providing health care, but people are dying because of lack of health care). And the quality of health care is usually orders of magnitude worse... For example, a woman diagnosed with breast cancer in the U.S. has a 1 in 5 chance of dying, 1 in 3 chance of dying in France or Germany, and a 1 in 2 chance of dying in England.
And as for starving in the United States, that is absurd. There is actually an epidemic of obesity amoung the poor in the United States. We do have people who qualify as being malnurished, but that is because they subsist on a diet of twinkies, fast food, potato chips, etc. The only cases of starvation in the last 100 years are cases of extreme child abuse, drug abuse (meth users sometimes starve themselves to death) or people being stranded in the wilderness.
But, to get back to the point, what the poster said was correct. Americans now expect "cradle-to-grave" care from the government. Americans (like many countries), look to the government as the solution to all problems, and anyone who opposes massive expansion of the government is maligned as being some sort of "corporate lackey". There is no danger of the FCC disappearing, because Americans will never give up that government "protection". The only debate over government control in America is who will control the government.
No one has a problem with the conservation you speak of. And right now people are pretty much free to conserve to their hearts content.
What people have a problem with, is supporting Central Planning, and calling it "Conservation". It is one thing to support people voluntarily choosing to conserve resources (which has almost universal support... virtually no-one wants to ban conservation), and another thing for the government to sieze control of all resources, and ration them according to political concerns.
Conservation is totally possible through popular voluntary action (in fact, that is the only time it has ever really worked). And it is totally possible to have government regulation and central planning that destroys the enviornment (Just look to any past or present Communist state).
Do you really trust the people who brought you "The War on Drugs", "The War on Poverty", and "The War on Terror", to fix the enviornment? (And to run just about everything else in your life, which will be the consequence of central-planning?)
At what point do we tell people living in rural America, who have a quality of life higher than 99% of the world, who already recieve vast government farm subsidies at the expense of the rest of the country, that maybe it is time they foot their own bills.
Why should the rest of America have half their paycheck (and ever increasing) taken away to subsidize a lifestyle choice for a tiny minority of the country.
You don't think there is better things that the government could be doing with that money? I know you would like to save that $7 bucks a month on broadband, but the rest of the country is being bleeded to death by taxes.
It is true, not all opinions are of equal value. But if we are going to dismiss creationism, shouldn't we also dismiss quasi-religious philosophies like Marxism, or Fruedian Psychology, in education?
Why should I have to listen to some college professor wax on about discredited metaphysical nonsense like Dialetical Materialism, or psychology that has no scientific bases whatsoever ("ID", "Ego", "Superego"... what part of the brain do these exist in again?)?
And worse yet, why did I learn such obviouse lies like "Christopher Columbus discovered America", or "Roosevelt ended the Great Depression", in grade school. If we are getting rid of bad ideas, why not those too?
Intelligent Design Creationism is just one more stupid things schools can teach.
This is what happens when you want to put education under the leviathan of the federal government.
The inevitable consequence of putting education under political control (i.e. control by the government), is that education becomes politicized. Education inevitably becomes the place to promote political and social goals.
If schools were run privately, or strictly by local government, then there would not be an issue. Parents would have a choice what their children were taught.
People want the education system to be a federal dictatorship, and then cry when the dictator has opinions they don't like. Sorry, that is how dictatorships work. If you want to solve the problem, then allow parents to choose for their kids instead of government.
It is a new bill. It is called the "Racial and Religious Hatred" bill, and comedians like Michael Palin from Monty Python are protesting against it because it would esentially make Monty Python illegal!!! (There has already been lots of debate over if Monty Python would be able to be shown on British television if it first came out under modern guidelines).
You probably haven't heard about it, because such restrictions on freedom of speech are not really controversial in Europe. Europeans will become outraged that they might have to get a travel visa when entering the U.S., but their governments at the same time can pass laws on outright political censorship and they will barely be aware of the issue.
Like I said, America is quickly giving up its right to freedom of speech. But don't look to Europe for common sense on the issue. It is their totalitarian policies that U.S. politicians are trying to emulate. Europeans are the last people Americans want to look for leadership if they want to fight an ever-increasing American police state.
The reason the Democrats do this kind of stuff is because they know people like you will vote Democrat no matter what. You are never going to vote Republican. And you are never going to "throw your vote away" on a third party (in fact, Democrats activly tried suing, sabatoging, insulting and assaulting third partys, their candidates, and their supporters).
I have had Democrats outraged that I would "support the patriot act and Iraq war" by not supporting John Kerry (when, of course, Kerry supported the Iraq war, and Kerry supported the Patriot act and said it didn't go far enough... and my candidate opposed both the patroit act and the Iraq war).
Since the left in America are habitual Democrats for life, not only will you only vote for Democrats, but you will also have nothing but rage and spite for people who vote differently. All the Democrats really need to worry about are the middle of the road swing voters.
If the left wants to start being taken seriously, they have to be willing to turn against the Democratic party.
You are completly wrong. Anti-pornography laws have been used to restrict information on reproductive health, gay rights, renaissance paintings, beauty pagents, and a whole slew of other things.
Are you honestly trying to tell me that political groups are not going to use this to go after anything they don't like?
You are just more conditioned to European insanity than U.S. insanity. It is just as insane and facist to want to restrict simulated stylized violent fiction as it is to restrict sex. Restricting either one is stupid.
So the Eurocrats want to restrict different types of free speech. That doesn't make it any more sane.
And the UK you mentioned as an example has quite extreme restrictions on political speech (for example, you can be imprisoned for making fun of a religion), which is the most destructive kind of censorship.
Please, I can understand you are disgusted by censorship in the U.S... the problem has become an epidemic. But Europe is the last place we want to follow as an example of a free society.
How about we abandon neo-feudalism all together and free people from the mass arbitrary confiscation of property by the state.
Two wrongs don't make a right. Just because we are all getting screwed by the government, doesn't make it right for the government to screw over churches. It means that it is wrong for the government to screw us over.
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Because:
1. Do you really think the FDA is going to allow hospitals to use an medical equipment made from a webcam? The laws to "protect" you require rigorous testing, documentation, and a lengthy approval process. That cost money. LOTS of money. And that money must be recouped in the cost of the item.
2. If even the slightest thing goes wrong, the doctor and hospital are going to be sued into oblivion for using the equipment. Insurance companies are not going to insure doctors and hospitals unless they know the equipment meets absolutly insane limits of profection.
It could easily be replaced by smaller non-government institutions, similiar to Underwriters Laboratories, or CSA.
As for us eating poison pills without the FDA, there are many countries without any sort of government drug protection racket like the FDA, and there isn't really a problem. Check out this article for an example:
http://www.reason.com/links/links020205.shtml
And even the horror stories you heard in school about before the US "government was protecting us" are mostly urban legend, or highly exasurated at best.
Actually, it costs about a billion dollars to comply with regulations for the FDA. Eliminate the miles of red tape, and hundreds of millions in graft to government officials, and it could be orders of magnitude cheaper. Jonas Salk certainly didn't need a billion dollars.
Who wants to bet that in addition to trying to screen "adult" sites (which will 100% be the case, because such screening is required by federal law) and those other sites that inadvertantly are also screened out (safe sex sites, gay rights sites, art sites, etc.), that it will be very difficult to connect to a site that critizes the major, or city government or could "cause potential problems"?
And who wants to bet that every political group with an agenda will also try to get the city to screen out sites that they don't like?
Oh, and what happens when the city wireless network and your wireless network are messing with each other? Thats right, sorry, but your wireless network is a "public nuisance". Shut it down or go to jail!
But free-speech, freedom of choice, and freedom to run your own wireless network is a small price to pay for the illusion of free wireless (you still pay quite a bit for it, you just pay it through taxes or reduced services somewhere lese... but it sure FEELS free). Ahhh! Isn't socialism grand? I am sure this is exactly what Marx had in mind!
San Franscisco is near Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley people sell technology. A big technology contract (hopefully to local technology companies) means big campaign donations (kickbacks) from said companies to the politicians responsible.
It is not a way to get more votes directly, it is a way to get more money, and hence more votes.
The big technology companies win because they get a big overpriced contract, the mayor wins because he get big campaign donations, and hey, low income people win, because everyone knows that poor people are standing around saying to themselves "Damn, if only I had wireless high-bandwidth internet service so I could check the Dow on the way to my buisness luncheon".
How can anyone take serious this Cosmo-magazine pop psychology bullshit? This test is about as useful as your typical online "Purity Test". (Actually, the "Purity Test" is much more scientific because it asks about actual behavior, instead of completly subjective opinion from someone who is likely to be biased.
Of course it is white, upper-class, bourgeoise who think that modern packaged foods have become too bland, mediocre, and homogenous. Since food has become so cheap to produce on an industrial scale, there is no longer an element of conspicuous consumption to food. So the designer clothes wearing upper class will drive their BMWs over to the "Whole Foods Market", and buy "organic" and "macrobiotic" foods for 5-10 times the price of regular stuff, and tell their friends how wonderful it is and how everyone should do it.
The 95%+ of the other people on the planet, who have real problems to worry about, would be happy to eat our "bland, mediocre, and homogenous" food.
And in true "Let them eat cake" irony, it is these same upper-class fashionable bourgeoise are leading the fight to stop geneticaly-modified food, industrial farming, the use of pesticides, and all the things that make food abundant, cheap, and sustainable... and doing it in the name of "enviornmentalism" and "socialism", and against the "evil-capitalists".
Now, I believe in the free-market and I think that these people should be allowed to throw away their money on whatever they want. But the real reason people have issues with food nowadays is because mass-produced food is considered declasse.
People read stories like this, and then wonder why so many people are so hostile to the idea of municipal broadband servies.
I will take my Internet service without Big Brother government watching, thanks.
Maybe parents are not lazy... maybe a normal person doesn't find low-poly people having PG sex, and cartoon style violence, to not really be that bad.
I see no reason why a normal 12 year old shouldn't be allowed to play GTA. I don't understand what is the big deal. Its make-believe. Lighten up people.
It seems like Amazon is up to something sneaky by paying for this frivolous pantent portfolio, when Amazon surely has the legal clout to fight this kind of thing.
Big companies like Amazon can afford to pay for these patents, but small companies cannot. They are losing money by paying for these things, but if they raise the cost of doing buisness beyond a certain point (if everyone has to pay millions to use patented technology in order to run an eccommerce site), they can knock out a lot of competition. There will be no chance for the mom and pop store selling used books can hope to compete with Amazon, because they won't be able to afford the startup cost or liability.
I think a lot of big companies are encouraging this abuse of patent laws in order to squash competition from smaller companies who don't have a few million to spare.
You are saying that the information comes from people you may disagree with (you don't know for sure, since you don't bother reading such information), so it isn't a valid point of discussion? "Oh god, I must not expose myself to ideas that don't cofirm my previously held viewpoints... must not keep an open mind...". A free-thinking, non-brainwashed individual will happilly pull information from all over the political spectrum. I think your statements illustrate perfectly the growing facism in the western world.
The Heritage Foundation is clearly neo-con and pro-Bush, and tends to distort its figures to be pro-American, and pro-Republican. So when the Heritage Foundation says that the U.S. has rappidly dropped in it's Index of Economic Freedom since G. W. Bush has become president and there has been a Republican majority in Congress, that information is extremly interesting. You would think that the left would use that information to make a compelling case against Bush that could win over a lot of people on the right. What more convincing information could someone use to discredit Bush than figures from a right-wing think-tank showing that Bush has actually made the U.S. LESS free-market. Someone who is intelligent and open-minded would read information from people with opposing viewpoints, and use it for their own ends.
But unfortunatly, the left nowadays is brain-dead, which is why Bush and his cronies have taken over the United States.
Actually, Sweden and the United States spend roughly the same percentage of GDP on social spending... and are close in rank on the Heritage Foundations Index of Economic Freedom. It is a myth that western European countries are somehow more socialist that the United States. Socialist programs in Europe sometimes appear to work better than in the U.S. because those countries have small populations, cover small geographic areas, and are culturally and socially homogenous (like in your example of Sweden).
And socialism doesn't gaurantee medical care. When you talk about "medical coverage" what you are talking about is a piece of paper or rhetoric that says "you will recieve that medical care". That promise doesn't translate into reality. People who live under socialized medicine (I am one of them) do not have any assurance of medical care. People often times have to wait for critical treatment well beyond what they will survive (meaning, you need a heart operation immediatly or you will die... you are put on a two year waiting list. The government is going through the beurocratic motions of providing health care, but people are dying because of lack of health care). And the quality of health care is usually orders of magnitude worse... For example, a woman diagnosed with breast cancer in the U.S. has a 1 in 5 chance of dying, 1 in 3 chance of dying in France or Germany, and a 1 in 2 chance of dying in England.
And as for starving in the United States, that is absurd. There is actually an epidemic of obesity amoung the poor in the United States. We do have people who qualify as being malnurished, but that is because they subsist on a diet of twinkies, fast food, potato chips, etc. The only cases of starvation in the last 100 years are cases of extreme child abuse, drug abuse (meth users sometimes starve themselves to death) or people being stranded in the wilderness.
But, to get back to the point, what the poster said was correct. Americans now expect "cradle-to-grave" care from the government. Americans (like many countries), look to the government as the solution to all problems, and anyone who opposes massive expansion of the government is maligned as being some sort of "corporate lackey". There is no danger of the FCC disappearing, because Americans will never give up that government "protection". The only debate over government control in America is who will control the government.
I am sure I am going to be one of a chorus of people saying this, but why bother?
Space flight is so rare compared to airplane, automobiles, steel plants, etc. as to be almost insignificant.
Wouldn't it be better to worry about things that actually effect the enviornment?
How do you intend to convince anyone about Global Warming, if you have nothing but patronizing contempt for them?
No one has a problem with the conservation you speak of. And right now people are pretty much free to conserve to their hearts content.
What people have a problem with, is supporting Central Planning, and calling it "Conservation". It is one thing to support people voluntarily choosing to conserve resources (which has almost universal support... virtually no-one wants to ban conservation), and another thing for the government to sieze control of all resources, and ration them according to political concerns.
Conservation is totally possible through popular voluntary action (in fact, that is the only time it has ever really worked). And it is totally possible to have government regulation and central planning that destroys the enviornment (Just look to any past or present Communist state).
Do you really trust the people who brought you "The War on Drugs", "The War on Poverty", and "The War on Terror", to fix the enviornment? (And to run just about everything else in your life, which will be the consequence of central-planning?)
Actually, the U.S. adopted the metric system in 1866. (and in 1975... and in 1988...).
Space weapons already exist, and the U.S., China, and Russia most certainly have them deployed, and maybe others too.
At what point do we tell people living in rural America, who have a quality of life higher than 99% of the world, who already recieve vast government farm subsidies at the expense of the rest of the country, that maybe it is time they foot their own bills.
Why should the rest of America have half their paycheck (and ever increasing) taken away to subsidize a lifestyle choice for a tiny minority of the country.
You don't think there is better things that the government could be doing with that money? I know you would like to save that $7 bucks a month on broadband, but the rest of the country is being bleeded to death by taxes.
It is true, not all opinions are of equal value. But if we are going to dismiss creationism, shouldn't we also dismiss quasi-religious philosophies like Marxism, or Fruedian Psychology, in education?
Why should I have to listen to some college professor wax on about discredited metaphysical nonsense like Dialetical Materialism, or psychology that has no scientific bases whatsoever ("ID", "Ego", "Superego"... what part of the brain do these exist in again?)?
And worse yet, why did I learn such obviouse lies like "Christopher Columbus discovered America", or "Roosevelt ended the Great Depression", in grade school. If we are getting rid of bad ideas, why not those too?
Intelligent Design Creationism is just one more stupid things schools can teach.
This is what happens when you want to put education under the leviathan of the federal government.
The inevitable consequence of putting education under political control (i.e. control by the government), is that education becomes politicized. Education inevitably becomes the place to promote political and social goals.
If schools were run privately, or strictly by local government, then there would not be an issue. Parents would have a choice what their children were taught.
People want the education system to be a federal dictatorship, and then cry when the dictator has opinions they don't like. Sorry, that is how dictatorships work. If you want to solve the problem, then allow parents to choose for their kids instead of government.
It is a new bill. It is called the "Racial and Religious Hatred" bill, and comedians like Michael Palin from Monty Python are protesting against it because it would esentially make Monty Python illegal!!! (There has already been lots of debate over if Monty Python would be able to be shown on British television if it first came out under modern guidelines).
m t icle&ID=69
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4075442.st
http://www.georgeosborne.co.uk/record.jsp?type=ar
You probably haven't heard about it, because such restrictions on freedom of speech are not really controversial in Europe. Europeans will become outraged that they might have to get a travel visa when entering the U.S., but their governments at the same time can pass laws on outright political censorship and they will barely be aware of the issue.
Like I said, America is quickly giving up its right to freedom of speech. But don't look to Europe for common sense on the issue. It is their totalitarian policies that U.S. politicians are trying to emulate. Europeans are the last people Americans want to look for leadership if they want to fight an ever-increasing American police state.
The reason the Democrats do this kind of stuff is because they know people like you will vote Democrat no matter what. You are never going to vote Republican. And you are never going to "throw your vote away" on a third party (in fact, Democrats activly tried suing, sabatoging, insulting and assaulting third partys, their candidates, and their supporters).
I have had Democrats outraged that I would "support the patriot act and Iraq war" by not supporting John Kerry (when, of course, Kerry supported the Iraq war, and Kerry supported the Patriot act and said it didn't go far enough... and my candidate opposed both the patroit act and the Iraq war).
Since the left in America are habitual Democrats for life, not only will you only vote for Democrats, but you will also have nothing but rage and spite for people who vote differently. All the Democrats really need to worry about are the middle of the road swing voters.
If the left wants to start being taken seriously, they have to be willing to turn against the Democratic party.
You are completly wrong. Anti-pornography laws have been used to restrict information on reproductive health, gay rights, renaissance paintings, beauty pagents, and a whole slew of other things.
Are you honestly trying to tell me that political groups are not going to use this to go after anything they don't like?
You are just more conditioned to European insanity than U.S. insanity. It is just as insane and facist to want to restrict simulated stylized violent fiction as it is to restrict sex. Restricting either one is stupid.
So the Eurocrats want to restrict different types of free speech. That doesn't make it any more sane.
And the UK you mentioned as an example has quite extreme restrictions on political speech (for example, you can be imprisoned for making fun of a religion), which is the most destructive kind of censorship.
Please, I can understand you are disgusted by censorship in the U.S... the problem has become an epidemic. But Europe is the last place we want to follow as an example of a free society.
How about we abandon neo-feudalism all together and free people from the mass arbitrary confiscation of property by the state.
Two wrongs don't make a right. Just because we are all getting screwed by the government, doesn't make it right for the government to screw over churches. It means that it is wrong for the government to screw us over.