OT: Soviet Re-Birth

[Hugh Manatee]

Dancing Nekkid Phong FTW!

[AgentZero]

Renegade: My main issue with Harper is the fact that he seems quite in favour of passing his conservative Christian beliefs into laws. I have no particular issue with leaders having conservative (or any other) religious views, but when they attempt to force these beliefs on people who don't share them by enacting them as secular laws, such action tends to reduce me to an incoherent frothy-mouthed zealot whose most eloquent statement on the subject can be summed up as, "RAHHH! YOU BAD! AZ SMASH NOW!"

State <================================================= ====> Church

Isn't that how it's supposed to work?

[Randallw]

My stance is that these are morals that they believe in and believe are good for people. If you don't let them try to enact them then you are basically saying "ok you can be in government but don't try to do what you think is best". The end result is that you are not allowing certain people a chance at government. Once you disallow one part of the community from taking part who else do you think is unfit to hold office. After awhile there is only a small selection of the population fit to serve. If everyone can't agree you may as well have seperate nations each populated by a community that all agree on the same thing, except of course then you have people demanding another countries laws change because they are "wrong", not that they are prepared to live there. As is my want here's a bit from Blackadder

M: Oh, has there been a general election, then, Mr. Blackadder?

E: Indeed there has, Mrs. Miggins.

M: Oh, well, I never heard about it.

E: Well of course you didn't; you're not eligible to vote.

M: Well, why not?

E: Because virtually no-one is: women, peasants, (looks at Baldrick) chimpanzees (Baldrick looks behind himself, trying to see the animal), lunatics, Lords...

M: ...but it hardly seems fair to me.

E: Of course it's not fair -- and a damn good thing too. Give the like of Baldrick the vote and we'll be back to cavorting druids, death by stoning, and dung for dinner.

M: So, who are they electing when they have these elections?

E: Ah, the same old (?): fat tory landowners who get made MPs when they reach a certain weight; raving revolutionaries who think that just because they do a day's work that somehow gives them the right to get paid...

[Atrocities]

The one thing that simply just won't go away, truth. But then again all truth is speculative depending on who's editing the story or video. You decide: The Truth About Obama - or so they say.

In the face of that could happen in the next eight years, world wide, who do you think will be best suited to fight the good fight. Will Russia fall back into Soviet era thinking, wait they pretty much have already done that, so that point is mute. The question is, how bad will it get. With the rising demand for oil and the falling availability of that resource coupled with the genuine lack of government and private sector involvement in conservation and development of new fuel sources, China's ever alarming way, world wide food shortages, bizzar world wide weather patterns, and a global onslaught of terrorist activity, who will step up and take the reigns of freedom and righteousness and lead us all well and good into the future? And what will that future hold?

I will not be voting this year. I do not see any candidate worthy of my vote. I am for all intents and purposes sickened by the options now before us. In the face of these ever growing threats to world peace, our options for the next eight years are not good ones.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

I'd suggest voting independant.

Also, change has to happen locally.

[Fyron]

Randallw said:
My stance is that these are morals that they believe in and believe are good for people. If you don't let them try to enact them then you are basically saying "ok you can be in government but don't try to do what you think is best".

So are you saying we should allow the christian fundamentalists to destroy science education by putting ID as a first-class member of biology class? We should deny human beings rights based on sexual orientation, just because some fundamentalists read the Bible incorrectly (along the same exact lines as gender and racial discrimination in the past)?

In my mind there is soemthing wrong with people that don't believe in something.

Humanist egalitarianism is not something valid to believe in? Secularism is not a lack of belief in anything, its belief in not governing by an arbitrary organized religion (since that has always lead to tyranny against the other in the whole of human history).

Spectarofdeath said:
I agree with the democrats that the wealthy (who have much more to give) should make a much larger contribution to the nation then the poor (who don't have much to give)

30% of 1,000,000 is a hell of a lot more money than 30% of 40,000. Whatever happened to the principles of liberty and equality?

Also the whole voting system (electoral college) deciding who wins is flawed. Whats the point in even counting the popular vote?

The point is that the US is a confederation of semi-independent states, not one singular mono-nation with power stemming from the top. It was set up the way it is so that every state at least gets some say in the government, regardless of population. If you do away with the electoral college and go to a straight, nation-wide popular vote, you also need to do away with the Senate. It creates vastly disproportional representation in the national legislature as well. You should probably also do away with the separation of powers between state and federal governments, since its all part of the same basic form of government. The electoral college is a far more complex issue than one might imagine.

[Randallw]

Fyron said:
So are you saying we should allow the christian fundamentalists to destroy science education by putting ID as a first-class member of biology class? We should deny human beings rights based on sexual orientation, just because some fundamentalists read the Bible incorrectly (along the same exact lines as gender and racial discrimination in the past)?

I don't know what form of ID you are speaking of but the idea that God created Earth is theology not biology. I also don't know what fundamentalists believe. If it's not Catholic or Orthodox I just label it as Protestant and delve no further.

Humanist egalitarianism is not something valid to believe in? Secularism is not a lack of belief in anything, its belief in not governing by an arbitrary organized religion (since that has always lead to tyranny against the other in the whole of human history).

Violence isn't an aspect of religion, it's an aspect of people. People are flawed and ruin whatever they claim to believe in. I've seen advertisments by atheists and their level of vehemence shows me just because they can't believe in God doesn't mean they aren't cruel and vicious. I don't exactly know what Humanism is.

[Azselendor]

There is only one form of Intelligent Design. And if it gets into our schools, watch 2 things happen.

1.) A generation of the dumbest americans to ever exist.
2.) Endless lawsuits by fringe groups suing the government's education system into bankruptcy to get their religion's theory's pushed into schools. After all, GOTTA TEACH THE CONTROVERSY!

Mark my words, if ID gets in, in months we'll be teaching Lord Xenu in history class, The earth is flat in geography, and teaching other things that shouldn't be taught in schools.

All funded by your taxpayer dollars.

Like that public ally funded islamic charter school in Minnesota.

Secular school systems are a very strong and good thing. polluting it with religious ideology

[AgentZero]

I don't really see how Russia returning to Communism would really be a huge deal, aside from the knee-jerk "ZOMG! Communism is teh opozit of democrasee! Oh noes! They gonna kill us all!"

Communism is an economic system. Democracy is a political system. There's no reason the two can't co-exist, even in the same country. I'd be more worried about Russia falling back into being a totalitarian state. Because that would be very bad, regardless of which economic system the new dictator chooses.

[douglas]

Randallw said:
I don't know what form of ID you are speaking of but the idea that God created Earth is theology not biology. I also don't know what fundamentalists believe. If it's not Catholic or Orthodox I just label it as Protestant and delve no further.

The particular form isn't very important. The central concept is that proponents of the various variants of "Intelligent Design" each want their particular brand of theology to be taught in public schools as science.