This whole "gay marriage mess" is a side effect of the fact that the US Government has decided to meddle in something that EVERYONE ELSE ON THE PLANET views as a primarily religious matter. So public policy gets conflated with religious doctrine.
No, it's entirely due to extremist religious nutters who despise every decent thing this country ever stood for and seek to impose their delusional hatred on the decent people of this country.
The thing you have to keep in mind is that these evil monsters do not get to define what is or what is not a marriage. Marriage was around long before the god these scum worship was even invented, so the idea that they have any right to any say in the matter is utterly ludicrous. They're welcome to put whatever restrictions they want on what goes on in their houses of hatred, but the second they think there's anything in the world that gives them the right to shove their blind ignorant hatred into the laws of a nation that was founded primarily on the simple principle that religious delusion has no place in the government of a free society, they have declared themselves at war with all decent, ethical, moral people and on the ideal of America as there is nothing more diametrically opposed to the founding principles of this nation than letting religious extremists fuck over decent people due to their ignorant hatred and cowardice.
It doesn't have one god damned thing to do with the government granting marriage licenses. It is entirely an issue of religious lunatics thinking its their business to tell the government that it can't give the licenses to decent people because some particular interpretations of some particular religions are especially vile and monstrous and the believers in such garbage have no concept of what is and what is not any of their fucking business.
If it's otherwise her word against his (which is skewed way in her favor nowadays), then that facebook profile might be the only thing that keeps an innocent guy from getting his life ruined.
Of course if he's 'Feeling: "Rapacious"', then all bets are off.
Small Business has been the economic driver for a long time. Cut all the taxes to company with 20 or less employees and see the job market turn over.
Beware the law of unintended consequences. If it turns out that the sweet part of the sector is made up of companies with 21-25 employees, you've just created an incentive for them to fire several people;-)
Plus all the 20 employee companies who won't hire now.
If the goverment was facist in nature, do you think the book would have been significantly different?
In many ways it would have been. There was a book written about a fascist dystopia. It was called Brave New World and it was significantly different than 1984 as I already pointed out.
The book is about the effects of a government exercising absolute control over it's citizenry in order to achieve it's political ideals, which you will notice are not at all socialist or communist in nature. This is totalitarianism.
However the point you seem to be willfully trying to miss is that while it may be totalitarianism, that isn't the whole picture and you've missed a great deal of very important things about the book.
You're also missing the very clear point that while totalitarianism is a very general description of an authoritarian government, the extremity of its generality makes it mostly worthless as a descriptive term given the many vastly different types of government which fit under that umbrella.
This includes Communism and Fascism which are extreme polar opposites.
So, no, I don't need to reread 1984. You do. Then go read Brave New World.
Then write me up a report comparing and contrasting the societies in each of them.
Unless you're completely out of touch with reality, you will notice some rather major differences between the societies in each book. Those differences are largely due to the respective author's decisions to write about the extremes of the left and the right specifically, as opposed to merely writing about the evils of totalitarianism.
In 1984 everyone was equal. Except the proles who don't matter and the party elite who are more equal. Left wing extremism in a nutshell. In Brave New World, some people were born "better" and everyone was brainwashed into being happy about it. Right wing extremism in a nutshell.
If he had wanted to portray a true socialist state he would have made it classless. Maybe, maybe not but that's irrelevant. He wanted to portray a Socialist dystopia, not a real socialist state. And as we all know Orwell was well aware in a Socialist dystopia ( and hell even in real Stalinist communism) some animals are more equal than others.
I suppose that's one way to think about it. Another is that since those drugs are illegal, they tend to be supplied by large drug-smuggling operations. You buy something, some of that money goes into the salesperson's pocket, and some of that goes into the illegal drug trade.
That's just an argument not to pay your taxes since they go to fund the enforcement of the drug laws which is the root cause of the overwhelming majority of the problems associated with the drug trade.
The illegal drug trade and the associated violence is caused directly by the drug laws, so by paying your taxes, you are choosing to fund that activity in a far more direct and damaging manner than simply buying drugs.
1984 was about Socialism "IngSoc" gone crazy. Of course it was totalitarian, but totalitarian is an extremely broad characterization. Communism or Socialism are more descriptive of the actual type of government.
So, saying 1984 was about totalitarianism is to miss the vast majority of the point. Brave New World was, likewise, about totalitarianism, but when you state that as if it meant anything of interest of value it, again, completely misses the point.
1984 was a fictional account of what happens when a left wing government goes off the rails to the extreme. Brave New World is similar except that it is about right wing extremism.
When you lump them both as totalitarianism, you completely miss the point. If describing them as merely "totalitarian" was in any way meaningful, then Communism and Fascism would be the same instead of opposite extremes, which they are. That distinction is critical to understand to even recognize the modern world.
1.) We should call beliefs "subjective" when we mean "objectively false".
No, you should call beliefs subjective when their truth in your eyes is determined solely by your desire that they be true rather than on any intersection with reality. When they are objectively false, it's especially important at the very least to call them subjective rather than lying flat out and calling them objectively true.
2.) If something's objective, there won't be debate.
It depends. The fact that the Earth is an oblate spheroid is objectively true and there is no rational debate on that topic. The fact that there is a flat earth society doesn't mean that they are magically granted any sort of objective legitimacy. They are delusional nutters and nothing more. So when something is as obviously objectively true as that, there is no debate although there are people claiming to debate it. There is a world of difference.
3.) You can tell that you evaluate something objectively, because you decided that it's a fairy tale.
No. Objectively any particular religious book is a collection of fairy tales. If this weren't the truth, then there would be a very real issue with the fact that there are so many mutually contradictory "objective truths" out there. Once you have subjectively decided that one of them is "true", you've necessarily decided that the rest are "false". The only way to make that sync up with reality is to either: 1) Demonstrate the objective truth of your particular interpretation of your particular belief in fairy tales. This is obviously impossible or it would have been done by now. or 2) Notice that there is only one highly subjective view in which any religion ends up as anything but a fairy tale and that's the view of one who already subjectively believes in the truth of that fairy tale. To everyone else in the world, they're spouting obvious delusional nonsense. So, objectively, it's not that everyone's crazy delusional fairy tales are false except yours because you really *really* believe that yours must magically be true in spite of all of the evidence. It's that all of the delusional fairy tales are false.
If the magical sky fairy parts of the bible had any objective truth to them at all, you'd be able to demonstrate that. Neither you, nor any other religious person in the entire history of the world has ever been able to come up with any such demonstration of any scrap of the magical nonsense in the bible or any other religious text.
Therefore, objectively, your religion is nothing but a belief in fairy tales.
Objective doesn't mean assume everything is equally likely and deserving of respect as you seem to believe.
4.) If God existed, no one would believe differently about religion; if something is real, people agree about it.
If there were an entity deserving of the name god who had any interest whatsoever in communicating his nature or desires to humans at any point in the history of the world, then, yes, quite obviously he would have been capable of carrying out such a simple task successfully. Once you've proven yourself such a failure as to be unable to deliver a simple message, you are not worthy of the name god. Heck, you're not even marginally competent. So yes, there would have been one story and we *all* would have damn well known it was true. That type of ability is one tiny part of what being a god entails.
5.) Christians were all raised that way.
Within rounding error, that's an absolute fact. It's possible that there are some very few people in the world who describe themselves as Christians who weren't indoctrinated into it, but that's a vanishingly small number of people.
6.) If someone believes Christianity, it must be because of brain damage and desperate desire. If someone rejects Christianity, it proves their objectivity.
Can you come up with any other possible *objective* reason somebody could believe in something so dumb? Seriously, think it through.
It's hard to explain; it's just the way we are. I guess the best way to say it is we show our flag because we are Americans.
No, it's how the bottom of the barrel of our country are due to them blindly swallowing jingoistic bullshit. Rabid flag wavers are *not* patriotic in any way shape or form. They're jingoistic. That's a completely different thing and in fact it's actively hostile to patriotism as made crystal clear during the Bush years with the you're with us or against us bullshit which was quite intentionally directed directly at patriots by jingoistic cowards.
. When we pledge allegiance to it; it's not to the flag but to our ideals.
No, you're following a tradition established long, long after this country was established. When people pledge allegiance to the flag, they are young children in school being indoctrinated. Adults don't generally (if ever) say it again after leaving school.
I mean, seriously, dude, try to at least sound sane. You're just repeating bullshit propaganda. We really need thinkers in this country not ignorant sheep who just keep bleating the same tired easily falsified bullshit.
The case for the free market *is* ethics. Respect for property rights imply an unregulated free market and strongly suggest capitalism.
You're missing a critically important point here.
There are unregulated markets, and there is the theoretical ideal of a free market. These are not the same thing. Most blatantly, the first can actually exist in reality, the second can't ever possibly exist.
Now, I think that a free market is a good asymptotic goal, but you really need to understand that it is nothing but a theoretical abstraction and can't exist in reality anymore than the frictionless planes of high school physics can.
Now, apart from making that huge but common error, you seem to be saying that even if such a thing as a free market were possible that it would necessarily be the same thing as an unregulated market. This is also completely false.
The inevitable end result of an unregulated market is about as far away from the ideal of a free market as its possible to get. Now, it's important to remember that the same thing is true of over regulated markets, which fact you don't seem to have an issue with. Given that, it's surprising that you have a problem grasping the fact that unregulated markets are necessarily incredibly unfree.
Here's a simple example which should make the problem crystal clear to you.
Assume I'm the CEO of Widgets Inc. We've been in the widget business for a long time and have done well financially, but we're the big dog. Now assume that you start up a company, NewWidgets Inc. with some great new innovations in widget making which allow you to greatly undercut my best price.
Now, in an *unregulated* market, what do you think would happen?
Well, I would take some tiny part of my large amount of funds and hire some goons to go torch your office, rape your family to death in front of you and then burn you alive.
Now without some form of regulation on the market, that would be the end of the story and most likely the end of any attempts by anyone to compete with me.
Now, you might try to claim that laws against murder aren't regulations of the market, but given the example I put forward, you'd quite obviously be incorrect as those regulations had the effect of regulating the market. The original reason for the establishment of anti-murder laws is totally irrelevant to the fact that it is a market regulation.
Now, once you realize that simple fact, it quickly becomes obvious that an unregulated market is inevitably a complete disaster. The only rational debate is one on what sort of regulations do the most to make the markets approach the theoretical ideal of a free market, rather than on whether or not any regulations are necessary. Some regulations are quite obviously necessary, but bad enough regulations could easily approach the disaster guaranteed by no regulations.
I'm a conservative Christian who believes that same-sex sexual activity transgresses an objective moral principle.
Then you are a completely insane delusional nutter and a really evil fucking worthless piece of shit who has a deep seated problem dealing with reality. No offense, but if you honestly can't tell the difference between objective reality and something like your religious beliefs which are *purely* subjective, then just...wow, Dude. That's far out batshit insane.
The word you are looking for is *subjective* that means it's only true inside your own head. If it were an objective truth, then there wouldn't be a debate. The fact that you only believe such a thing because your parents were evil fucks who lied through their teeth to you in order to brainwash you as a child proves that quite clearly.
I've read your bible, but I was never brainwashed into insisting it must be true. In other words I can assess it *objectively*. You are not capable of doing that. You have a subjective demand that your magical invisible sky fairy has to be real. That isn't objective. Due to your history, you are not capable of objectivity, nor will you ever be. Your brain is damaged. I pity you, but don't ever for one second pretend you are capable of being objective about anything in any way related to the subject. That would be a lie, and that's a sin.....subjectively anyhow.
Objectively, your god is a myth and the bible is a book of fairy tales. The only reason it's more than that to you is your purely subjective desperate desire that it magically be true.
If your god did exist, then there would be one religion and there would be nothing subjective about the whole topic. As it is there is nothing about your god which isn't purely subjective. That's becasue he only exists inside your head and not in objective reality.
I'll be the first to admit that "just because" isn't a justification, but most people believe in that "invisible man in the sky" you so readily mock (or one like Him). And they're all wrong, not you?
Quite obviously so.
All you've said is that you believe that the delusions of brainwashed people magically become sane because there are a lot of them.
How would you possibly attempt to back up such an idiotic statement?
You do know that adults do not think rationally about magical sky fairies and then decide to start believing in them, right? You do know that it is a critically important part of all major religions that its followers must brainwash their children from an extremely young age to believe in that particular religion's fantasies without question, right?
Please stop spouting extremely stupid statements like that. If you are so out of touch with reality and so entirely unable to understand the difference between rational thought and blind repeating of nonsense an ignorant child was force fed, then you shouldn't even attempt to take part in rational discourse. You're not capable of it.
If you do have that ability and you are intentionally ignoring facts in order to push an agenda, then you're a deeply dishonest liar and you have been called out on it.
You quite obviously fit into one of those categories though as you so clearly demonstrated by attempting to push such a blatantly obvious fallacy as appealing to popularity.
Seriously, grow up and act like an honest human being or try to learn a little about logic, before spouting such ignorant twaddle again, ok?
Whichever is wrong with you is a serious flaw, and only you are capable of addressing it.
But that's not correct usage of the word. A phobia is not a hatred, it's a fear; a paralyzing fear of something, one so great that it's debilitating.
Whatever else you wish to say about opponents of homosexuality, they don't have a phobia.
I'm really confused how you made that huge, obviously false, leap of faith.
They spend great amounts of time money and other people's resources in order to attack something which is perfectly normal, natural and healthy in order to address a problem which only exists inside their own heads. Their fear of homosexuality is something they make a concerted effort to put at the forefront of their actions by trying to sell deeply crazy and disturbed fear to the rest of the population, "oh no gays getting married will destroy society" and similar far out lunacy is their entire basis for their views and their only argument, fallacious and insane as it quite clearly is.
So given that the anti-gay nutters are loud and proud about their totally irrational paralyzing fear, why did it fall upon you to try and deny something they declare proudly at every opportunity.
You clearly do not have a rational grasp on the issue.
You do realize why it was setup that way? Otherwise, what possible reason would there be for small states to join the union if they are always outvoted by the larger states?
It's entirely possible to recognize perfectly well why it was set up that way while still having the basic common sense to recognize that it's a failed idea.
What we have today is the largest, most populous and most productive states being dragged down by the small states who want to tell everybody in the big states how to live their lives while forcing them to make massive welfare payments to the small states.
This is not at all a good thing in any way. Hell, let the small states leave the union if they can't deal with the idea that the people who pay their own bills get to make their own decisions about their own lives. Huge gain financially, morally and socially for the union. Either that, or they can just grow up and deal with not being able to tell other people how to live their lives.
Either way, the current EC system is doing what it's designed to do, but the world has changed so much that what it was designed to do is a pure negative today.
Just to be picky, the people used voting to *keep* him in office (2004). They used term limits (which was never publicly voted on) to remove him from office in 2008.
Just to be accurate, the OP specified Bush Sr. who was a one term president.
Aww... aren't you precious! Like Gizmo's kids, after the change... really cute, in a messed up and evil sort of way...
Who?...What?... Whatever, dude.
I always wonder whether people who come up with such twisted fantasies are able to imagine them because they have vivid imaginations... or because, given enough power, they themselves would act in that manner
You might consider picking up a history book. Really, you should if you think reality is just a "twisted fantasy". Seriously, dude, pay a little bit of attention to the world and how it's always worked.
Well, either, you're completely delusional, or you're some wacko hippy who thinks the world has always run on unicorn farts and happy thoughts....but I repeat myself. Put down the bong, hippy. Seriously, what are you, like 12?
In my case, my rational analysis indicates a probability that the Christian Bible is correct.
Sorry, you made some decent points until that.
In your case, your entirely irrational desire to have your favorite magical invisible fairy be the "real" one indicates that probability to you.
An actual rational analysis would leave you convinced that, while there might be some god somewhere, there's no way in hell it could possibly be that one.
You believe it because your parents shoved it down your throat when your brain wasn't properly formed and for no other reason. If your parents were Muslim, you'd be a Muslim.
Rationally, that's exactly how it works. Irrationality is all that you have to back up your *belief*.
and would have enriched those antagonists who lost had they instead emerged victorious.
Often it did regardless. Those residents of the losing antagonist nations who got quite rich were often the ones promoting the wars to their nation while avoiding actually sacrificing anything for it. Victory, while desired, wasn't really the main goal. As long as they could avoid getting killed, they could quite happily loot their own nation at the expense of the blood of the people they don't give a shit about. Just look at Cheney and the rest of the chicken hawks and America's recent disastrous to all but a few, "wars".
As long as you're not dumb enough to enlist and are lacking enough in basic ethics as to happily have the fools who are dumb enough killed for your benefit, you can make quite a healthy profit doing so. Hell the families of those who you murdered to get rich will support you because to not support you would be to admit that they were dumb enough to get duped and that their loved ones are dead for nothing except your profit. Licking your boots is preferable to basic honesty and respecting their lost family to most people. The power of self delusion should never be underestimated.
Oblivion has no such retarded online authentication. By all means we should dump on the games that treat paying customers as pirates but be careful to make sure you criticize the correctly guilty parties.
That's right. Oblivion should be dumped on not for stupid DRM schemes but because it sucked ass. They took a great series and nerfed it. But it didn't have intrusive DRM.
It's also known as "self-sufficiency", and it works a lot better than "government dependence", which was what was expected by too many people after Hurricane Katrina.
LOL,
that's why Alaska is the queen of the welfare states. How about you start being a little bit self-sufficient and stop taking 2 dollars from me for every dollar you pay in taxes ya god damned welfare leech.
Slashdot Mirror
I wonder where all the excess flux goes?
Into the capacitor, duh.
This whole "gay marriage mess" is a side effect of the fact that the US Government has
decided to meddle in something that EVERYONE ELSE ON THE PLANET views as a primarily
religious matter. So public policy gets conflated with religious doctrine.
No, it's entirely due to extremist religious nutters who despise every decent thing this country ever stood for and seek to impose their delusional hatred on the decent people of this country.
The thing you have to keep in mind is that these evil monsters do not get to define what is or what is not a marriage. Marriage was around long before the god these scum worship was even invented, so the idea that they have any right to any say in the matter is utterly ludicrous.
They're welcome to put whatever restrictions they want on what goes on in their houses of hatred, but the second they think there's anything in the world that gives them the right to shove their blind ignorant hatred into the laws of a nation that was founded primarily on the simple principle that religious delusion has no place in the government of a free society, they have declared themselves at war with all decent, ethical, moral people and on the ideal of America as there is nothing more diametrically opposed to the founding principles of this nation than letting religious extremists fuck over decent people due to their ignorant hatred and cowardice.
It doesn't have one god damned thing to do with the government granting marriage licenses. It is entirely an issue of religious lunatics thinking its their business to tell the government that it can't give the licenses to decent people because some particular interpretations of some particular religions are especially vile and monstrous and the believers in such garbage have no concept of what is and what is not any of their fucking business.
If it's otherwise her word against his (which is skewed way in her favor nowadays), then that facebook profile might be the only thing that keeps an innocent guy from getting his life ruined.
Of course if he's 'Feeling: "Rapacious"', then all bets are off.
How pissed off would he be if that happened ;-)
On average, given permission to be sadistic, most people are.
I'm not! I'll be happy to prove it to you if you'll just sit down, let me strap you into this chair, attach some electrodes......
Small Business has been the economic driver for a long time. Cut all the taxes to company with 20 or less employees and see the job market turn over.
Beware the law of unintended consequences. If it turns out that the sweet part of the sector is made up of companies with 21-25 employees, you've just created an incentive for them to fire several people ;-)
Plus all the 20 employee companies who won't hire now.
Hey, it's not "pork", it's an "economic stimulus".
In a similar vein to "I economically stimulated your wife last night" ;-)
If the goverment was facist in nature, do you think the book would have been significantly different?
In many ways it would have been. There was a book written about a fascist dystopia. It was called Brave New World and it was significantly different than 1984 as I already pointed out.
The book is about the effects of a government exercising absolute control over it's citizenry in order to achieve it's political ideals, which you will notice are not at all socialist or communist in nature. This is totalitarianism.
However the point you seem to be willfully trying to miss is that while it may be totalitarianism, that isn't the whole picture and you've missed a great deal of very important things about the book.
You're also missing the very clear point that while totalitarianism is a very general description of an authoritarian government, the extremity of its generality makes it mostly worthless as a descriptive term given the many vastly different types of government which fit under that umbrella.
This includes Communism and Fascism which are extreme polar opposites.
So, no, I don't need to reread 1984. You do.
Then go read Brave New World.
Then write me up a report comparing and contrasting the societies in each of them.
Unless you're completely out of touch with reality, you will notice some rather major differences between the societies in each book. Those differences are largely due to the respective author's decisions to write about the extremes of the left and the right specifically, as opposed to merely writing about the evils of totalitarianism.
In 1984 everyone was equal. Except the proles who don't matter and the party elite who are more equal. Left wing extremism in a nutshell.
In Brave New World, some people were born "better" and everyone was brainwashed into being happy about it. Right wing extremism in a nutshell.
If he had wanted to portray a true socialist state he would have made it classless.
Maybe, maybe not but that's irrelevant. He wanted to portray a Socialist dystopia, not a real socialist state. And as we all know Orwell was well aware in a Socialist dystopia ( and hell even in real Stalinist communism) some animals are more equal than others.
I suppose that's one way to think about it. Another is that since those drugs are illegal, they tend to be supplied by large drug-smuggling operations. You buy something, some of that money goes into the salesperson's pocket, and some of that goes into the illegal drug trade.
That's just an argument not to pay your taxes since they go to fund the enforcement of the drug laws which is the root cause of the overwhelming majority of the problems associated with the drug trade.
The illegal drug trade and the associated violence is caused directly by the drug laws, so by paying your taxes, you are choosing to fund that activity in a far more direct and damaging manner than simply buying drugs.
1984 was about totalitarianism, not communism.
1984 was about Socialism "IngSoc" gone crazy. Of course it was totalitarian, but totalitarian is an extremely broad characterization. Communism or Socialism are more descriptive of the actual type of government.
So, saying 1984 was about totalitarianism is to miss the vast majority of the point.
Brave New World was, likewise, about totalitarianism, but when you state that as if it meant anything of interest of value it, again, completely misses the point.
1984 was a fictional account of what happens when a left wing government goes off the rails to the extreme.
Brave New World is similar except that it is about right wing extremism.
When you lump them both as totalitarianism, you completely miss the point. If describing them as merely "totalitarian" was in any way meaningful, then Communism and Fascism would be the same instead of opposite extremes, which they are. That distinction is critical to understand to even recognize the modern world.
1.) We should call beliefs "subjective" when we mean "objectively false".
No, you should call beliefs subjective when their truth in your eyes is determined solely by your desire that they be true rather than on any intersection with reality. When they are objectively false, it's especially important at the very least to call them subjective rather than lying flat out and calling them objectively true.
2.) If something's objective, there won't be debate.
It depends. The fact that the Earth is an oblate spheroid is objectively true and there is no rational debate on that topic. The fact that there is a flat earth society doesn't mean that they are magically granted any sort of objective legitimacy. They are delusional nutters and nothing more. So when something is as obviously objectively true as that, there is no debate although there are people claiming to debate it. There is a world of difference.
3.) You can tell that you evaluate something objectively, because you decided that it's a fairy tale.
No. Objectively any particular religious book is a collection of fairy tales. If this weren't the truth, then there would be a very real issue with the fact that there are so many mutually contradictory "objective truths" out there. Once you have subjectively decided that one of them is "true", you've necessarily decided that the rest are "false". The only way to make that sync up with reality is to either:
1) Demonstrate the objective truth of your particular interpretation of your particular belief in fairy tales. This is obviously impossible or it would have been done by now.
or
2) Notice that there is only one highly subjective view in which any religion ends up as anything but a fairy tale and that's the view of one who already subjectively believes in the truth of that fairy tale. To everyone else in the world, they're spouting obvious delusional nonsense. So, objectively, it's not that everyone's crazy delusional fairy tales are false except yours because you really *really* believe that yours must magically be true in spite of all of the evidence. It's that all of the delusional fairy tales are false.
If the magical sky fairy parts of the bible had any objective truth to them at all, you'd be able to demonstrate that. Neither you, nor any other religious person in the entire history of the world has ever been able to come up with any such demonstration of any scrap of the magical nonsense in the bible or any other religious text.
Therefore, objectively, your religion is nothing but a belief in fairy tales.
Objective doesn't mean assume everything is equally likely and deserving of respect as you seem to believe.
4.) If God existed, no one would believe differently about religion; if something is real, people agree about it.
If there were an entity deserving of the name god who had any interest whatsoever in communicating his nature or desires to humans at any point in the history of the world, then, yes, quite obviously he would have been capable of carrying out such a simple task successfully.
Once you've proven yourself such a failure as to be unable to deliver a simple message, you are not worthy of the name god. Heck, you're not even marginally competent. So yes, there would have been one story and we *all* would have damn well known it was true. That type of ability is one tiny part of what being a god entails.
5.) Christians were all raised that way.
Within rounding error, that's an absolute fact. It's possible that there are some very few people in the world who describe themselves as Christians who weren't indoctrinated into it, but that's a vanishingly small number of people.
6.) If someone believes Christianity, it must be because of brain damage and desperate desire. If someone rejects Christianity, it proves their objectivity.
Can you come up with any other possible *objective* reason somebody could believe in something so dumb? Seriously, think it through.
7
It's hard to explain; it's just the way we are. I guess the best way to say it is we show our flag because we are Americans.
No, it's how the bottom of the barrel of our country are due to them blindly swallowing jingoistic bullshit.
Rabid flag wavers are *not* patriotic in any way shape or form. They're jingoistic. That's a completely different thing and in fact it's actively hostile to patriotism as made crystal clear during the Bush years with the you're with us or against us bullshit which was quite intentionally directed directly at patriots by jingoistic cowards.
. When we pledge allegiance to it; it's not to the flag but to our ideals.
No, you're following a tradition established long, long after this country was established. When people pledge allegiance to the flag, they are young children in school being indoctrinated. Adults don't generally (if ever) say it again after leaving school.
I mean, seriously, dude, try to at least sound sane. You're just repeating bullshit propaganda. We really need thinkers in this country not ignorant sheep who just keep bleating the same tired easily falsified bullshit.
In the country I live in (Australia) I own a 4bedroom house in an inner-city suburb.
What does that even mean?
The inner city is just what it says, the inner part of the city.
A suburb is by definition *outside* of the city.
So do you live in the city, or do you live in a suburb?
The case for the free market *is* ethics. Respect for property rights imply an unregulated free market and strongly suggest capitalism.
You're missing a critically important point here.
There are unregulated markets, and there is the theoretical ideal of a free market. These are not the same thing. Most blatantly, the first can actually exist in reality, the second can't ever possibly exist.
Now, I think that a free market is a good asymptotic goal, but you really need to understand that it is nothing but a theoretical abstraction and can't exist in reality anymore than the frictionless planes of high school physics can.
Now, apart from making that huge but common error, you seem to be saying that even if such a thing as a free market were possible that it would necessarily be the same thing as an unregulated market. This is also completely false.
The inevitable end result of an unregulated market is about as far away from the ideal of a free market as its possible to get. Now, it's important to remember that the same thing is true of over regulated markets, which fact you don't seem to have an issue with. Given that, it's surprising that you have a problem grasping the fact that unregulated markets are necessarily incredibly unfree.
Here's a simple example which should make the problem crystal clear to you.
Assume I'm the CEO of Widgets Inc. We've been in the widget business for a long time and have done well financially, but we're the big dog. Now assume that you start up a company, NewWidgets Inc. with some great new innovations in widget making which allow you to greatly undercut my best price.
Now, in an *unregulated* market, what do you think would happen?
Well, I would take some tiny part of my large amount of funds and hire some goons to go torch your office, rape your family to death in front of you and then burn you alive.
Now without some form of regulation on the market, that would be the end of the story and most likely the end of any attempts by anyone to compete with me.
Now, you might try to claim that laws against murder aren't regulations of the market, but given the example I put forward, you'd quite obviously be incorrect as those regulations had the effect of regulating the market. The original reason for the establishment of anti-murder laws is totally irrelevant to the fact that it is a market regulation.
Now, once you realize that simple fact, it quickly becomes obvious that an unregulated market is inevitably a complete disaster. The only rational debate is one on what sort of regulations do the most to make the markets approach the theoretical ideal of a free market, rather than on whether or not any regulations are necessary. Some regulations are quite obviously necessary, but bad enough regulations could easily approach the disaster guaranteed by no regulations.
We're coming to steal your cheese. But you can keep your crap beer.
That's fine, but you should keep your tired old jokes that haven't even made any sense since the 80s.
I'm a conservative Christian who believes that same-sex sexual activity transgresses an objective moral principle.
Then you are a completely insane delusional nutter and a really evil fucking worthless piece of shit who has a deep seated problem dealing with reality. No offense, but if you honestly can't tell the difference between objective reality and something like your religious beliefs which are *purely* subjective, then just...wow, Dude. That's far out batshit insane.
The word you are looking for is *subjective* that means it's only true inside your own head.
If it were an objective truth, then there wouldn't be a debate. The fact that you only believe such a thing because your parents were evil fucks who lied through their teeth to you in order to brainwash you as a child proves that quite clearly.
I've read your bible, but I was never brainwashed into insisting it must be true. In other words I can assess it *objectively*. You are not capable of doing that. You have a subjective demand that your magical invisible sky fairy has to be real. That isn't objective. Due to your history, you are not capable of objectivity, nor will you ever be. Your brain is damaged.
I pity you, but don't ever for one second pretend you are capable of being objective about anything in any way related to the subject. That would be a lie, and that's a sin.....subjectively anyhow.
Objectively, your god is a myth and the bible is a book of fairy tales. The only reason it's more than that to you is your purely subjective desperate desire that it magically be true.
If your god did exist, then there would be one religion and there would be nothing subjective about the whole topic. As it is there is nothing about your god which isn't purely subjective. That's becasue he only exists inside your head and not in objective reality.
I'll be the first to admit that "just because" isn't a justification, but most people believe in that "invisible man in the sky" you so readily mock (or one like Him). And they're all wrong, not you?
Quite obviously so.
All you've said is that you believe that the delusions of brainwashed people magically become sane because there are a lot of them.
How would you possibly attempt to back up such an idiotic statement?
You do know that adults do not think rationally about magical sky fairies and then decide to start believing in them, right? You do know that it is a critically important part of all major religions that its followers must brainwash their children from an extremely young age to believe in that particular religion's fantasies without question, right?
Please stop spouting extremely stupid statements like that.
If you are so out of touch with reality and so entirely unable to understand the difference between rational thought and blind repeating of nonsense an ignorant child was force fed, then you shouldn't even attempt to take part in rational discourse. You're not capable of it.
If you do have that ability and you are intentionally ignoring facts in order to push an agenda, then you're a deeply dishonest liar and you have been called out on it.
You quite obviously fit into one of those categories though as you so clearly demonstrated by attempting to push such a blatantly obvious fallacy as appealing to popularity.
Seriously, grow up and act like an honest human being or try to learn a little about logic, before spouting such ignorant twaddle again, ok?
Whichever is wrong with you is a serious flaw, and only you are capable of addressing it.
But that's not correct usage of the word. A phobia is not a hatred, it's a fear; a paralyzing fear of something, one so great that it's debilitating.
Whatever else you wish to say about opponents of homosexuality, they don't have a phobia.
I'm really confused how you made that huge, obviously false, leap of faith.
They spend great amounts of time money and other people's resources in order to attack something which is perfectly normal, natural and healthy in order to address a problem which only exists inside their own heads. Their fear of homosexuality is something they make a concerted effort to put at the forefront of their actions by trying to sell deeply crazy and disturbed fear to the rest of the population, "oh no gays getting married will destroy society" and similar far out lunacy is their entire basis for their views and their only argument, fallacious and insane as it quite clearly is.
So given that the anti-gay nutters are loud and proud about their totally irrational paralyzing fear, why did it fall upon you to try and deny something they declare proudly at every opportunity.
You clearly do not have a rational grasp on the issue.
You do realize why it was setup that way? Otherwise, what possible reason would there be for small states to join the union if they are always outvoted by the larger states?
It's entirely possible to recognize perfectly well why it was set up that way while still having the basic common sense to recognize that it's a failed idea.
What we have today is the largest, most populous and most productive states being dragged down by the small states who want to tell everybody in the big states how to live their lives while forcing them to make massive welfare payments to the small states.
This is not at all a good thing in any way. Hell, let the small states leave the union if they can't deal with the idea that the people who pay their own bills get to make their own decisions about their own lives. Huge gain financially, morally and socially for the union. Either that, or they can just grow up and deal with not being able to tell other people how to live their lives.
Either way, the current EC system is doing what it's designed to do, but the world has changed so much that what it was designed to do is a pure negative today.
Just to be picky, the people used voting to *keep* him in office (2004). They used term limits (which was never publicly voted on) to remove him from office in 2008.
Just to be accurate, the OP specified Bush Sr. who was a one term president.
Aww ... aren't you precious! Like Gizmo's kids, after the change ... really cute, in a messed up and evil sort of way ...
Who?...What?... Whatever, dude.
I always wonder whether people who come up with such twisted fantasies are able to imagine them because they have vivid imaginations ... or because, given enough power, they themselves would act in that manner
You might consider picking up a history book. Really, you should if you think reality is just a "twisted fantasy". Seriously, dude, pay a little bit of attention to the world and how it's always worked.
Well, either, you're completely delusional, or you're some wacko hippy who thinks the world has always run on unicorn farts and happy thoughts....but I repeat myself. Put down the bong, hippy. Seriously, what are you, like 12?
In my case, my rational analysis indicates a probability that the Christian Bible is correct.
Sorry, you made some decent points until that.
In your case, your entirely irrational desire to have your favorite magical invisible fairy be the "real" one indicates that probability to you.
An actual rational analysis would leave you convinced that, while there might be some god somewhere, there's no way in hell it could possibly be that one.
You believe it because your parents shoved it down your throat when your brain wasn't properly formed and for no other reason.
If your parents were Muslim, you'd be a Muslim.
Rationally, that's exactly how it works.
Irrationality is all that you have to back up your *belief*.
and would have enriched those antagonists who lost had they instead emerged victorious.
Often it did regardless. Those residents of the losing antagonist nations who got quite rich were often the ones promoting the wars to their nation while avoiding actually sacrificing anything for it. Victory, while desired, wasn't really the main goal. As long as they could avoid getting killed, they could quite happily loot their own nation at the expense of the blood of the people they don't give a shit about. Just look at Cheney and the rest of the chicken hawks and America's recent disastrous to all but a few, "wars".
As long as you're not dumb enough to enlist and are lacking enough in basic ethics as to happily have the fools who are dumb enough killed for your benefit, you can make quite a healthy profit doing so. Hell the families of those who you murdered to get rich will support you because to not support you would be to admit that they were dumb enough to get duped and that their loved ones are dead for nothing except your profit. Licking your boots is preferable to basic honesty and respecting their lost family to most people. The power of self delusion should never be underestimated.
Oblivion has no such retarded online authentication. By all means we should dump on the games that treat paying customers as pirates but be careful to make sure you criticize the correctly guilty parties.
That's right. Oblivion should be dumped on not for stupid DRM schemes but because it sucked ass.
They took a great series and nerfed it. But it didn't have intrusive DRM.
It's also known as "self-sufficiency", and it works a lot better than "government dependence", which was what was expected by too many people after Hurricane Katrina.
LOL,
that's why Alaska is the queen of the welfare states. How about you start being a little bit self-sufficient and stop taking 2 dollars from me for every dollar you pay in taxes ya god damned welfare leech.