I remember the whining of the conservative talk show guys in the 90s about Clinton not getting more than 50% of the popular vote and claiming he doesn't represent the wishes of the people because of that.
What they were claiming was that Clinton's talk of a "landslide" and having a "mandate" from the people was complete BS, as he didn't even have a majority. They never claimed that his presidency was somehow illegitimate because of it, or that he wasn't duly elected, like I've heard some nutcases claim about Bush.
What do you favor then? I'd really like to know. As of right now, my opinion on neo-conservatives is based on their perceived actions. I don't want to believe that they're intentionally doing what they appear to be doing. I like to be optimistic, and I'd really like to discover that neo-conservatives really aren't the religious fundamentalists that they appear to be.
We believe in basic freedoms and other fundamental rights as being inalienable rights given by God, which no government has the right to impede. Among these are the right to life (which liberals generally refuse to extend to the unborn); the right to self-government (which liberals don't acknowledge, as they advocate judges who make they law say what *they* think it *should* say, instead of what the people's representatives wrote and voted on); the right to security of one's property (which liberals don't acknowledge, as they believe the government should distribute property from those who have more to those who have less). Should I go on? Fred gives a nice rundown in his announcement of candidacy: http://imwithfred.com/
By popular vote, he lost in 2000, I know, he won the electoral vote, but almost 500,000 people more voted for Gore than him. That hardly sounds like consent of the people. And please, don't accuse me of whining. You made the assertion that it was the consent of the people that made him president.
That is the consent of the people. Each state votes according its own popular vote, distributing its electoral votes accordingly, according to the rules determined by each state legislature. That's how the consent of the people is determined. A combined national aggregate has nothing to do with anything.
No, but it IS the court's job to check the constitutionality of laws. If a law is blatantly unconstitutional, the SCOTUS should strike it down, not wait until a case is brought before it.
That's totally incorrect. The lynch-pin in the legitimacy of the constitutional power of the Federal Courts is the fact that their power constitutionally is limited to actual *cases* and *controversies* brought before it by adverse parties with proper standing.
when President George Washington forwarded to the Court a request for guidance as to how best to maintain neutrality...consistent with international law and treaties to which the United States was a party. Chief Justice Jay responded by informing the President that the Court was without power to help...Jay said that the Constitution authorized the Court to interpret the law only in the context of a real case or controversy--it had no power to render an advisory opinion about the law.
I'm an anti-voter, anti-voting in all elections that I can vote in. Many people are surprised that I said I would actually vote for Ron Paul in the primaries, since this vote doesn't actually give any of my rights up to another individual. But even with so many RP supporters online (and now offline), I still think the only way to reduce tyranny in this country is to get judges back into reading the Constitution, and understanding that the document is not flexible, living, breathing and adapting.
That is also the only way to get back to a merely legitimate government -- one based on laws actually passed by representatives of the people. You might want to consider supporting Fred. Watching his announcement speech online, it struck me that he's the first plausible presidential candidate I can remember actually openly advocating restoring the constitution balance of power between the federal government and the states.
Neoconservatives have different goals than most Americans. They want a smaller government to have more power and less oversight. They want wealth to flow upward to a few captains of industry. They want to impose social restrictions on Americans. They want to turn their religious beliefs into Law. They want to keep the population scared and obedient. These ideals are not mine. I'm sure they aren't yours. They are very far from classic American ideology. Our current government has the idea that the people need to be controlled. They are leaning so far away from republicanism that they are scared of the people.
I am proud to call myself a neoconservative. The above description is so dissimilar to anything that any of us favor, as to be laughable.
Our current government want to rule without the consent of the people and without full representation. "I'm the decider" -- George W. Bush
That is abject nonsense. George Bush was twice duly elected. He is the representative of the people in the Executive Branch. He is the decider on executive issues, by the consent of the people.
IMO that's a BIG problem. It means essentially that they can pass any unconstitutional law and SCOTUS will take four years before they'll strike it down as unconstitutional. That IMO is really bad.
It takes less than two years to vote out a Representative who votes for an unconstitutional law. The founding fathers were relying on the people, not SCOTUS, to defend their constitution.
I see the ACLU and EFF serving the same purpose, except they're the investigative/defensive arm of the general citizenry.
No they're not. The ACLU spends far more time attacking the general citizenry than defending it. It takes enough willpower on behalf of large segments of the population as it is, to refrain from firebombing the ACLU, without them being given our tax money.
*Rotate the view by 15 degrees. After a day, does your brain straighten it for you? Does it rotate the other way when you take them off? *Rotate the hue by x degrees? Does your brain correct after time? *Dampen one of the primary colors, while enhancing the other two. Does your brain compensate after time? etc...
Re:Biggest myths of all have been around for ages.
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I wasn't making fun of anyone's vocabulary, exactly. "Vociferously" is just a word that is not very common, but one that George Bush has shown a propensity towards using, for example in his last presidential debates. That was the only part of my post that was a joke.
So there is no self determination, then, for if it is not you but God who is deciding you be good then you are not living your own life.
If you believe in self determination then you MUST believe that the good came from that person.
Unless, of course, you think good is a substance, in which case God help you;)
Good comes from God, but God gives us the tools and the freedom to choose to manifest that good or to turn away from it. It is our decision, but it is his power that we wield both when we do choose to do good and when we actually do it. Freedom requires that we have the perception that we act of ourselves. But we don't; we choose from amongst the influences that wish to act through us, both good and evil.
And yes, Good is more substantial and more real than any physical substance. Ultimately, Good and Truth are the only things in creation of any genuine substance. Everything else is an outward manifestation of these two things and their interaction.
Re:Biggest myths of all have been around for ages.
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It amazes me how actually looking and trying to find out the answer is looked down upon by religious people, when just deciding that some superman in the sky sneezed everything into existence is defended so vociferously.
On the contrary, religious people are more interested in finding answers. Atheists prefer to simply say, "we can't know" what caused the Big Bang. Yes we can. Everything is knowable.
vociferously.
And I think you learned that word from George Bush.
But I think [yes that's an act of faith, not reason] that probably by the end of this Century. the non-believers will have their picture of the universe all neatly tied up with all the loose ends tucked in. When (OK, if) that happens, you folks will find it harder to dismiss 'rationality'.
That is probably close to the top of the list of the "non-believers" most irrational articles of faith. It's been around as long as they have. The "complete understanding" has always been just around the corner. As both Socrates and Confucius said, (in so many words) without acknowledging the immenseness of your own ignorance, the process of rationality and learning cannot even begin.
Just as the last three or four levels of "fundamental particles," turned out to actually be composed of particles even more more fundamental, so will what we currently call "fundamental particles." But the modern secular intellect prefers to presume (contrary to both reason and experience) that his knowledge constitutes the full extent of reality.
The God hypothesis is at least is unscientific as the multiverse hypothesis, which at least has the advantage of being based on something that we've observed. Of course, being a problem that's difficult to test, these two ideas are far from exhausting the possible reasons the universe is the way it is.
Based on something observed? Who has observed an alternate universe??? There are probably billions of people with some sort of direct experience of God.
Either the universe is logical and we can reason about it, or it's not and we can't. So far, it seems to be pretty logical.
The universe is logical, and we can reason about it. God, heaven, and hell are all logical. We can reason about all of them. However the human mind has the capacity to warp logic in ways that only get more and more creative as the individual's intelligence increases. Combine that with the tendency of humans to imagine they are knowledgeable about vast ranges of things of which they are actually completely ignorant, and you have to be extremely careful with what you're imagining "logic" is telling you.
Faith in God, however, never provided much insight into the workings of the universe, though it dominated scientific thought for Millenia, and was actually a step backward from the Greek Pantheon, etc, which at least didn't plainly contradict everyday goings on.
The understanding of God is tied inexorably with the foundation of math and science, and in the minds of the greatest geniuses to ever lived, who founded them, such as Pythagoras and Newton. Understanding the pursuit of truth as something independent of a relationship with God is a recent invention which has not helped science, rather I believe that history will make it obvious that it has hindered it in crucial ways, and limited mankind's continued intellectual development.
No, it's not. By all accounts, Saddam and Osama did not like each other (different religious factions to name one reason, there are others). What "some" people do believe, however, is that Al Qaueda had links to Iraq. Problem with that is, Al Qaeda has links to almost every country on earth, including the US (remember when Osama visited the US for medical treatment?). What is wrong with this, is that those saying these things (Bush and Co.) knew exactly what people would discern from their statements. They knew what they had to say in order to gain support from the masses. They did so quite well I might add. Saddam had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11, they had no weapons of mass destruction (should have left the inspectors in there to "make sure"), and Iraq had absolutely no means to attack us (we destroyed their military and country over the previous 10 years). No, we invaded for other reasons, but the allusion to those reasons would have kept us from invading. Ergo, PR machine in full force. And it worked. Yay us...
Osama and Sadam were very different people. No one is suggesting that they had some sort of close personal relationship. However, while Saddam and his inner circle were far from religious, the country at large was and is very religious. The possibility of weapons moving from the Sunni power circles in Iraq to Al Qaeda was very real, and exactly what Al Qaeda was interested in in Iraq. This was the realistic situation, and this was exactly how the administration characterized the situation.
Exactly!! I have - NEVER - heard anyone, especially Republicans or conservatives, make the claim that Saddam was involved in 9-11, yet democrats constantly cite this BS.
Right, and what is more pathologically insane, to believe that Saddam was responsible for 9/11 or to believe that George Bush was responsible for 9/11? And yet liberals have to make up that conservatives believe the former, whereas the latter pathological delusion is willingly offered up by numerous liberals. (And interestingly, I've noticed that the further to the left they are, the more likely they seem to be to believe it.)
I read about half of those quotes of Bush and Cheney. All that I read were excellent, fact-based points. None that I read even suggested that Saddam had any direct responsibility for 9/11.
"Nearing the second anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, seven in 10 Americans continue to believe that Iraq's Saddam Hussein had a role in the attacks"
That says that 7 in 10 believe that it's "at least likely" that Saddam played some role. Which is a reasonable belief. People with common enemies tend to work together. It's a lot different than believing that Saddam played a direct role in the attack, which no one I've ever heard of does, or ever has.
[quoting a speech by GW Bush:] "The liberation of Iraq is a crucial advance in the campaign against terror. We've removed an ally of al Qaeda, and cut off a source of terrorist funding. And this much is certain: No terrorist network will gain weapons of mass destruction from the Iraqi regime, because the regime is no more. In these 19 months that changed the world, our actions have been focused and deliberate and proportionate to the offense. We have not forgotten the victims of September the 11th"
These are all true and valid points. What does this have to do with the claim that somebody somewhere believes that Saddam attacked the WTC?
"Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones." ~ - Marcus Aurelius
While I believe that there is an element of truth in this, there is also a fatal flaw. If all Good come only through God (which happens to be the case), then the good that a person does and attributes to themselves instead of to God is inherently tainted. Can you imagine someone who lived an incredibly selfless and giving life, e.g. like Mother Theresa, and yet who attributed all that good that they did to themselves, rather than to God? Such a person would have to have such a high opinion of himself as to be a megalomaniac. Selflessness is impossible without acknowledging your own source outside of yourself, and becomes self-defeating. Someone attributing that much good to himself would probably have to see himself as a god, like Nietzsche, and go insane.
Since 1900, U.S. farmers have more than tripled wheat production per acre to 40 bushels in 1997, up from 12. For corn, the gains have been even larger--127 bushels per acre in 1997 versus 28 in 1900. But in the previous century, crop yields barely improved at all. In 1800, wheat yields were 15 bushels per acre and corn yields 25 bushels per acre.
There are a whole lot of factors that contribute to those increases, though. Probably one of the simplest is the affordability of irrigation. One of the most frequently overlooked is the 30% increase of atmospheric CO2 concentrations.
You're claiming that it's easier to believe that: 1) something (God) exists and has no creator 2) God has the ability to create the universe 3) God used that ability to create the universe
As opposed to: 1) something (the Universe) exists and has no creator
That's right. That was Aristotle's point. Through observation, even today, we see that nothing in the Universe is eternal. Everything changes; everything is caused; everything has a lifespan. The Universe itself therefore must have had a First Cause, caused ultimately by something that doesn't change, which is uncaused, and eternal. That thing must therefore be of completely different nature than the universe. If that First Cause is considered to have consciousness, or come from consciousness, that consciousness is God. Either way, the belief in a First Cause is far more reasonable than a belief in an uncaused or self-caused Universe, which is contrary to our observations.
Well, you can call it that if it makes you feel better, but the rest of us just call that "wishful thinking".
I have little doubt your faith makes you feel good inside, but then again, so does a hit to a heroin addict.
It is wishful thinking to think of religion as wishful thinking. Religion, like science, is the study of reality. It is the study of those aspects of reality which can only be learned subjectively, whereas science studies only what can be learned objectively. There is also no systematic methodology in most religion as there is in science, certainly not a common shared one; but that could change in the future.
It is a myth that religious people believe as they do in order to "feel good." Religious people believe as they do because they wish to believe the truth. However, by all appearances atheists believe what they do about religious people because those beliefs make them feel good.
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What they were claiming was that Clinton's talk of a "landslide" and having a "mandate" from the people was complete BS, as he didn't even have a majority. They never claimed that his presidency was somehow illegitimate because of it, or that he wasn't duly elected, like I've heard some nutcases claim about Bush.
We believe in basic freedoms and other fundamental rights as being inalienable rights given by God, which no government has the right to impede. Among these are the right to life (which liberals generally refuse to extend to the unborn); the right to self-government (which liberals don't acknowledge, as they advocate judges who make they law say what *they* think it *should* say, instead of what the people's representatives wrote and voted on); the right to security of one's property (which liberals don't acknowledge, as they believe the government should distribute property from those who have more to those who have less). Should I go on? Fred gives a nice rundown in his announcement of candidacy: http://imwithfred.com/
That is the consent of the people. Each state votes according its own popular vote, distributing its electoral votes accordingly, according to the rules determined by each state legislature. That's how the consent of the people is determined. A combined national aggregate has nothing to do with anything.
That's totally incorrect. The lynch-pin in the legitimacy of the constitutional power of the Federal Courts is the fact that their power constitutionally is limited to actual *cases* and *controversies* brought before it by adverse parties with proper standing.
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/
That is also the only way to get back to a merely legitimate government -- one based on laws actually passed by representatives of the people. You might want to consider supporting Fred. Watching his announcement speech online, it struck me that he's the first plausible presidential candidate I can remember actually openly advocating restoring the constitution balance of power between the federal government and the states.
I am proud to call myself a neoconservative. The above description is so dissimilar to anything that any of us favor, as to be laughable.
That is abject nonsense. George Bush was twice duly elected. He is the representative of the people in the Executive Branch. He is the decider on executive issues, by the consent of the people.
It takes less than two years to vote out a Representative who votes for an unconstitutional law. The founding fathers were relying on the people, not SCOTUS, to defend their constitution.
No they're not. The ACLU spends far more time attacking the general citizenry than defending it. It takes enough willpower on behalf of large segments of the population as it is, to refrain from firebombing the ACLU, without them being given our tax money.
*Rotate the view by 15 degrees. After a day, does your brain straighten it for you? Does it rotate the other way when you take them off?
*Rotate the hue by x degrees? Does your brain correct after time?
*Dampen one of the primary colors, while enhancing the other two. Does your brain compensate after time?
etc...
I wasn't making fun of anyone's vocabulary, exactly. "Vociferously" is just a word that is not very common, but one that George Bush has shown a propensity towards using, for example in his last presidential debates. That was the only part of my post that was a joke.
Ample.
The thing about proof of spiritual matters is that it can only be presented subjectively.
Good comes from God, but God gives us the tools and the freedom to choose to manifest that good or to turn away from it. It is our decision, but it is his power that we wield both when we do choose to do good and when we actually do it. Freedom requires that we have the perception that we act of ourselves. But we don't; we choose from amongst the influences that wish to act through us, both good and evil.
And yes, Good is more substantial and more real than any physical substance. Ultimately, Good and Truth are the only things in creation of any genuine substance. Everything else is an outward manifestation of these two things and their interaction.
On the contrary, religious people are more interested in finding answers. Atheists prefer to simply say, "we can't know" what caused the Big Bang. Yes we can. Everything is knowable.
And I think you learned that word from George Bush.
That is probably close to the top of the list of the "non-believers" most irrational articles of faith. It's been around as long as they have. The "complete understanding" has always been just around the corner. As both Socrates and Confucius said, (in so many words) without acknowledging the immenseness of your own ignorance, the process of rationality and learning cannot even begin.
Just as the last three or four levels of "fundamental particles," turned out to actually be composed of particles even more more fundamental, so will what we currently call "fundamental particles." But the modern secular intellect prefers to presume (contrary to both reason and experience) that his knowledge constitutes the full extent of reality.
Based on something observed? Who has observed an alternate universe??? There are probably billions of people with some sort of direct experience of God.
The universe is logical, and we can reason about it. God, heaven, and hell are all logical. We can reason about all of them. However the human mind has the capacity to warp logic in ways that only get more and more creative as the individual's intelligence increases. Combine that with the tendency of humans to imagine they are knowledgeable about vast ranges of things of which they are actually completely ignorant, and you have to be extremely careful with what you're imagining "logic" is telling you.
The understanding of God is tied inexorably with the foundation of math and science, and in the minds of the greatest geniuses to ever lived, who founded them, such as Pythagoras and Newton. Understanding the pursuit of truth as something independent of a relationship with God is a recent invention which has not helped science, rather I believe that history will make it obvious that it has hindered it in crucial ways, and limited mankind's continued intellectual development.
Big surprise. Modded down (-1, Logical, Threatening to liberal mythology)
Osama and Sadam were very different people. No one is suggesting that they had some sort of close personal relationship. However, while Saddam and his inner circle were far from religious, the country at large was and is very religious. The possibility of weapons moving from the Sunni power circles in Iraq to Al Qaeda was very real, and exactly what Al Qaeda was interested in in Iraq. This was the realistic situation, and this was exactly how the administration characterized the situation.
Cause he pissed us off. You got somethin to say about it?
Also, the vice president shot a guy in the face cause he thought he looked like a bird.
Right, and what is more pathologically insane, to believe that Saddam was responsible for 9/11 or to believe that George Bush was responsible for 9/11? And yet liberals have to make up that conservatives believe the former, whereas the latter pathological delusion is willingly offered up by numerous liberals. (And interestingly, I've noticed that the further to the left they are, the more likely they seem to be to believe it.)
I read about half of those quotes of Bush and Cheney. All that I read were excellent, fact-based points. None that I read even suggested that Saddam had any direct responsibility for 9/11.
That says that 7 in 10 believe that it's "at least likely" that Saddam played some role. Which is a reasonable belief. People with common enemies tend to work together. It's a lot different than believing that Saddam played a direct role in the attack, which no one I've ever heard of does, or ever has.
These are all true and valid points. What does this have to do with the claim that somebody somewhere believes that Saddam attacked the WTC?
While I believe that there is an element of truth in this, there is also a fatal flaw. If all Good come only through God (which happens to be the case), then the good that a person does and attributes to themselves instead of to God is inherently tainted. Can you imagine someone who lived an incredibly selfless and giving life, e.g. like Mother Theresa, and yet who attributed all that good that they did to themselves, rather than to God? Such a person would have to have such a high opinion of himself as to be a megalomaniac. Selflessness is impossible without acknowledging your own source outside of yourself, and becomes self-defeating. Someone attributing that much good to himself would probably have to see himself as a god, like Nietzsche, and go insane.
There are a whole lot of factors that contribute to those increases, though. Probably one of the simplest is the affordability of irrigation. One of the most frequently overlooked is the 30% increase of atmospheric CO2 concentrations.
That's right. That was Aristotle's point. Through observation, even today, we see that nothing in the Universe is eternal. Everything changes; everything is caused; everything has a lifespan. The Universe itself therefore must have had a First Cause, caused ultimately by something that doesn't change, which is uncaused, and eternal. That thing must therefore be of completely different nature than the universe. If that First Cause is considered to have consciousness, or come from consciousness, that consciousness is God. Either way, the belief in a First Cause is far more reasonable than a belief in an uncaused or self-caused Universe, which is contrary to our observations.
It is wishful thinking to think of religion as wishful thinking. Religion, like science, is the study of reality. It is the study of those aspects of reality which can only be learned subjectively, whereas science studies only what can be learned objectively. There is also no systematic methodology in most religion as there is in science, certainly not a common shared one; but that could change in the future.
It is a myth that religious people believe as they do in order to "feel good." Religious people believe as they do because they wish to believe the truth. However, by all appearances atheists believe what they do about religious people because those beliefs make them feel good.