My inner cynic is on the same page. We'll see what happens in 2010. I am worried about health care reform right now. Where is the anger and resistance that we the people were showing during debate on the stimulus bill.
Ahh...back from vacation. A nice rest. Since one of the labels here is "politics" and we have a discussion of governmental "power" I thought it might be fun to take a look at this simple fact
Anyone care to...perhaps....retract cries of statism and socialism?
And how exactly does an entity (the government) have more power (at 82 billion) than corporations do (at 39 trillion). As Greenspan said in House of Cards, "You can't stop the free market"...unless, of course, it's in fantasy land with a hyper over exaggerated villain:)
Mark: How much dog shit are you willing to tolerate in your ice cream?
Would a teaspoon spoil an entire 10 gallon drum for you, if you knew it was in there?
The Federal Government, by upending 230 years of bankruptcy tradition, has just flipped the entire investment market on its head.
If investments that you thought were secured in a certain way are now subject to political favoritism, it changes the entire landscape for investment in the future. You think the economy is sluggish now? Just wait until no one can trust signed contracts anymore.
Speaking of retractions, Protagoras thou feckless, wizened poltroon, you recently (and what a coinkydink! it dropped off the front page) claimed that unnamed commenters here were little different from Al Qaeda.
Here are your choices:
1. Name the names (and, of course, be ready to provide evidence).
2. Apologize and withdraw the statement.
3. Do neither, and stand revealed as what I already know you are.
Fascism and Marxism/Communism are both forms of socialism. Both exert total control over the economy. Communism does it through state ownership of property while Fascism "allows" private ownership, but actively micromanages through edicts.
Mussolini (the originator of both the idea and term "fascism") considered communism unworkable, so his idea was to focus on socialism within a nation (socialist "nationalism" which is a different creature than conservative nationalism) and to try to do socialism "better" by removing the problem of the "tragedy of the commons" experienced in Russia caused by no one owning anything.
(Note: As far as I know, Mussolini didn't actually use the phrase "tragedy of the commons". That is just my method of summarizing what happens when no one actually owns anything, a constant problem with communism which Mussolini apparently recognized.)
Combining Mark's article and Geek's comment: The owners of normal corporations don't get to tax their competitors into oblivion to raise operating capital. That's the problem with government ownership of one company. The law loses its impression of neutrality. The different rules and taxes will be easy to justify, they'll just holler something about the national interest in protecting the state's assets.
What was deceptive about the article Marky linked to is that the banks are central to the economy, and that's what they established control of first. (That's control as in fascism, not ownership as in communism.) So even though it's a small percentage of the economy, it's the economic equivalent of grabbing someone by the throat.
Health care is obviously their next major goal. Fortunately for us, some Democrats aren't real careful about hiding their plans when they're on camera.
I know I've said this before, and I'm pretty sure I've said it here. But okay Mark, one more time just for you.
The difference between the government running anything and the private sector running anything is that in the private sector one has customers.
They choose to do business with you or not, according to their preferences and their needs, rather than yours. Therefore you as a company owner have to address those needs and preferences in order to get them to choose to give you money.
If you are a government, you don't have customers, you have taxpayers. Taxpayers don't choose to give you money, they do it because if they refuse, people with guns will come after them and either shoot them or put them in a cage.
Am I going too fast for you? That's the bottom line, the short version. I agree that there are all kinds of services people want in their lives, and I further agree that many of them are vital. Now, pick one of those services and explain to me why it's better to have it administered through violence and the threat of violence (the only tool governments really have), rather than by finding a profitable way to give you what you actually want, rather than what you are ordered to content yourself with.
...explain to me why it's better to have it administered through violence and the threat of violence (the only tool governments really have), rather than by finding a profitable way to give you what you actually want, rather than what you are ordered to content yourself with. - GOF
Because, silly, you're too stupid to know "what you actually want." What you actually want is bad for you. It's bad for Mother Gaia. It's bad for people in the Sudan. It's greedy. It's wasteful. It's wrong!
You should be happy to be told what you want, when you want it, and how much of it you want by your betters in government.
And you should be even happier when they tell you that you can't have that either, even though your betters in the government have the stuff you thought you wanted in the first place.
Therefore you as a company owner have to address those needs and preferences in order to get them to choose to give you money.
Which is wasteful and stupid.
It's much better to get someone who's spent their life thinking about, well, THINKING to determine the best thing for the company - and the customer.
Customers are smelly, dirty, and have their perversions, there's no telling what they might want. Why, they might want something that's dangerous, a motorcycle, or maybe ice cream!
No, that's where the government can dispassionately step in and arbiter, making sure the company and the customer can have a long relationship.
Yes, we've explained this to Mark many times. But when you give it the name that describes those systems he froths. Spews. Denies believing in the exact system he'll then turn around and demand we put in place.
Adam:
Won't work. Nice try, I've tried it several times. But Mark has nothing behind his ego. He's got no reputation left to lose.
So what if he abandons merely another 20 threads. What's 20 more compared to all the other threads and arguments he's abandoned?
Mark is a particularly poor gambler - he keeps trying to bet, so that he can declare victory, and, errrr, somehow.. all those other arguments he bet on and lost will suddenly be winners, and he'll be in the black.
No, it doesn't make any sense, but Vegas is built upon such thought processes.
Once he starts losing badly enough that even he realizes he can't win, he'll leave, and start another thread/discussion, trying to somehow prove that all of us - from diverse backgrounds, religions, and political viewpoints, are locked into the thought process he actually is. Never understanding that he's cargo-culting, and we actually have the headsets, radios, and planes.
(Which is unfair, and why we need to be handicapped in our arguments with him, it's not FAIR that the planes come into OUR airfield and bring goodies!)
M sez And how exactly does an entity (the government) have more power (at 82 billion) than corporations do (at 39 trillion).
Stupid, useless question M, because money does not equate to power. I mean were you trying to set up a follow on argument or was that the extent of your brainpower?
"Corporations don't get to take 1/3 of your stuff or chase you with guns and throw you into jail if you refuse to pony up."
No, the corporations simply act as government enforcers, so that the government will allow them to stay in business. (See what happens to any corporation if it refuses to deduct FICA from an employee's wages.)
Corporations do get you to surrender your rights (freedom of speech, 2A, etc) through coercion -- see what happens when you call a female coworker of equal rank a stupid bitch -- and they also enforce stupid State regulations (e.g. no-smoking policies).
So it's not done at the point of a gun, but by economic extortion.
"the corporations simply act as government enforcers"
Actually, the reverse is more accurate.
"money does not equate to power."
I disagree completely. While I think we can all agree that DC is corrupt, the mechanism for this power is driven by corporations not the government. I get the fact that "government" is a four letter word for most folks here but you really give them waaayyy too much credit and way too much power.
"Corporations don't get to take 1/3 of your stuff or chase you with guns and throw you into jail if you refuse to pony up."
Actually, they pay the government to do that. Again, look at where the center of power actually is...it certainly isn't in DC...the majority of which are buffoons.
"There are threads waiting for you."
First of all, it's the same basic argument and I think it would be time consuming to repeat myself. Second, in the past I have continued discussions that are way down the page and have not gotten any responses. Unlike yourselves, this doesn't bother me at all (getting no repsonses) but why continue it when I can do it closer to the top of the page.
"You think the economy is sluggish now?"
Well, let's see. Home construction is up, unemployment is down here in MN, the dow seems to be relatively stable...perlhaqr, I want you to remember what you wrote and if the economy is better later this year or next, I'd appreciate a full retraction.
"First of all, it's the same basic argument and I think it would be time consuming to repeat myself."
Really? So you don't think you have any responsibility to deal with comparisons of people here with Al Queda?
You don't think you have any responsibility to deal with your LIES? With your godamn ignorance, evasiveness, and refusal to continue any argument beyond the FIRST. FUCKING. SIGN. OF. EVIDENCE?
You run so damn much from numbers I'd swear you're the first numerophobe I've met.
As usual, Protagoras, your premise withers in the face of evidence.
Speaking of evidence, Monsieur FourFeathers...still waiting. Which commenters here are little different from Al Qaeda, and on what basis does your claim for same rest?
Or maybe I should be more correct and say that he bailed without ever responding to our arguments that Britt's list is fatally flawed.
But that's just par for the course with Marky.
BTW, Marky. You've made this claim:
"in the past I have continued discussions that are way down the page and have not gotten any responses."
I call B.S. I don't remember any thread in the last several months where you "got in the last word". Prove it. Here's a hint: you can use google to help. Start your search query with "site:haloscan.com" followed by your search terms.
Ed, you are granting too much to Marky. You are implicitly asserting that there has been any sort of 'discussion' at some point, and I really don't remember a discussion in the past year or so with him.
Mostly it has been him saying some of the stupidest things I have read in many a long year (until he comments again), and then the take down by people much smarter than myself, followed by more random bleating from Marky, more thumping from people with facts, data and actual arguments, and then Marky whining and running away.
I didn't intend to imply that there have been discussions with Marky, though there has occasionally been some responses from him. He tends to make assertions, while we try to respond with arguments. (And Marky doesn't understand the difference.)
"claimed that unnamed commenters here were little different from Al Qaeda."
Ken, I would refer you to my comparison from said thread and ask you to defend a view contrary to it, as Grumpy did, if you have you have a problem
"Here are your choices:"
Only these three? So much for liberty and freedom:)
"1. Name the names (and, of course, be ready to provide evidence)."
Name names? Sure you want me to go down that path? As far as evidence goes, I would again refer you to the comparison list I made and show me how I am wrong. Grumpy made some good points.
"2. Apologize and withdraw the statement."
Not going to happen. When I hear both Al Qaeda and some on the right saying virtually the same thing...sometimes even on the same day...and behaving accordingly, I think my point is valid.
"3. Do neither, and stand revealed as what I already know you are."
Ooo...I'm really scared now. Like the opinion of me is really going to change even if I am proved right from now until the end of time. Because there is no POSSIBLE way I can be, right?
Youmade the claim, therefore you back it up or retract it!
"There is little difference between Al Qaeda and a substantial portion of the conservative base in this country. That includes some people who post here."
1. Name names? Sure you want me to go down that path?
Did I stutter or use words too big for you? Name. The. Names, you sniveling coward.
2. When I hear both Al Qaeda and some on the right saying virtually the same thing...sometimes even on the same day...and behaving accordingly, I think my point is valid.
More content-free and evidence-free rhetoric. Prove it. Provide documented examples that can be confirmed by others.
3. Like the opinion of me is really going to change even if I am proved right from now until the end of time. Because there is no POSSIBLE way I can be, right?
Unlike you, Protagoras, I am willing to speak plain. You are entirely unencumbered by character. You demonstrate that every time you put fingers to keyboard.
Alright then. Compare Al Qaeda's view on homosexuals and a recent post by Sarah in which she stated that homosexuals should not be allowed to marry or adopt children. Compare Al Qaeda's views on the sinfullness of homosexuality to a debate a while back regarding the sinfullness of homsexuality, according to the Bible, between Ed and myself.
Pretty much everyone on here supports torture/EIT's right? How is that different from Al Qaeda exactly? Don't they do the same thing?
"Now here is an apt punishment for DePalma and his ilk"
in regards to the film "Redacted." Compare this sentiment to how Al Qaeda would treat a similar exercise in freedom of speech.
Need I go on?
Oh, and Ken, unlike yourself, I don't take any joy or pleasure in singling people out and personally attacking them. I find it terribly sad that there are similarities between Al Qaeda and some on the right. Cowardice had nothing to do with my hesistance.
So... you equate Sarah's views that homosexuals have the right to do what they please in their own homes, but that she doesn't think it's a good idea for them to adopt...
...with the stoning, murder, and imprisonment of homosexuals?
Are you THAT fucking stupid?
"Compare this sentiment to how Al Qaeda would treat a similar exercise in freedom of speech."
Pretty much everyone on here supports torture/EIT's right?
This is such a classic example of Democrat left history revision that I have to address it:
Bush/Cheney's CIA asked for clarification up their chain of command. Several legal experts were consulted and concluded that it was not torture. Not satisfied with that, several members of Congress were briefed, including several ranking Democrats. They too concluded that it was not torture.
Now Barack Obama gets elected and because he decides it's torture, suddenly none of that happened. Bush/Cheney decided to torture people. Why? Because Barack said so.
It's the same tactic as "Bush lied about WMD". Every major intelligence operation in the world had that same information, and they all drew the same conclusions from it. Congress had that same info, and they drew the same conclusion from it. Bush didn't declare war, he can't, only Congress can. And yet somehow Bush and Cheney, and only Bush and Cheney, lied and got us into this war.
Sorry Mark, but that dog doesn't hunt, no matter how many times you try to make it. You can use Bush/Cheney and "the conservative right" as a convenient scapegoat for the excesses of those you support, but there's too much evidence to make it fly.
There is so much to respond to in this comment, but for the moment I'll restrict myself to this.
"Pretty much everyone on here supports torture/EIT's right?"
Once again you're playing games with the definitions of words, specifically "torture". You're taking your definition of "torture" and pretending that it is both an honest definition and that it's our definition.
You will find no one here that supports using Al Qaeda level torture techniques. That includes such lovely things as drilling holes in the victim's joints. The main thing that characterizes Al Qaeda's torture methods is a very simple characteristic which distinguishes it from EIT's: Permanent physical and/or psychological damage.
Just look at what the North Vietnamese did to John McCain. He still can't raise his arms above his shoulders because they permanently damaged him. Other forms of torture, such as the chinese water torture are known for driving people permanently insane. THAT is an example of true torture and we are vehemently opposed to such abuses.
Then we have something like waterboarding, where Our. Own. Troops. are subjected to it as a frikkin' Training Technique in resisting interrogation. Heck, there are even people who volunteer to have it done to them so that people can see what it's like. It produces no permanent damage. If it did, neither of these common instances would take place. (Who in their right mind would volunteer for a permanent disability???)
If you're going to use your definition of torture, then you need to be campaigning against professional sports. After all, professional athletes sometimes suffer permanent disabling injuries, even while training. (I'm thinking here primarily of baseball, basketball and especially football.) But no one complains about how we "torture" those athletes. And let's not even talk about boxing, and other fighting "sports" where the goal is to actually hurt the other person.
Can you seriously expect to equate our support for EIT's with Al Qaeda's extreme torture when the damage scale goes like this?
EIT's < Professional Sports < Real Torture
I've even considered volunteering for a waterboarding session just so I could tell you to shut up about it being torture, but I know it would be a waste of time. But let me put it this way: If I am willing to go through it myself, then I have no trouble putting people who want to produce widespread carnage through it too.
Bottom line: What we agree with when it comes to torture is NOTHING like what Al Qaeda does.
Alright then. Compare Al Qaeda's view on homosexuals and a recent post by Sarah in which she stated that homosexuals should not be allowed to marry or adopt children.
Apparently, you don't know what Al Queda's view is on homosexuals.
This makes it very hard for you to be lecturing us.
About the time of 9/11, I read where some Al Queda/Taliban sorts were in a village watering hole somewhere in Afghanistan. 3 or 4 different imams, and the Great Satan and how we coddle homosexuals came up. This is from memory, but 1 imam said that you should build a brick wall, then push it over on the homosexual. Another said no, they should be thrown off a tall building or a cliff. Another insisted that only drawing and quartering was acceptable. Their supporters got to arguing over it, and before long 10 were dead and 40 were shot up.
Mark: If you ever hope to actually learn to think critically, you need to stop and actually think about what you said.
Sarah has expressed her opinion that they should be disallowed from certain civil opportunities and abilities.
And you've equated that with a group who demands death (via some method we'll settle on later). Death.
"I'm sorry, but I don't think it's healthy for gays to adopt"
is exactly the same as:
"DEATH"
In your world.
Then you accuse us of slanting words, of mixing definitions, playing games, and altering reality.
No, Mark, there's no way you can possibly, reasonably equate Sarah - no matter how she might possible HATE HATE HATE homosexuals (Sarah: sorry, just an example), if she's not calling for their death.
Your complete ignorance on what is really torture and what Al Queda does in comparison to what we do is actually not as boggling. It's stupid, and it's indicative that you're a fool, but it's not as blatant. But only by a little bit.
For the past 2+ years, we've told you how your thought process worked. That you made a conclusion, based upon somebody, usually a raging partisan not interested in the facts, and then you start stringing together "arguments".
More often than not, your arguments revolve or pivot around complete ignorance of the meanings of words, misunderstandings as to history, meanings of concepts. Remember all the times we've demonstrated that? OK, do you remember, all the time we've pointed out how many times we've done it?
Well, here you go.
2 perfect examples that ought to be obvious to even you.
(And they also demonstrate why you fail to understand why most of us aren't "conservative" much less why you fail to see the humor when Kevin says "Do it again, only HARDER!" and you show up, say, "THAT'S NOT WHAT I'M SAYING! JUST DO IT HARDER!" or jumping into the "learned racism as an attack to shut up the other party thread" and called us all racists, whilst denying that's what's being taught in the schools!. But most importantly, it demonstrates why you scream about speech codes, thoughtcrime - when we say that you won't allow dissent. Sarah dissents from your opinion, and so to you she must dissent all the way.
So "no differences" between her, and people who insist upon, and gladly kill the group in question. You dehumanize your opponents, just as we're telling you you do, and make caricatures of them.)
For the sake of presenting an accurate record, and not for any concern for anything Protagoras has to say, I actually don't support waterboarding, and so respectfully differ with those of my fellow commenters who do.
I came to my position because I reasoned that a tool once granted can be misused down the road. William Grigg points out that waterboarding was once relatively commonly used as part of the "third degree" in police interrogation:
http://lewrockwell.com/grigg/grigg-w95.html
I understand the "ticking time bomb" argument in favor of such practices, but there at least ought to be a ticking time bomb, or at least a strong suspicion and circumstantial evidence that there is one.
But getting back to my main point: This is now a country where supporting Ron Paul's presidential campaign (I voted for Dr. Paul in Ohio, after Fred Thompson withdrew...hey, wonder what his Cairo speech woulda been like? ;-) ), displaying the Gadsden flag (I fly the Betsy Ross flag, except when I fly the Culpeper Minute Men flag), or "protesting" (how's your tea?) constitute evidence, in some official quarters, of low-level terrorism. This is not an Obama thing; the notorious Pennsylvania and Alabama pamphlets predate the Obama administration.
Frankly, I think that makes my case stronger. I'd just as soon not empower Leviathan any more than we already have done.
I'm with you, Ken. Whoever wrote the guidance for the CIA either was negligently or deliberaltely ignorant of the fact that we prosecuted Japanese soldiers (in part) for waterboarding our guys in WWII. Neither do I buy the line that it's less damaging than things like boxing or football - there's a big difference between volunteering to fight and being repeatedly drowned (ask anyone who's done it) against your will.
It simply doesn't cut it that Al Qaeda is more evil. "Better than Al Qaeda" is hardly an inspiring standard for the greatest country on the planet.
"So... you equate Sarah's views that homosexuals have the right to do what they please in their own homes, but that she doesn't think it's a good idea for them to adopt...
...with the stoning, murder, and imprisonment of homosexuals?"
Hmm...don't you equate the support of an assault weapon ban as being a precursor to all guns being seized? While I don't think that Sarah would wantonly murder homosexuals, she does have the same view of them that Al Qaeda does...they should have less rights than the straights.
And spend some time talking to the "base"...either one. They'll tell you what they envision as being delightful when it comes to homosexuals.
And spend some time talking to the "base"...either one. They'll tell you what they envision as being delightful when it comes to homosexuals.
I guess that means none of us are real conservatives.
Hmm...don't you equate the support of an assault weapon ban as being a precursor to all guns being seized?
When a law makes no slightest pretense of addressing the problems it was claimed to be needed to address, is it unreasonable to think it was passed for a different reason? Especially when the seizure of all guns is a recurring theme among members of the political faction that pushed for such a law?
she does have the same view of them that Al Qaeda does...they should have less rights than the straights.
By the logic you are using, anyone who proposes punishing anyone in any fashion for their behavior is equivalent to an Al-Qaeda terrorist.
That's like saying the cop on the corner is equivalent to a terrorist because he thinks thieves should have fewer rights than those who restrict themselves to their own stuff.
That is not to say I am treating gays and thieves as equal. It so happens my opinion of gay rights is different from Sarah's. But that doesn't change the fact that you are, in effect, saying "convicted felons should not have the right to bear arms" equates to "kill all the Jews" because in both cases it treats one class of people as less than another.
Bullshit.
BTW, you never answered my question from above:
The difference between the government running anything and the private sector running anything is that in the private sector one has customers.
They choose to do business with you or not, according to their preferences and their needs, rather than yours. Therefore you as a company owner have to address those needs and preferences in order to get them to choose to give you money.
If you are a government, you don't have customers, you have taxpayers. Taxpayers don't choose to give you money, they do it because if they refuse, people with guns will come after them and either shoot them or put them in a cage.
Am I going too fast for you? That's the bottom line, the short version. I agree that there are all kinds of services people want in their lives, and I further agree that many of them are vital. Now, pick one of those services and explain to me why it's better to have it administered through violence and the threat of violence (the only tool governments really have), rather than by finding a profitable way to give you what you actually want, not what you are ordered to content yourself with.
"the CIA either was negligently or deliberaltely ignorant of the fact that we prosecuted Japanese soldiers (in part) for waterboarding our guys in WWII."
Since this was basically new to me, I did some research. I was only able to find a single reliable source on this claim. Some people are saying that we executed Japanese soldiers for waterboarding. That doesn't seem to hold up.
First of all, Yukio Asano (the defendent in this case) was not executed, but sentenced to 15 years of hard labor.
Second, the list of charges does not say "water boarding", but "water torture". Whether or not this was the same thing as waterboarding seems to be an open question. Some sites used quotes to make it sound like waterboarding, but they were usually partial quotes and fragments of sentences, which definitely leaves open the question of whether or not the quotes were cherry picked to create that impression. I also saw sites that claimed that the Japanese version of water torture was pumping water down the victims throat so forcefully that the stomach sometimes burst from the pressure, which would make "water torture" something completely different than waterboarding. In this case, nearly every page I visited was suspect in some manner, most evincing obvious bias. Therefore it is nearly impossible to reach a reliable conclusion on what I was able to find on the internet. (A reliable conclusion should be possible with enough research. I just wasn't able to spend time on it.)
Finally, "water torture" was not the only abuse this soldier engaged in. This soldier also committed beatings (including kicking and using clubs, both of which are capable of killing), burning the prisoners with cigarettes, and other abuses. Even without "waterboarding" it sounds like this soldier earned a 15 year sentence, though it was probably pretty lenient.
You have to remember that at the time, the Japanese were so overwhelmingly vicious that their use of modern waterboarding could be considered incredibly merciful compared to what they usually did.
The "Bataan Death March" is just one example of how rough they were on prisoners. This forced march of 72,000-75,000 prisoners resulted in a casualty rate of 25-28% of the prisoner deaths along the way. They're also apparently responsible for murdering roughly 6 million civilians and POWs during the course of the war. (Estimates range from 3 million to over 10 million.) Some of the atrocities they committed are ones that I've actively worked to forget. They made the North Vietamese torturers look like amateurs.
Bottom line: The argument that Japanese soldiers were punished "for waterboarding" seems incredibly weak in comparison to the totality of what they did in WWII and I don't find it convincing.
Ken, IMHO, EIT's are to be reserved only for extreme cases, such as those where a terrorist has been clearly identified as such and there is good reason to suspect they have important information. (Reason: they've earned punishment due to their actions, i.e., they're guilty, not innocent and their will needs to be broken.)
As to not wanting the government to use EIT's against you, in cases where the government is treating an innocent person as guilty, even low level actions, such as simple arrest, are wrong. It's even worse if the government agents know the person they're abusing is innocent. If the government is knowingly acting tyrannically, they will already do things which are normally out-of-bounds, therefore I don't see normal limits on their behavior (such as "no waterboarding") even slowing them down.
"While I don't think that Sarah would wantonly murder homosexuals..."
Then start over, and try with some evidence. You still have one hell of a fucking heinous accusation standing against her. And, given that, I have absolutely no problem saying you, Mark, are a fucking asshat.
she does have the same view of them that Al Qaeda does...they should have less rights than the straights.
It's amazing that you can still be so stupid, so smirkingly oblivious, so self-absorbed and smug that you can disgust me.
But yet, you've been doing it regularly.
Listen up, you libelous sack of wasted education tax dollars, there's nothing the same there
AL QUEDA GIVES NO - NONE - ZIP - NADA "RIGHTS" TO HOMOSEXUALS. THEY KILL THEM. ON SIGHT. WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE.
THEY GET IN FIREFIGHTS AND KILL EACH OTHER TO DEBATE HOW IS THE __**BEST**__ WAY TO KILL HOMOSEXUALS.
Disagreeing with adoption policy - isn't in the slightest the same as killing them.
A very telling, but minor compared to your slanders and libels, point is that "adoption" ISN'T A RIGHT. We've explained this to you many times. (And you propose to lecture to US on evaluating Constitutional Scholars?)
"So... you equate Sarah's views that homosexuals have the right to do what they please in their own homes, but that she doesn't think it's a good idea for them to adopt...
...with the stoning, murder, and imprisonment of homosexuals?"
Hmm...don't you equate the support of an assault weapon ban as being a precursor to all guns being seized?
Yes, and it's irrelevant. This is you cargo-culting more.
The reason I've been hammering you on the ban, VERBATIM BOY, is that you were flailing just as pointlessly, and decried that we would consider you a banner, if you supported a "AW"B. You're so clucking fueless that you can't even admit that the B in AWB stands for BAN. BAN. BAN. How dare you try and lecture to us on the state of the schools when you disprove yourself?
As to your comparison: There is none. Yes, I believe an "assault weapon" ban would be a step on the way to a total gun ban. Mainly because that's what Sugarmman, Feinstein, Brady, Obama, et al said and did after the former "Crime Prevention Act" passed.
I say that because there's an obvious path, historical evidence (do we need to explain to you what "evidence" means?), and a paper trail that ought to even convince a public school teacher to prove it.
Now show the proof that Sarah has deep in her heart hatred towards homosexuals. PROVE that you're right, and her views are IDENTICAL, and she wants to KILL IMMEDIATELY any and all HOMOSEXUALS.
After you get through with that, explain why Dick Cheney hasn't killed his daughter.
You're disgustingly sick when you will stoop to those kind of Godwinesque comparisons - and you do it lightly and unadvisedly. You don't even think about it. It's all the same to you.
But we are supposedly the unfeeling, enraged ones. And you get upset when we point out we know the Alinsky playbook - the one you're using, although I doubt you have the attention span to have read it.
Accusing someone - only based on her religion (good thing she's Christian, else you'd be hatecriming) and opinion of desiring and ordaining and intending to commit mass murder ought to cause even a demonstrated liar such as yourself to hold your tongue.
Ed, I hear you. That's why I mentioned the ticking time bomb, though I do so with enough reservations to book the QE II solid. Twice. There's a reason they say "hard cases make bad law." :-)
I find it fascinating that Marky-Mark doesn't think an "Assault weapon" BAN would lead eventually to a COMPLETE (or English-equivalent) ban on firearms here after the video showing IN THEIR OWN WORDS that Obama and the Left intend "health care reform" to lead to the end-game of a UNIVERSAL SINGLE-PAYER SYSTEM (that payer being the Feddle Gubmint) all the while telling the Rubes "Oh, no! If you like what you've got, you won't have to change!"
Yes, they think we're that stupid.
And Mark IS that stupid.
And he teaches children what he terms "critical thinking."
Ed, of course the Japanese did much worse things. But they also waterboarded, and the descriptions our and other prisoners gave of the process matches the modern one well, almost verbatim. The Khmer Rouge did it routinely; there's a prominent waterboard exhibit in the genocide museum in Phnom Penh. That we do it to our soldiers who are at high risk of capture is an argument for it being a form of torture, not against. Finally, there are loads of informal accounts on the web of guys who submitted to waterboarding just to convey the experience. Some of them set out to show that opponents of the technique are bleeding-heart pansies.
I'm not attempting to draw even a loose moral equivalence here. There's a huge continuum of mistreatment and the televised beheadings of random prisoners by Al Qaeda is certainly much further down toward the bad end of the spectrum than waterboarding is (due, IMO, to its permanence and wanton brutality). Like I said, however, "better than Al Qaeda" is a pretty lame standard to hold for the West. If that's all we can claim, are we really worth defending?
Alright, I did not want to spend the time responding to the homosexual thing because I'm supposed to be working. But because it's just snowballing and I'm also being tarred unfairly, it seems I have no choice. (Marky, are you going to pay my $90/hour rate for this?)
I will start off by saying that it seems I am probably the "most extreme" person here when it comes to homosexuality. But claims that this "most extreme" position is "little different from Al Qaeda" is pure bull-pucky.
Conservatives can have two general reasons for opposing homosexuality: Christian teachings (The Bible) and secular reasons.
I'll start with the Biblical position. (BTW, atheist conservatives who oppose homosexuality cannot, by definition, opposed it for Christian reasons. Therefore, Marky's attempt to tar them with the brush of "religious extremism" is already clearly irrational.)
There are three primary times when the Bible talks about homosexuality: Sodom & Gomorrah, when giving the laws to the Israel, and in the New Testament. It is condemned all three times.
I assume I don't have to quote the whole story of Sodom & Gomorrah. The only evil specified in the story is that all the men (the text is very specific about this) tried to rape Lot's male visitors, and that they were so bent on homosexual sex that they even turned down Lot's offer of his two virgin daughters if they would give up on raping the men. It's safe to assume that homosexuality is not the only evil they were guilty of, but God did destroy the cities for their pervasive evil, which definitely included homosexuality.
The second instance is when God was giving Israel their civil law. There are two verses which forbid it:
"You are not to sleep with a man as with a woman; it is detestable."
(Leviticus 18:22 HCSB)
"If a man sleeps with a man as with a woman, they have both committed an abomination. They must be put to death; their blood is on their own hands."
(Leviticus 20:13 HCSB)
So does this mean that Christians are supposed to kill homosexuals? No.
Let's start by looking at the verses themselves. The first verse is just a statement of principle (how God sees things). "It is detestable." The second verse starts with the same principle. So from that aspect, we can assume that this is an unchanging principle. But only the second verse states the death penalty.
The death penalty is crystal clear, so it would seem to apply to all Christians. So we need to look a little deeper. First of all, this is part of the civil law given to the nation of Israel. This means that Israel was to specifically enforce this law with this penalty. But it doesn't necessarily mean that those who are not part of the nation of Israel—which is most Christians today—are bound by the same laws. (Note: I could go into an explanation of why I think this law was a good idea, but this post is going to be too long as it is.)
In fact, the Bible does make it clear that laws given specifically and only to Israel do not apply to Christians.
"If, then, perfection came through the Levitical priesthood (for under it the people received the law), what further need was there for another priest to arise in the order of Melchizedek, and not to be described as being in the order of Aaron? For when there is a change of the priesthood, there must be a change of law as well."
(Hebrews 7:11-12 HCSB)
"Before this faith came, we were confined under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith was revealed. The law, then, was our guardian until Christ, so that we could be justified by faith. But since that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus."
(Galatians 3:23-26 HCSB)
"Therefore, my brothers, you also were put to death in relation to the law through the crucified body of the Messiah, so that you may belong to another—to Him who was raised from the dead—that we may bear fruit for God. For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions operated through the law in every part of us and bore fruit for death. But now we have been released from the law, since we have died to what held us, so that we may serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old letter of the law."
(Romans 7:4-6 HCSB)
"“Look, the days are coming”—this is the LORD’S declaration—“when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. This one will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant they broke even though I had married them”—the LORD’S declaration. “Instead, this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days”—the LORD’S declaration. “I will place My law within them and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be My people."
(Jeremiah 31:31-33 HCSB)
Note the part I put in bold. It specifies that the law in Leviticus was specific to the nation of Israel.
"In the same way He also took the cup after supper and said, “This cup is the new covenant established by My blood; it is shed for you."
(Luke 22:20 HCSB)
"By saying, a new covenant, He has declared that the first is old. And what is old and aging is about to disappear."
(Hebrews 8:13 HCSB)
These are all general statements of principle. There is also a specific parallel example:
"If a man sleeps with his father’s wife, he has shamed his father. Both of them must be put to death; their blood is on their own hands."
(Leviticus 20:11 HCSB)
Notice that sleeping with your father's wife also deserved the death penalty under the law given to Israel. This exact situation showed up in the early church. Notice how the Christians were to respond to it:
"It is widely reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and the kind of sexual immorality that is not even condoned among the Gentiles—a man is living with his father’s wife. … I wrote to you in a letter not to associate with sexually immoral people— by no means referring to this world’s immoral people, or to the greedy and swindlers, or to idolaters; otherwise you would have to leave the world. But now I am writing you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother who is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or a reviler, a drunkard or a swindler. Do not even eat with such a person. For what is it to me to judge outsiders? Do you not judge those who are inside? But God judges outsiders. Put away the evil person from among yourselves."
(1 Corinthians 5:1,9-13 HCSB)
Anyone see any command here about putting them to death? Me neither. There are two principles the Christians are to follow: if they're in the church and they're behaving like this, kick them out. Don't even associate with them. (This doesn't necessarily mean go the other way when you run into them in the grocery store, but definitely don't invite them over to your house or go to dinner with them.) If they're not part the church, we're to leave them to God to deal with.
If this principle applies to one death penalty crime only 2 verses away from the death penalty verse for homosexuality, then it's entirely reasonable to consider the same principle to apply to Christians encountering homosexual behavior.
Of course, that makes Christians exactly like the Muslims who slit the throats of those with homosexual inclinations, right? NOT!! What we have here is behavior/don't hang out vs. inclinations/kill.
So, if Christians are no longer bound by the law which was given to Israel, does that mean that homosexuality is now okay? No. The New Testament repeats the condemnation of homosexual behavior, just not the penalty given to Israel:
"Do you not know that the unjust will not inherit God’s kingdom? Do not be deceived: no sexually immoral people, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, homosexuals, thieves, greedy people, drunkards, revilers, or swindlers will inherit God’s kingdom."
(1 Corinthians 6:9-10 HCSB)
"We know that the law is not meant for a righteous person, but for the lawless and rebellious, for the ungodly and sinful, for the unholy and irreverent, for those who kill their fathers and mothers, for murderers, for the sexually immoral and homosexuals, for kidnappers, liars, perjurers, and for whatever else is contrary to the sound teaching based on the glorious gospel of the blessed God that was entrusted to me."
(1 Timothy 1:9-11 HCSB)
Note: Some people claim that homosexuality was added to these verses by later translations because the word was not used in the King James translation. There's just one small problem with their theory; the word "homosexual" was not added to the English language until the late 1800's and the King James translation was finished in 1611, so it was not possible for the King James translators to use this word because it did not exist at the time. So they had to use an entire phrase to convey the same meaning. The equivalent word for homosexual is definitely in the original Greek.
"Therefore God delivered them over in the cravings of their hearts to sexual impurity, so that their bodies were degraded among themselves. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served something created instead of the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.
"This is why God delivered them over to degrading passions. For even their females exchanged natural sexual intercourse for what is unnatural. The males in the same way also left natural sexual intercourse with females and were inflamed in their lust for one another. Males committed shameless acts with males and received in their own persons the appropriate penalty for their perversion.
And because they did not think it worthwhile to have God in their knowledge, God delivered them over to a worthless mind to do what is morally wrong. They are filled with all unrighteousness, evil, greed, and wickedness. They are full of envy, murder, disputes, deceit, and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, arrogant, proud, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, and unmerciful. Although they know full well God’s just sentence—that those who practice such things deserve to die—they not only do them, but even applaud others who practice them."
(Romans 1:24-32 HCSB)
I think it's interesting to compare these paragraphs with what happened in Sodom & Gomorrah. It seems that full blown homosexuality is closely tied with a general depravity of mind. This is the passage that strongly implies that homosexuality was not the only evil going on in Sodom & Gomorrah.
There's one more principle I should point out before I begin to close this out. That is that Christians are to help each other overcome sin:
"Brothers, if someone is caught in any wrongdoing, you who are spiritual should restore such a person with a gentle spirit, watching out for yourselves so you won’t be tempted also."
(Galatians 6:1 HCSB)
"Be on your guard. If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him."
(Luke 17:3 HCSB)
Finally, I should point out that in the "ranking of sin" there is only one unforgivable sin: blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. Homosexuality falls into the same level as any other sexual sin, most of which are sins heterosexuals can commit.
So in short, the Biblical position is: Homosexual behavior is a sin, just like many others. The church's response to such sin should be to first try to help them overcome their behavior, and if they refuse, to eject those who practice this sin (like many others) from fellowship. Those outside the church are to be left to God.
How is this "little different from Al Qaeda" again? "Try to help first, leave them alone if that fails" vs. "hunt down anyone with homosexual desires and kill them." Yeah, no difference there! Only the difference between Florence Nightingale and Dr. Kervorkian. No difference whatsoever! [/ snark]
But what about the secular arguments? They can't be based on the Bible, even though they point to the same conclusion.
Quite simply, the key to a secular conclusion about homosexuality is, well, the Scientific Method. That means observation, which means studies. So what do they say about homosexuality?
Let's start with a simple observation: Changing the definition of marriage from one man, one woman to same sex couples changes the foundation upon which the definition of marriage is based. Traditional marriage is based upon the simple observation of physiology and psychology. Only one man and one woman can produce a child. Two men cannot. Two women cannot. More men or more women can increase the number of children produced, but only one pairing can produce one child. Or more correctly, one fertilized egg, which sometimes splits into multiple children.
Even without children, it is only slightly less obvious that men and women tend to complement each other psychologically as well. Kevin has touched upon this observation with his own descriptions of the violent and predatory vs. violent and protective illustration. As part of that illustration, he correctly points out that young men usually have a tendency to be more physically aggressive than older men. A big reason for this is that marriage tends to cause men to mellow out due to the interplay of the psychological differences between men and women. (Take a look at any marriage self help books. You will find that they point to these differences as necessary to mange for a successful marriage. As in, "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus".) The differences (and conflicts) between the sexes tend to wear away the rough edges from the men, thus calming them down. (No fault divorce allows an easy "out" which interrupts this growth, which is part of why I'm opposed to it. BTW, this is another difference between most conservatives and Al Qaeda. AQ teaches that getting a divorce is easier than getting married.) The end result is a society with far fewer men spoiling for a fight, thus a more stable society.
But when same sex marriage is permitted, it is not based on observations at all. Rather it's basis is "people should be allowed to do what they want to do." In other words, desire is somehow expected to be able to trump our physical and psychological natures.
Do you see that fundamental shift? Observation of nature vs. Wants.
This fundamental shift shows up in the results of studies of the homosexual lifestyle.
I mentioned that even without children, marriage tends to reduce the aggressiveness of young men. It turns out that domestic violence is a huge problem among homosexual men. Two homosexual psychologists, David Island and Patrick Letellier studied the problem and wrote about it in a book, "Men Who Beat the Men Who Love Them." (Article about the book here.) They write, "at least 500,000 gay men are abused by their lovers each year in the United States." That means that homosexual men abuse their lovers an order of magnatude more often than so called hate crimes are committed.
That puts domestic violence at the third largest problem for homosexuals; right behind AIDS and chemical abuse.
Other studies have shown that depression is a huge problem for them. (50% higher than in the general population in the study referred to here.) They also tend to die 20 years soon than their non-homosexual counterparts. Furthermore (according to the study), the level of tolerance by the surrounding society has absolutely nothing to with these rates, as is often claimed by the pro-homosexual lobby.
Other problems include huge levels of promiscuity among homosexuals. In another study (again by researchers who are themselves homosexuals) they found that 43% of homosexuals had had over 500 partners and 28% had more than 1,000 (!!!) sexual partners. Among those "committed" to each other (supposedly just like marriage), not a single relationship was monogamous after 5 years. Not One! They averaged 8 outside partners per year. (Much more here.) No wonder STD's—especially AIDS, the number 1 problem of them all—is such a problem among homosexuals.
Just think of the impact of that on traditional marriage. If there is no such thing as a monogamous "same sex marriage", then there is literally no reason to expect the same in traditional marriage.
Which brings me to what happened in countries which accepted same sex marriage. The Netherlands is a prime example, where out of wedlock births skyrocketed after same sex marriage passed. In and of itself, this doesn't necessarily sound like a bad thing, until you look at the effects of marriage both on the couple and their children. (See the earlier link to probe.org for references to the studies.)
"Married people are much happier and likely to be less unhappy than any other group of people.
"Married people live up to eight years longer than divorced or never-married people.
"Married people suffer less from long-term illnesses than those who are unmarried.
"Married people are less likely to engage in unhealthy behaviors such as drug and alcohol abuse.
"Married people have twice the amount of sex as single people and report greater levels of satisfaction in the area of sexual intimacy.
"Children in married families are less like to suffer serious child abuse.
"Children in married families are less likely to end up in jail as adults.
"Children in married families are less likely to be depressed as adolescents.
"Children in married families are less likely to be expelled from school.
"Children in married families are less likely to repeat a grade in school.
"Children in married families are less likely to have developmental problems.
"Children in married families are less likely to have behavioral problems.
"Children in married families are less likely to use drugs (marijuana, cocaine).
"Children in married families are less likely to be sexually active."
"There is no consensus among scientists about the exact reasons that an individual develops a heterosexual, bisexual, gay or lesbian orientation. Although much research has examined the possible genetic, hormonal, developmental, social, and cultural influences on sexual orientation, no findings have emerged that permit scientists to conclude that sexual orientation is determined by any particular factor or factors. Many think that nature and nurture both play complex roles...."
"Research by social scientists, although not definitive, suggests that children reared by openly homosexual parents are far more likely to engage in homosexual behavior than children raised by others. Studies thus far find between 8% and 21% of homosexually parented children ultimately identify as non-heterosexual. For comparison purposes, approximately 2% of the general population are non-heterosexual. Therefore, if these percentages continue to hold true, children of homosexuals have a 4 to 10 times greater likelihood of developing a non-heterosexual preference than other children."
The bottom line is that there are truly powerful reasons based in science to consider homosexual behavior to be a major problem, both for the individuals involved and society as a whole. That is why the government has a compelling interest in suppressing homosexual activity, which is why I am more conservative than Sarah on this.
Yet even though it seems that homosexual behavior needs to be supressed, it does not automatically follow that the solution is to implement a death penalty. (That would be especially hypocritical since even murder usually doesn't earn the death penalty.) Since a large part of the reason why homosexual behavior should be surpressed is to protect the lives of those with homosexual tendencies, implementing a death penalty would be like a fireman burning down a building to save it. It would be outright counterproductive.
So now it's time to compare this position to Al Qaeda again. Al Qaeda's position is based on their religion, the secular conservative position is based evidence (Uh, oh, I just lost Marky here) and reason. Al Qaeda's chosen action is to kill. The most rational secular conservative position is that action is necessary to save lives. Once again we have kill vs. save lives (Not(kill)).
"Little difference"? Only if A = Not(A), war is peace, night is day, and good = evil.
Are you ready to take your slander back yet Marky?
"they should have less rights than the straights."
What "rights" would they not have which straights would? Laws against homosexuality (also called sodomy laws, see part 1 above) apply to straights too. Just like laws against assault apply to everyone.
After all, the only difference is that some people want to do certain things, and others don't. "But I wanna" has absolutely nothing to do with equality under the law.
Should we make bank robbery legal only for those who want to rob banks? Or how about making domestic abuse legal because some men like to beat their wives? After all, they're prevented from doing what they like to do under the current laws.
BTW, Kevin. I wasn't trying to challenge your überpost crown. It just sort of all spilled out. :)
The article you linked to under "verbatim" was one of the first ones I found. It was the one I was thinking about the most when I pointed out that most of the articles included a few sentence fragments as quotes and very little other quoting. That's why I rejected it as authoritative.
If you could find much more complete quotes from the trials, that would go a long way towards establishing just how similar (or not) the Japanese "water torture" was to modern waterboarding.
The problem with defining torture in terms of how much discomfort is involved is that it is a Sorites paradox. (How many grains of sand are in a heap?) There is a continuous range of discomfort with no distinct "notches" where we could attach a dividing line. Consider:
What's the most comfortable a person could be? Sound asleep in a quality bed at a perfect temperature. There's no discomfort at all.
Now imagine being woken up early. Most people I know would be irritated because your comfort has been unexpectedly broken by very low level discomfort. I really doubt that most people would call this torture.
How about if it's warm enough outside that I start sweating profusely. That's even more discomfort. The degree of that discomfort depends entirely on how warm it is and how active I am. Again, that's a continuous spectrum. Is that torture? No. What if the temperature becomes extreme and water isn't available. Again continuous degrees. Ask someone who works in a steel mill if this is "torture."
How about if it's cold outside? It's the same problem.
What if I'm forced to listen to my kid's music. Hey! Get me out of Guantanamo!
What about a professional fighter who takes a beating? Is that torture? Is it torture when a prisoner receives less of a beating? Why?
How about a Navy seal during training who is pushed to the very limits of human endurance? Is that torture? Is it torture when a prisoner has to endure less discomfort than this?
The point is, if we look solely at levels of discomfort, any line we draw would be arbitrary. Furthermore, any arguments against a line drawn in that particular spot is just as valid as arguments in favor of that line. The simple point is that "it's freakin' scary" just isn't enough. (Watch AFV sometime for people who are scared out of their wits on theme parks rides.)
What we need is to look at related measurements to reach a justifiable conclusion. Think about it, why did Christopher Hitchens and Mancow agree to be waterboarded? It's because they knew there would be no permanent damage. They had to have some inkling of how bad it would be, yet they did it anyway.
Do you suppose they would have agreed to go under Al Qaeda's drill torture? Not on your life. Again, why? Because that would have clearly produced a permanent disability.
That's why I think Permanent Damage is part of a good definition of what is and isn't torture. While you can argue forever about degrees of discomfort, whether or not there has been permanent physical damage is easy to measure. Thus it provides an good point to hang a rational justification on it.
I had also mentioned permanent mental damage. That's obviously harder to measure. It's also harder to argue about because breaking someone's will to get information which is critical to saving many lives is the whole point of the exercise. Is that mentally damaging? Quite definitely. Is it permanent? Quite likely. Will it cause the person to be unable to function normally? Probably not.
Think about it. Even normal people who have never been subjected to deliberate torture can encounter incidents which can cause permanent mental damage. A prime example is Kevin's recent post on the man who accidentally shot and killed his son. It is going to leave a permanent mark on his psyche. It may even prevent him from living a normal life, though the degree of that effect will depend in large part on how much control he exerts over himself and how much outside help he gets.
At the extreme end, there are torture techniques which can leave a person a gibbering idiot for the rest of their life. Again, the permanent damage standard works at defining such techniques as off limits.
The problem with permanent psychological damage is that so much depends on the mental makeup of the person on the receiving end, and there are so many degrees of damage. So we are kind of stuck with somewhat arbitrary lines here.
One clear line we could say is that interrogation techniques which have a risk of even moderate permanent psychological damage are off limits unless the person being interrogated is clearly known to be guilty of violent crimes and that there is reasonable suspicion that the person has knowledge of time critical information necessary to save lives. Furthermore, you don't jump to extreme measures immediately, but always start with less risky measures and only ramp it up when it's clear that they aren't working. I think there are also probably other reasonable caveats (as Ken said) which should also apply.
Does this sound reasonable and based on measurable "bright lines" to you?
Alright then. Compare Al Qaeda's view on homosexuals and a recent post by Sarah in which she stated that homosexuals should not be allowed to marry or adopt children.
Markadelphia: Do you honestly believe that murdering individuals, sometimes in remarkably horrific ways, is equivalent to denying the same person the privilege to raise a child not currently legally or genetically theirs?
A simple "yes" or "no" will suffice - I honestly do not care as to your explanation.
If you honestly believe that those two circumstances are equivalent, would be so kind as to indicate which state you currently live and teach in? Feel free to email me directly, if you do not wish to make it public knowledge. I only ask because I want to ensure that no children I may have in the future interact with you on any level, much less are taught by you.
My objections to the practice of waterboarding are twofold. The first is based on personal taste; I've seen what victims have said historically (including the volunteers) and have arrived at the conclusion that it's a form of torture. I don't think we should do it to people we have in custody. This is probably not worth arguing due to its basis.
My second objection is based in law. I hate the UN as much as most people here, but here is the definition in the treaty they organized (and which we ratified):
"Any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions."
It's a mouthful in a comment window, I know. The law is important to me because as an advocate of liberty I have to be assured that what government we have submits to the rule of law. What we can see from the UNCAT definition is that permanence is not a standard. All you need is:
1) A government agent
2) A deliberate, positive action (ie, bad food or living conditions is insufficient), and
3) "severe pain or discomfort."
So is taking a person to the brink of death by drowning torture? It is the way I read the treaty.
Your comparison to boxing is invalid because of the same difference that exists between charity and welfare or husbands and rapists. Voluntary participation by all parties is a critical variable in any moral calculus. You may enjoy a round of sparring at the gym, but I think you would object to being punched in the face (even once!) on the walk home even if you had just willingly taken a beating in the ring.
"Any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person...punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed..."
The way that reads to me is that if he blows up a barracks full of your buddies and you shoot him for it, even in the heat of the moment having caught him in the act, then that's torture.
You'll forgive me if that strikes me as completely ridiculous, huh?
"So is taking a person to the brink of death by drowning torture? "
C'mon, Xenocles, that's a straw man. Waterboarding does not take a person to the brink of death by drowning. It is intended to make the person feel like he is drowning, even though he isn't drowning. Done (ahem) properly, it can be continued indefinitely (well, to the point of hunger or a toilet break, and so on) without killing anyone.
"The way that reads to me is that if he blows up a barracks full of your buddies and you shoot him for it, even in the heat of the moment having caught him in the act, then that's torture."
C'mon, Grumpy, that's a straw man. What are the conditions under which the quoted UN rule applies? The quote by Xenocles doesn't say. Likely this rule applies only to people who are in custody, i.e. likely it doesn't apply to conditions of combat on the battlefield. It would be nice to know, wouldn't it?
No, I'm not taking sides here. I'm just a spectator.
It would indeed be nice to know, DJ. I read through the entire convention and can't find any language that applies it only to persons in custody. Since it's not the "Convention Against War" I assume that is, but that is only an assumption. It doesn't seem to prohibit execution, either, provided the execution is done humanely.
I used to think that the idea that it was "simulated drowning" made it okay. But the words of people like this guy made me reconsider. Have you ever aspirated water? I have. Even after meeting all my Navy requirements I'm not a very good swimmer, and when I was a kid I got in over my head. Just one breath of water and you panic. You simply lose control; I can totally believe that people would say anything to stop the experience.
Also, my item 3 was a misquote, it should read "severe pain and suffering," not "...discomfort"
GOF, are you talking about a summary execution or shooting a fleeing combatant? Those two are almost entirely different from one another.
"It would indeed be nice to know, DJ. I read through the entire convention and can't find any language that applies it only to persons in custody."
Now we know what you already knew, that we don't know if it has limits. If it doesn't, then Grumpy has a very valid observation, doesn't he?
"Have you ever aspirated water?"
Yup. I was eight years old, in a swimming pool, and I nearly drowned my older brother by trying to climb onto him to save my own ass. If I could have talked my way out of it, I would have.
"Just one breath of water and you panic. You simply lose control ..."
Yup. It makes you feel like you're drowning even though you aren't.
I'm reminded of an old Justin Wilson joke.
He described a man with a son who was very short. The guy talked to a doctor about it, and the doctor said, "Try to stretch him. Every night, just lay him out on the dinner table, have people grab his arms and legs, and then pull for a while. He'll be tall in no time."
A few weeks later, the doctor asked if there were any results yet. The man replied, "Well, yeah, the little bastard has confessed to fifty crimes."
I'd like to make two amendments, upon further consideration and research:
1) The UNCAT lists prohibited motives for torture. Self-defense or defense of others is not among them, so it seems at least plausible that the treaty does not apply to battle. Using weapons and such designed to cause unnecessary suffering are prohibited elsewhere.
2) The USC section regarding torture (here) adds the language "upon another person within his custody or physical control." So, if nothing else, that's how the US has implemented the treaty.
Ed: You've made it clear that you think a 2400 year-old book written by near-primitives is an accurate source of information about the behavior of homosexuals. And you wonder why many people don't trust religious true believers?
DJ, that was exactly my point, that there weren't any stated conditions. If there aren't, then no it isn't a straw man, because there is no loophole so ridiculous that a good lawyer won't use it to defend his friends and attack his enemies.
And we are, after all, talking about the UN here. Given the UN-run prostitution and slavery operations that they have called "nation building" or "emergency relief" in the past, I'm not prepared to assume that common sense will be applied to what's written.
Did you happen to read parts 3 through 5 of what he wrote? Did you notice that he gave two lines of argument, the religious and the scientific? If you ignored the scientific argument, that doesn't mean it never existed.
"DJ, that was exactly my point, that there weren't any stated conditions. If there aren't, then no it isn't a straw man, because there is no loophole so ridiculous that a good lawyer won't use it to defend his friends and attack his enemies."
I agree. I didn't know whether or not there were any limitations that simply hadn't been stated here. That there aren't any numbs the mind, but the UN does that.
I have noticed that when it comes to homosexuality, it's a common tactic of leftists to attack only religious arguments as if scientific arguments don't even exist. And just like markm did here, even when a scientific argument is laid out, they continue their attack as if it is only a religious issue and no scientific argument was made; even if no one even hints at a religious argument and only scientific arguments are made. Talk about a strawman fallacy!
markm,
First of all, the Bible is not a single book, but a collection of 66 different books and letters. The last book written is generally dated at 95 A.D., while the oldest books are thought to have been written in the late 1,400's B.C.; a span of about 1,500 years ranging from about 1,900 to 3,400 years ago. If you're gonna make a claim about how old something is, at least get it right.
Second, since when does "old" equal "always wrong"? That simply does not follow. When we take a look at the scientific evidence of the effects of homosexuality, we see that, by golly, The Bible is right about this! It is destructive.
BTW, if you're going to claim that the Bible is wrong about homosexuality just because it's old, then you also need to throw out "love your neighbor as yourself." Are you planning to do the exact opposite just because someone said this nearly 2,000 years ago?
Or how about the Code of Hammurabi? It dates from about 1790 B.C., prior to the writing of the first book of the Bible. Yet most people view it as providing a big part of the foundation for our modern concepts of law. Does that mean that we should throw out our entire system of laws and justice just because some of its fundamental concepts can be traced back to a document that's roughly 3,800 years old?
You should also look up Protagoras (the name Ken has applied to Markadelphia). He predated Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, and the New Testament in the Bible. Yet his ideas are commonly accepted by most leftists today (usually not being aware that they are). Are you willing to give up on his ideas just because they're older than the Bible's instruction to Christians about sexual sins? I suspect you won't. (I say his ideas should not be given up just because they're old, but because they're wrong.)
Face it, there is no common philosophy in existence today which cannot also be found in ancient writings. Age has absolutely nothing to do with validity.
Google is a wonderful thing. I just decided to check out the validity of this statement by Marky:
"in the past I have continued discussions that are way down the page and have not gotten any responses."
I did a search using this search string: "site:haloscan.com Markadelphia". Google showed 127 comment threads from The Smallest Minority where Marky participated. Of those, 7 weren't arguments about principles or politics. That leaves 120 debate threads.
(Note: Google returned 148 hits. 2 were for other sites. I used my browsers Find feature to figure out which ones he actually participated in.)
Out of those 127 threads where he participated, Marky got the last word in on 14 of them. Out of those 14, 1 was a statement of agreement with Kevin, 1 was a statement of agreement with Sarah on Battlestar Galactica, 2 referred to other comment threads and his blog, 1 was a correction, 1 said he would think about it, and 2 others did not make any kind of argument or assertion. That means that out of 146 threads, Markadelphia did not get a response to his final assertions only 6 times!
The dates of those times where Marky was technically correct about not getting a response are:
7/1/07
8/22/07
12/1/07
2/9/08
2/18/08
9/19/08
That makes his claim that he "has had" instances where he got in the last word exactly 5% true. That means 95% of the time, he runs away. Furthermore, it has been 9 full months since this has happened.
Marky, do you really think it's a good idea to throw out a claim which we can check you on and is 95% untrue? (Yeah, I know. Dumb question. Of course he thinks it's a good idea.)
"Marky, do you really think it's a good idea to throw out a claim which we can check you on and is 95% untrue? (Yeah, I know. Dumb question. Of course he thinks it's a good idea.)"
If I can borrow from Mark Twain:
Those who won't [insert any of: learn, think, reason, remember] have no advantage over those who can't.
Marky, do you really think it's a good idea to throw out a claim which we can check you on and is 95% untrue? (Yeah, I know. Dumb question. Of course he thinks it's a good idea.)
Actually, Ed, Mark doesn't think about how good an idea something is.
Look at the other thread where he says he "stands by" the infamous "verbatim comment". He's forgotten that he didn't know the definition, after insisting that he did, and then failing to even bother to look it up when he deigned to tell us what he thought it meant.
There's no thought, no judgement that goes into that, Ed. Mark simply cannot comprehend how to make, support, built up, and tear down an argument. ANY argument.
Mark simply doesn't consider ANYTHING. The reason he's so inane is this is how he thinks. He can't support his assertions, so he insists that he has. Why not? It's not like we'll respect him any less - remember how he wanted Kevin to censure me for calling him out on his idiocy?
To Mark, tone is more important than substance. Substance actually means almost nothing. Intent matters. Emotion matters. Facts? Logic? History? Bah.
Remember, this is the guy who claimed that he could divine people's internal thoughts and motivations based on seeing them on TV.
It's utterly hilarious that he then loses his shit when we bemoan the malpractice that is the Public Education System - when he's the single biggest proof of how badly it's failing our youth. (Not that it employs him, but that he considers himself an educated, discerning, insightful person.)
By the way, LabRat pointed me to Theodore Dalrymple. I've read a number of his articles, but haven't been systematically reading his shorter pieces.
http://www.city-journal.org/2008/eon0711td.html
The head examiner of a British school-examination board, ... recently explained to teachers why a pupil who answered the question, “Describe the room you’re in,” with “Fuck off”—an actual case, apparently—should receive a grade of 7.5 percent rather than a grade of zero. Indeed, Buckroyd went so far as to say that “it would be wicked to give it zero because it does show some very basic skills we are looking for.”
First, the candidate had spelled the two words correctly, said the chief examiner, which showed some grasp of English orthography; and second, he had strung two words together correctly, which showed some grasp of grammatical structure and an ability to convey meaning. Had the words come with an exclamation mark, moreover, the candidate should have received a grade of 11 percent, because he would have shown some grasp of punctuation.
“We’re looking for positives,” explained another examiner, who was presumably desperate to avoid provoking low self-esteem among his examinees. Buckroyd added that, after all, the candidate was “better than someone who doesn’t write anything at all.”
That's not this country, granted. But we can see the same impulses and rationalizations. “We’re looking for positives,” - much as Mark insisted I should be censured for my tone, and he should be rewarded for his. Exact same thought process. "Looking for positives". Not being right. Once you stop worrying about being right, and stop worrying about facts and proof...
So what if you make obviously false claims?
... There's a reason he's such a Obama fanatic - he's hoping to "prove" that his way of thought is totally, really BETTER to us.
Given Marky's current laughable claim that it's not unusual for him to get the last word, I thought this exchange was particularly ironic:
Markadelphia:"Hey, Kevin, don't know if you are still reading this thread but I am sorry for not answering you question. I totally forgot that I left a post here. If you are still reading, let me know and I will answer." (12/27/07)
Kevin Baker:"Yup. Still checking in from time to time. But I'm more interested in your answer to the question I asked here." (about 14 hours later)
I started to write the "Chronicles of Markadelphia" a while back, collecting all of his thoughts.
I got depressed about 2 hours in.
Your first two links are impressive, and obviously I was busy with something at that time, because I don't think I'd have let Mark's moral equivalence stand.
Conservatives forgive all the rotten shit this country does and chalk it up all up to national security, completely ignoring the fact that our actions in Iran, for example, in the 1950s and 60s are the root cause of why they despise us.
So, until our country stops behaving in the exact same way countries like Iran and Syria do and we start acting like the morally superior country we claim to be, there will always be terrorism.
Funny thing, his second sounds familiar...
Now, are you willing to accept our responsibility in all of this? Are you willing to look at the hell we have wrought? Kevin, please watch the film that I linked to above. You have to open your eyes to the way the US does business in the world. It really explains an awful lot.
The ending of the 3rd doesn't have Mark making any ludicrous claims... though he did earlier. I don't assess my students with testing. Typical that a conservative would think that they only way to measure knowledge is by a test.My students write papers, have group discussion, and work on tangible projects. That is what they get graded on, as well as classroom participation.
...
(I still remembered that thread for his stupidity there. If you guys don't mind my quoting of my own comment to him: That's what you've done, Mark. Insisted you're someone worth listening to, then when asked for specifics as to why, dithered, moved the goalposts around (When you didn't notice you were being scored upon, and the scoreboard was incrementing wildly), accused me and others of "distorting language", and distorted the everlasting shit out of the English language to try and make non-factual arguments.
Just - ex-fucking-xactly like what "testing" means.
"I don't test! Ha!"
*we all put heads in hands*. "Yes, yes you do."
"No! I don't! I grade! I give essays! No tests! HA! HA!"
Truly, your intellect is staggering.)
Lessee.. the 4th.. A Beck thread, so I tuned out early.
5th:
Hee. I have to say that you are really way off base here on the cause of our education system's woes.
...
Instead, what we have, in most schools, is a tendency to show America for what it is...warts and all. As an educator, I am sorry that you don't want to hear it but I am going to tell the truth in my classes and not warp reality to fit an outdated ideology. We don't live in Pleasantville anymore. If you make the mistake of thinking that that ideology is communism or socialism, well...then you would be believing a lie that is being propagated by those who would stand to lose the most from ANY deviation for our current system..even a return to what most Democrats want which is real capitalism, as opposed to the oligarchy we have now.
(*snicker* *giggle* And Ed, you were wondering if it bothered him to make unsubstantiated claims? :) )
And the last is Mark's usual attempt to be a deep thinker, but still peddling his "culture of fear" that somehow *we* are perpetuating.
It's an interesting list, but I'm afraid it was a waste of your time. He's now ignoring this thread, and he'll come back later and claim this was all bogus, and he "stands behind" his claims. Besides, "point proven". Verbatim.
One final thought for you before I stop watching the thread for today:
The only reason I bothered going though the Christian view of homosexuality was because Marky used it to try to pretend that it backs up his claim that conservatives "are little different than Al Qaeda". Even though the concept of supporting your arguments seems to be foreign to Marky, it's an important concept and I thought it was important to stick to it. So I went through the whole exercise to prove that I wasn't pulling stuff out of my nether regions. On the contrary, of the two reasons conservatives hold the position we do, neither position is anything like what he things they are.
If I had been trying to make a case why you should conclude that homosexuality is wrong, I would have used the scientific argument, not the Biblical one.
Remember this is what Marky was trying to equate us to. (Warning: This video is EXTREMELY graphic. Don't even bother if you have a weak stomach. I couldn't finish watching it myself. The site itself also fills the rest of the page with explicit pornagraphy.) That is was fundamentalist Islam (like Al Qaeda) calls "good".
"Now, pick one of those services and explain to me why it's better to have it administered through violence and the threat of violence (the only tool governments really have), rather than by finding a profitable way to give you what you actually want, not what you are ordered to content yourself with."
I don't even know where to start with this one. I guess I need some clarification first. Are you saying that the government is threatening you with violence on a daily basis? And are you also saying that corporations in this country "find a profitable way to give you what you actually want?" I can't answer this point until I figure out where you are coming from...
"I find it fascinating that Marky-Mark doesn't think an "Assault weapon" BAN would lead eventually to a COMPLETE (or English-equivalent) ban on firearms here"
Well, it won't. Have you ever calculated the cost of what an entire ban would be? Not to mention the political cost? I had the occasion recently to spend some time with a constitutional lawyer and I asked him what he thought about this view. After laughing a little bit, he explained to me that, essentially, people aren't going to be allowed to own a bazooka and they are never going to have the right to hand guns, rifles, and other weapons taken away. The battle, as it always is, is fought in between those extremes.
"Markadelphia: Do you honestly believe that murdering individuals, sometimes in remarkably horrific ways, is equivalent to denying the same person the privilege to raise a child not currently legally or genetically theirs?"
No...and since you don't want my explanation, stop reading.
Hirabists don't simply kill gays on sight. Of course they have done that but they also limit their rights in other ways. They are not accepted in society because of religious code just as they are not accepted by some here due to religious code. Ed essentially proved my point for me with his analysis of Christian doctrine on homosexuality which is largely the same as Muslim doctrine. The similarity I am pointing out is that folks there and folks here have essentially the same view on homosexuality. The actions they take as a result of this obviously are different (thank God!) but the belief is the same.
"And then, nothing…"
If I recall, I answered that question in another thread. I could be wrong, of course, but I'm sure my new biographer Ed will let me know:)
One final point, the comment was made above (by Ken) that I was a coward. I've been posting here for a couple of years now and have endured insult after personal attack. As Ed mentioned above, he works and doesn't always have the time to craft the large essays as he did above. I work, have a family, and also am back in school for further education. And I have to respond to everyone not just one person. So, I challenge any one of you to spend the same amount of time as the sole voice on a liberal blog. See how well you do. When you have and have defended yourselves using the same rules you place upon me AND any they place on you, then you can come talk to me about cowardice as well as some of the bullshit about my responsiveness above which, btw, is so obviously the usual tactic by the right to discredit another point of view. (Oh...whew...he can't be right about anything he says because we just "proved" that he is a liar/idiot/dope/dolt/unresponsive twat)
So until any one of you accept that challenge, these particular opinions are utterly devoid of perspective and one giant load of garbage.
" So, I challenge any one of you to spend the same amount of time as the sole voice on a liberal blog"
Irrelevant. Your arguments are what they are, and they either stand for what they or they do not. The number of people opposing it makes no difference (see Mr. Beck for reference).
"Hirabists don't simply kill gays on sight. Of course they have done that..."
I'm stopping you there. You just contradicted your first sentence. Try again, moron.
"...is so obviously the usual tactic by the right to discredit another point of view"
Those godamn meanie rightwing groupthink bastards insist I establish credibility by not running away from arguments! OH NOES!
Seriously, is your entire rebuttal to something like 20 threads I've personally followed where you ran away and refused to back up your bullshit claims that you're the "sole" liberal and dissenting view on here?
Of course they have done that but they also limit their rights in other ways.
Remember when LabRat went off on you for claiming that jobs and banks "enslaved" people?
Yeah. What you said was exactly that stupid. AGAIN.
Oh, so they KILL THEM, but they also won't let them adopt, marry, or eat ice cream *FROTH* IT"S THE EXACT SAME THING *FROTH FROTH*.
And thus you refute yourself, your ignorance, and your purported ability to think.
I've been posting here for a couple of years now and have endured insult after personal attack.
Why, Mark? Do you think it could have anything to do with your consistent lying, consistent insults, libels, redefining words, and utter assinity for 2 years?
No? Oh, these were just PERSONAL attacks and had nothing to do with your track record of intellectual, moral, and ethical dishonesty?
Like claiming that you "don't do logical fallacies"... then proceeding them apace. Just as you did. Again.
Most of what you consider "personal insult" is your inability to admit that you're wrong.
When you have and have defended yourselves using the same rules you place upon me
We use the same rules, you moron. We've explained that to you many times. Everything I post is with the same "rules" that I "place upon you".
I'm honest. And consistent. Run away - but it's obvious that you know you've fucked up bigtime. Again.
But you owe Sarah, and Ed (and many others) an apology.
Grow a set, and apologize to them for libeling them. Or run away, and yet again, find yourself with more evidence that you're an dishonest, slandering, personal-attacking idiot.
Which is well-proven.
The only thing here that's unproven is the things you postulate, you propose, and you say.
"Are you saying that the government is threatening you with violence on a daily basis?"
Mark, what on earth do you think will happen if you break any law and the authorities find out?
1) Police will come to arrest you.
2) If you do not cooperate, they will warn you (if you're lucky).
3) If you continue to resist, they will apply force to you, starting with dragging you away.
4) If you resist 3 with force of your own, they will apply progressively deadlier force until you comply or are dead (mooting the issue).
Most people don't need threats to obey most laws. If you are inclined to break a given law, however, then you are indeed under continuous threat of government violence.
"Remember when LabRat went off on you for claiming that jobs and banks 'enslaved' people?"
That one amused me. I'm guessing Mark is one of those people who, provided he ever had a minimum wage job (Taco Bell, for example), had a crappy attitude and talked about how he was a "wage slave" and his boss was "like, a total slave-driver."
It would explain his position in the educational system and defense of it as somehow being anything other than a failure.
"Are you saying that the government is threatening you with violence on a daily basis?"
Yes, they do implicitly at all times. Try disobeying the law on a daily basis, significantly enough to be noticed, and see how long it takes before the gubmint threatens you explicitly with violence. Then keep on and see how long it takes before the gubmint makes good on that explicit threat.
C'mon, Hollywood boy, you've seen it in the MOOVEES how many times?
"Hirabists don't simply kill gays on sight. Of course they have done that ..."
Goddamn, boy, if the self-contradiction in these adjacent sentences isn't YOU in a (ahem) nutshell.
"So, I challenge any one of you to spend the same amount of time as the sole voice on a liberal blog."
A number of us spend as much time (or more) hammering you here as you spend serving up these hanging curve balls. What is relevant is whether or not you show that your assertions are in accord with observable, demonstrable facts, and whether or not your assertions are logically and rationally reasoned therefrom. What is not relevant is where you do it or how many people oppose you. It's about getting it right, not about measuring the audience.
"See how well you do."
We see how well we do, and we do damned well.
You, on the other hand, have been demonstrated to be wrong (i.e. contrary to demonstrated facts) countless times, you have been caught lying over and over and over again, and you have been shown to have no ability to think critically or rationally.
"When you have and have defended yourselves using the same rules you place upon me ..."
We do, liar boy, we do. The difference between you and (most of) the rest of us is that we follow those same rules we try to get you to follow, but you don't follow them, indeed you show astonishingly little evidence of understanding them.
I keep telling you: you ain't fooling anyone, but your fragile little ego won't let you stop trying.
"And are you also saying that corporations in this country "find a profitable way to give you what you actually want?"
Sigh ...
It's really, really simple, teacher boy.
You ready?
Here it comes ...
Corporations don't "give you what you actually want". Corporations sell you what you actually want.
Y'see, you don't buy what a corporation sells unless you want what the corporation sells. Why? Because no one forces you to buy what the corporation sells. You do so of your own free will.
So, if a corporation can't find a way to sell you what you want, then you won't buy. If it can't find a way to do so profitably, then it doesn't make a profit and either goes out of business or reorganizes under the bankruptcy laws.
Look up the ancient history of General Motors and Chrysler. They made money hand over fist by profitably selling what their customers wanted to buy. They didn't give their customers anything; they sold their customers automobiles.
Now look up the very recent history of General Motors and Chrysler. They filed for reorganization under the bankruptcy laws because they couldn't find a way to profitably sell what customers wanted to buy. Some customers simply didn't buy, some customers bought competitor's products, and neither GM nor Chrysler made a profit, on average, on what their customers did buy.
"I can't answer this point until I figure out where you are coming from..."
No, you are simply dodging the question, as usual. Y'see, that it matters where he's "coming from" is a non sequitur because how the economy works is not determined by what he, or you, think about it.
GOF sez Did you happen to read parts 3 through 5 of what he wrote? Did you notice that he gave two lines of argument, the religious and the scientific? If you ignored the scientific argument, that doesn't mean it never existed.
That stuff was about as scientific as something Markadaffia would link to.
Ed's best argument is working from the book of primitive superstition. The pseudo-science argument is on par with creationism. As for the social science argument(s), that is what in SCotUS circles is called a Brandeis brief - social science hocus-pocus instead of legal reasoning.
Reading that made me wonder, do lefties actually believe in free will? Or do they think humans are just mindless automatons that follow whatever is programmed into them? I think they must all be disciples of Skinner, and thus they think that anyone who disagrees with them is therefore not functioning properly (and needs to be 'corrected').
At least right-wing religious people believe this (or sin anyways) is estrangement from God, which is less annoying than not being in tune with the hive-mind.
"So, I challenge any one of you to spend the same amount of time as the sole voice on a liberal blog."
Well, I spent eight months posting at DemocraticUnderground before they kicked me off for something I wrote somewhere else.
You see, Markadelphia, the difference is you're still allowed to post here, no matter how inane your blatherings are - case in point:
"Hirabists don't simply kill gays on sight. Of course they have done that ..."
Your erstwhile brothers and sisters of the Left tend to exercise Reasoned Discourse™ and ban those who disagree with them, especially if those opponents use logic, reason and evidence in their arguments.
"Markadelphia: Do you honestly believe that murdering individuals, sometimes in remarkably horrific ways, is equivalent to denying the same person the privilege to raise a child not currently legally or genetically theirs?"
No...and since you don't want my explanation, stop reading.
Hirabists don't simply kill gays on sight. Of course they have done that...
*blinks*
*blinksblinks*
I wonder if you will ever truly comprehend how much of an idiotic ass you just made of yourself with the above comment. You lied, you contradicted yourself, and you proved to the world that you have absolutely no idea of what you are arguing, all in the space of two lines. I would say that I was impressed, except that you are supposedly responsible for the education of growing children, and the knowledge someone as irrational and incoherent as you in such a position disturbs me greatly.
Also, allow me to echo Kevin's comments concerning posting on liberal weblogs... I have tried to do so, repeatedly, in the past, and every time I brought to bear logic, evidence, statistics, reason, rational thought, or other such argumentative tactics, I was banned very shortly thereafter. Sure, if you want to talk about how you feel, or your emotional response to certain events, then lefty weblogs are the place to be. But if you want to get down into the nuts-and-bolts of facts, reality, and truth... the lefties do not want that on their weblogs.
When you have and have defended yourselves using the same rules you place upon me
Quick! Describe those rules!
And contrast those with what different rules we operate under!
...endured insult after personal attack.
Guilty on this account.
And I think I have said this before, stop sniveling. No one is forcing you to comment here, and no one is making you write the most inane and constantly free from logical thought comments here.
If you can't play with the big boys, and extremely sharp ladies, go home.
Take a look at how many 'liberal' blogs ban people who disagree w/ their echo chamber. Democratic Underground and Huffington post are the height of censorship.
No...and since you don't want my explanation, stop reading.
Hirabists don't simply kill gays on sight. Of course they have done that but they also limit their rights in other ways. They are not accepted in society because of religious code just as they are not accepted by some here due to religious code. Ed essentially proved my point for me with his analysis of Christian doctrine on homosexuality which is largely the same as Muslim doctrine. The similarity I am pointing out is that folks there and folks here have essentially the same view on homosexuality. The actions they take as a result of this obviously are different (thank God!) but the belief is the same. -Markedelphia, 06.21.09 - 3:47 pm
You realize that you in no way proved your point with that post, don't you?
All you really just did was prove (well, not really, more like just merely state, since you didn't back it up with passages from the Koran) that Muslim and Christian orthodoxy is similar in regards to homosexuals.
Ok, so what?
Unless your point is that all Muslims are members of Al Queda. Because your original point was that some people who post on this blog have a similar view of homosexuals as Al Queda.
Here, I'll even quote your words for you for reference:
Alright then. Compare Al Qaeda's view on homosexuals and a recent post by Sarah in which she stated that homosexuals should not be allowed to marry or adopt children. Compare Al Qaeda's views on the sinfullness of homosexuality to a debate a while back regarding the sinfullness of homsexuality, according to the Bible, between Ed and myself. - Markedelphia, 06.19.09 - 1:20 pm
Now, I don't have my PC handbook with me, but I'm pretty sure that equating all Muslims with terrorist organization is a big no-no.
Actually, as non-PC as I am, I don't believe that's right myself.
So the question becomes this: Do you believe that Al Queda's beliefs reflect those of all Muslims, or are you simply so inept you can't build an argument without making yourself look like an ignorant bigot?
Do you believe that Al Queda's beliefs reflect those of all Muslims, or are you simply so inept you can't build an argument without making yourself look like an ignorant bigot?
"And are you also saying that corporations in this country "find a profitable way to give you what you actually want?"
I was in Borders bookstore this afternoon.
Now, being someone who is not "into" iPods and the like, I noticed that Borders' had mighty slim pickings on CD's. Where before their many CD racks were full of everything one might want to buy, now about 90% of the racks were empty.
So, I asked the general manager (who handled my purchase), with my tongue only partly in my cheek, if CD's were becoming obsolete, given their shelves were empty. The gist of her response, which developed over a surprisingly long conversation (there were no other customers to wait on) was as follows, paraphrased (but not quoted) by me into the form of a comprehensive statement (meaning, teacher boy, that she did NOT say this verbatim):
"No, CD's are still a real product. Borders Corporate Headquarters has analyzed our CD sales, both overall and on a store-by-store basis, and decided not to stock them as completely as we have been. Here, we found individual CD's that have been sitting on the shelf as long as four years without selling. We don't make money off what doesn't sell. So, tonight, we're rearranging that section of the store. We'll stock new release CD's and those that have sold well. We can still order anything you want to buy."
A lesson in market-driven economics, ain't it? This is a corporation that is finding a profitable way to sell you want you actually want. It measures what you actually want by what you actually buy and what you actually don't buy, "you" being the customer.
So, while you're "back in school for further education" [snort] (Wait, what? There is something you don't know, is there?) [/snort], try Remedial Economics for Kindergarten. It'll open a whole new world for you.
It certainly is relevant. Adam, go spend two years on a liberal blog as the sole voice of dissent. Then you can maybe have a leg to stand on. Until then, your point regarding my responsiveness is laughable.
"is your entire rebuttal to something like 20 threads I've personally followed where you ran away and refused to back up your bullshit claims that you're the "sole" liberal and dissenting view on here?"
Well, if you were under the same rules I was, I would call you on not answering ALL of my questions and responding to EVERYTHING that I wrote. My rebuttal would consist of the 8 jillion words I have written on this blog.
"claiming that jobs and banks "enslaved" people?"
They do. As I recall, Lab got pretty pissed at that unfortunate truth. I probably hit a little close to home on that one and for that, I apologize.
"Most of what you consider "personal insult" is your inability to admit that you're wrong."
"We use the same rules, you moron."
Wow. Talk about being caught with their hand in the cookie jar:)
"But you owe Sarah, and Ed (and many others) an apology."
Until they pull their head out of a warped interpretation of a document written by (what was it called here again)..savages?, no apology regarding the similarity between Al Qaeda's views on homosexuals and their views on homosexuals will be forthcoming. I have been lectured on here many times about individual rights. We have two cultures that have the same view that homosexuals are should not have certain rights.
As far as others go, I'm waiting on a response to the other examples I gave above regarding torture and Yosemite's comment. No takers?
"then you are indeed under continuous threat of government violence."
This is a good point. First of all, I'm not worried about the government. Second, I agree with most of the laws. Most of you do not. I marvel at the modern day conservative...and I know many...who are greatly angered about laws mainly because they don't agree with them. Therefore, they feel "slighted"...dare I say it? They feel like the are victims. And why? Because they can't be assholes AND enjoy the comforts of American culture at the same time.
"What is relevant is whether or not you show that your assertions are in accord with observable, demonstrable facts"
Show me a liberal who does. Every liberal is a liar/moron/ignorant/useful idiot and if they aren't, you just pretend they are. In fact, that's the central problem I have with modern day conservatives. If they don't like what is happening, they just...make up a bunch of shit and then pretend that it is real and comment on it. Ex: Barack Obama is a socialist. As Maher said, he's not even a liberal. In fact, neither am I!
"We see how well we do, and we do damned well."
Again, you can't say you "do well" until you get out there and argue your point with 20 people who are liberal. Put your money where you mouth is and show me the links. 2 years, dude, and then we'll see how well you do. I KNOW that there are people out there that would hand your ass to you far better than I can.
"I spent eight months posting at DemocraticUnderground"
That doesn't surprise me. They kicked me off of there too back when it first started because of my views on Israel and Pakistan. Oh, and there was a porn thing too that I did very very poorly on. Yeah, I'm really broken up about that one....NOT!!! But this would be an example of why I have respect for you, Kevin. And why you are probably right on some of the bullshit you call me on.
"If you can't play with the big boys..."
Huh? I think I've proved that I can do that. How many years now? This comment makes no sense.
"Do you believe that Al Queda's beliefs reflect those of all Muslims, or are you simply so inept you can't build an argument without making yourself look like an ignorant bigot?"
No, but my friend Eric (evangelical minister) does. Recall he said that only "true" Muslims are followers of Al Qaeda and bin Laden. That makes no sense to me because virtually all the Muslims I know and many around the world hate bin Laden and think he is warped. In fact, many think hirabis have perverted the Koran just as many right wing Christians have perverted the Bible. They choose quotes out of context to fit their own individual beliefs.
In other words, they pretend something is true and then proceed as if it is fact. It's no wonder that it carries over to their politics as well. I am speaking of both Al Qaeda and some on the right (thankfully not all)
I would call you on not answering ALL of my questions and responding to EVERYTHING that I wrote. My rebuttal would consist of the 8 jillion words I have written on this blog.
Even the ones that contradict yourself? The ones where you lie?
Mark, your 8 jillion words indict you as utterly specious and a fool.
Adam, go spend two years on a liberal blog as the sole voice of dissent
Like that. I've dealt with it in the past, and Kevin and others told you that they've TRIED.. Instead of dealing with that, instead of rebutting that, you just repeat what you said before. Congratulating Kevin doesn't take away his point, that Liberal blogs don't allow the sort of dissent you're talking about, like...
We have two cultures that have the same view that homosexuals are should not have certain rights.
NO.
You LYING SUMBITCH.
That is NOT THE SAME THING AT ALL.
First: you've not proven that it's a "right".
Second, you've not proven that anybody here wants to deny anybody any rights.
You've made an idiotic claim, and now you're being a lying, obtuse, asshole.
Third, ONE OF THOSE GROUPS KILLS ALL THE HOMOSEXUALS THEY GET THEIR HANDS ON. One debates if they should adopt kids, if that's in the best interest.
Unix-Jedi: claiming that jobs and banks "enslaved" people?"
They do. As I recall, Lab got pretty pissed at that unfortunate truth. I probably hit a little close to home on that one and for that, I apologize.
She got pissed for the same reason I'm pissed - there's a massive difference between ENSLAVEMENT, selling people, beating, killing, deciding when and what they can eat, when they can breed, selling their kids, and you wandering into the bank and saying "Hey, I'd like to get a job, and then I'd like to buy a house, will you hand me 10 years salary up front?"
And you want to know why you get "personal attacks"?
After 2 years here, not only have you not learned, but you've regressed. You've gotten DUMBER as you tell us that the educational system isn't filled with hacks and idiots.
Rebuttal? What more is there to say about your vapidity than that you equate slavery with employment, and that you think that there's no difference between *having a debate* and disagreeing with your view, and with KILLING those people on SIGHT.
2 years? Meaningless. Doesn't matter. Like Sisyphus, all you do is push the rock up , and then it goes to the exact same place. If you're wrong - so absolutely wrong I DARE you to tell a relative of a murder victim that it's exactly the same as that vote.
You owe us another apology now. Another for screaming that we're incapable of judging the educational system.
Why is Mark so strident about education? Let's think about equivocation for a minute, using "Mark's rules" (Funny thing, he bitches about "different rules", but he's the one who can't stay consistent with "primary source", sources, or even which is more, 22 or 15.)
What does "Taliban" mean?
"Students". They're STUDENTS caught by a teacher.
Which means that, using Mark's equivalence, that Mark is identical to Mullah Omar.
They teach a worldview that's contrary to the reality. They believe that their belief and narrative can and will FORCE reality to follow. They insist on dogmatic devotion to "facts" - which are not negotiable, and anyone who tries to argue them is evil!
Really makes a lot of sense, if you think about it. Sorry about that, Mullahdelphia.
It's been explained to you time and again, teacher boy. Now clear the air. List, right here, the "rules" you claim we want you to follow and the "rules" that we follow. Be very goddamned specific. Write them out, in gruesome detail. Save the bullshit (we've got more than enough from you) and spell it out.
Hah. I crack me up. You can't do it, can you?
"claiming that jobs and banks "enslaved" people?"
"They do. As I recall, Lab got pretty pissed at that unfortunate truth. I probably hit a little close to home on that one and for that, I apologize."
Damn. I'm getting more popcorn, and I still don't like popcorn.
Me:"What is relevant is whether or not you show that your assertions are in accord with observable, demonstrable facts"
Markayou'vegottabekiddingme: "Show me a liberal who does."
This admission of yours is the key to your stupidity. You have admitted, via a cliché, to being afflicted with precisely what we complain about liberals in general and about you in particular.
Once again, I'll spell it out: Reality is what it is regardless of what you, or anyone else, thinks about it. So, if what you think about reality doesn't square with the relevant observable, demonstrable facts thereof, then what you think about reality is wrong. Further, the truth of this assertion is self-evident.
But you cannot accept that, and you revel in it.
"As Maher said, he's not even a liberal. In fact, neither am I!"
Me:""We see how well we do, and we do damned well."
Markajackass:"Again, you can't say you "do well" until you get out there and argue your point with 20 people who are liberal."
Yet again, you engage in your usual jumping to conclusions, wherein you jump to the conclusion that I haven't argued my point with 20 people who are liberal. So, if I don't do it here, where you can read it, then it didn't happen? Goddamn, you pathetic fool, are you really that dense?
"Put your money where you mouth is and show me the links."
How do I link to a conversation I had in person, face-to-face, with a fool like you? Now, go ahead, tell me "that doesn't count." C'mon, fool, we're waiting.
"2 years, dude, and then we'll see how well you do."
I've been at it since before you were born, little boy, long before the internet existed. We see how I do when I do it here. Hate it, don't you?
"I KNOW that there are people out there that would hand your ass to you far better than I can."
Dude, damned nearly anyone can argue better than you can. "I've known sheep that could outwit you!" -- Wanda.
"And why you are probably right on some of the bullshit you call me on."
Probably? You really can't figure out what?
"If you can't play with the big boys..."
"Huh? I think I've proved that I can do that. How many years now? This comment makes no sense."
No, you've proved just the opposite, over and over and over again. But your bloated, eggshell-thin ego won't let you admit it.
They do. As I recall, Lab got pretty pissed at that unfortunate truth. I probably hit a little close to home on that one and for that, I apologize.
You're probably going to just wave this around as more evidence that all conservatives can do is personally attack, but you'll do that anyway even if all you had for evidence was a Speak-n-Spell once owned by William F. Buckley, so screw it.
FUCK you for this statement. Fuck you right in the goddamn ear.
I was NOT angry because you got close to home. Not even close. You haven't got the slightest idea where home is and I'd more or less come to that conclusion before we had that go-around, but that is NOT what changed or why I stopped bothering to engage with you at all except for drive-by mocking.
I was furious with you because you revealed not that you are intellectually bankrupt, which everyone knew and I don't really care that much about, but that you are completely morally bankrupt despite all your pious posturing.
If you can sit there and compare the experience of having the bank buy you a house and expecting you to pay back the cost with interest to SLAVERY then you have absolutely no moral sense at all. None.
If you can read about innocent people being kidnapped, tortured, treated like an unusually renewable supply of livestock, sold off with no regard for where their family members might be, and then MAYBE at the end of their lives MAYBE some particularly tender-hearted soul might grant them the right to live like the poorest of the freeborn without having to answer whatever whim the people that bought that person...
...And then you can fucking turn around and think "I have a job I have to show up to in order for them to keep paying me money and I have to pay the bank back for my house, I guess that's kind of like being a slave, I'll make that argument"....
Then you are either ass-fuck-ignorant, as in never read anything else about slavery other than "a person owning another person", which you as a certified teacher of history cannot claim, or you have a black fucking hole where your sense of right and wrong should be. That you would dare to try and shore up your weak-tea argument against "financial obligations I have to fulfill or else there could be financial consequences" by trying to borrow some of the horror of that practice, that word, demonstrated that to me more clearly than anything else, and THAT is why I will not engage with you anymore.
UJ and DJ still bother because it's useful for the viewing audience at home to see the record set straight. For that reason I'm doing this now.
I don't have nearly the righteous rage that LabRat does here since reading her comment was rather cathartic. I would like to respond to this tidbit (only this one, since I can't make any sense out of the rest of the paragraph):
"I agree with most of the laws."
Most. Therefore, not all. That puts you in the same boat as the rest of us; you obey those other laws at least in part because of the threat of force by the government. Thank you for proving my point.
Which means that, using Mark's equivalence, that Mark is identical to Mullah Omar.
Why stop with one person? He didn't.
Al Qaeda wants an independent Palestinian state. So do liberals.
Al Qaeda wants U.S. troops to leave Iraq. So do liberals. In fact, both warned of grave consequences, including further terrorist attacks, should the invasion even take place.
Several liberals stood up and defended the motivation behind the September 11th attacks. I wonder if Al Qaeda agrees with 'em.
This from one of Mark's oft-quoted darlings, Michael Moore: "They are the REVOLUTION, The Minutemen, and their numbers will grow - and they will win."
Weird how a man's talent for postmodern deconstructionist horseshit (which unlike liberals OR Al Qaeda I can admit to my fun-with-equivocation being) gets all fuzzy when it's time to point the lens to the left.
Does that mean that in your opinion no one should have to work in order to have a place to live and food to eat, unless they feel like it?
Are you suggesting that if there is something you can't afford at the moment, someone else should be required to cover that expense for you, and you shouldn't have to pay them back unless you feel like it? Or are you only suggesting that the person/people whose money you used should not make a profit?
"It certainly is relevant. Adam, go spend two years on a liberal blog as the sole voice of dissent. Then you can maybe have a leg to stand on."
As has been said before, it's cute that you assume this is our only venue of argument with idiots like you.
It is irrelevant. Apparently I need to explain why.
You see, logic, facts, and evidence are not impacted by the numbers of dissenting opinions. Just as the plural of anecdote is not evidence, the strength or weakness of an argument is not determined by the number of arguments against it.
The ONLY thing you can say is that you have more arguments to deal with. The funny thing is, though, most of these are against your own.
So what happens is this:
1) You say something stupid. Sometimes a little stupid, sometimes so mindfuckingly dumb that I am amazed you don't shit in your socks while brushing your teeth.
2) Your statements and arguments, being extremely weak and lacking ANY substance of evidence (one link to a blog post you clearly haven't read isn't evidence, child), are torn apart.
3) Evidence, data, facts, and arguments are placed in counterpoint to yours by people who know their shit, who are fair as all hell (and if you don't believe this, ask yourself why the only ban you've probably ever witnessed on here was Beck's [which appears to have been temporary anyway]). Actually, fuck the parentheses - ask yourself why the hell people even put up with your blathering bullshit.
4) You fail to address those arguments, ignore them, or disappear.
5) Rinse. Repeat, and you still won't get that godamn grease out of your head that is your brain.
Harrington had seen the poor as victims because they could find no work; his more radical allies, especially a group associated with Columbia University's social-work school, argued that compelling the demoralized inner-city poor to work or take part in training that would fit them for work, instead of giving them unconditional welfare, was itself victimization. Richard A. Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, for example, argued that America's poverty programs—"self-righteously oriented toward getting people off welfare" and making them independent—were violating the civil rights of the poor. Journalist Richard Elman claimed that "vindictive" America was "humiliating" welfare recipients by forcing them to seek entry-level work as taxi drivers, restaurant employees, and factory laborers, instead of giving them a guaranteed minimum income.
And, even more directly to the point:
Like communists who claim that communism didn't fail but instead was never really tried, Barbara Ehrenreich made her public debut with an attempt to brush aside the War on Poverty's obviously catastrophic results. The 46-year-old daughter of a Montana copper miner-turned-business executive, she joined Cloward and Piven to co-author a 1987 polemic, The Mean Season: The Attack on the Welfare State. The War on Poverty had failed so far, the book claimed, not because of its flawed premises but because the government hadn't done enough to redistribute the nation's wealth. America needed an even bigger War on Poverty that would turn the country into a European-style social welfare state. Pooh-poohing the work ethic and the dignity of labor, the authors derided calls for welfare reform that would require recipients to work, because that would be mortifying to the poor. "There is nothing ennobling about being forced to please an employer to feed one's children," the authors wrote, forgetting that virtually every worker and business owner must please someone, whether boss or customer, to earn a living. Welfare's true purpose, the book declared, should be to "permit certain groups to opt out of work."
Well now to be fair, I don't think Mark believes nobody should have to work unless they feel like it.
I think I can safely hypothesize that he thinks straight white male Christian conservatives should have to work whether they like it or not. Extending that assumption to anyone else is where the logic gets fuzzy.
"The War on Poverty had failed so far, the book claimed, not because of its flawed premises but because the government hadn't done enough to redistribute the nation's wealth. America needed an even bigger War on Poverty…"
Well, well, well, "The ideology can't be wrong, so do it again, only harder" in just about so many words.
Nice spadework, DJ, and what you unearthed is highly illustrative.
Cause and effect in that comment, to the extent that they pertain at all, are entirely and neatly reversed. The world of Star Trek did not eliminate poverty by eliminating money, they eliminated scarcity, which eliminated poverty, which eliminated money by rendering a medium of exchange moot.
If we have access to effectively limitless energy too cheap to meter (Mr. Fusion, more or less), and we can each replicate whatever we need or want in the nifty slot in the hallway next to the linen closet, we wouldn't need to engage in exchange at all, unless one or both of us had some sort of utility for the other's handicraft (I assume that's how Pop Sisko's restaurant on Earth in Deep Space Nine attracted clientele).
Okay, all of the above is sort of in jest. The real way the world of Star Trek abolished poverty is that Gene Roddenberry said, "Poverty and money are abolished. So let it be written -- so let it be done!"
Quod erat demonstrandum. Even then, it required bucketloads of handwaving, such as the brisk market in "replicator rations" (huh?) in Voyager.
Talk about a Whiskey Tango Foxtrot moment. You have replicators, which are generally understood to be able to make pretty much anything they can hold from anything else. This presumably would include whatever spare parts needed to keep the replicators running. There's plenty of basic matter in the Delta Quadrant that isn't fundamentally different from anything else in the known galaxy, either. So how in Thee Merry Hell do you get replicator rations? Hell, you could make dilithium crystals and quantum torpedoes in job lots...except that doing so would violate the Law of Conservation of Dramatic Tension.
I'm going to diverge on a tangent here for a bit. This comment is directed specifically toward you, Markadelphia, and I apologize for the length of it. Kindly bear with me.
Many years ago, I read Eisenhower's Crusade in Europe, his account, from his perspective, of the Second World War in Europe. I read it so long ago (easily 30 years or more) that I don't remember when it was.
Being a student of that war (my father fought in it), one paragraph in particular has stuck with me all these years, and I think it is relevant at this point. For your benefit, I have looked it up once again. For it to be understandable without reading the book, a bit of context is necessary, so I'll provide it.
When the Allies invaded the continent in Normandy, General Eisenhower was in overall command as Supreme Commander Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF). British General Montgomery was the ground commander, and under him, US General Bradley was in command of the US forces. In July, Allied forces had been built up such that two Army Groups were present: the US 12th Army Group under Bradley and the British 21st Army Group under Montgomery. Thus, Montgomery was no longer the overall ground commander, and from then on, all Army Group commanders reported directly to Eisenhower.
Montgomery inwardly seethed at this. From then on, clear up until the spring of 1945, he pushed repeatedly, as did the British Imperial General Staff, for the appointment of an overall ground commander between Eisenhower and the Army Group Commanders. He envisioned himself as that ground commander. Eisenhower always refused.
Something developed from this story, and I'll let Eisenhower tell it in his own words, with the time being the middle of March, as the Allied Forces prepared to clean the German forces out west of the Rhine:
-----
"Information concerning all these things was gathered by our Intelligence services, which daily presented to me their calculations and conclusions. These emphasised the mounting difficulties of the German war machine and encouraged me and all my associates to believe that one more great campaign, aggressively conducted on a broad front, would give the death blow to Hitler Germany.
"I found, among some of the higher military officials of Britain, a considerable and, to me, surprising opposition to my plan.
"The relationship maintained by the American Chiefs of Staff with their commanders in the field differed markedly from that which existed between similar echelons in the British service. The American doctrine has always been to assign a theater commander a mission, to provide him with a definite amount of force, and then to interfere as little as possible in the execution of his plans."
[...]
"When I completed my final plan in January 1945 my friend [British] Field Marshall Brooke informally but very earnestly presented serious objections. His questions were directed against what he called the planned dispersion of our forces. He maintained that we would never have enough strength to mount more than one full blooded attack across the Rhine."
-----
At this point, is is important to realize that such was the British thinking all along, particularly on the part of Montgomery. He had pleaded since early September, 1944, to have all Allied resources funneled to him such that, at a single stroke, he could cross the Rhine, advance to Berlin, and end the war. It was folly, an exercise in the pursuit of glory and driven by a full-bloated ego. Montgomery was superbly competent at commanding an army and at executing the planned, set-piece battle, but a surgical thrust was Patton's style, not his. He was allowed to try via Operation Market-Garden, and he failed miserably.
Now, to continue with Eisenhower's narrative:
-----
"Dispersion is one of the greatest crimes in warfare, but as with all other generalities the proper application of the truth is far more important than mere knowledge of its existence."
[...]
"I laboriously explained to Field Marshall Brooke that, far from dispersing effort, I was conducting the campaign so that when we were ready to initiate the final invasion of Germany on the other side of the Rhine we could bring such a concerted and tremendous power against him that his collapse would quickly follow. The decisive advantage in gaining the Rhine River along its length was to increase drastically the proportion of the Allied forces that could be used offensively."
[...]
"To this I retorted [to Brooke], 'I have not devised any plan on the basis of what individual or what nation gets the glory, for I must tell you in my opinion there is no glory in battle worth the blood it costs.'
"At the same time there was again suggested to me the establishment of an over-all "ground commander" to operate directly under SHAEF. I repudiated this suggestion, as I always had before."
-----
The Allied Army Groups advanced according to Eisenhower's plans and stood on the left bank of the Rhine, ready for the final campaign. It is the content of the following paragraph that has stuck with me all these years:
-----
"Field Marshall Brooke's arguments in the matter were found in conviction. There was no petty basis for his great concern. This was proved by the fact that only a few weeks later, when the destruction of the German armies west of the Rhine had been accomplished and he stood with me on the banks of the river to witness the crossing by the [US] Ninth Army and the [British] Twenty-first Army Group, he turned to me and said: "Thank God, Ike, you stuck by your plan. You were completely right and I am sorry if my fear of dispersed effort added to your burdens. The German is now licked. It is merely a question of when he chooses to quit. Thank God you stuck by your guns."
-----
This, ladies and gents, is called integrity.
And Markadelphia, you have none. You have no concept of what it is.
Ewkay.... so the idea is that any world in which good intentions and political correctness fail to trump basic physics and human nature is fundamentally unfair?
Okay, I'll buy that one.
I will not buy the idea that it is the fault of any human or group of humans, because I don't buy that humans can change it.
I guess that "I don't buy that humans can change it, so we have to find a way to live with it" attitude is what makes conservatives evil.
I guess that "I don't buy that humans can change it, so we have to find a way to live with it" attitude is what makes conservatives evil.
If you haven't read it, I strongly recommend Thomas Sowell's A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggle. Sowell posits two main streams of ideology - the "Constrained" and the "Unconstrained." The "Constrained" ideology is based on the idea that human nature is pretty much fixed, thus something has to be done to limit the accumulation of power by governments. In the Unconstrained vision, humans are perfectable, and restraints on the accumulation of power prevent the acquisition of human perfection.
MANY thanks for the reading recommendation! That's actually a subject I'd been thinking about and thought I'd noticed in the liberals I'd talked to, especially in the wake of Obama's inauguration. Was just having a hard time solidifying all the ideas in my head... good to know there's some prior writing out there.
YI was reading Thomas Paine's The Rights of Man last night, and I came across a passage that made Markadelphia's behavior much more clear:
"When a man in a wrong cause attempts to steer his course by anything other than some polar truth or principle, he is sure to be lost. It is beyond the compass of his capacity to keep all the parts of an argument together, and make them unite in one issue, by any other means than having this guide always in view. Neither memory nor invention will supply the want of it. The former fails him, and the latter betrays him."
Mark's arguments, you see, don't really have much of a unifying principle. Like many progressives, he seems to have a scattershot of causes, none of them really unified except by the feel-good emotion they elicit from him. Because their only unifying characteristic is emotion, it is impossible for him to argue from facts or logic, as these lie outside of emotion. This causes his arguments to be jumbled, self contradictory and outrageously muddled together. Simply put, he can not argue from reason because his arguments don't begin from reason.
Hmmm... "human nature is perfectable"... so does that mean all humans who are okay with working for a living can be trained to like supporting freeloaders? Or does it mean that all humans can be trained to refuse to freeload?
That's the problem with collectivism, it only works at all when it works 100%. It only takes one person who refuses to be "perfected" to ruin things. Bill Ayers expected to kill 25 million because he assumed that many would 'refuse to be perfected'.
Regolith, there is something of a unifying principle behind his, um, statements. It is this: Do Not Admit Significant Error.
What is astounding is that he is quite willing to be endlessly shown to be wrong, significantly and seriously so, via logical arguments and reasoning from demonstrable, verifiable facts, but he cannot actually admit, even to himself, either the correctness of what he is shown or the wrongness of his own statements. Apparently, it matters not to him what anyone else thinks of him, it matters only what he thinks of himself. This is actually consistent with the leftist teacher's creed, that self-esteem trumps all, and an utter fool should feel fine about being an utter fool. Thus he monotonically walks a path he paves with ever more idiotic statements, without regard for the observable fact that the history of his own statements reveals his foolishness to all. This doesn't work if the readers have memory, and we do.
From this comes a warning: Never underestimate the power of self-delusion.
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My inner cynic is on the same page. We'll see what happens in 2010. I am worried about health care reform right now. Where is the anger and resistance that we the people were showing during debate on the stimulus bill.
Yeah, the anger and resistance stopped that bill dead....wait. Oh, never mind.
Ahh...back from vacation. A nice rest. Since one of the labels here is "politics" and we have a discussion of governmental "power" I thought it might be fun to take a look at this simple fact
http://correspondents.theatlantic.com/conor_clarke/2009/06/what_socialism_looks_like.php
Anyone care to...perhaps....retract cries of statism and socialism?
And how exactly does an entity (the government) have more power (at 82 billion) than corporations do (at 39 trillion). As Greenspan said in House of Cards, "You can't stop the free market"...unless, of course, it's in fantasy land with a hyper over exaggerated villain:)
Oh, and check out the link in the middle of the post about Governor Palin.
I will be available to clean up any exploded brain matter...
>>And how exactly does an entity (the government) have more power (at 82 billion) than corporations do (at 39 trillion).
Corporations don't get to take 1/3 of your stuff or chase you with guns and throw you into jail if you refuse to pony up.
That's how.
So, Mark. There are threads waiting for you. Something like twenty that I can point to off the top of my head.
Are you going to give us a demonstration of responsible intellectual honesty, or ...wait. This is you. Nevermind.
Now where'd that unicorn go..
Mark: How much dog shit are you willing to tolerate in your ice cream?
Would a teaspoon spoil an entire 10 gallon drum for you, if you knew it was in there?
The Federal Government, by upending 230 years of bankruptcy tradition, has just flipped the entire investment market on its head.
If investments that you thought were secured in a certain way are now subject to political favoritism, it changes the entire landscape for investment in the future. You think the economy is sluggish now? Just wait until no one can trust signed contracts anymore.
"That's how."
And he's been told this many times before, right here in Kevin's parlor.
Back from vacation, same old shit, different day. Is anyone surprised?
Okay, just have to call attention to this gem in the comments from Mark's link:
"Why do you equate Socialism with state ownership of the means of production?
Mark's not entirely wrong. Isn't the selection of a favored firm by the government better known as fascism?
Speaking of retractions, Protagoras thou feckless, wizened poltroon, you recently (and what a coinkydink! it dropped off the front page) claimed that unnamed commenters here were little different from Al Qaeda.
Here are your choices:
1. Name the names (and, of course, be ready to provide evidence).
2. Apologize and withdraw the statement.
3. Do neither, and stand revealed as what I already know you are.
Xenocles,
Fascism and Marxism/Communism are both forms of socialism. Both exert total control over the economy. Communism does it through state ownership of property while Fascism "allows" private ownership, but actively micromanages through edicts.
Mussolini (the originator of both the idea and term "fascism") considered communism unworkable, so his idea was to focus on socialism within a nation (socialist "nationalism" which is a different creature than conservative nationalism) and to try to do socialism "better" by removing the problem of the "tragedy of the commons" experienced in Russia caused by no one owning anything.
(Note: As far as I know, Mussolini didn't actually use the phrase "tragedy of the commons". That is just my method of summarizing what happens when no one actually owns anything, a constant problem with communism which Mussolini apparently recognized.)
Thanks, Ed.
Combining Mark's article and Geek's comment: The owners of normal corporations don't get to tax their competitors into oblivion to raise operating capital. That's the problem with government ownership of one company. The law loses its impression of neutrality. The different rules and taxes will be easy to justify, they'll just holler something about the national interest in protecting the state's assets.
What was deceptive about the article Marky linked to is that the banks are central to the economy, and that's what they established control of first. (That's control as in fascism, not ownership as in communism.) So even though it's a small percentage of the economy, it's the economic equivalent of grabbing someone by the throat.
Health care is obviously their next major goal. Fortunately for us, some Democrats aren't real careful about hiding their plans when they're on camera.
I know I've said this before, and I'm pretty sure I've said it here. But okay Mark, one more time just for you.
The difference between the government running anything and the private sector running anything is that in the private sector one has customers.
They choose to do business with you or not, according to their preferences and their needs, rather than yours. Therefore you as a company owner have to address those needs and preferences in order to get them to choose to give you money.
If you are a government, you don't have customers, you have taxpayers. Taxpayers don't choose to give you money, they do it because if they refuse, people with guns will come after them and either shoot them or put them in a cage.
Am I going too fast for you? That's the bottom line, the short version. I agree that there are all kinds of services people want in their lives, and I further agree that many of them are vital. Now, pick one of those services and explain to me why it's better to have it administered through violence and the threat of violence (the only tool governments really have), rather than by finding a profitable way to give you what you actually want, rather than what you are ordered to content yourself with.
...explain to me why it's better to have it administered through violence and the threat of violence (the only tool governments really have), rather than by finding a profitable way to give you what you actually want, rather than what you are ordered to content yourself with. - GOF
Because, silly, you're too stupid to know "what you actually want." What you actually want is bad for you. It's bad for Mother Gaia. It's bad for people in the Sudan. It's greedy. It's wasteful. It's wrong!
You should be happy to be told what you want, when you want it, and how much of it you want by your betters in government.
And you should be even happier when they tell you that you can't have that either, even though your betters in the government have the stuff you thought you wanted in the first place.
GOF:
Therefore you as a company owner have to address those needs and preferences in order to get them to choose to give you money.
Which is wasteful and stupid.
It's much better to get someone who's spent their life thinking about, well, THINKING to determine the best thing for the company - and the customer.
Customers are smelly, dirty, and have their perversions, there's no telling what they might want. Why, they might want something that's dangerous, a motorcycle, or maybe ice cream!
No, that's where the government can dispassionately step in and arbiter, making sure the company and the customer can have a long relationship.
Yes, we've explained this to Mark many times. But when you give it the name that describes those systems he froths. Spews. Denies believing in the exact system he'll then turn around and demand we put in place.
Adam:
Won't work. Nice try, I've tried it several times. But Mark has nothing behind his ego. He's got no reputation left to lose.
So what if he abandons merely another 20 threads. What's 20 more compared to all the other threads and arguments he's abandoned?
Mark is a particularly poor gambler - he keeps trying to bet, so that he can declare victory, and, errrr, somehow.. all those other arguments he bet on and lost will suddenly be winners, and he'll be in the black.
No, it doesn't make any sense, but Vegas is built upon such thought processes.
Once he starts losing badly enough that even he realizes he can't win, he'll leave, and start another thread/discussion, trying to somehow prove that all of us - from diverse backgrounds, religions, and political viewpoints, are locked into the thought process he actually is. Never understanding that he's cargo-culting, and we actually have the headsets, radios, and planes.
(Which is unfair, and why we need to be handicapped in our arguments with him, it's not FAIR that the planes come into OUR airfield and bring goodies!)
M sez And how exactly does an entity (the government) have more power (at 82 billion) than corporations do (at 39 trillion).
Stupid, useless question M, because money does not equate to power. I mean were you trying to set up a follow on argument or was that the extent of your brainpower?
"Corporations don't get to take 1/3 of your stuff or chase you with guns and throw you into jail if you refuse to pony up."
No, the corporations simply act as government enforcers, so that the government will allow them to stay in business. (See what happens to any corporation if it refuses to deduct FICA from an employee's wages.)
Corporations do get you to surrender your rights (freedom of speech, 2A, etc) through coercion -- see what happens when you call a female coworker of equal rank a stupid bitch -- and they also enforce stupid State regulations (e.g. no-smoking policies).
So it's not done at the point of a gun, but by economic extortion.
Not much difference, really.
"So it's not done at the point of a gun, but by economic extortion.
Not much difference, really."
Hm... risk of life and limb versus risk of finding a new job.
Of course, they're ABSOLUTELY INDISTINGUISHABLE.
"the corporations simply act as government enforcers"
Actually, the reverse is more accurate.
"money does not equate to power."
I disagree completely. While I think we can all agree that DC is corrupt, the mechanism for this power is driven by corporations not the government. I get the fact that "government" is a four letter word for most folks here but you really give them waaayyy too much credit and way too much power.
"Corporations don't get to take 1/3 of your stuff or chase you with guns and throw you into jail if you refuse to pony up."
Actually, they pay the government to do that. Again, look at where the center of power actually is...it certainly isn't in DC...the majority of which are buffoons.
"There are threads waiting for you."
First of all, it's the same basic argument and I think it would be time consuming to repeat myself. Second, in the past I have continued discussions that are way down the page and have not gotten any responses. Unlike yourselves, this doesn't bother me at all (getting no repsonses) but why continue it when I can do it closer to the top of the page.
"You think the economy is sluggish now?"
Well, let's see. Home construction is up, unemployment is down here in MN, the dow seems to be relatively stable...perlhaqr, I want you to remember what you wrote and if the economy is better later this year or next, I'd appreciate a full retraction.
More in a bit...
"First of all, it's the same basic argument and I think it would be time consuming to repeat myself."
Really? So you don't think you have any responsibility to deal with comparisons of people here with Al Queda?
You don't think you have any responsibility to deal with your LIES? With your godamn ignorance, evasiveness, and refusal to continue any argument beyond the FIRST. FUCKING. SIGN. OF. EVIDENCE?
You run so damn much from numbers I'd swear you're the first numerophobe I've met.
Let's not forget where Marky posted a link to a laughable list of "similarities" between fascism and conservatism, then bailed; never attempting to deal with the fact that the comparison was fatally flawed.
"Well, let's see. Home construction is up, unemployment is down here in MN, the dow seems to be relatively stable..."
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2009/06/flow-of-funds-report-offers-hard.html
As usual, Protagoras, your premise withers in the face of evidence.
Speaking of evidence, Monsieur FourFeathers...still waiting. Which commenters here are little different from Al Qaeda, and on what basis does your claim for same rest?
Or maybe I should be more correct and say that he bailed without ever responding to our arguments that Britt's list is fatally flawed.
But that's just par for the course with Marky.
BTW, Marky. You've made this claim:
"in the past I have continued discussions that are way down the page and have not gotten any responses."
I call B.S. I don't remember any thread in the last several months where you "got in the last word". Prove it. Here's a hint: you can use google to help. Start your search query with "site:haloscan.com" followed by your search terms.
Ed, you are granting too much to Marky. You are implicitly asserting that there has been any sort of 'discussion' at some point, and I really don't remember a discussion in the past year or so with him.
Mostly it has been him saying some of the stupidest things I have read in many a long year (until he comments again), and then the take down by people much smarter than myself, followed by more random bleating from Marky, more thumping from people with facts, data and actual arguments, and then Marky whining and running away.
Rinse, repeat.
Russell,
I didn't intend to imply that there have been discussions with Marky, though there has occasionally been some responses from him. He tends to make assertions, while we try to respond with arguments. (And Marky doesn't understand the difference.)
"I get the fact that "government" is a four letter word for most folks here but you really give them waaayyy too much credit and way too much power."
That's your meme for this administration, ain't it, teacher boy? The gubmint ain't in charge, business is.
So, business in this country wants ...
... to pay taxes at a much higher rate.
... to pay more kinds of taxes, and at high rates.
... to have gubmint tell them who they must fire and hire.
... to have gubmint tell them what they must pay and provide their employees.
... to have gubmint tell them what they can produce and how they must produce it.
... to have gubmint exert more and more control over them.
... to have their shareholders replaced with their employees' unions.
... to be taken over, owned, and run by gubmint.
And all so business makes more money, right?
We all know why you think these idiotic thoughts, where we find this exchange:
GrumpyOldFart: "I can hardly wait to see how Mark is going to "prove" ..."
Markadopia: "Why should I even try? Belief is more important than reality."
That's you in a nutshell (and yes, the pun is intended), and "Rinse, repeat" is your modus operandi. It's all you do.
"claimed that unnamed commenters here were little different from Al Qaeda."
Ken, I would refer you to my comparison from said thread and ask you to defend a view contrary to it, as Grumpy did, if you have you have a problem
"Here are your choices:"
Only these three? So much for liberty and freedom:)
"1. Name the names (and, of course, be ready to provide evidence)."
Name names? Sure you want me to go down that path? As far as evidence goes, I would again refer you to the comparison list I made and show me how I am wrong. Grumpy made some good points.
"2. Apologize and withdraw the statement."
Not going to happen. When I hear both Al Qaeda and some on the right saying virtually the same thing...sometimes even on the same day...and behaving accordingly, I think my point is valid.
"3. Do neither, and stand revealed as what I already know you are."
Ooo...I'm really scared now. Like the opinion of me is really going to change even if I am proved right from now until the end of time. Because there is no POSSIBLE way I can be, right?
Wow. That response was just sad, Mark.
"Name names? Sure you want me to go down that path?"
Yes. Now.
Marky,
You made the claim, therefore you back it up or retract it!
"There is little difference between Al Qaeda and a substantial portion of the conservative base in this country. That includes some people who post here."
1. Name names? Sure you want me to go down that path?
Did I stutter or use words too big for you? Name. The. Names, you sniveling coward.
2. When I hear both Al Qaeda and some on the right saying virtually the same thing...sometimes even on the same day...and behaving accordingly, I think my point is valid.
More content-free and evidence-free rhetoric. Prove it. Provide documented examples that can be confirmed by others.
3. Like the opinion of me is really going to change even if I am proved right from now until the end of time. Because there is no POSSIBLE way I can be, right?
Unlike you, Protagoras, I am willing to speak plain. You are entirely unencumbered by character. You demonstrate that every time you put fingers to keyboard.
Because there is no POSSIBLE way I can be, right?
Possible? Yes. Probable? No.
"Yes. Now."
Alright then. Compare Al Qaeda's view on homosexuals and a recent post by Sarah in which she stated that homosexuals should not be allowed to marry or adopt children. Compare Al Qaeda's views on the sinfullness of homosexuality to a debate a while back regarding the sinfullness of homsexuality, according to the Bible, between Ed and myself.
Pretty much everyone on here supports torture/EIT's right? How is that different from Al Qaeda exactly? Don't they do the same thing?
Yosemite Sam posted this
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-478310/Tarred-feathered-tied-lamppost-Justice-drug-dealer-streets-Ulster.html
The comment that followed was
"Now here is an apt punishment for DePalma and his ilk"
in regards to the film "Redacted." Compare this sentiment to how Al Qaeda would treat a similar exercise in freedom of speech.
Need I go on?
Oh, and Ken, unlike yourself, I don't take any joy or pleasure in singling people out and personally attacking them. I find it terribly sad that there are similarities between Al Qaeda and some on the right. Cowardice had nothing to do with my hesistance.
So... you equate Sarah's views that homosexuals have the right to do what they please in their own homes, but that she doesn't think it's a good idea for them to adopt...
...with the stoning, murder, and imprisonment of homosexuals?
Are you THAT fucking stupid?
"Compare this sentiment to how Al Qaeda would treat a similar exercise in freedom of speech."
No. You draw the comparison. It's your claim.
Anyone else?
How's is that the same as Al-Qaeda? They would just lob his head off with a rusty Bowie knife. I guess I have a lot of catching up to do.
Oh, and Ken, unlike yourself, I don't take any joy or pleasure in singling people out and personally attacking them.
When someone is begging for it, "Service with a smile" is my motto.
Oh, and Ken, unlike yourself, I don't take any joy or pleasure in singling people out and personally attacking them.
Oh no, far better to make baseless assertions that Kevin's general audience are the same as the scum of the Earth Al Queda. Then run away.
And when pinned to the carpet, assume an offended and holier-than-thou attitude.
Rinse, repeat.
Cowardice had nothing to do with my hesistance.
Snort.
Pretty much everyone on here supports torture/EIT's right?
This is such a classic example of Democrat left history revision that I have to address it:
Bush/Cheney's CIA asked for clarification up their chain of command. Several legal experts were consulted and concluded that it was not torture. Not satisfied with that, several members of Congress were briefed, including several ranking Democrats. They too concluded that it was not torture.
Now Barack Obama gets elected and because he decides it's torture, suddenly none of that happened. Bush/Cheney decided to torture people. Why? Because Barack said so.
It's the same tactic as "Bush lied about WMD". Every major intelligence operation in the world had that same information, and they all drew the same conclusions from it. Congress had that same info, and they drew the same conclusion from it. Bush didn't declare war, he can't, only Congress can. And yet somehow Bush and Cheney, and only Bush and Cheney, lied and got us into this war.
Sorry Mark, but that dog doesn't hunt, no matter how many times you try to make it. You can use Bush/Cheney and "the conservative right" as a convenient scapegoat for the excesses of those you support, but there's too much evidence to make it fly.
Again.
There is so much to respond to in this comment, but for the moment I'll restrict myself to this.
"Pretty much everyone on here supports torture/EIT's right?"
Once again you're playing games with the definitions of words, specifically "torture". You're taking your definition of "torture" and pretending that it is both an honest definition and that it's our definition.
You will find no one here that supports using Al Qaeda level torture techniques. That includes such lovely things as drilling holes in the victim's joints. The main thing that characterizes Al Qaeda's torture methods is a very simple characteristic which distinguishes it from EIT's: Permanent physical and/or psychological damage.
Just look at what the North Vietnamese did to John McCain. He still can't raise his arms above his shoulders because they permanently damaged him. Other forms of torture, such as the chinese water torture are known for driving people permanently insane. THAT is an example of true torture and we are vehemently opposed to such abuses.
Then we have something like waterboarding, where Our. Own. Troops. are subjected to it as a frikkin' Training Technique in resisting interrogation. Heck, there are even people who volunteer to have it done to them so that people can see what it's like. It produces no permanent damage. If it did, neither of these common instances would take place. (Who in their right mind would volunteer for a permanent disability???)
If you're going to use your definition of torture, then you need to be campaigning against professional sports. After all, professional athletes sometimes suffer permanent disabling injuries, even while training. (I'm thinking here primarily of baseball, basketball and especially football.) But no one complains about how we "torture" those athletes. And let's not even talk about boxing, and other fighting "sports" where the goal is to actually hurt the other person.
Can you seriously expect to equate our support for EIT's with Al Qaeda's extreme torture when the damage scale goes like this?
EIT's < Professional Sports < Real Torture
I've even considered volunteering for a waterboarding session just so I could tell you to shut up about it being torture, but I know it would be a waste of time. But let me put it this way: If I am willing to go through it myself, then I have no trouble putting people who want to produce widespread carnage through it too.
Bottom line: What we agree with when it comes to torture is NOTHING like what Al Qaeda does.
Alright then. Compare Al Qaeda's view on homosexuals and a recent post by Sarah in which she stated that homosexuals should not be allowed to marry or adopt children.
Apparently, you don't know what Al Queda's view is on homosexuals.
This makes it very hard for you to be lecturing us.
About the time of 9/11, I read where some Al Queda/Taliban sorts were in a village watering hole somewhere in Afghanistan. 3 or 4 different imams, and the Great Satan and how we coddle homosexuals came up. This is from memory, but 1 imam said that you should build a brick wall, then push it over on the homosexual. Another said no, they should be thrown off a tall building or a cliff. Another insisted that only drawing and quartering was acceptable. Their supporters got to arguing over it, and before long 10 were dead and 40 were shot up.
Mark: If you ever hope to actually learn to think critically, you need to stop and actually think about what you said.
Sarah has expressed her opinion that they should be disallowed from certain civil opportunities and abilities.
And you've equated that with a group who demands death (via some method we'll settle on later). Death.
"I'm sorry, but I don't think it's healthy for gays to adopt"
is exactly the same as:
"DEATH"
In your world.
Then you accuse us of slanting words, of mixing definitions, playing games, and altering reality.
No, Mark, there's no way you can possibly, reasonably equate Sarah - no matter how she might possible HATE HATE HATE homosexuals (Sarah: sorry, just an example), if she's not calling for their death.
Your complete ignorance on what is really torture and what Al Queda does in comparison to what we do is actually not as boggling. It's stupid, and it's indicative that you're a fool, but it's not as blatant. But only by a little bit.
For the past 2+ years, we've told you how your thought process worked. That you made a conclusion, based upon somebody, usually a raging partisan not interested in the facts, and then you start stringing together "arguments".
More often than not, your arguments revolve or pivot around complete ignorance of the meanings of words, misunderstandings as to history, meanings of concepts. Remember all the times we've demonstrated that? OK, do you remember, all the time we've pointed out how many times we've done it?
Well, here you go.
2 perfect examples that ought to be obvious to even you.
(And they also demonstrate why you fail to understand why most of us aren't "conservative" much less why you fail to see the humor when Kevin says "Do it again, only HARDER!" and you show up, say, "THAT'S NOT WHAT I'M SAYING! JUST DO IT HARDER!" or jumping into the "learned racism as an attack to shut up the other party thread" and called us all racists, whilst denying that's what's being taught in the schools!. But most importantly, it demonstrates why you scream about speech codes, thoughtcrime - when we say that you won't allow dissent. Sarah dissents from your opinion, and so to you she must dissent all the way.
So "no differences" between her, and people who insist upon, and gladly kill the group in question. You dehumanize your opponents, just as we're telling you you do, and make caricatures of them.)
For the sake of presenting an accurate record, and not for any concern for anything Protagoras has to say, I actually don't support waterboarding, and so respectfully differ with those of my fellow commenters who do.
I came to my position because I reasoned that a tool once granted can be misused down the road. William Grigg points out that waterboarding was once relatively commonly used as part of the "third degree" in police interrogation:
http://lewrockwell.com/grigg/grigg-w95.html
I understand the "ticking time bomb" argument in favor of such practices, but there at least ought to be a ticking time bomb, or at least a strong suspicion and circumstantial evidence that there is one.
But getting back to my main point: This is now a country where supporting Ron Paul's presidential campaign (I voted for Dr. Paul in Ohio, after Fred Thompson withdrew...hey, wonder what his Cairo speech woulda been like? ;-) ), displaying the Gadsden flag (I fly the Betsy Ross flag, except when I fly the Culpeper Minute Men flag), or "protesting" (how's your tea?) constitute evidence, in some official quarters, of low-level terrorism. This is not an Obama thing; the notorious Pennsylvania and Alabama pamphlets predate the Obama administration.
Frankly, I think that makes my case stronger. I'd just as soon not empower Leviathan any more than we already have done.
Minor correction to the above: not exclusively an Obama thing.
I'm with you, Ken. Whoever wrote the guidance for the CIA either was negligently or deliberaltely ignorant of the fact that we prosecuted Japanese soldiers (in part) for waterboarding our guys in WWII. Neither do I buy the line that it's less damaging than things like boxing or football - there's a big difference between volunteering to fight and being repeatedly drowned (ask anyone who's done it) against your will.
It simply doesn't cut it that Al Qaeda is more evil. "Better than Al Qaeda" is hardly an inspiring standard for the greatest country on the planet.
I actually don't support waterboarding
THEN YOU'RE A HIPPIE WHO WANTS TO SLEEP WITH CINDY SHEEHAN! GET THE FUCK OUT, YOU CHE WANNABE!
Well, using Mark's reasoning, anyway.
"So... you equate Sarah's views that homosexuals have the right to do what they please in their own homes, but that she doesn't think it's a good idea for them to adopt...
...with the stoning, murder, and imprisonment of homosexuals?"
Hmm...don't you equate the support of an assault weapon ban as being a precursor to all guns being seized? While I don't think that Sarah would wantonly murder homosexuals, she does have the same view of them that Al Qaeda does...they should have less rights than the straights.
And spend some time talking to the "base"...either one. They'll tell you what they envision as being delightful when it comes to homosexuals.
And spend some time talking to the "base"...either one. They'll tell you what they envision as being delightful when it comes to homosexuals.
I guess that means none of us are real conservatives.
Hmm...don't you equate the support of an assault weapon ban as being a precursor to all guns being seized?
When a law makes no slightest pretense of addressing the problems it was claimed to be needed to address, is it unreasonable to think it was passed for a different reason? Especially when the seizure of all guns is a recurring theme among members of the political faction that pushed for such a law?
she does have the same view of them that Al Qaeda does...they should have less rights than the straights.
By the logic you are using, anyone who proposes punishing anyone in any fashion for their behavior is equivalent to an Al-Qaeda terrorist.
That's like saying the cop on the corner is equivalent to a terrorist because he thinks thieves should have fewer rights than those who restrict themselves to their own stuff.
That is not to say I am treating gays and thieves as equal. It so happens my opinion of gay rights is different from Sarah's. But that doesn't change the fact that you are, in effect, saying "convicted felons should not have the right to bear arms" equates to "kill all the Jews" because in both cases it treats one class of people as less than another.
Bullshit.
BTW, you never answered my question from above:
The difference between the government running anything and the private sector running anything is that in the private sector one has customers.
They choose to do business with you or not, according to their preferences and their needs, rather than yours. Therefore you as a company owner have to address those needs and preferences in order to get them to choose to give you money.
If you are a government, you don't have customers, you have taxpayers. Taxpayers don't choose to give you money, they do it because if they refuse, people with guns will come after them and either shoot them or put them in a cage.
Am I going too fast for you? That's the bottom line, the short version. I agree that there are all kinds of services people want in their lives, and I further agree that many of them are vital. Now, pick one of those services and explain to me why it's better to have it administered through violence and the threat of violence (the only tool governments really have), rather than by finding a profitable way to give you what you actually want, not what you are ordered to content yourself with.
"the CIA either was negligently or deliberaltely ignorant of the fact that we prosecuted Japanese soldiers (in part) for waterboarding our guys in WWII."
Since this was basically new to me, I did some research. I was only able to find a single reliable source on this claim. Some people are saying that we executed Japanese soldiers for waterboarding. That doesn't seem to hold up.
First of all, Yukio Asano (the defendent in this case) was not executed, but sentenced to 15 years of hard labor.
Second, the list of charges does not say "water boarding", but "water torture". Whether or not this was the same thing as waterboarding seems to be an open question. Some sites used quotes to make it sound like waterboarding, but they were usually partial quotes and fragments of sentences, which definitely leaves open the question of whether or not the quotes were cherry picked to create that impression. I also saw sites that claimed that the Japanese version of water torture was pumping water down the victims throat so forcefully that the stomach sometimes burst from the pressure, which would make "water torture" something completely different than waterboarding. In this case, nearly every page I visited was suspect in some manner, most evincing obvious bias. Therefore it is nearly impossible to reach a reliable conclusion on what I was able to find on the internet. (A reliable conclusion should be possible with enough research. I just wasn't able to spend time on it.)
Finally, "water torture" was not the only abuse this soldier engaged in. This soldier also committed beatings (including kicking and using clubs, both of which are capable of killing), burning the prisoners with cigarettes, and other abuses. Even without "waterboarding" it sounds like this soldier earned a 15 year sentence, though it was probably pretty lenient.
You have to remember that at the time, the Japanese were so overwhelmingly vicious that their use of modern waterboarding could be considered incredibly merciful compared to what they usually did.
The "Bataan Death March" is just one example of how rough they were on prisoners. This forced march of 72,000-75,000 prisoners resulted in a casualty rate of 25-28% of the prisoner deaths along the way. They're also apparently responsible for murdering roughly 6 million civilians and POWs during the course of the war. (Estimates range from 3 million to over 10 million.) Some of the atrocities they committed are ones that I've actively worked to forget. They made the North Vietamese torturers look like amateurs.
Bottom line: The argument that Japanese soldiers were punished "for waterboarding" seems incredibly weak in comparison to the totality of what they did in WWII and I don't find it convincing.
Ken, IMHO, EIT's are to be reserved only for extreme cases, such as those where a terrorist has been clearly identified as such and there is good reason to suspect they have important information. (Reason: they've earned punishment due to their actions, i.e., they're guilty, not innocent and their will needs to be broken.)
As to not wanting the government to use EIT's against you, in cases where the government is treating an innocent person as guilty, even low level actions, such as simple arrest, are wrong. It's even worse if the government agents know the person they're abusing is innocent. If the government is knowingly acting tyrannically, they will already do things which are normally out-of-bounds, therefore I don't see normal limits on their behavior (such as "no waterboarding") even slowing them down.
Here is a good article on the Japanese war crime convictions and waterboarding.
"While I don't think that Sarah would wantonly murder homosexuals..."
Then start over, and try with some evidence. You still have one hell of a fucking heinous accusation standing against her. And, given that, I have absolutely no problem saying you, Mark, are a fucking asshat.
she does have the same view of them that Al Qaeda does...they should have less rights than the straights.
It's amazing that you can still be so stupid, so smirkingly oblivious, so self-absorbed and smug that you can disgust me.
But yet, you've been doing it regularly.
Listen up, you libelous sack of wasted education tax dollars, there's nothing the same there
AL QUEDA GIVES NO - NONE - ZIP - NADA "RIGHTS" TO HOMOSEXUALS. THEY KILL THEM. ON SIGHT. WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE.
THEY GET IN FIREFIGHTS AND KILL EACH OTHER TO DEBATE HOW IS THE __**BEST**__ WAY TO KILL HOMOSEXUALS.
Disagreeing with adoption policy - isn't in the slightest the same as killing them.
A very telling, but minor compared to your slanders and libels, point is that "adoption" ISN'T A RIGHT. We've explained this to you many times. (And you propose to lecture to US on evaluating Constitutional Scholars?)
"So... you equate Sarah's views that homosexuals have the right to do what they please in their own homes, but that she doesn't think it's a good idea for them to adopt...
...with the stoning, murder, and imprisonment of homosexuals?"
Hmm...don't you equate the support of an assault weapon ban as being a precursor to all guns being seized?
Yes, and it's irrelevant. This is you cargo-culting more.
The reason I've been hammering you on the ban, VERBATIM BOY, is that you were flailing just as pointlessly, and decried that we would consider you a banner, if you supported a "AW"B. You're so clucking fueless that you can't even admit that the B in AWB stands for BAN. BAN. BAN. How dare you try and lecture to us on the state of the schools when you disprove yourself?
As to your comparison: There is none. Yes, I believe an "assault weapon" ban would be a step on the way to a total gun ban. Mainly because that's what Sugarmman, Feinstein, Brady, Obama, et al said and did after the former "Crime Prevention Act" passed.
I say that because there's an obvious path, historical evidence (do we need to explain to you what "evidence" means?), and a paper trail that ought to even convince a public school teacher to prove it.
Now show the proof that Sarah has deep in her heart hatred towards homosexuals. PROVE that you're right, and her views are IDENTICAL, and she wants to KILL IMMEDIATELY any and all HOMOSEXUALS.
After you get through with that, explain why Dick Cheney hasn't killed his daughter.
You're disgustingly sick when you will stoop to those kind of Godwinesque comparisons - and you do it lightly and unadvisedly. You don't even think about it. It's all the same to you.
But we are supposedly the unfeeling, enraged ones. And you get upset when we point out we know the Alinsky playbook - the one you're using, although I doubt you have the attention span to have read it.
Accusing someone - only based on her religion (good thing she's Christian, else you'd be hatecriming) and opinion of desiring and ordaining and intending to commit mass murder ought to cause even a demonstrated liar such as yourself to hold your tongue.
Ed, I hear you. That's why I mentioned the ticking time bomb, though I do so with enough reservations to book the QE II solid. Twice. There's a reason they say "hard cases make bad law." :-)
I find it fascinating that Marky-Mark doesn't think an "Assault weapon" BAN would lead eventually to a COMPLETE (or English-equivalent) ban on firearms here after the video showing IN THEIR OWN WORDS that Obama and the Left intend "health care reform" to lead to the end-game of a UNIVERSAL SINGLE-PAYER SYSTEM (that payer being the Feddle Gubmint) all the while telling the Rubes "Oh, no! If you like what you've got, you won't have to change!"
Yes, they think we're that stupid.
And Mark IS that stupid.
And he teaches children what he terms "critical thinking."
Ed, of course the Japanese did much worse things. But they also waterboarded, and the descriptions our and other prisoners gave of the process matches the modern one well, almost verbatim. The Khmer Rouge did it routinely; there's a prominent waterboard exhibit in the genocide museum in Phnom Penh. That we do it to our soldiers who are at high risk of capture is an argument for it being a form of torture, not against. Finally, there are loads of informal accounts on the web of guys who submitted to waterboarding just to convey the experience. Some of them set out to show that opponents of the technique are bleeding-heart pansies.
I'm not attempting to draw even a loose moral equivalence here. There's a huge continuum of mistreatment and the televised beheadings of random prisoners by Al Qaeda is certainly much further down toward the bad end of the spectrum than waterboarding is (due, IMO, to its permanence and wanton brutality). Like I said, however, "better than Al Qaeda" is a pretty lame standard to hold for the West. If that's all we can claim, are we really worth defending?
(Part 1 of 5)
Alright, I did not want to spend the time responding to the homosexual thing because I'm supposed to be working. But because it's just snowballing and I'm also being tarred unfairly, it seems I have no choice. (Marky, are you going to pay my $90/hour rate for this?)
I will start off by saying that it seems I am probably the "most extreme" person here when it comes to homosexuality. But claims that this "most extreme" position is "little different from Al Qaeda" is pure bull-pucky.
Conservatives can have two general reasons for opposing homosexuality: Christian teachings (The Bible) and secular reasons.
I'll start with the Biblical position. (BTW, atheist conservatives who oppose homosexuality cannot, by definition, opposed it for Christian reasons. Therefore, Marky's attempt to tar them with the brush of "religious extremism" is already clearly irrational.)
There are three primary times when the Bible talks about homosexuality: Sodom & Gomorrah, when giving the laws to the Israel, and in the New Testament. It is condemned all three times.
I assume I don't have to quote the whole story of Sodom & Gomorrah. The only evil specified in the story is that all the men (the text is very specific about this) tried to rape Lot's male visitors, and that they were so bent on homosexual sex that they even turned down Lot's offer of his two virgin daughters if they would give up on raping the men. It's safe to assume that homosexuality is not the only evil they were guilty of, but God did destroy the cities for their pervasive evil, which definitely included homosexuality.
The second instance is when God was giving Israel their civil law. There are two verses which forbid it:
"You are not to sleep with a man as with a woman; it is detestable."
(Leviticus 18:22 HCSB)
"If a man sleeps with a man as with a woman, they have both committed an abomination. They must be put to death; their blood is on their own hands."
(Leviticus 20:13 HCSB)
So does this mean that Christians are supposed to kill homosexuals? No.
Let's start by looking at the verses themselves. The first verse is just a statement of principle (how God sees things). "It is detestable." The second verse starts with the same principle. So from that aspect, we can assume that this is an unchanging principle. But only the second verse states the death penalty.
The death penalty is crystal clear, so it would seem to apply to all Christians. So we need to look a little deeper. First of all, this is part of the civil law given to the nation of Israel. This means that Israel was to specifically enforce this law with this penalty. But it doesn't necessarily mean that those who are not part of the nation of Israel—which is most Christians today—are bound by the same laws. (Note: I could go into an explanation of why I think this law was a good idea, but this post is going to be too long as it is.)
In fact, the Bible does make it clear that laws given specifically and only to Israel do not apply to Christians.
"If, then, perfection came through the Levitical priesthood (for under it the people received the law), what further need was there for another priest to arise in the order of Melchizedek, and not to be described as being in the order of Aaron? For when there is a change of the priesthood, there must be a change of law as well."
(Hebrews 7:11-12 HCSB)
"Before this faith came, we were confined under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith was revealed. The law, then, was our guardian until Christ, so that we could be justified by faith. But since that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus."
(Galatians 3:23-26 HCSB)
"Therefore, my brothers, you also were put to death in relation to the law through the crucified body of the Messiah, so that you may belong to another—to Him who was raised from the dead—that we may bear fruit for God. For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions operated through the law in every part of us and bore fruit for death. But now we have been released from the law, since we have died to what held us, so that we may serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old letter of the law."
(Romans 7:4-6 HCSB)
(Part 2 of 5)
"“Look, the days are coming”—this is the LORD’S declaration—“when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. This one will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant they broke even though I had married them”—the LORD’S declaration. “Instead, this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days”—the LORD’S declaration. “I will place My law within them and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be My people."
(Jeremiah 31:31-33 HCSB)
Note the part I put in bold. It specifies that the law in Leviticus was specific to the nation of Israel.
"In the same way He also took the cup after supper and said, “This cup is the new covenant established by My blood; it is shed for you."
(Luke 22:20 HCSB)
"By saying, a new covenant, He has declared that the first is old. And what is old and aging is about to disappear."
(Hebrews 8:13 HCSB)
These are all general statements of principle. There is also a specific parallel example:
"If a man sleeps with his father’s wife, he has shamed his father. Both of them must be put to death; their blood is on their own hands."
(Leviticus 20:11 HCSB)
Notice that sleeping with your father's wife also deserved the death penalty under the law given to Israel. This exact situation showed up in the early church. Notice how the Christians were to respond to it:
"It is widely reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and the kind of sexual immorality that is not even condoned among the Gentiles—a man is living with his father’s wife. … I wrote to you in a letter not to associate with sexually immoral people— by no means referring to this world’s immoral people, or to the greedy and swindlers, or to idolaters; otherwise you would have to leave the world. But now I am writing you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother who is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or a reviler, a drunkard or a swindler. Do not even eat with such a person. For what is it to me to judge outsiders? Do you not judge those who are inside? But God judges outsiders. Put away the evil person from among yourselves."
(1 Corinthians 5:1,9-13 HCSB)
Anyone see any command here about putting them to death? Me neither. There are two principles the Christians are to follow: if they're in the church and they're behaving like this, kick them out. Don't even associate with them. (This doesn't necessarily mean go the other way when you run into them in the grocery store, but definitely don't invite them over to your house or go to dinner with them.) If they're not part the church, we're to leave them to God to deal with.
If this principle applies to one death penalty crime only 2 verses away from the death penalty verse for homosexuality, then it's entirely reasonable to consider the same principle to apply to Christians encountering homosexual behavior.
Of course, that makes Christians exactly like the Muslims who slit the throats of those with homosexual inclinations, right? NOT!! What we have here is behavior/don't hang out vs. inclinations/kill.
So, if Christians are no longer bound by the law which was given to Israel, does that mean that homosexuality is now okay? No. The New Testament repeats the condemnation of homosexual behavior, just not the penalty given to Israel:
"Do you not know that the unjust will not inherit God’s kingdom? Do not be deceived: no sexually immoral people, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, homosexuals, thieves, greedy people, drunkards, revilers, or swindlers will inherit God’s kingdom."
(1 Corinthians 6:9-10 HCSB)
"We know that the law is not meant for a righteous person, but for the lawless and rebellious, for the ungodly and sinful, for the unholy and irreverent, for those who kill their fathers and mothers, for murderers, for the sexually immoral and homosexuals, for kidnappers, liars, perjurers, and for whatever else is contrary to the sound teaching based on the glorious gospel of the blessed God that was entrusted to me."
(1 Timothy 1:9-11 HCSB)
Note: Some people claim that homosexuality was added to these verses by later translations because the word was not used in the King James translation. There's just one small problem with their theory; the word "homosexual" was not added to the English language until the late 1800's and the King James translation was finished in 1611, so it was not possible for the King James translators to use this word because it did not exist at the time. So they had to use an entire phrase to convey the same meaning. The equivalent word for homosexual is definitely in the original Greek.
(Part 3 of 5)
"Therefore God delivered them over in the cravings of their hearts to sexual impurity, so that their bodies were degraded among themselves. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served something created instead of the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.
"This is why God delivered them over to degrading passions. For even their females exchanged natural sexual intercourse for what is unnatural. The males in the same way also left natural sexual intercourse with females and were inflamed in their lust for one another. Males committed shameless acts with males and received in their own persons the appropriate penalty for their perversion.
And because they did not think it worthwhile to have God in their knowledge, God delivered them over to a worthless mind to do what is morally wrong. They are filled with all unrighteousness, evil, greed, and wickedness. They are full of envy, murder, disputes, deceit, and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, arrogant, proud, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, and unmerciful. Although they know full well God’s just sentence—that those who practice such things deserve to die—they not only do them, but even applaud others who practice them."
(Romans 1:24-32 HCSB)
I think it's interesting to compare these paragraphs with what happened in Sodom & Gomorrah. It seems that full blown homosexuality is closely tied with a general depravity of mind. This is the passage that strongly implies that homosexuality was not the only evil going on in Sodom & Gomorrah.
There's one more principle I should point out before I begin to close this out. That is that Christians are to help each other overcome sin:
"Brothers, if someone is caught in any wrongdoing, you who are spiritual should restore such a person with a gentle spirit, watching out for yourselves so you won’t be tempted also."
(Galatians 6:1 HCSB)
"Be on your guard. If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him."
(Luke 17:3 HCSB)
Finally, I should point out that in the "ranking of sin" there is only one unforgivable sin: blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. Homosexuality falls into the same level as any other sexual sin, most of which are sins heterosexuals can commit.
So in short, the Biblical position is: Homosexual behavior is a sin, just like many others. The church's response to such sin should be to first try to help them overcome their behavior, and if they refuse, to eject those who practice this sin (like many others) from fellowship. Those outside the church are to be left to God.
How is this "little different from Al Qaeda" again? "Try to help first, leave them alone if that fails" vs. "hunt down anyone with homosexual desires and kill them." Yeah, no difference there! Only the difference between Florence Nightingale and Dr. Kervorkian. No difference whatsoever! [/ snark]
But what about the secular arguments? They can't be based on the Bible, even though they point to the same conclusion.
Quite simply, the key to a secular conclusion about homosexuality is, well, the Scientific Method. That means observation, which means studies. So what do they say about homosexuality?
Let's start with a simple observation: Changing the definition of marriage from one man, one woman to same sex couples changes the foundation upon which the definition of marriage is based. Traditional marriage is based upon the simple observation of physiology and psychology. Only one man and one woman can produce a child. Two men cannot. Two women cannot. More men or more women can increase the number of children produced, but only one pairing can produce one child. Or more correctly, one fertilized egg, which sometimes splits into multiple children.
Even without children, it is only slightly less obvious that men and women tend to complement each other psychologically as well. Kevin has touched upon this observation with his own descriptions of the violent and predatory vs. violent and protective illustration. As part of that illustration, he correctly points out that young men usually have a tendency to be more physically aggressive than older men. A big reason for this is that marriage tends to cause men to mellow out due to the interplay of the psychological differences between men and women. (Take a look at any marriage self help books. You will find that they point to these differences as necessary to mange for a successful marriage. As in, "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus".) The differences (and conflicts) between the sexes tend to wear away the rough edges from the men, thus calming them down. (No fault divorce allows an easy "out" which interrupts this growth, which is part of why I'm opposed to it. BTW, this is another difference between most conservatives and Al Qaeda. AQ teaches that getting a divorce is easier than getting married.) The end result is a society with far fewer men spoiling for a fight, thus a more stable society.
But when same sex marriage is permitted, it is not based on observations at all. Rather it's basis is "people should be allowed to do what they want to do." In other words, desire is somehow expected to be able to trump our physical and psychological natures.
Do you see that fundamental shift? Observation of nature vs. Wants.
This fundamental shift shows up in the results of studies of the homosexual lifestyle.
I mentioned that even without children, marriage tends to reduce the aggressiveness of young men. It turns out that domestic violence is a huge problem among homosexual men. Two homosexual psychologists, David Island and Patrick Letellier studied the problem and wrote about it in a book, "Men Who Beat the Men Who Love Them." (Article about the book here.) They write, "at least 500,000 gay men are abused by their lovers each year in the United States." That means that homosexual men abuse their lovers an order of magnatude more often than so called hate crimes are committed.
That puts domestic violence at the third largest problem for homosexuals; right behind AIDS and chemical abuse.
(Part 4 of 5)
Other studies have shown that depression is a huge problem for them. (50% higher than in the general population in the study referred to here.) They also tend to die 20 years soon than their non-homosexual counterparts. Furthermore (according to the study), the level of tolerance by the surrounding society has absolutely nothing to with these rates, as is often claimed by the pro-homosexual lobby.
Other problems include huge levels of promiscuity among homosexuals. In another study (again by researchers who are themselves homosexuals) they found that 43% of homosexuals had had over 500 partners and 28% had more than 1,000 (!!!) sexual partners. Among those "committed" to each other (supposedly just like marriage), not a single relationship was monogamous after 5 years. Not One! They averaged 8 outside partners per year. (Much more here.) No wonder STD's—especially AIDS, the number 1 problem of them all—is such a problem among homosexuals.
Just think of the impact of that on traditional marriage. If there is no such thing as a monogamous "same sex marriage", then there is literally no reason to expect the same in traditional marriage.
Which brings me to what happened in countries which accepted same sex marriage. The Netherlands is a prime example, where out of wedlock births skyrocketed after same sex marriage passed. In and of itself, this doesn't necessarily sound like a bad thing, until you look at the effects of marriage both on the couple and their children. (See the earlier link to probe.org for references to the studies.)
"Married people are much happier and likely to be less unhappy than any other group of people.
"Married people live up to eight years longer than divorced or never-married people.
"Married people suffer less from long-term illnesses than those who are unmarried.
"Married people are less likely to engage in unhealthy behaviors such as drug and alcohol abuse.
"Married people have twice the amount of sex as single people and report greater levels of satisfaction in the area of sexual intimacy.
"Children in married families are less like to suffer serious child abuse.
"Children in married families are less likely to end up in jail as adults.
"Children in married families are less likely to be depressed as adolescents.
"Children in married families are less likely to be expelled from school.
"Children in married families are less likely to repeat a grade in school.
"Children in married families are less likely to have developmental problems.
"Children in married families are less likely to have behavioral problems.
"Children in married families are less likely to use drugs (marijuana, cocaine).
"Children in married families are less likely to be sexually active."
(Part 5 of 5)
Finally, two other points. First, the American Psychological Association now admits that there is no 'gay gene':
"There is no consensus among scientists about the exact reasons that an individual develops a heterosexual, bisexual, gay or lesbian orientation. Although much research has examined the possible genetic, hormonal, developmental, social, and cultural influences on sexual orientation, no findings have emerged that permit scientists to conclude that sexual orientation is determined by any particular factor or factors. Many think that nature and nurture both play complex roles...."
Second, other studies seem to suggest that homosexuality is caught not an inherent trait.
"Research by social scientists, although not definitive, suggests that children reared by openly homosexual parents are far more likely to engage in homosexual behavior than children raised by others. Studies thus far find between 8% and 21% of homosexually parented children ultimately identify as non-heterosexual. For comparison purposes, approximately 2% of the general population are non-heterosexual. Therefore, if these percentages continue to hold true, children of homosexuals have a 4 to 10 times greater likelihood of developing a non-heterosexual preference than other children."
The bottom line is that there are truly powerful reasons based in science to consider homosexual behavior to be a major problem, both for the individuals involved and society as a whole. That is why the government has a compelling interest in suppressing homosexual activity, which is why I am more conservative than Sarah on this.
Yet even though it seems that homosexual behavior needs to be supressed, it does not automatically follow that the solution is to implement a death penalty. (That would be especially hypocritical since even murder usually doesn't earn the death penalty.) Since a large part of the reason why homosexual behavior should be surpressed is to protect the lives of those with homosexual tendencies, implementing a death penalty would be like a fireman burning down a building to save it. It would be outright counterproductive.
So now it's time to compare this position to Al Qaeda again. Al Qaeda's position is based on their religion, the secular conservative position is based evidence (Uh, oh, I just lost Marky here) and reason. Al Qaeda's chosen action is to kill. The most rational secular conservative position is that action is necessary to save lives. Once again we have kill vs. save lives (Not(kill)).
"Little difference"? Only if A = Not(A), war is peace, night is day, and good = evil.
Are you ready to take your slander back yet Marky?
Oh, and as for this…
"they should have less rights than the straights."
What "rights" would they not have which straights would? Laws against homosexuality (also called sodomy laws, see part 1 above) apply to straights too. Just like laws against assault apply to everyone.
After all, the only difference is that some people want to do certain things, and others don't. "But I wanna" has absolutely nothing to do with equality under the law.
Should we make bank robbery legal only for those who want to rob banks? Or how about making domestic abuse legal because some men like to beat their wives? After all, they're prevented from doing what they like to do under the current laws.
BTW, Kevin. I wasn't trying to challenge your überpost crown. It just sort of all spilled out. :)
Xenocles,
The article you linked to under "verbatim" was one of the first ones I found. It was the one I was thinking about the most when I pointed out that most of the articles included a few sentence fragments as quotes and very little other quoting. That's why I rejected it as authoritative.
If you could find much more complete quotes from the trials, that would go a long way towards establishing just how similar (or not) the Japanese "water torture" was to modern waterboarding.
The problem with defining torture in terms of how much discomfort is involved is that it is a Sorites paradox. (How many grains of sand are in a heap?) There is a continuous range of discomfort with no distinct "notches" where we could attach a dividing line. Consider:
What's the most comfortable a person could be? Sound asleep in a quality bed at a perfect temperature. There's no discomfort at all.
Now imagine being woken up early. Most people I know would be irritated because your comfort has been unexpectedly broken by very low level discomfort. I really doubt that most people would call this torture.
How about if it's warm enough outside that I start sweating profusely. That's even more discomfort. The degree of that discomfort depends entirely on how warm it is and how active I am. Again, that's a continuous spectrum. Is that torture? No. What if the temperature becomes extreme and water isn't available. Again continuous degrees. Ask someone who works in a steel mill if this is "torture."
How about if it's cold outside? It's the same problem.
What if I'm forced to listen to my kid's music. Hey! Get me out of Guantanamo!
What about a professional fighter who takes a beating? Is that torture? Is it torture when a prisoner receives less of a beating? Why?
How about a Navy seal during training who is pushed to the very limits of human endurance? Is that torture? Is it torture when a prisoner has to endure less discomfort than this?
The point is, if we look solely at levels of discomfort, any line we draw would be arbitrary. Furthermore, any arguments against a line drawn in that particular spot is just as valid as arguments in favor of that line. The simple point is that "it's freakin' scary" just isn't enough. (Watch AFV sometime for people who are scared out of their wits on theme parks rides.)
What we need is to look at related measurements to reach a justifiable conclusion. Think about it, why did Christopher Hitchens and Mancow agree to be waterboarded? It's because they knew there would be no permanent damage. They had to have some inkling of how bad it would be, yet they did it anyway.
Do you suppose they would have agreed to go under Al Qaeda's drill torture? Not on your life. Again, why? Because that would have clearly produced a permanent disability.
That's why I think Permanent Damage is part of a good definition of what is and isn't torture. While you can argue forever about degrees of discomfort, whether or not there has been permanent physical damage is easy to measure. Thus it provides an good point to hang a rational justification on it.
I had also mentioned permanent mental damage. That's obviously harder to measure. It's also harder to argue about because breaking someone's will to get information which is critical to saving many lives is the whole point of the exercise. Is that mentally damaging? Quite definitely. Is it permanent? Quite likely. Will it cause the person to be unable to function normally? Probably not.
Think about it. Even normal people who have never been subjected to deliberate torture can encounter incidents which can cause permanent mental damage. A prime example is Kevin's recent post on the man who accidentally shot and killed his son. It is going to leave a permanent mark on his psyche. It may even prevent him from living a normal life, though the degree of that effect will depend in large part on how much control he exerts over himself and how much outside help he gets.
At the extreme end, there are torture techniques which can leave a person a gibbering idiot for the rest of their life. Again, the permanent damage standard works at defining such techniques as off limits.
The problem with permanent psychological damage is that so much depends on the mental makeup of the person on the receiving end, and there are so many degrees of damage. So we are kind of stuck with somewhat arbitrary lines here.
One clear line we could say is that interrogation techniques which have a risk of even moderate permanent psychological damage are off limits unless the person being interrogated is clearly known to be guilty of violent crimes and that there is reasonable suspicion that the person has knowledge of time critical information necessary to save lives. Furthermore, you don't jump to extreme measures immediately, but always start with less risky measures and only ramp it up when it's clear that they aren't working. I think there are also probably other reasonable caveats (as Ken said) which should also apply.
Does this sound reasonable and based on measurable "bright lines" to you?
Alright then. Compare Al Qaeda's view on homosexuals and a recent post by Sarah in which she stated that homosexuals should not be allowed to marry or adopt children.
Markadelphia: Do you honestly believe that murdering individuals, sometimes in remarkably horrific ways, is equivalent to denying the same person the privilege to raise a child not currently legally or genetically theirs?
A simple "yes" or "no" will suffice - I honestly do not care as to your explanation.
If you honestly believe that those two circumstances are equivalent, would be so kind as to indicate which state you currently live and teach in? Feel free to email me directly, if you do not wish to make it public knowledge. I only ask because I want to ensure that no children I may have in the future interact with you on any level, much less are taught by you.
Ed-
My objections to the practice of waterboarding are twofold. The first is based on personal taste; I've seen what victims have said historically (including the volunteers) and have arrived at the conclusion that it's a form of torture. I don't think we should do it to people we have in custody. This is probably not worth arguing due to its basis.
My second objection is based in law. I hate the UN as much as most people here, but here is the definition in the treaty they organized (and which we ratified):
"Any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions."
It's a mouthful in a comment window, I know. The law is important to me because as an advocate of liberty I have to be assured that what government we have submits to the rule of law. What we can see from the UNCAT definition is that permanence is not a standard. All you need is:
1) A government agent
2) A deliberate, positive action (ie, bad food or living conditions is insufficient), and
3) "severe pain or discomfort."
So is taking a person to the brink of death by drowning torture? It is the way I read the treaty.
Your comparison to boxing is invalid because of the same difference that exists between charity and welfare or husbands and rapists. Voluntary participation by all parties is a critical variable in any moral calculus. You may enjoy a round of sparring at the gym, but I think you would object to being punched in the face (even once!) on the walk home even if you had just willingly taken a beating in the ring.
"Any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person...punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed..."
The way that reads to me is that if he blows up a barracks full of your buddies and you shoot him for it, even in the heat of the moment having caught him in the act, then that's torture.
You'll forgive me if that strikes me as completely ridiculous, huh?
"So is taking a person to the brink of death by drowning torture? "
C'mon, Xenocles, that's a straw man. Waterboarding does not take a person to the brink of death by drowning. It is intended to make the person feel like he is drowning, even though he isn't drowning. Done (ahem) properly, it can be continued indefinitely (well, to the point of hunger or a toilet break, and so on) without killing anyone.
"The way that reads to me is that if he blows up a barracks full of your buddies and you shoot him for it, even in the heat of the moment having caught him in the act, then that's torture."
C'mon, Grumpy, that's a straw man. What are the conditions under which the quoted UN rule applies? The quote by Xenocles doesn't say. Likely this rule applies only to people who are in custody, i.e. likely it doesn't apply to conditions of combat on the battlefield. It would be nice to know, wouldn't it?
No, I'm not taking sides here. I'm just a spectator.
OK, break's over ...
It would indeed be nice to know, DJ. I read through the entire convention and can't find any language that applies it only to persons in custody. Since it's not the "Convention Against War" I assume that is, but that is only an assumption. It doesn't seem to prohibit execution, either, provided the execution is done humanely.
I used to think that the idea that it was "simulated drowning" made it okay. But the words of people like this guy made me reconsider. Have you ever aspirated water? I have. Even after meeting all my Navy requirements I'm not a very good swimmer, and when I was a kid I got in over my head. Just one breath of water and you panic. You simply lose control; I can totally believe that people would say anything to stop the experience.
Also, my item 3 was a misquote, it should read "severe pain and suffering," not "...discomfort"
GOF, are you talking about a summary execution or shooting a fleeing combatant? Those two are almost entirely different from one another.
"It would indeed be nice to know, DJ. I read through the entire convention and can't find any language that applies it only to persons in custody."
Now we know what you already knew, that we don't know if it has limits. If it doesn't, then Grumpy has a very valid observation, doesn't he?
"Have you ever aspirated water?"
Yup. I was eight years old, in a swimming pool, and I nearly drowned my older brother by trying to climb onto him to save my own ass. If I could have talked my way out of it, I would have.
"Just one breath of water and you panic. You simply lose control ..."
Yup. It makes you feel like you're drowning even though you aren't.
I'm reminded of an old Justin Wilson joke.
He described a man with a son who was very short. The guy talked to a doctor about it, and the doctor said, "Try to stretch him. Every night, just lay him out on the dinner table, have people grab his arms and legs, and then pull for a while. He'll be tall in no time."
A few weeks later, the doctor asked if there were any results yet. The man replied, "Well, yeah, the little bastard has confessed to fifty crimes."
I'd like to make two amendments, upon further consideration and research:
1) The UNCAT lists prohibited motives for torture. Self-defense or defense of others is not among them, so it seems at least plausible that the treaty does not apply to battle. Using weapons and such designed to cause unnecessary suffering are prohibited elsewhere.
2) The USC section regarding torture (here) adds the language "upon another person within his custody or physical control." So, if nothing else, that's how the US has implemented the treaty.
Ed: You've made it clear that you think a 2400 year-old book written by near-primitives is an accurate source of information about the behavior of homosexuals. And you wonder why many people don't trust religious true believers?
Thank you for the clarification, Xenocles.
DJ, that was exactly my point, that there weren't any stated conditions. If there aren't, then no it isn't a straw man, because there is no loophole so ridiculous that a good lawyer won't use it to defend his friends and attack his enemies.
And we are, after all, talking about the UN here. Given the UN-run prostitution and slavery operations that they have called "nation building" or "emergency relief" in the past, I'm not prepared to assume that common sense will be applied to what's written.
markm,
Did you happen to read parts 3 through 5 of what he wrote? Did you notice that he gave two lines of argument, the religious and the scientific? If you ignored the scientific argument, that doesn't mean it never existed.
"DJ, that was exactly my point, that there weren't any stated conditions. If there aren't, then no it isn't a straw man, because there is no loophole so ridiculous that a good lawyer won't use it to defend his friends and attack his enemies."
I agree. I didn't know whether or not there were any limitations that simply hadn't been stated here. That there aren't any numbs the mind, but the UN does that.
Thanks Grumpy, you're exactly right.
I have noticed that when it comes to homosexuality, it's a common tactic of leftists to attack only religious arguments as if scientific arguments don't even exist. And just like markm did here, even when a scientific argument is laid out, they continue their attack as if it is only a religious issue and no scientific argument was made; even if no one even hints at a religious argument and only scientific arguments are made. Talk about a strawman fallacy!
markm,
First of all, the Bible is not a single book, but a collection of 66 different books and letters. The last book written is generally dated at 95 A.D., while the oldest books are thought to have been written in the late 1,400's B.C.; a span of about 1,500 years ranging from about 1,900 to 3,400 years ago. If you're gonna make a claim about how old something is, at least get it right.
Second, since when does "old" equal "always wrong"? That simply does not follow. When we take a look at the scientific evidence of the effects of homosexuality, we see that, by golly, The Bible is right about this! It is destructive.
BTW, if you're going to claim that the Bible is wrong about homosexuality just because it's old, then you also need to throw out "love your neighbor as yourself." Are you planning to do the exact opposite just because someone said this nearly 2,000 years ago?
Or how about the Code of Hammurabi? It dates from about 1790 B.C., prior to the writing of the first book of the Bible. Yet most people view it as providing a big part of the foundation for our modern concepts of law. Does that mean that we should throw out our entire system of laws and justice just because some of its fundamental concepts can be traced back to a document that's roughly 3,800 years old?
You should also look up Protagoras (the name Ken has applied to Markadelphia). He predated Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, and the New Testament in the Bible. Yet his ideas are commonly accepted by most leftists today (usually not being aware that they are). Are you willing to give up on his ideas just because they're older than the Bible's instruction to Christians about sexual sins? I suspect you won't. (I say his ideas should not be given up just because they're old, but because they're wrong.)
Face it, there is no common philosophy in existence today which cannot also be found in ancient writings. Age has absolutely nothing to do with validity.
Google is a wonderful thing. I just decided to check out the validity of this statement by Marky:
"in the past I have continued discussions that are way down the page and have not gotten any responses."
I did a search using this search string: "site:haloscan.com Markadelphia". Google showed 127 comment threads from The Smallest Minority where Marky participated. Of those, 7 weren't arguments about principles or politics. That leaves 120 debate threads.
(Note: Google returned 148 hits. 2 were for other sites. I used my browsers Find feature to figure out which ones he actually participated in.)
Out of those 127 threads where he participated, Marky got the last word in on 14 of them. Out of those 14, 1 was a statement of agreement with Kevin, 1 was a statement of agreement with Sarah on Battlestar Galactica, 2 referred to other comment threads and his blog, 1 was a correction, 1 said he would think about it, and 2 others did not make any kind of argument or assertion. That means that out of 146 threads, Markadelphia did not get a response to his final assertions only 6 times!
The dates of those times where Marky was technically correct about not getting a response are:
7/1/07
8/22/07
12/1/07
2/9/08
2/18/08
9/19/08
That makes his claim that he "has had" instances where he got in the last word exactly 5% true. That means 95% of the time, he runs away. Furthermore, it has been 9 full months since this has happened.
Marky, do you really think it's a good idea to throw out a claim which we can check you on and is 95% untrue? (Yeah, I know. Dumb question. Of course he thinks it's a good idea.)
"Marky, do you really think it's a good idea to throw out a claim which we can check you on and is 95% untrue? (Yeah, I know. Dumb question. Of course he thinks it's a good idea.)"
If I can borrow from Mark Twain:
Those who won't [insert any of: learn, think, reason, remember] have no advantage over those who can't.
Marky, do you really think it's a good idea to throw out a claim which we can check you on and is 95% untrue? (Yeah, I know. Dumb question. Of course he thinks it's a good idea.)
Actually, Ed, Mark doesn't think about how good an idea something is.
Look at the other thread where he says he "stands by" the infamous "verbatim comment". He's forgotten that he didn't know the definition, after insisting that he did, and then failing to even bother to look it up when he deigned to tell us what he thought it meant.
There's no thought, no judgement that goes into that, Ed. Mark simply cannot comprehend how to make, support, built up, and tear down an argument. ANY argument.
Mark simply doesn't consider ANYTHING. The reason he's so inane is this is how he thinks. He can't support his assertions, so he insists that he has. Why not? It's not like we'll respect him any less - remember how he wanted Kevin to censure me for calling him out on his idiocy?
To Mark, tone is more important than substance. Substance actually means almost nothing. Intent matters. Emotion matters. Facts? Logic? History? Bah.
Remember, this is the guy who claimed that he could divine people's internal thoughts and motivations based on seeing them on TV.
It's utterly hilarious that he then loses his shit when we bemoan the malpractice that is the Public Education System - when he's the single biggest proof of how badly it's failing our youth. (Not that it employs him, but that he considers himself an educated, discerning, insightful person.)
By the way, LabRat pointed me to Theodore Dalrymple. I've read a number of his articles, but haven't been systematically reading his shorter pieces.
http://www.city-journal.org/2008/eon0711td.html
The head examiner of a British school-examination board, ... recently explained to teachers why a pupil who answered the question, “Describe the room you’re in,” with “Fuck off”—an actual case, apparently—should receive a grade of 7.5 percent rather than a grade of zero. Indeed, Buckroyd went so far as to say that “it would be wicked to give it zero because it does show some very basic skills we are looking for.”
First, the candidate had spelled the two words correctly, said the chief examiner, which showed some grasp of English orthography; and second, he had strung two words together correctly, which showed some grasp of grammatical structure and an ability to convey meaning. Had the words come with an exclamation mark, moreover, the candidate should have received a grade of 11 percent, because he would have shown some grasp of punctuation.
“We’re looking for positives,” explained another examiner, who was presumably desperate to avoid provoking low self-esteem among his examinees. Buckroyd added that, after all, the candidate was “better than someone who doesn’t write anything at all.”
That's not this country, granted. But we can see the same impulses and rationalizations. “We’re looking for positives,” - much as Mark insisted I should be censured for my tone, and he should be rewarded for his. Exact same thought process. "Looking for positives". Not being right. Once you stop worrying about being right, and stop worrying about facts and proof...
So what if you make obviously false claims?
... There's a reason he's such a Obama fanatic - he's hoping to "prove" that his way of thought is totally, really BETTER to us.
I went back to take a look at the six threads and discovered I made a slight error on one of the dates. Here are the correct dates and their links.
4/3/07
7/1/07
12/1/07
The rest of the dates…
2/9/08
2/18/08
9/19/08
Given Marky's current laughable claim that it's not unusual for him to get the last word, I thought this exchange was particularly ironic:
Markadelphia: "Hey, Kevin, don't know if you are still reading this thread but I am sorry for not answering you question. I totally forgot that I left a post here. If you are still reading, let me know and I will answer." (12/27/07)
Kevin Baker: "Yup. Still checking in from time to time. But I'm more interested in your answer to the question I asked here." (about 14 hours later)
And then, nothing…
Ed, don't you have your sooper seekrit invisible ink decoder ring?
Ed:
I started to write the "Chronicles of Markadelphia" a while back, collecting all of his thoughts.
I got depressed about 2 hours in.
Your first two links are impressive, and obviously I was busy with something at that time, because I don't think I'd have let Mark's moral equivalence stand.
Conservatives forgive all the rotten shit this country does and chalk it up all up to national security, completely ignoring the fact that our actions in Iran, for example, in the 1950s and 60s are the root cause of why they despise us.
So, until our country stops behaving in the exact same way countries like Iran and Syria do and we start acting like the morally superior country we claim to be, there will always be terrorism.
Funny thing, his second sounds familiar...
Now, are you willing to accept our responsibility in all of this? Are you willing to look at the hell we have wrought? Kevin, please watch the film that I linked to above. You have to open your eyes to the way the US does business in the world. It really explains an awful lot.
The ending of the 3rd doesn't have Mark making any ludicrous claims... though he did earlier.
I don't assess my students with testing. Typical that a conservative would think that they only way to measure knowledge is by a test.My students write papers, have group discussion, and work on tangible projects. That is what they get graded on, as well as classroom participation.
...
(I still remembered that thread for his stupidity there. If you guys don't mind my quoting of my own comment to him:
That's what you've done, Mark. Insisted you're someone worth listening to, then when asked for specifics as to why, dithered, moved the goalposts around (When you didn't notice you were being scored upon, and the scoreboard was incrementing wildly), accused me and others of "distorting language", and distorted the everlasting shit out of the English language to try and make non-factual arguments.
Just - ex-fucking-xactly like what "testing" means.
"I don't test! Ha!"
*we all put heads in hands*. "Yes, yes you do."
"No! I don't! I grade! I give essays! No tests! HA! HA!"
Truly, your intellect is staggering.)
Lessee.. the 4th.. A Beck thread, so I tuned out early.
5th:
Hee.
I have to say that you are really way off base here on the cause of our education system's woes.
...
Instead, what we have, in most schools, is a tendency to show America for what it is...warts and all. As an educator, I am sorry that you don't want to hear it but I am going to tell the truth in my classes and not warp reality to fit an outdated ideology. We don't live in Pleasantville anymore. If you make the mistake of thinking that that ideology is communism or socialism, well...then you would be believing a lie that is being propagated by those who would stand to lose the most from ANY deviation for our current system..even a return to what most Democrats want which is real capitalism, as opposed to the oligarchy we have now.
(*snicker* *giggle* And Ed, you were wondering if it bothered him to make unsubstantiated claims? :) )
And the last is Mark's usual attempt to be a deep thinker, but still peddling his "culture of fear" that somehow *we* are perpetuating.
It's an interesting list, but I'm afraid it was a waste of your time. He's now ignoring this thread, and he'll come back later and claim this was all bogus, and he "stands behind" his claims. Besides, "point proven". Verbatim.
markm,
One final thought for you before I stop watching the thread for today:
The only reason I bothered going though the Christian view of homosexuality was because Marky used it to try to pretend that it backs up his claim that conservatives "are little different than Al Qaeda". Even though the concept of supporting your arguments seems to be foreign to Marky, it's an important concept and I thought it was important to stick to it. So I went through the whole exercise to prove that I wasn't pulling stuff out of my nether regions. On the contrary, of the two reasons conservatives hold the position we do, neither position is anything like what he things they are.
If I had been trying to make a case why you should conclude that homosexuality is wrong, I would have used the scientific argument, not the Biblical one.
Remember this is what Marky was trying to equate us to. (Warning: This video is EXTREMELY graphic. Don't even bother if you have a weak stomach. I couldn't finish watching it myself. The site itself also fills the rest of the page with explicit pornagraphy.) That is was fundamentalist Islam (like Al Qaeda) calls "good".
"Now, pick one of those services and explain to me why it's better to have it administered through violence and the threat of violence (the only tool governments really have), rather than by finding a profitable way to give you what you actually want, not what you are ordered to content yourself with."
I don't even know where to start with this one. I guess I need some clarification first. Are you saying that the government is threatening you with violence on a daily basis? And are you also saying that corporations in this country "find a profitable way to give you what you actually want?" I can't answer this point until I figure out where you are coming from...
"I find it fascinating that Marky-Mark doesn't think an "Assault weapon" BAN would lead eventually to a COMPLETE (or English-equivalent) ban on firearms here"
Well, it won't. Have you ever calculated the cost of what an entire ban would be? Not to mention the political cost? I had the occasion recently to spend some time with a constitutional lawyer and I asked him what he thought about this view. After laughing a little bit, he explained to me that, essentially, people aren't going to be allowed to own a bazooka and they are never going to have the right to hand guns, rifles, and other weapons taken away. The battle, as it always is, is fought in between those extremes.
"Markadelphia: Do you honestly believe that murdering individuals, sometimes in remarkably horrific ways, is equivalent to denying the same person the privilege to raise a child not currently legally or genetically theirs?"
No...and since you don't want my explanation, stop reading.
Hirabists don't simply kill gays on sight. Of course they have done that but they also limit their rights in other ways. They are not accepted in society because of religious code just as they are not accepted by some here due to religious code. Ed essentially proved my point for me with his analysis of Christian doctrine on homosexuality which is largely the same as Muslim doctrine. The similarity I am pointing out is that folks there and folks here have essentially the same view on homosexuality. The actions they take as a result of this obviously are different (thank God!) but the belief is the same.
"And then, nothing…"
If I recall, I answered that question in another thread. I could be wrong, of course, but I'm sure my new biographer Ed will let me know:)
One final point, the comment was made above (by Ken) that I was a coward. I've been posting here for a couple of years now and have endured insult after personal attack. As Ed mentioned above, he works and doesn't always have the time to craft the large essays as he did above. I work, have a family, and also am back in school for further education. And I have to respond to everyone not just one person. So, I challenge any one of you to spend the same amount of time as the sole voice on a liberal blog. See how well you do. When you have and have defended yourselves using the same rules you place upon me AND any they place on you, then you can come talk to me about cowardice as well as some of the bullshit about my responsiveness above which, btw, is so obviously the usual tactic by the right to discredit another point of view. (Oh...whew...he can't be right about anything he says because we just "proved" that he is a liar/idiot/dope/dolt/unresponsive twat)
So until any one of you accept that challenge, these particular opinions are utterly devoid of perspective and one giant load of garbage.
" So, I challenge any one of you to spend the same amount of time as the sole voice on a liberal blog"
Irrelevant. Your arguments are what they are, and they either stand for what they or they do not. The number of people opposing it makes no difference (see Mr. Beck for reference).
"Hirabists don't simply kill gays on sight. Of course they have done that..."
I'm stopping you there. You just contradicted your first sentence. Try again, moron.
"...is so obviously the usual tactic by the right to discredit another point of view"
Those godamn meanie rightwing groupthink bastards insist I establish credibility by not running away from arguments! OH NOES!
Seriously, is your entire rebuttal to something like 20 threads I've personally followed where you ran away and refused to back up your bullshit claims that you're the "sole" liberal and dissenting view on here?
Of course they have done that but they also limit their rights in other ways.
Remember when LabRat went off on you for claiming that jobs and banks "enslaved" people?
Yeah. What you said was exactly that stupid. AGAIN.
Oh, so they KILL THEM, but they also won't let them adopt, marry, or eat ice cream *FROTH* IT"S THE EXACT SAME THING *FROTH FROTH*.
And thus you refute yourself, your ignorance, and your purported ability to think.
I've been posting here for a couple of years now and have endured insult after personal attack.
Why, Mark? Do you think it could have anything to do with your consistent lying, consistent insults, libels, redefining words, and utter assinity for 2 years?
No? Oh, these were just PERSONAL attacks and had nothing to do with your track record of intellectual, moral, and ethical dishonesty?
Like claiming that you "don't do logical fallacies"... then proceeding them apace. Just as you did. Again.
Most of what you consider "personal insult" is your inability to admit that you're wrong.
When you have and have defended yourselves using the same rules you place upon me
We use the same rules, you moron. We've explained that to you many times. Everything I post is with the same "rules" that I "place upon you".
I'm honest. And consistent. Run away - but it's obvious that you know you've fucked up bigtime. Again.
But you owe Sarah, and Ed (and many others) an apology.
Grow a set, and apologize to them for libeling them. Or run away, and yet again, find yourself with more evidence that you're an dishonest, slandering, personal-attacking idiot.
Which is well-proven.
The only thing here that's unproven is the things you postulate, you propose, and you say.
"Are you saying that the government is threatening you with violence on a daily basis?"
Mark, what on earth do you think will happen if you break any law and the authorities find out?
1) Police will come to arrest you.
2) If you do not cooperate, they will warn you (if you're lucky).
3) If you continue to resist, they will apply force to you, starting with dragging you away.
4) If you resist 3 with force of your own, they will apply progressively deadlier force until you comply or are dead (mooting the issue).
Most people don't need threats to obey most laws. If you are inclined to break a given law, however, then you are indeed under continuous threat of government violence.
Xenocles:
Good luck trying to explain the bare basics to Mark.
Maybe one day he'll read some classics and learn what the baseline for civilized discussion is.
Oh, U-J, I know Mark's ways; I'm a long-time lurker. Just doing my part to hang a response on him for posterity.
"Remember when LabRat went off on you for claiming that jobs and banks 'enslaved' people?"
That one amused me. I'm guessing Mark is one of those people who, provided he ever had a minimum wage job (Taco Bell, for example), had a crappy attitude and talked about how he was a "wage slave" and his boss was "like, a total slave-driver."
It would explain his position in the educational system and defense of it as somehow being anything other than a failure.
"Are you saying that the government is threatening you with violence on a daily basis?"
Yes, they do implicitly at all times. Try disobeying the law on a daily basis, significantly enough to be noticed, and see how long it takes before the gubmint threatens you explicitly with violence. Then keep on and see how long it takes before the gubmint makes good on that explicit threat.
C'mon, Hollywood boy, you've seen it in the MOOVEES how many times?
"Hirabists don't simply kill gays on sight. Of course they have done that ..."
Goddamn, boy, if the self-contradiction in these adjacent sentences isn't YOU in a (ahem) nutshell.
"So, I challenge any one of you to spend the same amount of time as the sole voice on a liberal blog."
A number of us spend as much time (or more) hammering you here as you spend serving up these hanging curve balls. What is relevant is whether or not you show that your assertions are in accord with observable, demonstrable facts, and whether or not your assertions are logically and rationally reasoned therefrom. What is not relevant is where you do it or how many people oppose you. It's about getting it right, not about measuring the audience.
"See how well you do."
We see how well we do, and we do damned well.
You, on the other hand, have been demonstrated to be wrong (i.e. contrary to demonstrated facts) countless times, you have been caught lying over and over and over again, and you have been shown to have no ability to think critically or rationally.
"When you have and have defended yourselves using the same rules you place upon me ..."
We do, liar boy, we do. The difference between you and (most of) the rest of us is that we follow those same rules we try to get you to follow, but you don't follow them, indeed you show astonishingly little evidence of understanding them.
I keep telling you: you ain't fooling anyone, but your fragile little ego won't let you stop trying.
This deserves a comment all its own:
"And are you also saying that corporations in this country "find a profitable way to give you what you actually want?"
Sigh ...
It's really, really simple, teacher boy.
You ready?
Here it comes ...
Corporations don't "give you what you actually want". Corporations sell you what you actually want.
Y'see, you don't buy what a corporation sells unless you want what the corporation sells. Why? Because no one forces you to buy what the corporation sells. You do so of your own free will.
So, if a corporation can't find a way to sell you what you want, then you won't buy. If it can't find a way to do so profitably, then it doesn't make a profit and either goes out of business or reorganizes under the bankruptcy laws.
Look up the ancient history of General Motors and Chrysler. They made money hand over fist by profitably selling what their customers wanted to buy. They didn't give their customers anything; they sold their customers automobiles.
Now look up the very recent history of General Motors and Chrysler. They filed for reorganization under the bankruptcy laws because they couldn't find a way to profitably sell what customers wanted to buy. Some customers simply didn't buy, some customers bought competitor's products, and neither GM nor Chrysler made a profit, on average, on what their customers did buy.
"I can't answer this point until I figure out where you are coming from..."
No, you are simply dodging the question, as usual. Y'see, that it matters where he's "coming from" is a non sequitur because how the economy works is not determined by what he, or you, think about it.
Still don't understand "reality", do you?
GOF sez Did you happen to read parts 3 through 5 of what he wrote? Did you notice that he gave two lines of argument, the religious and the scientific? If you ignored the scientific argument, that doesn't mean it never existed.
That stuff was about as scientific as something Markadaffia would link to.
Ed's best argument is working from the book of primitive superstition. The pseudo-science argument is on par with creationism. As for the social science argument(s), that is what in SCotUS circles is called a Brandeis brief - social science hocus-pocus instead of legal reasoning.
You do so of your own free will.
Reading that made me wonder, do lefties actually believe in free will? Or do they think humans are just mindless automatons that follow whatever is programmed into them? I think they must all be disciples of Skinner, and thus they think that anyone who disagrees with them is therefore not functioning properly (and needs to be 'corrected').
At least right-wing religious people believe this (or sin anyways) is estrangement from God, which is less annoying than not being in tune with the hive-mind.
"So, I challenge any one of you to spend the same amount of time as the sole voice on a liberal blog."
Well, I spent eight months posting at DemocraticUnderground before they kicked me off for something I wrote somewhere else.
You see, Markadelphia, the difference is you're still allowed to post here, no matter how inane your blatherings are - case in point:
"Hirabists don't simply kill gays on sight. Of course they have done that ..."
Your erstwhile brothers and sisters of the Left tend to exercise Reasoned Discourse™ and ban those who disagree with them, especially if those opponents use logic, reason and evidence in their arguments.
You? We keep you around as a whetstone.
"Markadelphia: Do you honestly believe that murdering individuals, sometimes in remarkably horrific ways, is equivalent to denying the same person the privilege to raise a child not currently legally or genetically theirs?"
No...and since you don't want my explanation, stop reading.
Hirabists don't simply kill gays on sight. Of course they have done that...
*blinks*
*blinksblinks*
I wonder if you will ever truly comprehend how much of an idiotic ass you just made of yourself with the above comment. You lied, you contradicted yourself, and you proved to the world that you have absolutely no idea of what you are arguing, all in the space of two lines. I would say that I was impressed, except that you are supposedly responsible for the education of growing children, and the knowledge someone as irrational and incoherent as you in such a position disturbs me greatly.
Also, allow me to echo Kevin's comments concerning posting on liberal weblogs... I have tried to do so, repeatedly, in the past, and every time I brought to bear logic, evidence, statistics, reason, rational thought, or other such argumentative tactics, I was banned very shortly thereafter. Sure, if you want to talk about how you feel, or your emotional response to certain events, then lefty weblogs are the place to be. But if you want to get down into the nuts-and-bolts of facts, reality, and truth... the lefties do not want that on their weblogs.
When you have and have defended yourselves using the same rules you place upon me
Quick! Describe those rules!
And contrast those with what different rules we operate under!
...endured insult after personal attack.
Guilty on this account.
And I think I have said this before, stop sniveling. No one is forcing you to comment here, and no one is making you write the most inane and constantly free from logical thought comments here.
If you can't play with the big boys, and extremely sharp ladies, go home.
We keep you around as a whetstone.
A whetstone? Marky's as much as a whetstone as the Maginot Line was an effective deterrent the German attack (Sichlschnitt).
I'm amused that he keeps expecting that by fortifying his Ardennes, his Line will hold of countless waves of Republican DittoBots.
Hey Mark...,
Take a look at how many 'liberal' blogs ban people who disagree w/ their echo chamber. Democratic Underground and Huffington post are the height of censorship.
No...and since you don't want my explanation, stop reading.
Hirabists don't simply kill gays on sight. Of course they have done that but they also limit their rights in other ways. They are not accepted in society because of religious code just as they are not accepted by some here due to religious code. Ed essentially proved my point for me with his analysis of Christian doctrine on homosexuality which is largely the same as Muslim doctrine. The similarity I am pointing out is that folks there and folks here have essentially the same view on homosexuality. The actions they take as a result of this obviously are different (thank God!) but the belief is the same. -Markedelphia, 06.21.09 - 3:47 pm
You realize that you in no way proved your point with that post, don't you?
All you really just did was prove (well, not really, more like just merely state, since you didn't back it up with passages from the Koran) that Muslim and Christian orthodoxy is similar in regards to homosexuals.
Ok, so what?
Unless your point is that all Muslims are members of Al Queda. Because your original point was that some people who post on this blog have a similar view of homosexuals as Al Queda.
Here, I'll even quote your words for you for reference:
Alright then. Compare Al Qaeda's view on homosexuals and a recent post by Sarah in which she stated that homosexuals should not be allowed to marry or adopt children. Compare Al Qaeda's views on the sinfullness of homosexuality to a debate a while back regarding the sinfullness of homsexuality, according to the Bible, between Ed and myself. - Markedelphia, 06.19.09 - 1:20 pm
Now, I don't have my PC handbook with me, but I'm pretty sure that equating all Muslims with terrorist organization is a big no-no.
Actually, as non-PC as I am, I don't believe that's right myself.
So the question becomes this: Do you believe that Al Queda's beliefs reflect those of all Muslims, or are you simply so inept you can't build an argument without making yourself look like an ignorant bigot?
Do you believe that Al Queda's beliefs reflect those of all Muslims, or are you simply so inept you can't build an argument without making yourself look like an ignorant bigot?
Ooh! Ooh! This!
Mista Kotter! Mista Kotter!
*snicker*
And now for round two of:
"And are you also saying that corporations in this country "find a profitable way to give you what you actually want?"
I was in Borders bookstore this afternoon.
Now, being someone who is not "into" iPods and the like, I noticed that Borders' had mighty slim pickings on CD's. Where before their many CD racks were full of everything one might want to buy, now about 90% of the racks were empty.
So, I asked the general manager (who handled my purchase), with my tongue only partly in my cheek, if CD's were becoming obsolete, given their shelves were empty. The gist of her response, which developed over a surprisingly long conversation (there were no other customers to wait on) was as follows, paraphrased (but not quoted) by me into the form of a comprehensive statement (meaning, teacher boy, that she did NOT say this verbatim):
"No, CD's are still a real product. Borders Corporate Headquarters has analyzed our CD sales, both overall and on a store-by-store basis, and decided not to stock them as completely as we have been. Here, we found individual CD's that have been sitting on the shelf as long as four years without selling. We don't make money off what doesn't sell. So, tonight, we're rearranging that section of the store. We'll stock new release CD's and those that have sold well. We can still order anything you want to buy."
A lesson in market-driven economics, ain't it? This is a corporation that is finding a profitable way to sell you want you actually want. It measures what you actually want by what you actually buy and what you actually don't buy, "you" being the customer.
So, while you're "back in school for further education" [snort] (Wait, what? There is something you don't know, is there?) [/snort], try Remedial Economics for Kindergarten. It'll open a whole new world for you.
"Irrelevant."
It certainly is relevant. Adam, go spend two years on a liberal blog as the sole voice of dissent. Then you can maybe have a leg to stand on. Until then, your point regarding my responsiveness is laughable.
"is your entire rebuttal to something like 20 threads I've personally followed where you ran away and refused to back up your bullshit claims that you're the "sole" liberal and dissenting view on here?"
Well, if you were under the same rules I was, I would call you on not answering ALL of my questions and responding to EVERYTHING that I wrote. My rebuttal would consist of the 8 jillion words I have written on this blog.
"claiming that jobs and banks "enslaved" people?"
They do. As I recall, Lab got pretty pissed at that unfortunate truth. I probably hit a little close to home on that one and for that, I apologize.
"Most of what you consider "personal insult" is your inability to admit that you're wrong."
"We use the same rules, you moron."
Wow. Talk about being caught with their hand in the cookie jar:)
"But you owe Sarah, and Ed (and many others) an apology."
Until they pull their head out of a warped interpretation of a document written by (what was it called here again)..savages?, no apology regarding the similarity between Al Qaeda's views on homosexuals and their views on homosexuals will be forthcoming. I have been lectured on here many times about individual rights. We have two cultures that have the same view that homosexuals are should not have certain rights.
As far as others go, I'm waiting on a response to the other examples I gave above regarding torture and Yosemite's comment. No takers?
"then you are indeed under continuous threat of government violence."
This is a good point. First of all, I'm not worried about the government. Second, I agree with most of the laws. Most of you do not. I marvel at the modern day conservative...and I know many...who are greatly angered about laws mainly because they don't agree with them. Therefore, they feel "slighted"...dare I say it? They feel like the are victims. And why? Because they can't be assholes AND enjoy the comforts of American culture at the same time.
"What is relevant is whether or not you show that your assertions are in accord with observable, demonstrable facts"
Show me a liberal who does. Every liberal is a liar/moron/ignorant/useful idiot and if they aren't, you just pretend they are. In fact, that's the central problem I have with modern day conservatives. If they don't like what is happening, they just...make up a bunch of shit and then pretend that it is real and comment on it. Ex: Barack Obama is a socialist. As Maher said, he's not even a liberal. In fact, neither am I!
"We see how well we do, and we do damned well."
Again, you can't say you "do well" until you get out there and argue your point with 20 people who are liberal. Put your money where you mouth is and show me the links. 2 years, dude, and then we'll see how well you do. I KNOW that there are people out there that would hand your ass to you far better than I can.
"I spent eight months posting at DemocraticUnderground"
That doesn't surprise me. They kicked me off of there too back when it first started because of my views on Israel and Pakistan. Oh, and there was a porn thing too that I did very very poorly on. Yeah, I'm really broken up about that one....NOT!!! But this would be an example of why I have respect for you, Kevin. And why you are probably right on some of the bullshit you call me on.
"If you can't play with the big boys..."
Huh? I think I've proved that I can do that. How many years now? This comment makes no sense.
"Do you believe that Al Queda's beliefs reflect those of all Muslims, or are you simply so inept you can't build an argument without making yourself look like an ignorant bigot?"
No, but my friend Eric (evangelical minister) does. Recall he said that only "true" Muslims are followers of Al Qaeda and bin Laden. That makes no sense to me because virtually all the Muslims I know and many around the world hate bin Laden and think he is warped. In fact, many think hirabis have perverted the Koran just as many right wing Christians have perverted the Bible. They choose quotes out of context to fit their own individual beliefs.
In other words, they pretend something is true and then proceed as if it is fact. It's no wonder that it carries over to their politics as well. I am speaking of both Al Qaeda and some on the right (thankfully not all)
Well, if you were under the same rules I was,
Where am I not?
I would call you on not answering ALL of my questions and responding to EVERYTHING that I wrote. My rebuttal would consist of the 8 jillion words I have written on this blog.
Even the ones that contradict yourself? The ones where you lie?
Mark, your 8 jillion words indict you as utterly specious and a fool.
Adam, go spend two years on a liberal blog as the sole voice of dissent
Like that. I've dealt with it in the past, and Kevin and others told you that they've TRIED.. Instead of dealing with that, instead of rebutting that, you just repeat what you said before. Congratulating Kevin doesn't take away his point, that Liberal blogs don't allow the sort of dissent you're talking about, like...
We have two cultures that have the same view that homosexuals are should not have certain rights.
NO.
You LYING SUMBITCH.
That is NOT THE SAME THING AT ALL.
First: you've not proven that it's a "right".
Second, you've not proven that anybody here wants to deny anybody any rights.
You've made an idiotic claim, and now you're being a lying, obtuse, asshole.
Third, ONE OF THOSE GROUPS KILLS ALL THE HOMOSEXUALS THEY GET THEIR HANDS ON. One debates if they should adopt kids, if that's in the best interest.
Unix-Jedi: claiming that jobs and banks "enslaved" people?"
They do. As I recall, Lab got pretty pissed at that unfortunate truth. I probably hit a little close to home on that one and for that, I apologize.
She got pissed for the same reason I'm pissed - there's a massive difference between ENSLAVEMENT, selling people, beating, killing, deciding when and what they can eat, when they can breed, selling their kids, and you wandering into the bank and saying "Hey, I'd like to get a job, and then I'd like to buy a house, will you hand me 10 years salary up front?"
And you want to know why you get "personal attacks"?
After 2 years here, not only have you not learned, but you've regressed. You've gotten DUMBER as you tell us that the educational system isn't filled with hacks and idiots.
Rebuttal? What more is there to say about your vapidity than that you equate slavery with employment, and that you think that there's no difference between *having a debate* and disagreeing with your view, and with KILLING those people on SIGHT.
2 years? Meaningless. Doesn't matter. Like Sisyphus, all you do is push the rock up , and then it goes to the exact same place. If you're wrong - so absolutely wrong I DARE you to tell a relative of a murder victim that it's exactly the same as that vote.
You owe us another apology now. Another for screaming that we're incapable of judging the educational system.
A thought occurs to me.
Why is Mark so strident about education? Let's think about equivocation for a minute, using "Mark's rules" (Funny thing, he bitches about "different rules", but he's the one who can't stay consistent with "primary source", sources, or even which is more, 22 or 15.)
What does "Taliban" mean?
"Students". They're STUDENTS caught by a teacher.
Which means that, using Mark's equivalence, that Mark is identical to Mullah Omar.
They teach a worldview that's contrary to the reality. They believe that their belief and narrative can and will FORCE reality to follow. They insist on dogmatic devotion to "facts" - which are not negotiable, and anyone who tries to argue them is evil!
Really makes a lot of sense, if you think about it. Sorry about that, Mullahdelphia.
"Well, if you were under the same rules I was,"
It's been explained to you time and again, teacher boy. Now clear the air. List, right here, the "rules" you claim we want you to follow and the "rules" that we follow. Be very goddamned specific. Write them out, in gruesome detail. Save the bullshit (we've got more than enough from you) and spell it out.
Hah. I crack me up. You can't do it, can you?
"claiming that jobs and banks "enslaved" people?"
"They do. As I recall, Lab got pretty pissed at that unfortunate truth. I probably hit a little close to home on that one and for that, I apologize."
Damn. I'm getting more popcorn, and I still don't like popcorn.
Me: "What is relevant is whether or not you show that your assertions are in accord with observable, demonstrable facts"
Markayou'vegottabekiddingme: "Show me a liberal who does."
This admission of yours is the key to your stupidity. You have admitted, via a cliché, to being afflicted with precisely what we complain about liberals in general and about you in particular.
Once again, I'll spell it out: Reality is what it is regardless of what you, or anyone else, thinks about it. So, if what you think about reality doesn't square with the relevant observable, demonstrable facts thereof, then what you think about reality is wrong. Further, the truth of this assertion is self-evident.
But you cannot accept that, and you revel in it.
"As Maher said, he's not even a liberal. In fact, neither am I!"
You have admitted explicitly that you are a liberal.
Me: ""We see how well we do, and we do damned well."
Markajackass: "Again, you can't say you "do well" until you get out there and argue your point with 20 people who are liberal."
Yet again, you engage in your usual jumping to conclusions, wherein you jump to the conclusion that I haven't argued my point with 20 people who are liberal. So, if I don't do it here, where you can read it, then it didn't happen? Goddamn, you pathetic fool, are you really that dense?
"Put your money where you mouth is and show me the links."
How do I link to a conversation I had in person, face-to-face, with a fool like you? Now, go ahead, tell me "that doesn't count." C'mon, fool, we're waiting.
"2 years, dude, and then we'll see how well you do."
I've been at it since before you were born, little boy, long before the internet existed. We see how I do when I do it here. Hate it, don't you?
"I KNOW that there are people out there that would hand your ass to you far better than I can."
Dude, damned nearly anyone can argue better than you can. "I've known sheep that could outwit you!" -- Wanda.
"And why you are probably right on some of the bullshit you call me on."
Probably? You really can't figure out what?
"If you can't play with the big boys..."
"Huh? I think I've proved that I can do that. How many years now? This comment makes no sense."
No, you've proved just the opposite, over and over and over again. But your bloated, eggshell-thin ego won't let you admit it.
They do. As I recall, Lab got pretty pissed at that unfortunate truth. I probably hit a little close to home on that one and for that, I apologize.
You're probably going to just wave this around as more evidence that all conservatives can do is personally attack, but you'll do that anyway even if all you had for evidence was a Speak-n-Spell once owned by William F. Buckley, so screw it.
FUCK you for this statement. Fuck you right in the goddamn ear.
I was NOT angry because you got close to home. Not even close. You haven't got the slightest idea where home is and I'd more or less come to that conclusion before we had that go-around, but that is NOT what changed or why I stopped bothering to engage with you at all except for drive-by mocking.
I was furious with you because you revealed not that you are intellectually bankrupt, which everyone knew and I don't really care that much about, but that you are completely morally bankrupt despite all your pious posturing.
If you can sit there and compare the experience of having the bank buy you a house and expecting you to pay back the cost with interest to SLAVERY then you have absolutely no moral sense at all. None.
If you can read about innocent people being kidnapped, tortured, treated like an unusually renewable supply of livestock, sold off with no regard for where their family members might be, and then MAYBE at the end of their lives MAYBE some particularly tender-hearted soul might grant them the right to live like the poorest of the freeborn without having to answer whatever whim the people that bought that person...
...And then you can fucking turn around and think "I have a job I have to show up to in order for them to keep paying me money and I have to pay the bank back for my house, I guess that's kind of like being a slave, I'll make that argument"....
Then you are either ass-fuck-ignorant, as in never read anything else about slavery other than "a person owning another person", which you as a certified teacher of history cannot claim, or you have a black fucking hole where your sense of right and wrong should be. That you would dare to try and shore up your weak-tea argument against "financial obligations I have to fulfill or else there could be financial consequences" by trying to borrow some of the horror of that practice, that word, demonstrated that to me more clearly than anything else, and THAT is why I will not engage with you anymore.
UJ and DJ still bother because it's useful for the viewing audience at home to see the record set straight. For that reason I'm doing this now.
*sniff*
That was so beautiful, LabRat.
The pure expression of your rage makes my heart sing with joy.
(Making a note not to get LabRat mad, or tell her about how we're evolved from aquatic apes.)
OH NO YOU DINNT
(Ssshhh. No, I didn't, that's the point!)
I don't have nearly the righteous rage that LabRat does here since reading her comment was rather cathartic. I would like to respond to this tidbit (only this one, since I can't make any sense out of the rest of the paragraph):
"I agree with most of the laws."
Most. Therefore, not all. That puts you in the same boat as the rest of us; you obey those other laws at least in part because of the threat of force by the government. Thank you for proving my point.
"UJ and DJ still bother because it's useful for the viewing audience at home to see the record set straight. For that reason I'm doing this now."
Mmmm ...
GOOD popcorn. And M&M's, too!
And Marky boy, you are not going to win by default. You do such good work for our side.
Oh, and ...
"You invite abuse. It would be impolite not to accept it." -- Wayne Rogers
"If you can't play with the big boys..."
"Huh? I think I've proved that I can do that. How many years now? This comment makes no sense."
I had a whole response written.
But I deleted it and banged my head against the wall. Then I stopped and I felt much better.
The act had about the same effect as my deleted comment would have.
Plus, LabRat: woot!
Which means that, using Mark's equivalence, that Mark is identical to Mullah Omar.
Why stop with one person? He didn't.
Al Qaeda wants an independent Palestinian state. So do liberals.
Al Qaeda wants U.S. troops to leave Iraq. So do liberals. In fact, both warned of grave consequences, including further terrorist attacks, should the invasion even take place.
Several liberals stood up and defended the motivation behind the September 11th attacks. I wonder if Al Qaeda agrees with 'em.
This from one of Mark's oft-quoted darlings, Michael Moore: "They are the REVOLUTION, The Minutemen, and their numbers will grow - and they will win."
Oh yeah, and Al Qaeda loves Michal Moore almost as much as liberals do. Remember how they used his words in their propaganda pieces?
Weird how a man's talent for postmodern deconstructionist horseshit (which unlike liberals OR Al Qaeda I can admit to my fun-with-equivocation being) gets all fuzzy when it's time to point the lens to the left.
Just weird.
(*sniff*) Damn I love you guys! (And girls!)
Jobs and banks enslave people?
Does that mean that in your opinion no one should have to work in order to have a place to live and food to eat, unless they feel like it?
Are you suggesting that if there is something you can't afford at the moment, someone else should be required to cover that expense for you, and you shouldn't have to pay them back unless you feel like it? Or are you only suggesting that the person/people whose money you used should not make a profit?
Clarify, please.
Jobs and banks enslave people?
...
Clarify, please.
Why would you SAY such a thing?
"As far as others go, I'm waiting on a response to the other examples I gave above regarding torture and Yosemite's comment. No takers?"
I thought I did respond to that.
Have you ever seen the Warner-Brothers cartoon from which I take my nom-de-plume? How does my namesake act? Think about that.
Geez. it's like trying to converse with a not so bright 3 year old who has skipped his nap time.
"It certainly is relevant. Adam, go spend two years on a liberal blog as the sole voice of dissent. Then you can maybe have a leg to stand on."
As has been said before, it's cute that you assume this is our only venue of argument with idiots like you.
It is irrelevant. Apparently I need to explain why.
You see, logic, facts, and evidence are not impacted by the numbers of dissenting opinions. Just as the plural of anecdote is not evidence, the strength or weakness of an argument is not determined by the number of arguments against it.
The ONLY thing you can say is that you have more arguments to deal with. The funny thing is, though, most of these are against your own.
So what happens is this:
1) You say something stupid. Sometimes a little stupid, sometimes so mindfuckingly dumb that I am amazed you don't shit in your socks while brushing your teeth.
2) Your statements and arguments, being extremely weak and lacking ANY substance of evidence (one link to a blog post you clearly haven't read isn't evidence, child), are torn apart.
3) Evidence, data, facts, and arguments are placed in counterpoint to yours by people who know their shit, who are fair as all hell (and if you don't believe this, ask yourself why the only ban you've probably ever witnessed on here was Beck's [which appears to have been temporary anyway]). Actually, fuck the parentheses - ask yourself why the hell people even put up with your blathering bullshit.
4) You fail to address those arguments, ignore them, or disappear.
5) Rinse. Repeat, and you still won't get that godamn grease out of your head that is your brain.
Oh, and Mark?
I AM FUCKING TIRED OF TELLING YOU THAT YOU ARE NOT THE SOLE VOICE OF DISSENT.
For fuck's sake, look around. Do we look like we're all agreeing? Look at the post on homosexuality. LOTS OF FUCKING AGREEMENT THERE, huh?
Say...is it safe eat marshmallows roasted over a tire fire? This'n seems to have flared up again. ;-)
Snark aside, needed to answer a question raised by GrumpyOldFart:
"Does that mean that in your opinion no one should have to work in order to have a place to live and food to eat, unless they feel like it?"
To be fair to Protagoras, I don't recall that he has said so himself in so many words, but there are them as has said so, in precisely so many words.
http://www.city-journal.org/html/14_4_working_poor.html
Harrington had seen the poor as victims because they could find no work; his more radical allies, especially a group associated with Columbia University's social-work school, argued that compelling the demoralized inner-city poor to work or take part in training that would fit them for work, instead of giving them unconditional welfare, was itself victimization. Richard A. Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, for example, argued that America's poverty programs—"self-righteously oriented toward getting people off welfare" and making them independent—were violating the civil rights of the poor. Journalist Richard Elman claimed that "vindictive" America was "humiliating" welfare recipients by forcing them to seek entry-level work as taxi drivers, restaurant employees, and factory laborers, instead of giving them a guaranteed minimum income.
And, even more directly to the point:
Like communists who claim that communism didn't fail but instead was never really tried, Barbara Ehrenreich made her public debut with an attempt to brush aside the War on Poverty's obviously catastrophic results. The 46-year-old daughter of a Montana copper miner-turned-business executive, she joined Cloward and Piven to co-author a 1987 polemic, The Mean Season: The Attack on the Welfare State. The War on Poverty had failed so far, the book claimed, not because of its flawed premises but because the government hadn't done enough to redistribute the nation's wealth. America needed an even bigger War on Poverty that would turn the country into a European-style social welfare state. Pooh-poohing the work ethic and the dignity of labor, the authors derided calls for welfare reform that would require recipients to work, because that would be mortifying to the poor. "There is nothing ennobling about being forced to please an employer to feed one's children," the authors wrote, forgetting that virtually every worker and business owner must please someone, whether boss or customer, to earn a living. Welfare's true purpose, the book declared, should be to "permit certain groups to opt out of work."
Well now to be fair, I don't think Mark believes nobody should have to work unless they feel like it.
I think I can safely hypothesize that he thinks straight white male Christian conservatives should have to work whether they like it or not. Extending that assumption to anyone else is where the logic gets fuzzy.
"Well now to be fair, I don't think Mark believes nobody should have to work unless they feel like it."
Well, think again, Grumpy, because he pines for exactly that, with his head in the stars and his brain turned off. Read that entire comment thread, which dates from August, 2007.
"The War on Poverty had failed so far, the book claimed, not because of its flawed premises but because the government hadn't done enough to redistribute the nation's wealth. America needed an even bigger War on Poverty…"
Well, well, well, "The ideology can't be wrong, so do it again, only harder" in just about so many words.
Well, think again, Grumpy, because he pines for exactly that, with his head in the stars and his brain turned off.
How do you FIND that stuff?
Nice spadework, DJ, and what you unearthed is highly illustrative.
Cause and effect in that comment, to the extent that they pertain at all, are entirely and neatly reversed. The world of Star Trek did not eliminate poverty by eliminating money, they eliminated scarcity, which eliminated poverty, which eliminated money by rendering a medium of exchange moot.
If we have access to effectively limitless energy too cheap to meter (Mr. Fusion, more or less), and we can each replicate whatever we need or want in the nifty slot in the hallway next to the linen closet, we wouldn't need to engage in exchange at all, unless one or both of us had some sort of utility for the other's handicraft (I assume that's how Pop Sisko's restaurant on Earth in Deep Space Nine attracted clientele).
Okay, all of the above is sort of in jest. The real way the world of Star Trek abolished poverty is that Gene Roddenberry said, "Poverty and money are abolished. So let it be written -- so let it be done!"
Quod erat demonstrandum. Even then, it required bucketloads of handwaving, such as the brisk market in "replicator rations" (huh?) in Voyager.
Talk about a Whiskey Tango Foxtrot moment. You have replicators, which are generally understood to be able to make pretty much anything they can hold from anything else. This presumably would include whatever spare parts needed to keep the replicators running. There's plenty of basic matter in the Delta Quadrant that isn't fundamentally different from anything else in the known galaxy, either. So how in Thee Merry Hell do you get replicator rations? Hell, you could make dilithium crystals and quantum torpedoes in job lots...except that doing so would violate the Law of Conservation of Dramatic Tension.
"How do you FIND that stuff?"
Google is your tool and memory is your friend. Try it with these search terms:
"site: www.haloscan.com/comments/khbaker Markadelphia Star Trek replicator"
It brings up only one match. Click on it, then search the page for "Star Trek", which you'll find in this comment by Markadopia.
Piece o' cake.
I'm going to diverge on a tangent here for a bit. This comment is directed specifically toward you, Markadelphia, and I apologize for the length of it. Kindly bear with me.
Many years ago, I read Eisenhower's Crusade in Europe, his account, from his perspective, of the Second World War in Europe. I read it so long ago (easily 30 years or more) that I don't remember when it was.
Being a student of that war (my father fought in it), one paragraph in particular has stuck with me all these years, and I think it is relevant at this point. For your benefit, I have looked it up once again. For it to be understandable without reading the book, a bit of context is necessary, so I'll provide it.
When the Allies invaded the continent in Normandy, General Eisenhower was in overall command as Supreme Commander Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF). British General Montgomery was the ground commander, and under him, US General Bradley was in command of the US forces. In July, Allied forces had been built up such that two Army Groups were present: the US 12th Army Group under Bradley and the British 21st Army Group under Montgomery. Thus, Montgomery was no longer the overall ground commander, and from then on, all Army Group commanders reported directly to Eisenhower.
Montgomery inwardly seethed at this. From then on, clear up until the spring of 1945, he pushed repeatedly, as did the British Imperial General Staff, for the appointment of an overall ground commander between Eisenhower and the Army Group Commanders. He envisioned himself as that ground commander. Eisenhower always refused.
Something developed from this story, and I'll let Eisenhower tell it in his own words, with the time being the middle of March, as the Allied Forces prepared to clean the German forces out west of the Rhine:
-----
"Information concerning all these things was gathered by our Intelligence services, which daily presented to me their calculations and conclusions. These emphasised the mounting difficulties of the German war machine and encouraged me and all my associates to believe that one more great campaign, aggressively conducted on a broad front, would give the death blow to Hitler Germany.
"I found, among some of the higher military officials of Britain, a considerable and, to me, surprising opposition to my plan.
"The relationship maintained by the American Chiefs of Staff with their commanders in the field differed markedly from that which existed between similar echelons in the British service. The American doctrine has always been to assign a theater commander a mission, to provide him with a definite amount of force, and then to interfere as little as possible in the execution of his plans."
[...]
"When I completed my final plan in January 1945 my friend [British] Field Marshall Brooke informally but very earnestly presented serious objections. His questions were directed against what he called the planned dispersion of our forces. He maintained that we would never have enough strength to mount more than one full blooded attack across the Rhine."
-----
At this point, is is important to realize that such was the British thinking all along, particularly on the part of Montgomery. He had pleaded since early September, 1944, to have all Allied resources funneled to him such that, at a single stroke, he could cross the Rhine, advance to Berlin, and end the war. It was folly, an exercise in the pursuit of glory and driven by a full-bloated ego. Montgomery was superbly competent at commanding an army and at executing the planned, set-piece battle, but a surgical thrust was Patton's style, not his. He was allowed to try via Operation Market-Garden, and he failed miserably.
Now, to continue with Eisenhower's narrative:
-----
"Dispersion is one of the greatest crimes in warfare, but as with all other generalities the proper application of the truth is far more important than mere knowledge of its existence."
[...]
"I laboriously explained to Field Marshall Brooke that, far from dispersing effort, I was conducting the campaign so that when we were ready to initiate the final invasion of Germany on the other side of the Rhine we could bring such a concerted and tremendous power against him that his collapse would quickly follow. The decisive advantage in gaining the Rhine River along its length was to increase drastically the proportion of the Allied forces that could be used offensively."
[...]
"To this I retorted [to Brooke], 'I have not devised any plan on the basis of what individual or what nation gets the glory, for I must tell you in my opinion there is no glory in battle worth the blood it costs.'
"At the same time there was again suggested to me the establishment of an over-all "ground commander" to operate directly under SHAEF. I repudiated this suggestion, as I always had before."
-----
The Allied Army Groups advanced according to Eisenhower's plans and stood on the left bank of the Rhine, ready for the final campaign. It is the content of the following paragraph that has stuck with me all these years:
-----
"Field Marshall Brooke's arguments in the matter were found in conviction. There was no petty basis for his great concern. This was proved by the fact that only a few weeks later, when the destruction of the German armies west of the Rhine had been accomplished and he stood with me on the banks of the river to witness the crossing by the [US] Ninth Army and the [British] Twenty-first Army Group, he turned to me and said: "Thank God, Ike, you stuck by your plan. You were completely right and I am sorry if my fear of dispersed effort added to your burdens. The German is now licked. It is merely a question of when he chooses to quit. Thank God you stuck by your guns."
-----
This, ladies and gents, is called integrity.
And Markadelphia, you have none. You have no concept of what it is.
Ewkay.... so the idea is that any world in which good intentions and political correctness fail to trump basic physics and human nature is fundamentally unfair?
Okay, I'll buy that one.
I will not buy the idea that it is the fault of any human or group of humans, because I don't buy that humans can change it.
I guess that "I don't buy that humans can change it, so we have to find a way to live with it" attitude is what makes conservatives evil.
Okay, I think I get it now.
I guess that "I don't buy that humans can change it, so we have to find a way to live with it" attitude is what makes conservatives evil.
If you haven't read it, I strongly recommend Thomas Sowell's A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggle. Sowell posits two main streams of ideology - the "Constrained" and the "Unconstrained." The "Constrained" ideology is based on the idea that human nature is pretty much fixed, thus something has to be done to limit the accumulation of power by governments. In the Unconstrained vision, humans are perfectable, and restraints on the accumulation of power prevent the acquisition of human perfection.
Explains a lot, and very well argued.
In other words, they pretend something is true and then proceed as if it is fact.
Markadelphia summarizes himself without irony.
Kevin,
MANY thanks for the reading recommendation! That's actually a subject I'd been thinking about and thought I'd noticed in the liberals I'd talked to, especially in the wake of Obama's inauguration. Was just having a hard time solidifying all the ideas in my head... good to know there's some prior writing out there.
YI was reading Thomas Paine's The Rights of Man last night, and I came across a passage that made Markadelphia's behavior much more clear:
"When a man in a wrong cause attempts to steer his course by anything other than some polar truth or principle, he is sure to be lost. It is beyond the compass of his capacity to keep all the parts of an argument together, and make them unite in one issue, by any other means than having this guide always in view. Neither memory nor invention will supply the want of it. The former fails him, and the latter betrays him."
Mark's arguments, you see, don't really have much of a unifying principle. Like many progressives, he seems to have a scattershot of causes, none of them really unified except by the feel-good emotion they elicit from him. Because their only unifying characteristic is emotion, it is impossible for him to argue from facts or logic, as these lie outside of emotion. This causes his arguments to be jumbled, self contradictory and outrageously muddled together. Simply put, he can not argue from reason because his arguments don't begin from reason.
Hmmm... "human nature is perfectable"... so does that mean all humans who are okay with working for a living can be trained to like supporting freeloaders? Or does it mean that all humans can be trained to refuse to freeload?
That's the problem with collectivism, it only works at all when it works 100%. It only takes one person who refuses to be "perfected" to ruin things. Bill Ayers expected to kill 25 million because he assumed that many would 'refuse to be perfected'.
Regolith, there is something of a unifying principle behind his, um, statements. It is this: Do Not Admit Significant Error.
What is astounding is that he is quite willing to be endlessly shown to be wrong, significantly and seriously so, via logical arguments and reasoning from demonstrable, verifiable facts, but he cannot actually admit, even to himself, either the correctness of what he is shown or the wrongness of his own statements. Apparently, it matters not to him what anyone else thinks of him, it matters only what he thinks of himself. This is actually consistent with the leftist teacher's creed, that self-esteem trumps all, and an utter fool should feel fine about being an utter fool. Thus he monotonically walks a path he paves with ever more idiotic statements, without regard for the observable fact that the history of his own statements reveals his foolishness to all. This doesn't work if the readers have memory, and we do.
From this comes a warning: Never underestimate the power of self-delusion.
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