Xenophobia, Supremacism, Lebensraum.
Firstly, while most theists are probably moral absolutists, some theists are moral rationalists and relativists.
Secondly, while I prefer reason and relativism to absolutism, absolutism can be good if it promotes rational and what I deem to be good values.
Most atheists don’t believe in good and bad, but they believe in my and our good and bad.
Theism is only bad when it’s used to sanction dictatorship, when it’s apolitical or used to sanction democracy it’s tolerable or acceptable.
The urbanites were atheists.
He doesn’t have to, but most monotheist and polytheistic religions have a devil or demons, and most pantheists have ‘negative energy’.
Well, hundreds of millions of atheist and apatheist Chinese did and do.
They blame both, whereas democrats only blame drugs.
I don’t like conservatives because they blame government in principle.
I don’t like liberals because they mismanage government by propping up minorities, the underclass and women at the expense of the majority, the working class and men.
And while I trust our government more than corporations in one way because at least our government is partly democratic, I trust corporations more than our government in another because a corrupt government can do more damage than corrupt corporations.
Corrupt corporations can’t do as much damage without government support, as a corrupt government can do without corrupt corporations support.
While both dems and republicans have gone after guns, dems more so.
Right, “If Trump gave a similar order, most people would give him the middle finger”, including most Christian Americans.
For whatever reasons, cultural, geographical, genetic, the Chinese seem more docile and domesticated than, not only most Europeans, but most Africans, east Indians, Latin and Native Americans for that matter.
Until recently, the Chinese were as or more prosperous than Europeans, yet they never had democracy there, whereas Europeans, and east Indians for that matter had it at various times.
But the vast majority of these wars weren’t fought over one religion trying to supplant another, but for predominantly secular reasons.
Buddhists, Confucianists and Daoists didn’t declare war on other religions or the irreligious like Christians, Jews and Muslims did.
But Christians get along with each other real well, lol, well so long as they belong to the same sect!
Jews and Christians have by and large been demilitarized and deradicalized now, it’s only Muslims we have to worry about, and progressive’s coddle them, shelter them from necessary criticisms, consequently preventing them from undertaking necessary reforms, meanwhile they exaggerate the threat Christians pose.
My point was you paint religion with too broad a brush, most pagans and modern monotheists get along with everyone.
Secular progressives are almost as bad as religious conservatives when it comes to war.
And Secular progressives are worse when it comes to defending our borders, and they make excuses for minorities who commit crimes.
But the Muslims they’re letting in get up bright and early.
The Russians and the Chicoms got up bright and early.
Harder times could further militarize and radicalize the left.
As far as I know, Hitler never spoke of a Jesus dying-rising for the sins of mankind, he spoke of a 1 dimensional, predominantly despiritualized Jesus who hated Jews.
He deliberately distorted Jesus to persuade Christian Germans to genocide the Jews.
And then in the last several years of his life, but probably much, much earlier, he discussed plans with his inner circle to ultimately annihilate Christianity after the war.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_Christianity
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Nazi_Germany
The German Faith Movement (Deutsche Glaubensbewegung) was a religious movement in Nazi Germany (1933–1945), closely associated with University of Tübingen professor Jakob Wilhelm Hauer. The movement sought to move Germany away from Christianity towards a religion based on Germanic paganism and Nazi ideas.[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Faith_Movement
Your boy Hitchens had no bloody clue what he was talking about.
either that or he was deliberately spreading malicious misinformation and lies.
Actually faith in reason isn’t reasonable.
Then it’s not reasonable for you to have faith in your own statement.
It’s never, intrinsically reasonable to have faith in anything, faith and reason are antonyms, altho I suppose it can be extrinsically reasonable.
I don’t have faith in my statement, I know it to be the case.
How can you know anything? Knowing = 100% confidence.
Well I think it to be the case (less than 100% confidence but more than 50%).
How do you type that i with 2 dots? My keyboard doesn’t have that symbol.
My computer autocorrected the word.
Chomsky characterized libertarians as the most authoritarian of the bunch and I definitely agree with him. People usually are the opposite of how they say they are. For instance, if a woman says she’s tired of playing games, then she likes playing games; if she’s an open book, then the pages are blank. Or like the governor of OH who criticized his opponent for wanting to raise taxes and after his victory, he immediately proposed raising taxes. statenews.org/post/after-rep … s-tax-hike (Taxes on the poor no less.)
Or like Jefferson who held dear the idea of smaller government, but then used unprecedented overreach to expand the federal government.
I guess it’s not that everyone does the opposite but more that reality isn’t ideal. That and conservatives are lying assholes.
Yea, every ideology looks different on paper than in practice, this is true of both conservatives, libertarians and progressives.
Amazing that someone so highly regarded as chomsky would miss something so obvious. I’m sure he could learn a lot from you lol
Right, no need to critically think for yourself, just find the most highly regarded thinker of your day, and imitate what they say without comprehending a thing, or being able to prove it to yourself or anyone.
Yeah I guess so. The gas tax paid by the poor fixes the roads that the corps use to transport goods to make profits on. The privatization of profits and socialization of costs. That’s capitalism!
If they removed the taxes then who’d fix the roads?
Libertarians just want taxes for infrastructure, the military and police.
They want to keep our taxes flat and low.
I think it’s a terrible idea, but it’s better than having them flat or regressive and high.
It’s not spin. Why on earth would you tax the poor to give welfare to the poor? That makes no sense. The only reason the poor pay any tax is to placate republicans bitching about fairness.
Once in office, overwhelmingly republicrats don’t give two shits about fairness.
They’re not really conservative, libertarian or progressive, they’re conmen, and they will warp any and every ideology to suit their special interests.
Either money flows from the poor to the rich or the money is recirculated. There isn’t another way of doing it, so however it’s mixed up, the end result determines what system it should be considered.
I’m not conservative or progressive, I’m populist, I define that as wealth, resources and power flowing to the working class, not to the elite, nor to minorities, the underclass and women at the expense of the majority, the working class and men.
I’m not sure I want socialism. I think I just want to go back to the 1930-1980 period, but with a negative tax at the bottom. I don’t think I want state ownership of companies or even co-ops. Just put it back how it was and issue negative tax.
Unless dems radically change for the better somehow, you’ll either get more of what you have now: low-mid flat-progressive taxes, or what Nordic countries have: mid-high flat-progressive taxes.
If you want no taxes for the poor and high taxes for the rich, you’ll have to vote 3rd party, independent or form your own party.
The republicrats are 100% bought and paid for by the ruling class.
No, it means that wages will have to rise to lure people into work. If you get $10k UBI, are you going to quit your job? I asked everyone I could and only 1 person said she’d quit (because $10k is more than what she’s making and she’d rather stay home with her kids). Most people laughed at the idea of quitting a decent job for a paltry $10k.
Again, I know several people on disability for anxiety and depression.
They all confessed to me they were able to work full time, altho it would be difficult.
They all live unhealthily hedonistic lifestyles.
Moreover they have the option to work and make an additional 1000 dollars a month on top of the 1000 dollars a month of disability they receive, which would help them eat and live better, but they won’t even work single day per week, they refuse to.
Never mind what people say, “you will know them by their fruits”.
Goodness… you still haven’t understood. Wage-slavery! Hello! Parasites is the name you’re giving to those who protest being slaves. Good grief man, because people choose not to prostitute themselves for the benefit of the rich, you characterize them as parasites. After all our exchanges your continued inability to get your head around this is astounding. I’m at a loss for how to snap you out of this idea that people must be forced to contribute profits to the elites in order to survive.
I can help make Bezos richer or I can help make Buffett richer or I can help make Dimon richer or I can starve. Hmmm… what’s wrong with this picture?
If you eliminate all concepts of profit so that no one could profit from the slavery of people, then I might concede that everyone should pitch in, but that’s communism, ya know. Are you a closet communist?
No you’re much worse because not only do you want everyone to contribute to the workforce, but you want the fruits of their labors concentrated into few hands. So it’s the bad parts of communism + the bad parts of capitalism = your system. Force people to work and steal their fruits and give it to the lazy rich who do nothing.
If we end the war on drugs, the war on terror, cut taxes for the working and middle class down to 0, tax the upperclass @50-90%, and give it all back to the working and middle class in the form of free education, free healthcare, improved working conditions and doubling, tripling, quadrupling (as much as the 50-90% taxes can pay) everyone’s salary (so again, if you make 20, or 120 grand at your job, government will give you an additional 20, or 120 grand), work will no longer be that exploitative, as the majority of profits will go to the working and middle class.
We’ll all have more and work less instead of some of us working more and others less.
More co-ops and small businesses will form and rise, more big businesses will fall, and finally we’ll have sociopolitical and economic equilibrium, where everyone will be richer except the 1 10th of 1%, but also at the same time, more independent.
We’ll have both the best of both conservative, and progressive worlds, and that is what I meant by a brand new syncretic sociopolitical and economic system.
How do you arrive at that? We go from people being ignorant of how to raise a kid to needing licensing to buy groceries?
Well, people are somewhat ignorant about nutrition, drugs, relationships, pregnancy and STIs too, so I guess we need compulsory courses for every aspect of life.
What substantiation could you possibly offer in support of that assertion?
What could you possibly offer against it?
I don’t hear mothers complaining: we have no bloody idea how to raise our kids, we demand compulsory parental courses!
If someone is legally retarded, below 70 iQ and dependent on government, than sure, it will be necessary for the state to intervene, but even then it should be minimal.
You said genetic similarity is all that mattered, so therefore iq is irrelevant and a woman can be retarded, but still better at raising kids than the state by virtue of genetics. That is your position. Now if you retract that position and center it around knowledge, then you’ll be up against the combined wisdom of academia. Most girls in my area have a whole litter before 18, so what does a 100 iq trailer park chick know about raising 3 kids before being legally able to drink? Not a damn thing which is why those kids never leave the trailer park, except when they go to prison.
I didn’t say it’s all that mattered, they both matter, I just emphasized genetic similarity.
I think most mothers will agree with me when I say: their children should fundamentally be in their care, that the state should only intervene in extreme cases of mental deficiency and neglect.
Surely they are smart enough to answer a simple direct question. It looks like democracy scares you.
It doesn’t, I’m confident the vast majority of people will side with me on this, but if they don’t, I guess I’ll have to move to another country, I don’t want government telling me how to run my life.
The first thing an authoritarian does is kill the intellectuals.
Only the ones he disagrees with, the ones he agrees with he gives a monopoly to.
Watching tatted up floozies who can’t read or do math teaching kids who to read and do math ought to be fun.
You and I may have been able to educate ourselves, but most kids would drift listlessly from game to game. Beside chess, the last game I played was pacman. I won’t go near games because I’m scared I might like them and then my life is over.
Kids just need to know the basics: English and math.
If parents aren’t equipped to teach them to their kids, they can voluntarily send them to school, but the vast majority of parents are equipped and realize the importance of them, the only trouble is they don’t have enough time to homeschool.
History, science and so on you have to be inspired to learn anyway, and unfortunately most aren’t.
Most just need to figure out how to do what job they want to do, and they can go to school or self-educate if they’re inspired to.