Pardon me but the ONLY rule for criticizing Israel while not getting branded an anti-semite is... not criticizing Israel.
Fixed that for you. And I'm serious - this isn't about actual antisemitism, it's about suppression of criticism by claiming racism.
It's standard fare in politics sadly. If you want immigration laws (even just existing ones on the books) to be enforced, you're racist against Mexicans (an accusation made by people who have never reviewed Mexico's much stricter immigration laws!). If you criticize Israel, you're an anti-Semite. If you're against President Obama's politics or Eric Holder's actions, you're racist against black people. Etc etc. I wonder what such people would say if we ever developed a real problem with millions of white Canadians illegally entering the country, but I digress.
It's a cheap way to shut down all reasonable discussion and put the other person immediately on the defensive, trying to disprove a negative. It comes from people who don't want reason and logic to enter into the discussion because these are threats to their position, a position based on self-interest and not based on what makes good policy or which view is closest to the truth.
A side-effect I consider intentional is that the obsession with group identity is a direct assault on the concept of individuality. Real individuality is a strong threat to the main method of politics today, which is to divide people into multiple groups and gain power by promising to protect each from the others.
We have very similar stories, except I am from Africa, and the bit about the swimming. I agree with you entirely.
I have noticed that people born in the USA take their liberty for granted, and are careless with it. On the other hand, those who have seen oppression (and I have seen the trajectory we are once already) understand the real and present danger we face.
Some of us who were born there do love and cherish our liberty and recognize the many ways in which it is being trampled with impunity. The problem is, we are drowned out by so many who think that professional sports, pop music, consumerism, television, and personal dramas are much higher priority. It's a problem of values and a problem of dehumanization as explained by Erich Fromm.
You absolutely must have a broken people with malleable values and loyalties before you can have a police state. A strong, intact, whole people who are relatively self-sufficient and value ideals far beyond their own convenience cannot be trampled in this manner.
You remind me of so many I have encountered before, those who have the skill to usually win arguments despite being dead-wrong. These are not people who ever admit they were mistaken and you never hear that old view from them again. They are true believers. I have acquired enough humility and experience to recognize that nothing I say matters much to such a person, for they have a faith in their beliefs that cannot be shaken by reason.
You made this a personal matter the moment you implied there were a "select few' and that I regarded myself as among such an elite. It so happens that those who see clearly often are not those with popular positions, but that is not my doing. Oh how I wish that were not so, but I accept that it is and has been for a long time.
It's a roundabout way of saying that the number who agree with a thing and whether this is generally apprecaited is relevant to the truth of that thing, which is simply and plainly false. I am sorry the clarity of this passed by you unnoticed, for I did try to bring this to your attention, but the feelings and motivations of such a position are not difficult to understand. It's comfortable and cushy to accuse someone of being some kind of elitist while never explaining where their reason is flawed, and so very difficult to refute because it amounts to proving a negative.
You're a rarity because I can't say for certain whether you just love being right, or whether you really understand what you're doing. But I don't doubt your sincerity for a moment. And if you were wondering, pride has no proper place in such matters, which was exactly my point with my previous post.
You know, I really hate posts like yours, for a couple of reasons.
First, you say that warrantless wiretaps have been going on for a very long time. Maybe they have, but they were certainly never standard operating procedure. Good hell they're warrantlessly wiretapping EVERYBODY these days. And back then they never came out and said,"Hey, we're doing warrantless wiretaps, and if you don't like it you can fuck right off" like they do now.
Second, saying it's been going on like this for hundreds of years makes it sound like it'll always be this way, so you might as well do nothing. It also lends it an air false legitimacy: "If the founding fathers were doing it it must be okay."
The Founding Fathers were adamantly against this sort of thing and were willing to risk everything to try and create a nation that stood for something better. Their real problem is that they had to deal with the social realities of their day that were not within their power to overturn, such as the institution of slavery and the notions of class and wealth. Yet within those suffocating boundaries they instituted something more that we have failed to realize.
One of their fears about having a Bill of Rights at all, was that the mere existence of such a document may foster the notion that human rights were limited to only those which were enumerated. As it stands today, the Bill of Rights is merely a yardstick by which we measure how far our failures have progressed.
I sincerely believe that future generations will consider us a Dark Age greater than any medieval period, for never has the average person been so petty, emotionally and spiritually immature, ill-informed in the face of an Information Age, navie, and unwilling to stand up for what was right. The medieval serf at least had the excuse of being at the mercy of the information brokers and gatekeepers of their time. Our ignorant, on the other hand, can point only to their own laziness and failure of priorities.
Basically Uncle Tom Obama the choom gang coward looks far far worse because he promised time and time again to be far far better than his predecessors and instead, well, history has proven that while he is a skilled teleprompter reader his actions prove him to be a far right sycophant.
The hell of a thing is, even if he truly intended to be better (which I doubt, for he was groomed from his obscure start), it would not matter. He's a mere puppet or a cog in a vast machine far beyond his control despite his high office.
You are one of the minority who can remember what Jim Marrs calls "The old republic". That was before the banker takeover of the nation was approaching its final stages, before the technology for total surveillance was widespread and readily available, before there were so many American citizens who would cooperate with and work for the police-state apparatus in the name of security because they are governed by fear or greed or lust for power instead of reason and what was once called decency.
The real problem is, we now have an entire generation that has never known the difference. We have too many people who are products of their environment, knowing only what they were taught, who lack the initiative to really look into the history and understand the changes that have occurred. To them, all of this is necessary and normal. It's a problem of inertia.
Eric Holder can do no wrong because he is a black man. Furthermore, now that we have black man Jah Rasta Johnson as the DHS leader, nobody can complain about performance or creeping fascism because both are black men and to criticize black men is racist. And racism is a hate crime. Blacks are, after all, predisposed to crime, and will naturally resort to the appropriate criminal behavior even after an Ivy league law education. It's what we free-thinking tea-party individuals like to call "Chicago Politics."
Do you disagree, you racist motherfucker? Huh? Do you?
-- Ethanol-fueled
Chicago has a long history of corrupt politics, as do several other major cities. To focus on the group identity is to distract attention away from the power plays that are being made. That is simply a strategic error. That corruption is becoming more inclusive and diverse along with better and more worthy enterprises is hardly relevant to the state of the republic today. It really does not matter who is at the helm, under what holy name they crusade, with which justification they advance towards fascism. These matters are academic and within the realm of mere trivia.
What really matters is how and why the average person does not wake up and realize that the America they were taught to believe in does not exist, and how their own philosophical, intellectual, moral, and character flaws prevented them from seeing this at the very beginning. There is indeed something wrong with a person who argues passionately about minutia like sports and television shows while their nation is decaying. None of that could be an accident.
He's a representative sample of what the U.S. government has become, and that's by no means limited to either component party of the Ruling Class.
He's not a product of an entirely faceless process. He's an individual who has chosen his allegiances, as do all individuals. That must not be disregarded when measuring what sort of man he is.
The Left Wing and the Right Wing are two body parts of the same Beast. It's a monument to human stupidity that so few seem to truly comprehend that. The purpose of a two-party system is to play "good cop, bad cop" and to periodically switch roles for maximum mindfuck effect. The Founding Fathers foresaw what a two-party system would become because they understood and chose not to delude themselves about a few basic principles of reality. The understanding component is easy and painless compared to the decision to accept no delusion, however comfortable and reassuring it may be.
And only the brilliant select few can see it . . . right.
If by "select few" you mean anyone who reviews the facts of the matter, reads the studies, and looks at the government's own numbers, then yes.
I note you did not present evidence or reasoning to formulate a disagreement with me. You demonstrate the particular form of irrationality most rampant in this nation with your failed attempt at a cheap shot. Religious traditions call it "pride" but fail to really provide a definition, sadly. It's this need to assert a phony sense of superiority by showing empty contempt for someone else who has done nothing wrong to you, or otherwise putting that person down, since you already judged that person as inferior to you.
It's just the kind of thing that will prevent you from being self-correcting, from recognizing and trying to constructively remedy your own faults as they occur. The more extreme form is the "perpetual victim", whose problems are always caused by others because nothing is ever his or her fault. The small-minded view things in terms of fault and blame and how to redirect those against someone else. People with even a little wisdom view things in terms of cause and effect and realize that if a problem is your own fault, that's good, because that means you can change it by making a better choice.
You're better than the petty, small-minded behavior you're displaying here.
One way to win an argument is to change the terms or the definition of the terms.
Nothing "won" that way ever turns out well in the end. The practice is one reason the US has so many batshit insane laws like the War on Some Drugs that don't stand up to analysis, and continues to keep these laws even after this is well known.
The lack of rationality will have been the root cause of our downfall.
Nah. It ain't "deep-seated". We just hate the same old bullshit by lousy "programmers". Apple likes developers and gives its tools away for free. Actually, the only company that doesn't respect its developers is Microsoft. But, oh wait, there are no real developers on the Microsoft platform. Apple and *nix has all the developers.
Ouch. Burn.
Prove me wrong. Show me any tool that is coded for or coded by Microsoft that is:
1) desirable
2) practical
3) intuitive
Waiting...........
If you're looking for a fan of Microsoft to defend the merits of their software, you're barkin' up the wrong tree, friend. I've been a Linux user since around 1996 or so and have no interest in Microsoft products.
I simply found it amusing the way that guy worded his sentence, saying that something was free... after you pay. That's all. I have no idea how it can be so difficult to appreciate (or dislike) a simple jest.
Apple, for instance, only charges $100 to develop on the iPad, giving the tools away.
Sure, and the dealership just GAVE ME the car I'm driving after charging me money for it! Wow that was nice of them.
Ignorance is bliss... Xcode is still free even if you don't want to pay $100 for a developer account.
Actually you had to choose between two possible interpretations of what I said. 1) I am being facetious and am simply making a joke about the way he worded that, and 2) I was making a factual statement about developing software on (or for) the iPad. Because there was no additional context, you had to pick one. Naturally you chose the one that lets you make a smug comment while judging yourself smarter than me.
Is that bliss? Seems the product of a deep-seated (and horribly widespread) insecurity to me.
Require tests of one's ability to actually maneuver the car skillfully and to perform various emergency maneuvers in order to obtain a license, instead of the test being little more than memorizing traffic signs and rules. When about 50% to 75% of all applicants fail and must re-take the test, it is comprehensive enough. Require all retirees to re-take this test every two years in order to obtain a license. Treat "failure to yield" and "following too closely" as automatic fails of the test, and treat these violations as nearly as serious as DUI for licensed drivers on public roads. Stop worrying so damned much about speeding since it rarely causes accidents, and start telling cops to ticket slow drivers because they actually do create hazards for others.
We certainly can do this, but you can see there is no political will to carry it out despite all the "driving is a privilege, not a right" mantras you might hear from the states. The states themselves would receive far less in ticket revenues if poor drivers were kept off the roads, so again they have a disincentive.
Ha! You mean to tell me that all those kids who 10-20 years ago were getting a shit education grew up to be adults that don't know shit? Say it isn't so! Next thing you'll tell me is that correlation isn't causation and there is some bigger root cause we just haven't figured out yet.
Most jobs don't involve a lot of math or english these days.
More whether or not you can socially function and whether you know the basics of using a computer.
Plumbing, paving roads, being a cashier, managing people, checking meter readings, working an assembly line don't involve much math or English.
Perhaps society only needs a few people per hundred that are great at math? People don't need math skills to drive a semi-truck or make the donuts or take an order or stock a warehouse.... Similar to how most companies only need a few elite coders?
Historically education (especially higher education) was not for the purpose of job training. That was handled by other means such as apprenticeships. Education was for the purpose of personal enrichment and quality of life.
A nation of people who can effectively work their corporate jobs but believe everything the TV tells them will create a fascist dictatorship. In the USA it will probably be a "soft tyranny" of the "we know what's best for you, or else" type, not the "strong man with an iron fist" dictatorships we've seen in the past.
Because the cultural double standard means the guys face considerably less shame than the girls would in the same situation. It's a rather embarrassing truth, as it reveals just how shallow the supposed commitment to equality really is, but true even so.
That double standard will continue to exist so long as (too many) women continue to use sex appeal as a weapon of manipulation and a means of getting what they want.
If the significance of a woman's body and a woman's sexuality were to decline and become equal with mens', both effects would happen. It would be less useful as a tool of manipulation by unscrupulous women (the ones a wise man avoids) AND people would stop making a big deal out of every time a woman's body is exposed.
It's hilarious that when you say men should have honor and recognize womens' rights and treat women with respect, that makes you a "Troll" around here. Heh.
More laws regulating the internet to empower the NSA efforts will lead to countries (not just Brazil) leaving internet, or setting walled gardens, you can get out (by approved and monitored paths), you can use what is inside, but people from outside can't get in, and maybe the use of commercial US software could have some penalization (less access/tighly controlled). Is not a win-win, is an all-lose scenario but with someone yelling that we won.
It's a win for people who view strife and chaos as a means to achieve power. Historically, a peaceful prosperous nation with no crises and no serious threats has never been a means of expanding political power. "All lose" in the general sense, because the few who do gain are so tiny in number that they are less than a rounding error compared to those who lose, so I don't think your statement is generally false.
I like to listen to people's views about "the nanny state" right up until the part where they tell me I should deal with it by.. voting in somebody to fix the problem for us...
You probably noticed my post contained no such recommendation. Personally, I really don't want to rely on the government to protect me from things that I can protect myself from merely by using good judgment and not taking stupid and unnecessary risks. If I do take a stupid and unnecessary risk and it results in regret and humiliation, I don't view that as a law enforcement problem.
Then there's the whole topic of how one actually gets to be a major political candidate and why no one who wants to strongly reduce the size and power of government is likely to ever get the financial backing it takes to win an election.
Ah, you must be one of those people who thinks there shouldn't be any laws against fraud, since all parties had to agree to the transaction for it to progress.
Actually I'm more of a small-'l' libertarian. Force, threat of force, and fraud are the major things a government should protect you from.
What the law should say and what constitutes a good, rational decision are two separate issues.
Do you have any insights as to why they might have been made illegal in the first place?
Because telling other people how they must live is an irresistable urge among the small-minded. All of the reasons boil down to that. Drugs are hardly unique in this sense.
If the intention were to reduce harm as much as possible, prohibition is one of the least effective methods and all of the research shows this. But these are not people who are interested in facts, in measuring the effectiveness of their own solutions and no longer using methods that don't work. That would lead to conclusions that would interfere with pontificating to others about how they should live.
"Live and let live" and the notion of "consenting adults" do not occur to the small-minded.
Maybe someday the US will make laws based on science and reality, as opposed to "morality"
I'm not an atheist and I sincerely believe that one of the most immoral things we tolerate today is the effort to tell other people how they should live. That desire is the primary motive behind the War on (some) Drugs. What other people read, watch, think, believe, ingest, and generally anything (anything) consenting adults wish to do is absolutely none of my fucking business. Government has no case for its involvement unless a third party is victimized in some way.
I believe your problem is with organized religion, not with the concept of God itself and certainly not with any kind of genuine spirituality as practiced by thinking individuals. Incidentally I also can't stand the people who must win a convert and cannot respect that you believe what you believe (or not) for your own reasons. It's again a desire to control and make others like oneself and it's just plain evil trying to masquerade as good.
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Pardon me but the ONLY rule for criticizing Israel while not getting branded an anti-semite is... not criticizing Israel.
Fixed that for you. And I'm serious - this isn't about actual antisemitism, it's about suppression of criticism by claiming racism.
It's standard fare in politics sadly. If you want immigration laws (even just existing ones on the books) to be enforced, you're racist against Mexicans (an accusation made by people who have never reviewed Mexico's much stricter immigration laws!). If you criticize Israel, you're an anti-Semite. If you're against President Obama's politics or Eric Holder's actions, you're racist against black people. Etc etc. I wonder what such people would say if we ever developed a real problem with millions of white Canadians illegally entering the country, but I digress.
It's a cheap way to shut down all reasonable discussion and put the other person immediately on the defensive, trying to disprove a negative. It comes from people who don't want reason and logic to enter into the discussion because these are threats to their position, a position based on self-interest and not based on what makes good policy or which view is closest to the truth.
A side-effect I consider intentional is that the obsession with group identity is a direct assault on the concept of individuality. Real individuality is a strong threat to the main method of politics today, which is to divide people into multiple groups and gain power by promising to protect each from the others.
We have very similar stories, except I am from Africa, and the bit about the swimming. I agree with you entirely.
I have noticed that people born in the USA take their liberty for granted, and are careless with it. On the other hand, those who have seen oppression (and I have seen the trajectory we are once already) understand the real and present danger we face.
Some of us who were born there do love and cherish our liberty and recognize the many ways in which it is being trampled with impunity. The problem is, we are drowned out by so many who think that professional sports, pop music, consumerism, television, and personal dramas are much higher priority. It's a problem of values and a problem of dehumanization as explained by Erich Fromm.
You absolutely must have a broken people with malleable values and loyalties before you can have a police state. A strong, intact, whole people who are relatively self-sufficient and value ideals far beyond their own convenience cannot be trampled in this manner.
You remind me of so many I have encountered before, those who have the skill to usually win arguments despite being dead-wrong. These are not people who ever admit they were mistaken and you never hear that old view from them again. They are true believers. I have acquired enough humility and experience to recognize that nothing I say matters much to such a person, for they have a faith in their beliefs that cannot be shaken by reason.
You made this a personal matter the moment you implied there were a "select few' and that I regarded myself as among such an elite. It so happens that those who see clearly often are not those with popular positions, but that is not my doing. Oh how I wish that were not so, but I accept that it is and has been for a long time.
It's a roundabout way of saying that the number who agree with a thing and whether this is generally apprecaited is relevant to the truth of that thing, which is simply and plainly false. I am sorry the clarity of this passed by you unnoticed, for I did try to bring this to your attention, but the feelings and motivations of such a position are not difficult to understand. It's comfortable and cushy to accuse someone of being some kind of elitist while never explaining where their reason is flawed, and so very difficult to refute because it amounts to proving a negative.
You're a rarity because I can't say for certain whether you just love being right, or whether you really understand what you're doing. But I don't doubt your sincerity for a moment. And if you were wondering, pride has no proper place in such matters, which was exactly my point with my previous post.
You know, I really hate posts like yours, for a couple of reasons.
First, you say that warrantless wiretaps have been going on for a very long time. Maybe they have, but they were certainly never standard operating procedure. Good hell they're warrantlessly wiretapping EVERYBODY these days. And back then they never came out and said,"Hey, we're doing warrantless wiretaps, and if you don't like it you can fuck right off" like they do now.
Second, saying it's been going on like this for hundreds of years makes it sound like it'll always be this way, so you might as well do nothing. It also lends it an air false legitimacy: "If the founding fathers were doing it it must be okay."
The Founding Fathers were adamantly against this sort of thing and were willing to risk everything to try and create a nation that stood for something better. Their real problem is that they had to deal with the social realities of their day that were not within their power to overturn, such as the institution of slavery and the notions of class and wealth. Yet within those suffocating boundaries they instituted something more that we have failed to realize.
One of their fears about having a Bill of Rights at all, was that the mere existence of such a document may foster the notion that human rights were limited to only those which were enumerated. As it stands today, the Bill of Rights is merely a yardstick by which we measure how far our failures have progressed.
I sincerely believe that future generations will consider us a Dark Age greater than any medieval period, for never has the average person been so petty, emotionally and spiritually immature, ill-informed in the face of an Information Age, navie, and unwilling to stand up for what was right. The medieval serf at least had the excuse of being at the mercy of the information brokers and gatekeepers of their time. Our ignorant, on the other hand, can point only to their own laziness and failure of priorities.
Basically Uncle Tom Obama the choom gang coward looks far far worse because he promised time and time again to be far far better than his predecessors and instead, well, history has proven that while he is a skilled teleprompter reader his actions prove him to be a far right sycophant.
The hell of a thing is, even if he truly intended to be better (which I doubt, for he was groomed from his obscure start), it would not matter. He's a mere puppet or a cog in a vast machine far beyond his control despite his high office.
You are one of the minority who can remember what Jim Marrs calls "The old republic". That was before the banker takeover of the nation was approaching its final stages, before the technology for total surveillance was widespread and readily available, before there were so many American citizens who would cooperate with and work for the police-state apparatus in the name of security because they are governed by fear or greed or lust for power instead of reason and what was once called decency.
The real problem is, we now have an entire generation that has never known the difference. We have too many people who are products of their environment, knowing only what they were taught, who lack the initiative to really look into the history and understand the changes that have occurred. To them, all of this is necessary and normal. It's a problem of inertia.
Eric Holder can do no wrong because he is a black man. Furthermore, now that we have black man Jah Rasta Johnson as the DHS leader, nobody can complain about performance or creeping fascism because both are black men and to criticize black men is racist. And racism is a hate crime. Blacks are, after all, predisposed to crime, and will naturally resort to the appropriate criminal behavior even after an Ivy league law education. It's what we free-thinking tea-party individuals like to call "Chicago Politics."
Do you disagree, you racist motherfucker? Huh? Do you?
-- Ethanol-fueled
Chicago has a long history of corrupt politics, as do several other major cities. To focus on the group identity is to distract attention away from the power plays that are being made. That is simply a strategic error. That corruption is becoming more inclusive and diverse along with better and more worthy enterprises is hardly relevant to the state of the republic today. It really does not matter who is at the helm, under what holy name they crusade, with which justification they advance towards fascism. These matters are academic and within the realm of mere trivia.
What really matters is how and why the average person does not wake up and realize that the America they were taught to believe in does not exist, and how their own philosophical, intellectual, moral, and character flaws prevented them from seeing this at the very beginning. There is indeed something wrong with a person who argues passionately about minutia like sports and television shows while their nation is decaying. None of that could be an accident.
He's a representative sample of what the U.S. government has become, and that's by no means limited to either component party of the Ruling Class.
He's not a product of an entirely faceless process. He's an individual who has chosen his allegiances, as do all individuals. That must not be disregarded when measuring what sort of man he is.
The Left Wing and the Right Wing are two body parts of the same Beast. It's a monument to human stupidity that so few seem to truly comprehend that. The purpose of a two-party system is to play "good cop, bad cop" and to periodically switch roles for maximum mindfuck effect. The Founding Fathers foresaw what a two-party system would become because they understood and chose not to delude themselves about a few basic principles of reality. The understanding component is easy and painless compared to the decision to accept no delusion, however comfortable and reassuring it may be.
And only the brilliant select few can see it . . . right.
If by "select few" you mean anyone who reviews the facts of the matter, reads the studies, and looks at the government's own numbers, then yes.
I note you did not present evidence or reasoning to formulate a disagreement with me. You demonstrate the particular form of irrationality most rampant in this nation with your failed attempt at a cheap shot. Religious traditions call it "pride" but fail to really provide a definition, sadly. It's this need to assert a phony sense of superiority by showing empty contempt for someone else who has done nothing wrong to you, or otherwise putting that person down, since you already judged that person as inferior to you.
It's just the kind of thing that will prevent you from being self-correcting, from recognizing and trying to constructively remedy your own faults as they occur. The more extreme form is the "perpetual victim", whose problems are always caused by others because nothing is ever his or her fault. The small-minded view things in terms of fault and blame and how to redirect those against someone else. People with even a little wisdom view things in terms of cause and effect and realize that if a problem is your own fault, that's good, because that means you can change it by making a better choice.
You're better than the petty, small-minded behavior you're displaying here.
One way to win an argument is to change the terms or the definition of the terms.
Nothing "won" that way ever turns out well in the end. The practice is one reason the US has so many batshit insane laws like the War on Some Drugs that don't stand up to analysis, and continues to keep these laws even after this is well known.
The lack of rationality will have been the root cause of our downfall.
Nah. It ain't "deep-seated". We just hate the same old bullshit by lousy "programmers". Apple likes developers and gives its tools away for free. Actually, the only company that doesn't respect its developers is Microsoft. But, oh wait, there are no real developers on the Microsoft platform. Apple and *nix has all the developers.
Ouch. Burn.
Prove me wrong. Show me any tool that is coded for or coded by Microsoft that is:
1) desirable 2) practical 3) intuitive
Waiting...........
If you're looking for a fan of Microsoft to defend the merits of their software, you're barkin' up the wrong tree, friend. I've been a Linux user since around 1996 or so and have no interest in Microsoft products.
... after you pay. That's all. I have no idea how it can be so difficult to appreciate (or dislike) a simple jest.
I simply found it amusing the way that guy worded his sentence, saying that something was free
Apple, for instance, only charges $100 to develop on the iPad, giving the tools away.
Sure, and the dealership just GAVE ME the car I'm driving after charging me money for it! Wow that was nice of them.
Ignorance is bliss... Xcode is still free even if you don't want to pay $100 for a developer account.
Actually you had to choose between two possible interpretations of what I said. 1) I am being facetious and am simply making a joke about the way he worded that, and 2) I was making a factual statement about developing software on (or for) the iPad. Because there was no additional context, you had to pick one. Naturally you chose the one that lets you make a smug comment while judging yourself smarter than me.
Is that bliss? Seems the product of a deep-seated (and horribly widespread) insecurity to me.
Apple, for instance, only charges $100 to develop on the iPad, giving the tools away.
Sure, and the dealership just GAVE ME the car I'm driving after charging me money for it! Wow that was nice of them.
How, exactly, do you propose to do that?
Require tests of one's ability to actually maneuver the car skillfully and to perform various emergency maneuvers in order to obtain a license, instead of the test being little more than memorizing traffic signs and rules. When about 50% to 75% of all applicants fail and must re-take the test, it is comprehensive enough. Require all retirees to re-take this test every two years in order to obtain a license. Treat "failure to yield" and "following too closely" as automatic fails of the test, and treat these violations as nearly as serious as DUI for licensed drivers on public roads. Stop worrying so damned much about speeding since it rarely causes accidents, and start telling cops to ticket slow drivers because they actually do create hazards for others.
We certainly can do this, but you can see there is no political will to carry it out despite all the "driving is a privilege, not a right" mantras you might hear from the states. The states themselves would receive far less in ticket revenues if poor drivers were kept off the roads, so again they have a disincentive.
Ha! You mean to tell me that all those kids who 10-20 years ago were getting a shit education grew up to be adults that don't know shit? Say it isn't so! Next thing you'll tell me is that correlation isn't causation and there is some bigger root cause we just haven't figured out yet.
There's a cause alright, and it's quite deliberate.
Most jobs don't involve a lot of math or english these days. More whether or not you can socially function and whether you know the basics of using a computer. Plumbing, paving roads, being a cashier, managing people, checking meter readings, working an assembly line don't involve much math or English. Perhaps society only needs a few people per hundred that are great at math? People don't need math skills to drive a semi-truck or make the donuts or take an order or stock a warehouse .... Similar to how most companies only need a few elite coders?
Historically education (especially higher education) was not for the purpose of job training. That was handled by other means such as apprenticeships. Education was for the purpose of personal enrichment and quality of life.
A nation of people who can effectively work their corporate jobs but believe everything the TV tells them will create a fascist dictatorship. In the USA it will probably be a "soft tyranny" of the "we know what's best for you, or else" type, not the "strong man with an iron fist" dictatorships we've seen in the past.
Incidentally that first sentence describes a policy of artificial scarcity. Women are about 52% of the population. There is no scarcity.
Because the cultural double standard means the guys face considerably less shame than the girls would in the same situation. It's a rather embarrassing truth, as it reveals just how shallow the supposed commitment to equality really is, but true even so.
That double standard will continue to exist so long as (too many) women continue to use sex appeal as a weapon of manipulation and a means of getting what they want.
If the significance of a woman's body and a woman's sexuality were to decline and become equal with mens', both effects would happen. It would be less useful as a tool of manipulation by unscrupulous women (the ones a wise man avoids) AND people would stop making a big deal out of every time a woman's body is exposed.
It's hilarious that when you say men should have honor and recognize womens' rights and treat women with respect, that makes you a "Troll" around here. Heh.
More laws regulating the internet to empower the NSA efforts will lead to countries (not just Brazil) leaving internet, or setting walled gardens, you can get out (by approved and monitored paths), you can use what is inside, but people from outside can't get in, and maybe the use of commercial US software could have some penalization (less access/tighly controlled). Is not a win-win, is an all-lose scenario but with someone yelling that we won.
It's a win for people who view strife and chaos as a means to achieve power. Historically, a peaceful prosperous nation with no crises and no serious threats has never been a means of expanding political power. "All lose" in the general sense, because the few who do gain are so tiny in number that they are less than a rounding error compared to those who lose, so I don't think your statement is generally false.
I like to listen to people's views about "the nanny state" right up until the part where they tell me I should deal with it by.. voting in somebody to fix the problem for us...
You probably noticed my post contained no such recommendation. Personally, I really don't want to rely on the government to protect me from things that I can protect myself from merely by using good judgment and not taking stupid and unnecessary risks. If I do take a stupid and unnecessary risk and it results in regret and humiliation, I don't view that as a law enforcement problem.
Then there's the whole topic of how one actually gets to be a major political candidate and why no one who wants to strongly reduce the size and power of government is likely to ever get the financial backing it takes to win an election.
Ah, you must be one of those people who thinks there shouldn't be any laws against fraud, since all parties had to agree to the transaction for it to progress.
Actually I'm more of a small-'l' libertarian. Force, threat of force, and fraud are the major things a government should protect you from.
What the law should say and what constitutes a good, rational decision are two separate issues.
Having a law that protects people from a very specific act causing humiliation
We already have at least one such law. It's called slander.
It's not slander if it's factually correct.
Do you have any insights as to why they might have been made illegal in the first place?
Because telling other people how they must live is an irresistable urge among the small-minded. All of the reasons boil down to that. Drugs are hardly unique in this sense.
If the intention were to reduce harm as much as possible, prohibition is one of the least effective methods and all of the research shows this. But these are not people who are interested in facts, in measuring the effectiveness of their own solutions and no longer using methods that don't work. That would lead to conclusions that would interfere with pontificating to others about how they should live.
"Live and let live" and the notion of "consenting adults" do not occur to the small-minded.
Maybe someday the US will make laws based on science and reality, as opposed to "morality"
I'm not an atheist and I sincerely believe that one of the most immoral things we tolerate today is the effort to tell other people how they should live. That desire is the primary motive behind the War on (some) Drugs. What other people read, watch, think, believe, ingest, and generally anything (anything) consenting adults wish to do is absolutely none of my fucking business. Government has no case for its involvement unless a third party is victimized in some way.
I believe your problem is with organized religion, not with the concept of God itself and certainly not with any kind of genuine spirituality as practiced by thinking individuals. Incidentally I also can't stand the people who must win a convert and cannot respect that you believe what you believe (or not) for your own reasons. It's again a desire to control and make others like oneself and it's just plain evil trying to masquerade as good.