Each of those topics is relevant to Republicans and they take an active interest in it. The disagreement is how each of these topics are addressed.
Pretty much the Left would argue for an absolutist policy based on the current popular science. So they would shut down all the coal fueled power plants, outlaw gasoline vehicles, have mandatory vaccinations, and who knows what oppressive crap they would come up with in the name of food and water safety.
Republicans would look at each issue and weigh the cost vs. benefits and do what makes sense while ensuring everyone's safety and prosperity.
After all, what's best for the planet is if we all lived in grass huts and ate nuts and berries (strictly rationed so as to not impact the bears trying to fatten up for the winter). And since the Left would have outlawed water treatment plants due to the chemicals and land use impact, we'd all be drinking from streams.
Surprise surprise. A Republican-supporting post, that is every bit as rational and fair-minded as the Democrat-supporting post it responded to, gets modded "troll" while the post it responded to was moded "+3 insightful". The modding bias on slashdot is getting out of hand. I don't mind people up-modding because they agree with something, but down-modding based on disagreement is just a way of trying to hide arguments you're afraid others might find convincing.
I find I have to browse with a low mod setting these days in order to see both sides of a debate. If I wanted an echo chamber I could go to one of the many sites that openly support Democrats. I come to slashdot because I would rather read rational informed debate.
Do you think AC's post isn't a good argument? Plenty of people felt the need to respond to it with rational discussion. If the AC were a troll most people would ignore it or respond with anger. I myself wouldn't mod the AC insightful or informative, but he wasn't trolling anymore than post he responded to was.
So my post has been modded "troll" also. "Off-topic" would be a reasonable mod, but "troll"?
We are no longer getting candidates for leaders, we are getting ideology enforcers.
Democrats, Will spend want to spend more money to solve the problem, money will solve all problems.
Republicans, Will want private business to solve the problem, businesses can solve all problem.
Close, but I think you've missed it by a bit.
Democrats: All problems can be solved by the government spending money, or the government threatening people and businesses to force them to solve the problem.
Republicans: All problems can be solved by free people and free businesses either doing what is in their best interest or by acting in charity.
The problem with the Republican solution is that sometimes there isn't enough charity and often people are motivated badly by the "tragedy of the commons" (look it up if you haven't heard of it).
The problem with the Democratic solution is that it robs us of our freedom (freedom is not just a means to an end - freedom itself is a good thing), it costs too much, and experience tells us that in the long run free private enterprise usually produces greater innovation.
Actually Republicans might latch onto this debate, because the biggest issue is now firmly in their favor. We are on track to hit our Kyoto protocol goal of reducing CO2 to 1990 levels, having hit 1992 levels this year. Environmentally sustainable energy is now a huge win for Republicans as it wasn't Priuses, EPA regulations, or cap and trade, but petroleum engineers and fracking that got us there. The government has been actively trying to stop fracking, regardless of the settled science that it is safe.
How much fun would Romney have pointing out all of Obama's failed green policies to stop climate change while then pointing to the dreaded fracking as the solution, which is not only the leading source of non-government jobs in the US, but what has rendered the climate change debate moot.
A post that deserves +5 Informative is modded as a troll. I wonder why. Oh yeah, it supports Republicans.
Republicans will see the list of suggested topics ("biosecurity, climate change, the safety of food and water supplies, vaccination, and environmentally sustainable energy") as unfair and biased toward the Democrats' agenda. However, this says more about the Republican party's interest in science than it does about ScienceDebate.org's political bias.
Of course they would choose topics that are points of contention between the parties. If Republicans see that as bias, maybe they're not as confident about their positions as they pretend to be.
So someone - not a Republican but some random person - speculates on how Republicans will respond, and you take this as evidence for Republicans not being confident?? So you're not concerned about how Republicans actually respond? Some guy told you that how he imagines Republicans will react and you treat it as though his imagination is fact?
In fact, they've even argued against the idea of compromise.
For economic conservatives, we have good reason to resist further "compromise". We want to cut spending, Democrats want to increase spending. A fair compromise would mean keeping current spending levels (adjusting for inflation). Instead every budget compromise has been to increase spending, but just not as much as the Democrats wanted.
Or worse, we get a situation where Republicans say they want to cut taxes and decrease spending while Democrats say they want to raise taxes and increase spending. So the parties compromise by cutting taxes and increasing spending!
The other reason many conservatives distrust "compromise" is that the promises aren't kept. One of the more famous was the 1980s plan to amnesty illegal aliens while increasing enforcement to make sure the problem didn't happen again. We go the amnesty but not the enforcement. Another example from the 1980s was the budget compromises where taxes went up in exchange for future spending cuts - but the cuts never arrived.
Conservatives are tired of being told that a kick in the head is a compromise because it was only one foot instead of two.
Surprise surprise. A Republican-supporting post, that is every bit as rational and fair-minded as the Democrat-supporting post it responded to, gets modded "troll" while the post it responded to was moded "+3 insightful". The modding bias on slashdot is getting out of hand. I don't mind people up-modding because they agree with something, but down-modding based on disagreement is just a way of trying to hide arguments you're afraid others might find convincing.
I find I have to browse with a low mod setting these days in order to see both sides of a debate. If I wanted an echo chamber I could go to one of the many sites that openly support Democrats. I come to slashdot because I would rather read rational informed debate.
Do you think AC's post isn't a good argument? Plenty of people felt the need to respond to it with rational discussion. If the AC were a troll most people would ignore it or respond with anger. I myself wouldn't mod the AC insightful or informative, but he wasn't trolling anymore than post he responded to was.
Republicans will see the list of suggested topics ("biosecurity, climate change, the safety of food and water supplies, vaccination, and environmentally sustainable energy") as unfair and biased toward the Democrats' agenda.
Questions 1 to 3 on the "Science Debate" site basically saying "We're scientist, how much money will you use to buy our votes?" Those questions will definitely benefit the Democrats.
Most of the rest of the questions look pretty unbiased. The Democrats will have a slight advantage because it is always easier to say "We're going to spend more money this year" than it is to say "we'd like to spend more money but current spending rates are bankrupting our children and we have to cut back, and besides history shows that free enterprise produce most of the positive results we're looking for."
The Democrat position is easy - they say they'll stick their hands in and fix the problem. The Republican argument is more sophisticated and harder to communicate in a sound bite. The Republican position is based on boring subjects like math and history while the Democratic position is based on feel-good things like playing Santa Claus.
But that's not a problem specific to the science debate - it is just a general difference between the parties.
Personally, my view of freedom in general tells me that if the terms of employment that were agreed upon allow the employer and employee the freedom to terminate the employment - it is their business and not the government's to decide. A government employer must of course play by different rules.
It is one thing for a person or company to discriminate based on their religion. Such decisions are not controlling. If my employer doesn't like my religious beliefs, I'm free to find another. If I don't like my employer's religious beliefs, I'm free to find another. The employer should have the same freedom (so long as the employer isn't the government).
If I don't like the political or religious beliefs of a merchant, be it Chic-fil-a, Ben & Jerry's, or Shell (I boycotted them in the 80's over aparteid) I don't have to buy their goods.
The freedom that is missing is the freedom to choose. If you don't like your employer's health plan you can choose another employer. But there is only one government. You can't just choose a different government for your charity. If the government is telling you what to do, your freedom is gone. That's why the American Constitution puts so many restrictions on the government.
Either way a religious group can't do what they'd like to do (kill others, deny their workers contraconception, whatever),
No religious group that I know of in America is trying to stop anyone from getting contraception. The issue is whether other people can be forced to pay for that contraception. If you can't see the difference between killing someone and having your money taken by someone, you are incapable of distinguishing perpetrator from victim.
It doesn't make much sense, to me, to distinguish between "you have to do something you don't want"
Exactly. There is little difference between telling the Catholics "You can't practice your beliefs" and telling them "You have to do things you believe are immoral." It would be as if the Catholics were telling someone "We're going to stop you from using your own money to buy birth control", which of course is not something the Catholics are doing.
and without the NEA our kids won't learn about art and learning about art has been shown a correlation with higher math and science scores...
and we need to protect our borders...
and did I mention healthcare??
Nearly everything our government does is important to someone but it's clear from our high taxes and massive deficit that we just can't afford it all. Cutting waste will help but it won't enough. Some programs that are good and useful need to be shrunk or eliminated too. Doing so is of course unpopular. Whether or not this particular program was the best one to cut, I'm glad Ryan has the guts to make the hard decisions that need to be made and deal with the political fallout.
To explain more fully: I'd guess that you're buying the idea that "if the health plan covers contraception, and one of the employees gets contraception, that means that the employer is having to pay for contraception". Here's the thing: health care benefits are part of the employee's compensation. That money is no longer the employer's -- it's the employee's, and it's the employee's choice how to use it.
If that is the case, then why are Catholic employees being forced to pay for birth control coverage that they won't use? Shouldn't they have the choice to pick a plan that doesn't have birth control costs built in?
Just because the health benefit portion of the employee's compensation isn't provided directly as money, that doesn't make it not the employee's. Allowing employers to arbitrarily restrict their employee's health plan because of their own religious views is, in essence, no different than allowing them to dictate how employees can spend their monetary compensation.
It would be simpler if employees were buying healthcare themselves rather than from their employer. Then this wouldn't be an issue. Unfortunately the tax code penalizes such behavior.
No. The idea is that practices of religion should not be forced onto others that don't want them. A business owner objecting to birth control for their employees is doing that exact thing, and they have no fucking right to do so.
To my knowledge, no business is trying to keep their employees from taking birth control. They're objecting to being forced to pay for that birth control. If the employee pays for the birth control themself there is no problem.
These aren't a coordinated effort, obviously, but it does seem that much of our culture has adopted two ideas very hostile to religion and Christiantiy. The first is that religion should only be practiced in private. The second is that religious acts are ok so long as you don't really believe it - that we'll respect your right to do purely symbolic rituals but we won't respect your right to believe..
And what is wrong with those two ideas? Absolutely, religion should only be practiced in private. It has no place in the public sphere.
To many people, such a religion is no religion at all. But in any case, the American Constitutional guarantee of free exercise of religion does not have a clause saying "in private". The same amendment that guarantees religious freedom also guarantees freedom of assembly, freedom of the press, and freedom of speech. Would you feel comfortable putting the same restriction on those rights?
And secondly, although I agree that religious people have the right to believe whatever silliness they wish, nothing on earth would compel me to respect those beliefs.
Who's asking you to respect the beliefs? You should respect the right to practice the beliefs, at least if you're an American.
Furthermore, where religious beliefs come into conflict with human rights, religious beliefs have to yield.
I agree with you so long as you have a reasonable definition of "human rights". For example, the right to force other people to pay for your birth control pills is not and has never been a "human right".
It *is* left to local control, in fact if you don't like what your local schools are teaching there's probably at least a couple home-school cooperatives in your area to make the control even more personal. However, if you want federal funding then you need to meet federal guidelines established by the national community, which for now are fortunately not completely backwards.
So leaving it to local control means taking local money and refusing to give it back unless the local people do as they're told?
In recent months when people talk about a "war on religion" they're more likely to be talking about the HHS mandate that any Calholic who owns a business must violate the teachings of their religion if the want to be allowed to hire employees.
Well, I'd say religious killings are still illegal, but so what. There's plenty of common-good laws that are at odds with a particular religious view. It's neither new nor should it be considered a "war" on religion. The thinking you allude to is same nuttery as if a true-to-form Muslim said that laws that make murder a crime were somehow a "war on Islam", the latter promising that a religious killing is a noble thing to do (in a nutshell). Sorry, most popular religions have aspects of them that are against common good of mankind. It's a fact of life. Get over it, or do something to change it -- meaning, reform the religion, unless you advocate placing your own worldview over the welfare of others...
The difference is that if you murder someone because of your religion, you're taking rights away from that other person. The HHS mandate doesn't stop anyone from taking another person's rights away. Instead the HHS mandate takes away the right of Catholics to not participate in a process that violates their religious beliefs. See the difference? In your "religious killings" example someone (the killee) is forced to participate in a religious practice. In the HHS example, someone is forced to participate in an act against their religious beliefs. In both cases the solution is not force people to do things they don't want to do (either because the want to preserve their right to life or because they want to preserver their freedom of religion).
Making sure you don't restrict the "free practice" of religion as required by the American Constitution requires some reasonable accomodations. For example if a school bans hats because they obstruct views from the back of the room and don't look tidy, an exception should be made for yamulkas and other religiously mandated headcoverings for Sihks and some Muslim and Christian groups. It's not always clear where to draw the line for "reasonable", but accomodations are sometimes necessary.
In this case it would be simple enough to write the questions to say "According to the theory of evolution, man descended from A early mammals B dinosaurs, C apes, D all of the above" instead of simply "Man descended from A early mammals..." . That way the student who knows the theory of evolution but doesn't believe it isn't forced between lying and getting a good score. The test is supposed to see what the student knows, not what the student believes.
Yes I want standards for teaching children about science to be set by scientists, not by religious cranks. If that requires top down control, then that's a strong argument for top down control
Unless, of course, the "religious cranks" get on top. Then where will you be?
Perhaps this should be left to more local control so parents, who care more about their children than you or any beauracrat does, get to decide.
Please remember that when people talk about a "war" on religion, this is the kind of stuff they're referring to.
In recent months when people talk about a "war on religion" they're more likely to be talking about the HHS mandate that any Calholic who owns a business must violate the teachings of their religion if the want to be allowed to hire employees. That's the same mandate that says religious observance is ok when practiced inside a church amoung other people of the same religion, but if your religion wants to you to something good for the community like run a soup-kitchen or hospital, you have to violate your relgion.
There are some practices related to teaching of evolution as well. It is one thing to teach the theory of evolution. It is another to claim that the theory disproves Biblical teachings and to call those teachings "myths" as I've seen some books directed at children do.
Other unrelated forms of the war on religion, or at least on Christianity, include efforts the effort to remove all mention of Christ from Christmas celebrations. Since the Charlie Brown Christmas special came out maybe 50 years ago, have you seen another Christmas special on network TV that made any mention of the reason for Christmas? When was the last time you were at the mall in December and heard a real Christmas carol mixed in with the secular toons about Santa Claus and snow?
These aren't a coordinated effort, obviously, but it does seem that much of our culture has adopted two ideas very hostile to religion and Christiantiy. The first is that religion should only be practiced in private. The second is that religious acts are ok so long as you don't really believe it - that we'll respect your right to do purely symbolic rituals but we won't respect your right to believe..
Something that occasionally bothers me is the question of how much a brain works after it is dead. We don't really understand consciousness so we don't know how much of the brain is responsible for it. In fact the only way we know (suspect?) our fellow humans are conscious is they tell us - ok I'm wondering in to Turing test territory which isn't where I want to go.
Suppose we were to hit this old intact brain with a jolt of electricity - would it feel it? Would it be conscious at some level for a brief moment but completely unable to inform us? Would it suffer a brief horrible dream? It makes me feel like I want to have my brain completely obliterated somehow when I die so I can be sure there is nothing left that is capable of suffering.
hehe my tinfoil hat is fully deployed:)
war is good for business.
I don't believe that is true, though I know there are people who do. But even assuming Bush and the cabinet believed war is good for business, they would have to be psychopaths to launch a war for business purposes. Given what I've seen of Bush I just don't believe that's true. He may not be an angel, but I think it is safe to say he has a conscience. I think the same can be said of most of the people at the high levels of US government.
USSR invasion failed because of US involvement and support.
That doesn't negate what I said about the USSR's willingness to take casualties. American involvement increased the difficulty of taking Afghanistan, but our support would have been insignificant had the USSR been willing to launch the kind of effort and take the magnitude of casualties that they did in WWII.
We should have learned from USSR.
We need to learn both from this and from Vietnam and from Iraq. America just isn't willing to do what it takes to win a regional war against an uncivilized opponent. We don't fight dirty, we aren't willing to take many casualties, and regardless of which administration gets us involved in the war, eventually the Democrats get elected and we betray whatever friends we had in the region even if our involvement in the fighting is largely over. Whatever the reasons, good or bad, of getting involved the result is a loss of American lives, money, and credibility.
US response should have been proportional (strategic rather than emotional). making sure binladen and his top managers were taken out. Can't destroy a country and hope they will like you back!! Also cant win wars against ideals, only people.
yes this is overly simplistic but there are no complex way to arrive at a solution for this either, nature of the beast that is human.
At the time the mood in the press was such a that a "to hell with them" approach where we destroy but not rebuild wouldn't have been able to get support. It was clear that to get public support we had to commit to rebuilding. I don't know if Bush would have chosen that route given a choice - he might have done it anyway.
I'm pretty sure money wasn't the motivation for either country's invasion of Afghanistan. For the America it was 9-11, both for capturing Bin Laden and a belief that leaving the country in ruins would allow it to be used as a base for future terrorists and would also be morally wrong.
I'm not sure what the motivation for the Soviet Union was, but since they were communists I doubt it was money.
At least in the case of America (I frankly don't know that much about the inner workings of the Soviet Union), I believe the leadership wouldn't have wanted to motivate the populace to die in mass numbers anyway. There is plenty of reason to question the wisdom of Bush and his cabinet in deciding to invade and nation build in Afghanistan, but if you think they were out to make a profit you need to adjust your tinfoil hat.
I seriously doubt nuclear war will happen, especially with China. We've had them for 60+ years and the US is the only country to use not 1 but 2 against Japan. No one else has, and if there was a time for nuclear war, that would have been the Cold War.
After the US dropped the atomic bombs on Japan, there has never been a similar case to be made that using nuclear weapons would end a war and save hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of lives.
Looking at another scenario, there has never been a case where a nuclear armed country was facing potential total defeat - faced with having to surrender.
If either of those situations occurs in the future, it would not be too surprising to see nuclear arms used again. Would a nuclear-armed Assad be willing to use such a weapon against his own people?
I do agree that the US and China won't go to nuclear war so long as the US maintains a large enough arsenal to eliminate China. If we only have enough weapons to destroy half of China then there might be a problem. China has a long history of using human wave techniques and being callous about taking casualties. In the near future I don't think that's a problem - but in 50 to 100 years, who knows?
Both the US and Soviet Union were unwilling to do what it took to maintain a hold over rag-tag mountain guerrilla fighters and terrorists. The Soviet Union may have been willing to do the dirty work, but it was unwilling to take the casualties (had the Soviet Union been willing to take the casualties in Afghanistan that the Soviet Union took in WWII, there wouldn't be an Afghanistan today).
However, if it were truly an existential battle and recognized as such, the Soviet Union could have taken and held Afghanistan, and the US could do so today. It is a question of will, not capabilities.
We shouldn't be spending our money figuring out how to defeat poorly equipped enemies. The purpose of our military is to be able to defeat, or at least fight to a standstill, other militaries that may threaten our existence (in the future that likely means China). If we can handle China, we can handle anyone. Most importantly, if we can handle China, we won't have to.
If we can handle China then most of our wars will be with poorly equipped enemies. But planning for those wars instead of planning for war with China is getting the cart before the horse. Also, if we can win the small wars cheaply but can't win the big one, the small wars will be for naught. It will be an extreme example of being penny-wise and pound-foolish.
Slashdot Mirror
Each of those topics is relevant to Republicans and they take an active interest in it. The disagreement is how each of these topics are addressed.
Pretty much the Left would argue for an absolutist policy based on the current popular science. So they would shut down all the coal fueled power plants, outlaw gasoline vehicles, have mandatory vaccinations, and who knows what oppressive crap they would come up with in the name of food and water safety.
Republicans would look at each issue and weigh the cost vs. benefits and do what makes sense while ensuring everyone's safety and prosperity.
After all, what's best for the planet is if we all lived in grass huts and ate nuts and berries (strictly rationed so as to not impact the bears trying to fatten up for the winter). And since the Left would have outlawed water treatment plants due to the chemicals and land use impact, we'd all be drinking from streams.
Surprise surprise. A Republican-supporting post, that is every bit as rational and fair-minded as the Democrat-supporting post it responded to, gets modded "troll" while the post it responded to was moded "+3 insightful". The modding bias on slashdot is getting out of hand. I don't mind people up-modding because they agree with something, but down-modding based on disagreement is just a way of trying to hide arguments you're afraid others might find convincing.
I find I have to browse with a low mod setting these days in order to see both sides of a debate. If I wanted an echo chamber I could go to one of the many sites that openly support Democrats. I come to slashdot because I would rather read rational informed debate.
Do you think AC's post isn't a good argument? Plenty of people felt the need to respond to it with rational discussion. If the AC were a troll most people would ignore it or respond with anger. I myself wouldn't mod the AC insightful or informative, but he wasn't trolling anymore than post he responded to was.
So my post has been modded "troll" also. "Off-topic" would be a reasonable mod, but "troll"?
We are no longer getting candidates for leaders, we are getting ideology enforcers.
Democrats, Will spend want to spend more money to solve the problem, money will solve all problems.
Republicans, Will want private business to solve the problem, businesses can solve all problem.
Close, but I think you've missed it by a bit.
Democrats: All problems can be solved by the government spending money, or the government threatening people and businesses to force them to solve the problem.
Republicans: All problems can be solved by free people and free businesses either doing what is in their best interest or by acting in charity.
The problem with the Republican solution is that sometimes there isn't enough charity and often people are motivated badly by the "tragedy of the commons" (look it up if you haven't heard of it).
The problem with the Democratic solution is that it robs us of our freedom (freedom is not just a means to an end - freedom itself is a good thing), it costs too much, and experience tells us that in the long run free private enterprise usually produces greater innovation.
Actually Republicans might latch onto this debate, because the biggest issue is now firmly in their favor. We are on track to hit our Kyoto protocol goal of reducing CO2 to 1990 levels, having hit 1992 levels this year. Environmentally sustainable energy is now a huge win for Republicans as it wasn't Priuses, EPA regulations, or cap and trade, but petroleum engineers and fracking that got us there. The government has been actively trying to stop fracking, regardless of the settled science that it is safe.
How much fun would Romney have pointing out all of Obama's failed green policies to stop climate change while then pointing to the dreaded fracking as the solution, which is not only the leading source of non-government jobs in the US, but what has rendered the climate change debate moot.
A post that deserves +5 Informative is modded as a troll. I wonder why. Oh yeah, it supports Republicans.
Republicans will see the list of suggested topics ("biosecurity, climate change, the safety of food and water supplies, vaccination, and environmentally sustainable energy") as unfair and biased toward the Democrats' agenda. However, this says more about the Republican party's interest in science than it does about ScienceDebate.org's political bias.
Of course they would choose topics that are points of contention between the parties. If Republicans see that as bias, maybe they're not as confident about their positions as they pretend to be.
So someone - not a Republican but some random person - speculates on how Republicans will respond, and you take this as evidence for Republicans not being confident?? So you're not concerned about how Republicans actually respond? Some guy told you that how he imagines Republicans will react and you treat it as though his imagination is fact?
In fact, they've even argued against the idea of compromise.
For economic conservatives, we have good reason to resist further "compromise". We want to cut spending, Democrats want to increase spending. A fair compromise would mean keeping current spending levels (adjusting for inflation). Instead every budget compromise has been to increase spending, but just not as much as the Democrats wanted.
Or worse, we get a situation where Republicans say they want to cut taxes and decrease spending while Democrats say they want to raise taxes and increase spending. So the parties compromise by cutting taxes and increasing spending!
The other reason many conservatives distrust "compromise" is that the promises aren't kept. One of the more famous was the 1980s plan to amnesty illegal aliens while increasing enforcement to make sure the problem didn't happen again. We go the amnesty but not the enforcement. Another example from the 1980s was the budget compromises where taxes went up in exchange for future spending cuts - but the cuts never arrived.
Conservatives are tired of being told that a kick in the head is a compromise because it was only one foot instead of two.
Surprise surprise. A Republican-supporting post, that is every bit as rational and fair-minded as the Democrat-supporting post it responded to, gets modded "troll" while the post it responded to was moded "+3 insightful". The modding bias on slashdot is getting out of hand. I don't mind people up-modding because they agree with something, but down-modding based on disagreement is just a way of trying to hide arguments you're afraid others might find convincing.
I find I have to browse with a low mod setting these days in order to see both sides of a debate. If I wanted an echo chamber I could go to one of the many sites that openly support Democrats. I come to slashdot because I would rather read rational informed debate.
Do you think AC's post isn't a good argument? Plenty of people felt the need to respond to it with rational discussion. If the AC were a troll most people would ignore it or respond with anger. I myself wouldn't mod the AC insightful or informative, but he wasn't trolling anymore than post he responded to was.
Republicans will see the list of suggested topics ("biosecurity, climate change, the safety of food and water supplies, vaccination, and environmentally sustainable energy") as unfair and biased toward the Democrats' agenda.
Questions 1 to 3 on the "Science Debate" site basically saying "We're scientist, how much money will you use to buy our votes?" Those questions will definitely benefit the Democrats.
Most of the rest of the questions look pretty unbiased. The Democrats will have a slight advantage because it is always easier to say "We're going to spend more money this year" than it is to say "we'd like to spend more money but current spending rates are bankrupting our children and we have to cut back, and besides history shows that free enterprise produce most of the positive results we're looking for."
The Democrat position is easy - they say they'll stick their hands in and fix the problem. The Republican argument is more sophisticated and harder to communicate in a sound bite. The Republican position is based on boring subjects like math and history while the Democratic position is based on feel-good things like playing Santa Claus.
But that's not a problem specific to the science debate - it is just a general difference between the parties.
Personally, my view of freedom in general tells me that if the terms of employment that were agreed upon allow the employer and employee the freedom to terminate the employment - it is their business and not the government's to decide. A government employer must of course play by different rules.
It is one thing for a person or company to discriminate based on their religion. Such decisions are not controlling. If my employer doesn't like my religious beliefs, I'm free to find another. If I don't like my employer's religious beliefs, I'm free to find another. The employer should have the same freedom (so long as the employer isn't the government).
If I don't like the political or religious beliefs of a merchant, be it Chic-fil-a, Ben & Jerry's, or Shell (I boycotted them in the 80's over aparteid) I don't have to buy their goods.
The freedom that is missing is the freedom to choose. If you don't like your employer's health plan you can choose another employer. But there is only one government. You can't just choose a different government for your charity. If the government is telling you what to do, your freedom is gone. That's why the American Constitution puts so many restrictions on the government.
Either way a religious group can't do what they'd like to do (kill others, deny their workers contraconception, whatever),
No religious group that I know of in America is trying to stop anyone from getting contraception. The issue is whether other people can be forced to pay for that contraception. If you can't see the difference between killing someone and having your money taken by someone, you are incapable of distinguishing perpetrator from victim.
It doesn't make much sense, to me, to distinguish between "you have to do something you don't want"
Exactly. There is little difference between telling the Catholics "You can't practice your beliefs" and telling them "You have to do things you believe are immoral." It would be as if the Catholics were telling someone "We're going to stop you from using your own money to buy birth control", which of course is not something the Catholics are doing.
We NEED big science.
And we need health care...
and welfare...
and food stamps...
and national defense...
and the space program is really important...
and drug rehabilitation programs...
and the FDA...
and the EPA...
and without the NEA our kids won't learn about art and learning about art has been shown a correlation with higher math and science scores...
and we need to protect our borders...
and did I mention healthcare??
Nearly everything our government does is important to someone but it's clear from our high taxes and massive deficit that we just can't afford it all. Cutting waste will help but it won't enough. Some programs that are good and useful need to be shrunk or eliminated too. Doing so is of course unpopular. Whether or not this particular program was the best one to cut, I'm glad Ryan has the guts to make the hard decisions that need to be made and deal with the political fallout.
To explain more fully: I'd guess that you're buying the idea that "if the health plan covers contraception, and one of the employees gets contraception, that means that the employer is having to pay for contraception". Here's the thing: health care benefits are part of the employee's compensation. That money is no longer the employer's -- it's the employee's, and it's the employee's choice how to use it.
If that is the case, then why are Catholic employees being forced to pay for birth control coverage that they won't use? Shouldn't they have the choice to pick a plan that doesn't have birth control costs built in?
Just because the health benefit portion of the employee's compensation isn't provided directly as money, that doesn't make it not the employee's. Allowing employers to arbitrarily restrict their employee's health plan because of their own religious views is, in essence, no different than allowing them to dictate how employees can spend their monetary compensation.
It would be simpler if employees were buying healthcare themselves rather than from their employer. Then this wouldn't be an issue. Unfortunately the tax code penalizes such behavior.
No. The idea is that practices of religion should not be forced onto others that don't want them. A business owner objecting to birth control for their employees is doing that exact thing, and they have no fucking right to do so.
To my knowledge, no business is trying to keep their employees from taking birth control. They're objecting to being forced to pay for that birth control. If the employee pays for the birth control themself there is no problem.
These aren't a coordinated effort, obviously, but it does seem that much of our culture has adopted two ideas very hostile to religion and Christiantiy. The first is that religion should only be practiced in private. The second is that religious acts are ok so long as you don't really believe it - that we'll respect your right to do purely symbolic rituals but we won't respect your right to believe..
And what is wrong with those two ideas? Absolutely, religion should only be practiced in private. It has no place in the public sphere.
To many people, such a religion is no religion at all. But in any case, the American Constitutional guarantee of free exercise of religion does not have a clause saying "in private". The same amendment that guarantees religious freedom also guarantees freedom of assembly, freedom of the press, and freedom of speech. Would you feel comfortable putting the same restriction on those rights?
And secondly, although I agree that religious people have the right to believe whatever silliness they wish, nothing on earth would compel me to respect those beliefs.
Who's asking you to respect the beliefs? You should respect the right to practice the beliefs, at least if you're an American.
Furthermore, where religious beliefs come into conflict with human rights, religious beliefs have to yield.
I agree with you so long as you have a reasonable definition of "human rights". For example, the right to force other people to pay for your birth control pills is not and has never been a "human right".
It *is* left to local control, in fact if you don't like what your local schools are teaching there's probably at least a couple home-school cooperatives in your area to make the control even more personal. However, if you want federal funding then you need to meet federal guidelines established by the national community, which for now are fortunately not completely backwards.
So leaving it to local control means taking local money and refusing to give it back unless the local people do as they're told?
In recent months when people talk about a "war on religion" they're more likely to be talking about the HHS mandate that any Calholic who owns a business must violate the teachings of their religion if the want to be allowed to hire employees.
Well, I'd say religious killings are still illegal, but so what. There's plenty of common-good laws that are at odds with a particular religious view. It's neither new nor should it be considered a "war" on religion. The thinking you allude to is same nuttery as if a true-to-form Muslim said that laws that make murder a crime were somehow a "war on Islam", the latter promising that a religious killing is a noble thing to do (in a nutshell). Sorry, most popular religions have aspects of them that are against common good of mankind. It's a fact of life. Get over it, or do something to change it -- meaning, reform the religion, unless you advocate placing your own worldview over the welfare of others...
The difference is that if you murder someone because of your religion, you're taking rights away from that other person. The HHS mandate doesn't stop anyone from taking another person's rights away. Instead the HHS mandate takes away the right of Catholics to not participate in a process that violates their religious beliefs. See the difference? In your "religious killings" example someone (the killee) is forced to participate in a religious practice. In the HHS example, someone is forced to participate in an act against their religious beliefs. In both cases the solution is not force people to do things they don't want to do (either because the want to preserve their right to life or because they want to preserver their freedom of religion).
Making sure you don't restrict the "free practice" of religion as required by the American Constitution requires some reasonable accomodations. For example if a school bans hats because they obstruct views from the back of the room and don't look tidy, an exception should be made for yamulkas and other religiously mandated headcoverings for Sihks and some Muslim and Christian groups. It's not always clear where to draw the line for "reasonable", but accomodations are sometimes necessary.
In this case it would be simple enough to write the questions to say "According to the theory of evolution, man descended from A early mammals B dinosaurs, C apes, D all of the above" instead of simply "Man descended from A early mammals..." . That way the student who knows the theory of evolution but doesn't believe it isn't forced between lying and getting a good score. The test is supposed to see what the student knows, not what the student believes.
Yes I want standards for teaching children about science to be set by scientists, not by religious cranks. If that requires top down control, then that's a strong argument for top down control
Unless, of course, the "religious cranks" get on top. Then where will you be?
Perhaps this should be left to more local control so parents, who care more about their children than you or any beauracrat does, get to decide.
Please remember that when people talk about a "war" on religion, this is the kind of stuff they're referring to.
In recent months when people talk about a "war on religion" they're more likely to be talking about the HHS mandate that any Calholic who owns a business must violate the teachings of their religion if the want to be allowed to hire employees. That's the same mandate that says religious observance is ok when practiced inside a church amoung other people of the same religion, but if your religion wants to you to something good for the community like run a soup-kitchen or hospital, you have to violate your relgion.
There are some practices related to teaching of evolution as well. It is one thing to teach the theory of evolution. It is another to claim that the theory disproves Biblical teachings and to call those teachings "myths" as I've seen some books directed at children do.
Other unrelated forms of the war on religion, or at least on Christianity, include efforts the effort to remove all mention of Christ from Christmas celebrations. Since the Charlie Brown Christmas special came out maybe 50 years ago, have you seen another Christmas special on network TV that made any mention of the reason for Christmas? When was the last time you were at the mall in December and heard a real Christmas carol mixed in with the secular toons about Santa Claus and snow?
These aren't a coordinated effort, obviously, but it does seem that much of our culture has adopted two ideas very hostile to religion and Christiantiy. The first is that religion should only be practiced in private. The second is that religious acts are ok so long as you don't really believe it - that we'll respect your right to do purely symbolic rituals but we won't respect your right to believe..
Something that occasionally bothers me is the question of how much a brain works after it is dead. We don't really understand consciousness so we don't know how much of the brain is responsible for it. In fact the only way we know (suspect?) our fellow humans are conscious is they tell us - ok I'm wondering in to Turing test territory which isn't where I want to go.
Suppose we were to hit this old intact brain with a jolt of electricity - would it feel it? Would it be conscious at some level for a brief moment but completely unable to inform us? Would it suffer a brief horrible dream? It makes me feel like I want to have my brain completely obliterated somehow when I die so I can be sure there is nothing left that is capable of suffering.
hehe my tinfoil hat is fully deployed :)
war is good for business.
I don't believe that is true, though I know there are people who do. But even assuming Bush and the cabinet believed war is good for business, they would have to be psychopaths to launch a war for business purposes. Given what I've seen of Bush I just don't believe that's true. He may not be an angel, but I think it is safe to say he has a conscience. I think the same can be said of most of the people at the high levels of US government.
USSR invasion failed because of US involvement and support.
That doesn't negate what I said about the USSR's willingness to take casualties. American involvement increased the difficulty of taking Afghanistan, but our support would have been insignificant had the USSR been willing to launch the kind of effort and take the magnitude of casualties that they did in WWII.
We should have learned from USSR.
We need to learn both from this and from Vietnam and from Iraq. America just isn't willing to do what it takes to win a regional war against an uncivilized opponent. We don't fight dirty, we aren't willing to take many casualties, and regardless of which administration gets us involved in the war, eventually the Democrats get elected and we betray whatever friends we had in the region even if our involvement in the fighting is largely over. Whatever the reasons, good or bad, of getting involved the result is a loss of American lives, money, and credibility.
US response should have been proportional (strategic rather than emotional). making sure binladen and his top managers were taken out. Can't destroy a country and hope they will like you back!! Also cant win wars against ideals, only people.
yes this is overly simplistic but there are no complex way to arrive at a solution for this either, nature of the beast that is human.
At the time the mood in the press was such a that a "to hell with them" approach where we destroy but not rebuild wouldn't have been able to get support. It was clear that to get public support we had to commit to rebuilding. I don't know if Bush would have chosen that route given a choice - he might have done it anyway.
I'm pretty sure money wasn't the motivation for either country's invasion of Afghanistan. For the America it was 9-11, both for capturing Bin Laden and a belief that leaving the country in ruins would allow it to be used as a base for future terrorists and would also be morally wrong.
I'm not sure what the motivation for the Soviet Union was, but since they were communists I doubt it was money.
At least in the case of America (I frankly don't know that much about the inner workings of the Soviet Union), I believe the leadership wouldn't have wanted to motivate the populace to die in mass numbers anyway. There is plenty of reason to question the wisdom of Bush and his cabinet in deciding to invade and nation build in Afghanistan, but if you think they were out to make a profit you need to adjust your tinfoil hat.
I seriously doubt nuclear war will happen, especially with China. We've had them for 60+ years and the US is the only country to use not 1 but 2 against Japan. No one else has, and if there was a time for nuclear war, that would have been the Cold War.
After the US dropped the atomic bombs on Japan, there has never been a similar case to be made that using nuclear weapons would end a war and save hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of lives.
Looking at another scenario, there has never been a case where a nuclear armed country was facing potential total defeat - faced with having to surrender.
If either of those situations occurs in the future, it would not be too surprising to see nuclear arms used again. Would a nuclear-armed Assad be willing to use such a weapon against his own people?
I do agree that the US and China won't go to nuclear war so long as the US maintains a large enough arsenal to eliminate China. If we only have enough weapons to destroy half of China then there might be a problem. China has a long history of using human wave techniques and being callous about taking casualties. In the near future I don't think that's a problem - but in 50 to 100 years, who knows?
Both the US and Soviet Union were unwilling to do what it took to maintain a hold over rag-tag mountain guerrilla fighters and terrorists. The Soviet Union may have been willing to do the dirty work, but it was unwilling to take the casualties (had the Soviet Union been willing to take the casualties in Afghanistan that the Soviet Union took in WWII, there wouldn't be an Afghanistan today).
However, if it were truly an existential battle and recognized as such, the Soviet Union could have taken and held Afghanistan, and the US could do so today. It is a question of will, not capabilities.
We shouldn't be spending our money figuring out how to defeat poorly equipped enemies. The purpose of our military is to be able to defeat, or at least fight to a standstill, other militaries that may threaten our existence (in the future that likely means China). If we can handle China, we can handle anyone. Most importantly, if we can handle China, we won't have to.
If we can handle China then most of our wars will be with poorly equipped enemies. But planning for those wars instead of planning for war with China is getting the cart before the horse. Also, if we can win the small wars cheaply but can't win the big one, the small wars will be for naught. It will be an extreme example of being penny-wise and pound-foolish.
mod parent up!