More or less, this is a classical republican view with a minor amount of democratic leaning.
The classical Republican view *is* the Libertarian view, for the most part. Republican reality is completely divorced from either of these.
As I said, libertarian is an extremist view that I'm just a bit too coservative to accept.
And yet your entire post previous to this sentence said that you do support Libertarian economic policies ( or rather economic Liberalism ), you disagreee with what the Republicans are doing, yet you claim that the exact position that you just stated that you hold is to extremist. Very odd.
Especially since once again, you keep demonstrating that you don't know what "conservative" even means by claiming you're too much of one to be a Libertarian. Hard core (economic) conservatives *are libertarian* whether they're in that party or not.
Anything you think is "radical" about the Libertarians, well, look back nad that's more or less how it used to be before it was radically changed. You're saying that you support keeping the radical changes to our economic system, which in no conceivable way makes you "conservative".
Your generalized indictment of calling the party fascists and hate-mongers is in no way, shape, or form backed up by facts.
Wow, stunning job of backing up your position with facts.
None of the incidents you describe are factual examples of fascism or hate-mongering.
Well, it's clearly *you* who have no idea what fascism is. It's the merging of state and corporate power. I gave many examples of exactly that.
As far as hate mongering, that's exactly what things like "oh no the evil faggotzorz are going to *destroy marriage* so we must use the full force of the government to prevent them from being able to live their lives how they like" are.
Nobody has come up with any arguments for their point except for some mythical "destruction" that the gays are plotting. That is hate mongering.
So, it's crystal clear that you are nothing but a shill. You are entirely unable to back up any of your assertions becasue they're clearly not true.
Nice try though, Sparky. It takes more than "durrr no it's not" to make an argument.
I'm far too conservative to accept the overly liberal economic theories of the libertarian party.
You do know that "Conservative" means "Liberal" in this context, right?
So called "Conservative" economic policy *is* economic Liberalism. Not anything the Republicans do, mind you, but they're radical extremists, not conservative.
"Liberal" doesn't mean what it does here in most of the rest of the world and it didn't used to mean that here. So when the "conservative" movement started, what they were trying to go back to was real Liberalism.
If you prefer Republican economic policies over Liberal (remember, we're talking classical Liberalism), then what you support is taking your tax dollars and giving them to already profitable corporations. To take out massive loans at interest, and spend the borrowed money like a drunken sailor.
You do understand that those are the major differences between Republican Voodoo economics and Liberal economics, right? Is that really what you support and what exactly do you see as a positive about that?
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Wow this is pretty funny. In your comment:
"Conservatives" don't hold any defensible positions, so they are entirely unable to do anything of the sort as demonstrated by the fact that hate mongering was their entire campaign strategy for the last several elections.
In your signature:
Be a patriot: Murder a Republican.
And yet you're completely unable to point out anything either funny or inconsistent about it.
There is a large difference between an unprovoked assault and self defense.
Rational discourse requires the use of facts to establish a clear pattern. Labeling a party fascist hate-mongers, when there are no facts to support that extreme of a generalized indictment, is incendiary and unhelpful.
Except that "generalized indictment" *is* backed up by the facts. Seriously, you might try paying attention once in a while.
From secret meetings with the energy industry, to calling off the Justice Dept on Microsoft to making up idiotic lies in order to fool people into backing an invasion whose only purpose was giving us a new cold war scenario where the military industtrial complex can loot the country to extremist gay hatred, to having nothing to offer policy wise except to screech hatred of the evil liberals, death camps, destruction of the constitution and its replacement with purely police state tactics.
Seriously, wake up.
Durrr, but nothing backs that up....
Rational discourse involves you actually either knowing what you're talking about, or not spouting ridiculous lies which aren't actually backed up by any facts.
Republicans have lost their way by clinging to a leader that insists on unilateral action.
The Republicans lost their way with Nixon and the old style Republicanism died for good on the day Reagan was elected. Again, try to keep up. This isn't new. Bush's regime is damn near a carbon copy of Reagan's with a lot of the same treasonous criminals who doctored intelligence to totally overstate threats, supported terrorists and ran death camps.
So, don't even dare try to play the "Durrr it just happened all of a sudden and It's not my fault I was too stupid to see it" game. The Republicans have been leading the assault on America for decades now.
Actually no. That is just you rationalizing your own hatred.
Hardly. But, maybe you just think it's ok for the government to do any damn thing it pleases including running death camps in various third world shitholes.
By cloaking yourself in some noble, but frankly disingenous, crap, you are just dressing up your personal bias.
Again, that isn't even a rational statement. I'm not claiming to be Captain Liberty defender of blagh blagh blagh. My personal bias is for the government staying out of my business, out of my pocket, and out of the robbing me and blowing up a bunch of shit so they can make a few people richer by rebuilding it business.
So, yes, absolutely I have a personal bias, but that bias is very neutral. The fact that that is all you need to hate a group of people who are so violently opposed to those simple principles. They have chosen to work to destroy the last protections left in the Constitution, destroy our credibility worldwide, mortgage the country to the hilt and scoop off most of it.
Their further assaults on seperation of church and state, gays, dissenters, free speech and the like are entirely anti-American.
You must have a pretty extreme position if you think those are "reasonable" things to do.
That you are unable to be introspective enough to see that shows us, more than anything else, your bias, and serves as an example for my original point.
I'm quite capable of identifying my biases. I believe in personal liberty. The Republicans are leading the assault on that. There's no difficulty in identifying my bias, and no trouble understanding that when somebody despises what you like and works to destroy it then that leads to a negative bias. So, no, it does nothing for your point.
and that you manage to appoint yourself as the spokesman for literally millions of people in both the US and Europe, I'd say your original point is just asinine.
I imagine that there are literally millions of people who feel that way. Maybe you thought I said that *all* of the members of those various groups feel that way though, which I didn't.
The point was to illustrate that your claim that people were hating on Republicans just because they're "buying into a particular political philosophy" doesn't add up.
People from every political philosophy *with the exception of fascist theocrats* hate fascist theocrats. So, it's not that everybody else's blinders are on since most of them disagree with each other as well on various issues. Heck, try to picture a Green/John Birch social;-)
It's not even the political philosophy the Republicans bought into that's the problem. It's the actions they've taken that are the problem, and it's about damn time they took some responsibility for their actions.
Does it mean anyone who thinks I can go to a doctor is wrong?
No, but it's quite clear that anybody who thought he *would* clean up his mess or even had any intention of doing so is an idiot. Hell, it was quite obvious in 2004 that reelecting him would only make things worse as has been proven.
1. I am republican. Truth be told, I've become disgusted with both parties. Yet I'm too conservative to go libratarian.
I'm thinking that you don't actually know what the words "Republican", "Conservative", or "Libertarian" mean if you think that sentence even makes sense.
If you were too conservative to be a Republican, then you would probably be a Libertarian. Of course, being anything except a Religious extremist fascist would make you unfit for the Republican party for the last 20-30 years or so.
So, seriously, are you really just a religious extremist who wants to control how people live their lives in minute detail and replace our system of government with a fascist theocracy, or do you just not know what the Libertarian party is?
Re:freaking me out
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Conservatives explain why they think you're wrong. Liberals spit and call you a Nazi.
Laughable.
"You're either with us or you're a terrorist supporting traitor (While we're lying through our teeth and looting the country *again*)".
"Conservatives" don't hold any defensible positions, so they are entirely unable to do anything of the sort as demonstrated by the fact that hate mongering was their entire campaign strategy for the last several elections.
Keep telling yourself that black is white, slavery is freedom and all of that though. Your ability to maintain that sort of doublethink at this point is pretty impressive.
Republicans are often called harsh names for positions they hold dear. Among these are racist, xenophobe, fascist, fundie, hate monger, etc. This is irrisponsible, and never happened in the media 20 years ago, but it happens today.
And, of course, the fact that over the last 30 years the Republicans have completely rejected their historical platform in favor of fascism and hate mongering couldn't have anything to do with that, now could it?
Sorry, but instituting a fascist police state and promoting hate based legislation reaps its own rewards. Anybody who votes Republican should be ashamed of themselves and would be if they had any sense of decency at all.
If what you hold dear is explicitly rejected by the constitution, then you don't get it. Too fucking bad. Move to a country that shares your values, like Saudi Arabia or something.
Oh, no, you're right, it's the evil media always attacking the poor innocent Republicans. Idiot.
Funny, I've always felt that an intelligent person would realize that buying into a particular political philosophy doesn't automatically make the other side evil.
Which has nothing to do with the point.
You don't need to buy into any particular political philosophy to hate the Republicans. You just need to want liberty. That's it. Alternatively, you just need to not want to live under a Fascist Theocracy.
Most people's hatred of Republicans has nothing to do with having bought into some other political ideology and therefore being against everything else. The fact is that the Republicans have *proven* themselves to be enemies of America, enemies of the Constitution, enemies of liberty, and completely lacking in any sort of morality.
Look at who hates the Republicans:
Democrats (obviously) The John Birch Society. L(l)ibertarians Greens Most of Europe Me who is none of the above.
Pretty So, please drop the silly nonsense. Hating Republicans is *sane*. Supporting them is not in any way sane.
It's all to do with the actions that they decided to take, the choices thay made, what they stand for, and more importantly what they stand against.
Being a member of some other political group doesn't make the Republicans evil. The *Republicans* chose to be evil. Period.
Being despised by all decent people is the consequence of that action. It's a little thing called personal responsibility, and it's like kryptonite to those sick amoral fuckers.
If I'm gauranteed freedom of the press why can't I publish a paper called "Fuck niggers and ya know what hitler was right about dem jews", legally I cannot publish such "obscenities".
Your other examples are good, but what's stopping you from doing this? I mean, you might have a hard time getting a major publishing house to publish it, but there's nothing illegal about you paying to publish it is there? In France and Germany maybe, but I'm pretty sure you can do that in America still.
That's not being a friend. If the help you're giving someone isn't working, try something new. There is always help for someone. I don't need to know you OR your friend - who I'm not even talking about - this is not deducing motives, but actions. Someone stopping helping their friend FOR ANY REASON is not being as good a friend as they can. Simple. It doesn't matter if one friend is Hitler and the other Mother Theresa - motives, feelings, pizza preference, whatever - it doesn't come into it:)
One of my brothers is probably in worse shape than Capn Crunch, since he doesn't even have any "skillz" at all. He had every opportunity in the world to make something out of his life and he has consistently refused to do so.
There isn't one of us that he hasn't lived with and robbed. He's been sent to rehab several times and prison several more.
This is all over a period of more than 20 years.
We have all tried many different things to help from simply providing money, food and a place to stay, to helping get him jobs, to paying for education, tutoring and the like.
So, while it's nice to believe that people can always be saved from themselves, I don't believe it.
Given 20 years of Meth addiction, his brain is well and truly fried. He, for the most part, can't even string together words into meaningful sentences.
If I were to invite him into my house, then I know full well that he would steal shit *whether he needed money or not*. If I let him live there, it would only be a matter of time until I came home and found my wife beaten to a bloody pulp because *that's the sort of shit he does*. And goes to prison for. Repeatedly. With no concern for the consequences, or the fact that it's his own family he's destroying.
So, there is no way in hell his friends and family are going to be able to pull him out of this since he has no real interest in pulling himself out.
At some point, in some situations, your best course is to just let them make their own way for better or worse.
So, while I find your sentiment admirable, I also find it rather naive.
That statement goes to the point of showing that the world was convinced of something even though it was ultimately wrong.
The point you're apparently *still* failing to get is that the world was never convinced of any such thing. *That* is the idiotic lie you're repeating.
The radius of the earth has been known for thousands of years. And no, Columbus did not buck the common belief. Everybody knew the world was round. Columbus claimed the radius was far smaller than it is and he was wrong.
So seriously, if you're so unable to figure out something that simple and freaking obvious, then your ability to think rationally is very much in question. Or rather, your ability to buy into idiotic nonsense which is contrary to all facts and any reasonable conclusion just becasue you were told it was true by some authority figure has been clearly demonstrated.
Not saying that that is the case in this discussion at all, but it is beneficial to us all to challenge these issues continuously.
Yet you're the one who is refusing to think. You keep repeating a ridiculous lie which 5 minutes of research would have proven false. Hell, 5 minutes of thought would have demonstrated the extreme unlikelyhood of it.
So, yes, challenging stupid beliefs is good. Maybe you should actually try it instead of using your unquestioned, stupid, beliefs as if they were reasonable to try and make a point?
However, the argument that he presented to the school board, and on which it ruled, had NOTHING to do with HIS evaluation of the theories of global warming.
Fair enough. I wasn't addressing that though. I was just pointing out that the exact argument made in this thread that was called ad hominem wasn't.
Wrong, and your statement itself is ad hominem. Go read the definition, please. Example, from wikipedia:
"An ad hominem argument, also known as argumentum ad hominem (Latin: "argument to the person", "argument against the man") is a logical fallacy consisting of replying to an argument by attacking or appealing to the person making the argument, rather than by addressing the substance of the argument."
Any time your retort's subject matter is your opponent in the debate, that is ad hominem.
Ahhh, but in this case, it wasn't the person that was being attacked. It was a filter that that person had chosen to apply to their perception with demonstrable effects on his ability to draw logical conclusions *in certain situations* which was being attacked.
His stated belief that the earth is 14,000 years old demonstrates this filter applied to his ability to deal with many sciences such as geology, paleontology, etc.
Therefore, his chosen belief system does have a bearing "on his own ability to objectively evaluate the evidence concerning global warming," as the OP said, since that evidence is science-based as well.
The back of my brain says that we do have a slightly higher rate of violent offenders than much of the world, but I don't feel like backing it up.
Same here. Today at work I was working on closing out old issues rather than doing new stuff, so I'm in 'identify broken stuff' mode, hence the nature of my posts in this thread;-)
I suppose, but people feeling envious of others isn't really a good reason to scrap a whole system. Envy is your own problem, not the problem of people doing well. If the system itself is rigged, then something ought to be done. But just because someone perceives it to be unfair because they don't have the same end result as some millionaire doesn't mean anyone should pay them any attention.
Look at it like this:
Say you're a pediatrician. Say further that a large group of people in your neighborhood are idiots who think that means you're really a pedophile (this actually happened in England a while back). Their ignorance is their own problem, and since you're actually a doctor and not a perv, why should you pay any attention to them (as they start lighting the torches and heading down your street).
Do you see how something can easily be *wrong*, entirely not your fault or responsibility, yet still potentially your problem and still something that it makes sense for you to pay attention to?
The more socialism there is in the system, the more centralized control over the economy will exist.
And the same is true of fascism as you seem well aware of from your next comment.
The better solution is: the more competition there is in the system, the less chance there will be for wealth to concentrate. That means trust-busting, no socialism, and removing barriers to entry in the market (like Congressional subsidies to farmers and corporate welfare).
Good luck with that. Yes, that was glib, but no, I don't disagree with you at all. I wish us all luck getting that.
It could be that the US has more people in prison because our justice system can catch criminals and put them in prison.
Of course, so do most other countries, so I'm not sure how this is evidence of anything.
Our economy is strong enough to afford police officers and a court system that will even pay for a lawyer for those accused of a crime (as poor as public defenders may be
Meaning that all else being equal, we should have *fewer* people in prison than if only the rich had defense attorneys.
Your own arguments don't do anything to back up your opinion and in the second case your own argument goes directly against what you're attempting to use it to demonstrate.
According the the Gini numbers mentioned in TFA, this would mean that the US has one of the highest crime rates in the world! I don't think that is the case.
The US has more people per capita in prison than any other nation on the planet.
The US also has more people *in raw numbers* in prison than any other nation on the planet.
That's incarceration rate rather than crime rate, but they are related, so clearly it's reasonable to guess that we might well have one of the highest crime rates as well.
Did you actually have any reason to think that we don't?
Engineers may have thought it impossible in practice to build a supersonic aircraft, but I know of no claims that it was physically impossible in theory for an object to move at supersonic speeds.
No, no, really it's true. Nobody ever believed it was even possible.
Especially not the test pilots. They were just all selected for their completely suicidal natures.
Slashdot Mirror
More or less, this is a classical republican view with a minor amount of democratic leaning.
The classical Republican view *is* the Libertarian view, for the most part. Republican reality is completely divorced from either of these.
As I said, libertarian is an extremist view that I'm just a bit too coservative to accept.
And yet your entire post previous to this sentence said that you do support Libertarian economic policies ( or rather economic Liberalism ), you disagreee with what the Republicans are doing, yet you claim that the exact position that you just stated that you hold is to extremist.
Very odd.
Especially since once again, you keep demonstrating that you don't know what "conservative" even means by claiming you're too much of one to be a Libertarian.
Hard core (economic) conservatives *are libertarian* whether they're in that party or not.
Anything you think is "radical" about the Libertarians, well, look back nad that's more or less how it used to be before it was radically changed.
You're saying that you support keeping the radical changes to our economic system, which in no conceivable way makes you "conservative".
Your generalized indictment of calling the party fascists and hate-mongers is in no way, shape, or form backed up by facts.
Wow, stunning job of backing up your position with facts.
None of the incidents you describe are factual examples of fascism or hate-mongering.
Well, it's clearly *you* who have no idea what fascism is.
It's the merging of state and corporate power. I gave many examples of exactly that.
As far as hate mongering, that's exactly what things like "oh no the evil faggotzorz are going to *destroy marriage* so we must use the full force of the government to prevent them from being able to live their lives how they like" are.
Nobody has come up with any arguments for their point except for some mythical "destruction" that the gays are plotting. That is hate mongering.
So, it's crystal clear that you are nothing but a shill. You are entirely unable to back up any of your assertions becasue they're clearly not true.
Nice try though, Sparky. It takes more than "durrr no it's not" to make an argument.
I'm far too conservative to accept the overly liberal economic theories of the libertarian party.
You do know that "Conservative" means "Liberal" in this context, right?
So called "Conservative" economic policy *is* economic Liberalism. Not anything the Republicans do, mind you, but they're radical extremists, not conservative.
"Liberal" doesn't mean what it does here in most of the rest of the world and it didn't used to mean that here.
So when the "conservative" movement started, what they were trying to go back to was real Liberalism.
If you prefer Republican economic policies over Liberal (remember, we're talking classical Liberalism), then what you support is taking your tax dollars and giving them to already profitable corporations. To take out massive loans at interest, and spend the borrowed money like a drunken sailor.
You do understand that those are the major differences between Republican Voodoo economics and Liberal economics, right?
Is that really what you support and what exactly do you see as a positive about that?
Wow this is pretty funny. In your comment:
"Conservatives" don't hold any defensible positions, so they are entirely unable to do anything of the sort as demonstrated by the fact that hate mongering was their entire campaign strategy for the last several elections.
In your signature:
Be a patriot: Murder a Republican.
And yet you're completely unable to point out anything either funny or inconsistent about it.
There is a large difference between an unprovoked assault and self defense.
Apparently you never learned that.
Rational discourse requires the use of facts to establish a clear pattern. Labeling a party fascist hate-mongers, when there are no facts to support that extreme of a generalized indictment, is incendiary and unhelpful.
Except that "generalized indictment" *is* backed up by the facts.
Seriously, you might try paying attention once in a while.
From secret meetings with the energy industry, to calling off the Justice Dept on Microsoft to making up idiotic lies in order to fool people into backing an invasion whose only purpose was giving us a new cold war scenario where the military industtrial complex can loot the country to extremist gay hatred, to having nothing to offer policy wise except to screech hatred of the evil liberals, death camps, destruction of the constitution and its replacement with purely police state tactics.
Seriously, wake up.
Durrr, but nothing backs that up....
Rational discourse involves you actually either knowing what you're talking about, or not spouting ridiculous lies which aren't actually backed up by any facts.
Republicans have lost their way by clinging to a leader that insists on unilateral action.
The Republicans lost their way with Nixon and the old style Republicanism died for good on the day Reagan was elected.
Again, try to keep up. This isn't new. Bush's regime is damn near a carbon copy of Reagan's with a lot of the same treasonous criminals who doctored intelligence to totally overstate threats, supported terrorists and ran death camps.
So, don't even dare try to play the "Durrr it just happened all of a sudden and It's not my fault I was too stupid to see it" game. The Republicans have been leading the assault on America for decades now.
Actually no. That is just you rationalizing your own hatred.
;-)
Hardly. But, maybe you just think it's ok for the government to do any damn thing it pleases including running death camps in various third world shitholes.
By cloaking yourself in some noble, but frankly disingenous, crap, you are just dressing up your personal bias.
Again, that isn't even a rational statement.
I'm not claiming to be Captain Liberty defender of blagh blagh blagh.
My personal bias is for the government staying out of my business, out of my pocket, and out of the robbing me and blowing up a bunch of shit so they can make a few people richer by rebuilding it business.
So, yes, absolutely I have a personal bias, but that bias is very neutral. The fact that that is all you need to hate a group of people who are so violently opposed to those simple principles. They have chosen to work to destroy the last protections left in the Constitution, destroy our credibility worldwide, mortgage the country to the hilt and scoop off most of it.
Their further assaults on seperation of church and state, gays, dissenters, free speech and the like are entirely anti-American.
You must have a pretty extreme position if you think those are "reasonable" things to do.
That you are unable to be introspective enough to see that shows us, more than anything else, your bias, and serves as an example for my original point.
I'm quite capable of identifying my biases. I believe in personal liberty. The Republicans are leading the assault on that. There's no difficulty in identifying my bias, and no trouble understanding that when somebody despises what you like and works to destroy it then that leads to a negative bias.
So, no, it does nothing for your point.
and that you manage to appoint yourself as the spokesman for literally millions of people in both the US and Europe, I'd say your original point is just asinine.
I imagine that there are literally millions of people who feel that way.
Maybe you thought I said that *all* of the members of those various groups feel that way though, which I didn't.
The point was to illustrate that your claim that people were hating on Republicans just because they're "buying into a particular political philosophy" doesn't add up.
People from every political philosophy *with the exception of fascist theocrats* hate fascist theocrats.
So, it's not that everybody else's blinders are on since most of them disagree with each other as well on various issues. Heck, try to picture a Green/John Birch social
It's not even the political philosophy the Republicans bought into that's the problem. It's the actions they've taken that are the problem, and it's about damn time they took some responsibility for their actions.
Does it mean anyone who thinks I can go to a doctor is wrong?
No, but it's quite clear that anybody who thought he *would* clean up his mess or even had any intention of doing so is an idiot.
Hell, it was quite obvious in 2004 that reelecting him would only make things worse as has been proven.
1. I am republican. Truth be told, I've become disgusted with both parties. Yet I'm too conservative to go libratarian.
I'm thinking that you don't actually know what the words "Republican", "Conservative", or "Libertarian" mean if you think that sentence even makes sense.
If you were too conservative to be a Republican, then you would probably be a Libertarian.
Of course, being anything except a Religious extremist fascist would make you unfit for the Republican party for the last 20-30 years or so.
So, seriously, are you really just a religious extremist who wants to control how people live their lives in minute detail and replace our system of government with a fascist theocracy, or do you just not know what the Libertarian party is?
Conservatives explain why they think you're wrong. Liberals spit and call you a Nazi.
Laughable.
"You're either with us or you're a terrorist supporting traitor (While we're lying through our teeth and looting the country *again*)".
"Conservatives" don't hold any defensible positions, so they are entirely unable to do anything of the sort as demonstrated by the fact that hate mongering was their entire campaign strategy for the last several elections.
Keep telling yourself that black is white, slavery is freedom and all of that though. Your ability to maintain that sort of doublethink at this point is pretty impressive.
Republicans are often called harsh names for positions they hold dear. Among these are racist, xenophobe, fascist, fundie, hate monger, etc. This is irrisponsible, and never happened in the media 20 years ago, but it happens today.
And, of course, the fact that over the last 30 years the Republicans have completely rejected their historical platform in favor of fascism and hate mongering couldn't have anything to do with that, now could it?
Sorry, but instituting a fascist police state and promoting hate based legislation reaps its own rewards.
Anybody who votes Republican should be ashamed of themselves and would be if they had any sense of decency at all.
If what you hold dear is explicitly rejected by the constitution, then you don't get it. Too fucking bad. Move to a country that shares your values, like Saudi Arabia or something.
Oh, no, you're right, it's the evil media always attacking the poor innocent Republicans.
Idiot.
Funny, I've always felt that an intelligent person would realize that buying into a particular political philosophy doesn't automatically make the other side evil.
Which has nothing to do with the point.
You don't need to buy into any particular political philosophy to hate the Republicans. You just need to want liberty. That's it.
Alternatively, you just need to not want to live under a Fascist Theocracy.
Most people's hatred of Republicans has nothing to do with having bought into some other political ideology and therefore being against everything else.
The fact is that the Republicans have *proven* themselves to be enemies of America, enemies of the Constitution, enemies of liberty, and completely lacking in any sort of morality.
Look at who hates the Republicans:
Democrats (obviously)
The John Birch Society.
L(l)ibertarians
Greens
Most of Europe
Me who is none of the above.
Pretty
So, please drop the silly nonsense.
Hating Republicans is *sane*. Supporting them is not in any way sane.
It's all to do with the actions that they decided to take, the choices thay made, what they stand for, and more importantly what they stand against.
Being a member of some other political group doesn't make the Republicans evil. The *Republicans* chose to be evil. Period.
Being despised by all decent people is the consequence of that action. It's a little thing called personal responsibility, and it's like kryptonite to those sick amoral fuckers.
Yeah, cause they did such a shitty job with Oblivion huh?
Exactly. I assume you were being sarcastic, I'm not. I think Oblivion absolutely sucked. Pretty graphics, everything else sucked.
YMMV
If I'm gauranteed freedom of the press why can't I publish a paper called "Fuck niggers and ya know what hitler was right about dem jews", legally I cannot publish such "obscenities".
Your other examples are good, but what's stopping you from doing this?
I mean, you might have a hard time getting a major publishing house to publish it, but there's nothing illegal about you paying to publish it is there?
In France and Germany maybe, but I'm pretty sure you can do that in America still.
That's not being a friend. If the help you're giving someone isn't working, try something new. There is always help for someone. I don't need to know you OR your friend - who I'm not even talking about - this is not deducing motives, but actions. Someone stopping helping their friend FOR ANY REASON is not being as good a friend as they can. Simple. It doesn't matter if one friend is Hitler and the other Mother Theresa - motives, feelings, pizza preference, whatever - it doesn't come into it :)
One of my brothers is probably in worse shape than Capn Crunch, since he doesn't even have any "skillz" at all.
He had every opportunity in the world to make something out of his life and he has consistently refused to do so.
There isn't one of us that he hasn't lived with and robbed.
He's been sent to rehab several times and prison several more.
This is all over a period of more than 20 years.
We have all tried many different things to help from simply providing money, food and a place to stay, to helping get him jobs, to paying for education, tutoring and the like.
So, while it's nice to believe that people can always be saved from themselves, I don't believe it.
Given 20 years of Meth addiction, his brain is well and truly fried. He, for the most part, can't even string together words into meaningful sentences.
If I were to invite him into my house, then I know full well that he would steal shit *whether he needed money or not*.
If I let him live there, it would only be a matter of time until I came home and found my wife beaten to a bloody pulp because *that's the sort of shit he does*. And goes to prison for. Repeatedly. With no concern for the consequences, or the fact that it's his own family he's destroying.
So, there is no way in hell his friends and family are going to be able to pull him out of this since he has no real interest in pulling himself out.
At some point, in some situations, your best course is to just let them make their own way for better or worse.
So, while I find your sentiment admirable, I also find it rather naive.
That statement goes to the point of showing that the world was convinced of something even though it was ultimately wrong.
The point you're apparently *still* failing to get is that the world was never convinced of any such thing.
*That* is the idiotic lie you're repeating.
The radius of the earth has been known for thousands of years.
And no, Columbus did not buck the common belief.
Everybody knew the world was round. Columbus claimed the radius was far smaller than it is and he was wrong.
So seriously, if you're so unable to figure out something that simple and freaking obvious, then your ability to think rationally is very much in question.
Or rather, your ability to buy into idiotic nonsense which is contrary to all facts and any reasonable conclusion just becasue you were told it was true by some authority figure has been clearly demonstrated.
Not saying that that is the case in this discussion at all, but it is beneficial to us all to challenge these issues continuously.
Yet you're the one who is refusing to think. You keep repeating a ridiculous lie which 5 minutes of research would have proven false. Hell, 5 minutes of thought would have demonstrated the extreme unlikelyhood of it.
So, yes, challenging stupid beliefs is good. Maybe you should actually try it instead of using your unquestioned, stupid, beliefs as if they were reasonable to try and make a point?
Who is the sheep in this discussion?
Well, if you're going to keep repeating tired old nonsense like:
"Don't forget that not to long ago, everyone _knew_ the world was flat."
then you quite clearly are one.
I mean how out of touch with reality do you have to be to repeat a lie that old and tired out and so completely disproven?
Seriously, dude, you're a sheep. It doesn't take much sense at all to know that you were lying on that old chestnut and you don't even have that much.
However, the argument that he presented to the school board, and on which it ruled, had NOTHING to do with HIS evaluation of the theories of global warming.
Fair enough. I wasn't addressing that though. I was just pointing out that the exact argument made in this thread that was called ad hominem wasn't.
it would be incorrect to locate blame on the rich/pediatricians unless they're actually doing something wrong
Sure, I'm not placing blame.
So inequality is not the problem, it's corruption and rigged systems that are.
Exactly. Some inequality is a result of that and some just is.
Bleh.
Agreed. Bleh.
Last I looked, churches are indirectly subsidized by taxpayers:
Don't forget faith-based initiatves.
Churches that fell for that are *directly* subsidised.
In theory, with enough "activist judges", they could be forced to perform gay marriages in the future which would make me laugh and laugh and laugh.
Wrong, and your statement itself is ad hominem. Go read the definition, please. Example, from wikipedia:
"An ad hominem argument, also known as argumentum ad hominem (Latin: "argument to the person", "argument against the man") is a logical fallacy consisting of replying to an argument by attacking or appealing to the person making the argument, rather than by addressing the substance of the argument."
Any time your retort's subject matter is your opponent in the debate, that is ad hominem.
Ahhh, but in this case, it wasn't the person that was being attacked. It was a filter that that person had chosen to apply to their perception with demonstrable effects on his ability to draw logical conclusions *in certain situations* which was being attacked.
His stated belief that the earth is 14,000 years old demonstrates this filter applied to his ability to deal with many sciences such as geology, paleontology, etc.
Therefore, his chosen belief system does have a bearing "on his own ability to objectively evaluate the evidence concerning global warming," as the OP said, since that evidence is science-based as well.
That's a perfectly valid argument.
That's largely due to stupid drug laws.
;-)
Absolutely.
The back of my brain says that we do have a slightly higher rate of violent offenders than much of the world, but I don't feel like backing it up.
Same here. Today at work I was working on closing out old issues rather than doing new stuff, so I'm in 'identify broken stuff' mode, hence the nature of my posts in this thread
I suppose, but people feeling envious of others isn't really a good reason to scrap a whole system. Envy is your own problem, not the problem of people doing well. If the system itself is rigged, then something ought to be done. But just because someone perceives it to be unfair because they don't have the same end result as some millionaire doesn't mean anyone should pay them any attention.
Look at it like this:
Say you're a pediatrician. Say further that a large group of people in your neighborhood are idiots who think that means you're really a pedophile (this actually happened in England a while back).
Their ignorance is their own problem, and since you're actually a doctor and not a perv, why should you pay any attention to them (as they start lighting the torches and heading down your street).
Do you see how something can easily be *wrong*, entirely not your fault or responsibility, yet still potentially your problem and still something that it makes sense for you to pay attention to?
The more socialism there is in the system, the more centralized control over the economy will exist.
And the same is true of fascism as you seem well aware of from your next comment.
The better solution is: the more competition there is in the system, the less chance there will be for wealth to concentrate. That means trust-busting, no socialism, and removing barriers to entry in the market (like Congressional subsidies to farmers and corporate welfare).
Good luck with that.
Yes, that was glib, but no, I don't disagree with you at all. I wish us all luck getting that.
It could be that the US has more people in prison because our justice system can catch criminals and put them in prison.
Of course, so do most other countries, so I'm not sure how this is evidence of anything.
Our economy is strong enough to afford police officers and a court system that will even pay for a lawyer for those accused of a crime (as poor as public defenders may be
Meaning that all else being equal, we should have *fewer* people in prison than if only the rich had defense attorneys.
Your own arguments don't do anything to back up your opinion and in the second case your own argument goes directly against what you're attempting to use it to demonstrate.
According the the Gini numbers mentioned in TFA, this would mean that the US has one of the highest crime rates in the world! I don't think that is the case.
The US has more people per capita in prison than any other nation on the planet.
The US also has more people *in raw numbers* in prison than any other nation on the planet.
That's incarceration rate rather than crime rate, but they are related, so clearly it's reasonable to guess that we might well have one of the highest crime rates as well.
Did you actually have any reason to think that we don't?
Engineers may have thought it impossible in practice to build a supersonic aircraft, but I know of no claims that it was physically impossible in theory for an object to move at supersonic speeds.
No, no, really it's true.
Nobody ever believed it was even possible.
Especially not the test pilots. They were just all selected for their completely suicidal natures.