This posting from me is a personal one and I will set it up as follows. When atheists and Christians debate the subject of whether the United States is a Christian nation or not, we hear all about the Treaty of Tripoli and quotes from Jefferson and Mason, etc. from the atheists, while the Christians spout on and on about the original discoverers claimed this land in the name of God, King and Country, etc.I personally do not give a rats ass about what 18th Century slave owning anti-tax property owners have to say. Not germane to my life, yours? I doubt it seriously. And I really don’t care about the colonizers from Spain, France and England who claimed a land that was already settled and had been lived on for centuries.My problem is this, the Christians claim that this country is a Christian one because the majority of the citizens according to them claim to be Christians. I contend that if anyone is going to claim the United States of America is a Christian nation, then damn it, it ought to at least act Christian or develop Christian policies. Well, during my lifetime, this country has done a lot of things that I wouldn’t personally consider to be very moral. Actually, I would call a lot of my history to be pretty damn immoral. One instance would be the bombing of Hanoi on Christmas morning back in ‘71 or ‘72 or both. After fighting the Christian nation of France, that really was Catholic back in the late 40s and 50s, the French Indochina citizens came to rely on their colonizing enemies to stop fighting on one day each year, December 25th. The Americans who followed the same course of action against the Communists in Vietnam until Nixon and Kissinger (who got a Nobel Peace Award for this) decided to drop ordinance on the women and children in Hanoi who came out to shop on the day that their enemies celebrated the holy birth of their Lord and Savior. Until Nixon, it was apparently a sin for us Christian nations to kill children on our Savior’s Birthday. Seems silly to me and it apparently did to Nixon and Kissinger as well. So does that prove we are Christian? Is bombing women and children in order to prove you are serious about ending a war proof that you are Christian or are not?Does a country that kidnaps a citizen and engages in rendition and torture prove that the United States is a Christian nation or is not?Does a country whose leaders veto and sustain that veto that would have provided the funds necessary to provide medical care to ten million children who don’t have insurance prove the United States is a Christian nation or is not?This list can go on and on and I really do not know whether the facts mentioned above prove we are Christian or not. Really. I am not a Christian and was never reared in any religious organization. All of these actions could very well demonstrate what Christianity is all about. Given its history from 300 CE to the present, I’d have to say these seem to be very Christian acts.Okay, discuss among yourselves and have fun.Peter Nuhn
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AT,
Just out of curiosity, do you think that welfare and foodstamps and wic and public housing projects should all be axed? Should we throw these people out on the streets without means to support themselves. Is that really a country you would want to live in. One with shantytowns like South Africa?
If not; why is the Robin Hood mentality okay for feeding and housing people okay, but taking care of their health not okay?
If you think the crime problem in this country is bad now, just wait until several million people of no means are thrown out on the street. I can see a country with a caste system emerging, like India. You will have those of means living in gated communities, and you will have the hordes of unwashed masses. Somehow, that just seems unAmerican to me. It is not a place I want to live. Give me Germany anyday.
I have to sign off for now. I am very drugged up on antianxeity meds at the moment and it is all I can do to get my fingers to do what I want them to, much less make a cogent argument. We can agree to disagree again, later.
Good night, one and all. No hard feelings, I hope.
Our economy is poised to crash. There will be many changing their tune with regard to government mediated assistance. Hard times can strike anyone. Anyone. To think that it can’t happen to you is simply arrogance and unwise.
Look at how much a clusterfuck all of the “New Deal” programs are. Look at how much of a clusterfuck the remaining ones are.
Some failed right away and were gotten rid of. The others have been withering very slowly.
Social security will begin paying more in benefits than they’re collecting in taxes in 2017. In 2041 the SSA trust fund will be exhausted.
Know where I got those dates? Straight off of my Social Security statement, mailed to me straight from the SSA.
Our bright future, brought to you by U.S. sociali$m!
AT,
Two things.
1) Social Security could be shored up by increasing the limit at which taxes are paid into the fund, from the current first 90 some thousand dollars of income to every penny you make. Also, a little seceret. The more you pay in… the more you receive in benefits on the other end. I know. I receive SSD.
2) Social Security should be means tested. If you are independantly wealthy, you should forgo said benefits, for the benefit of the country. You can’t tell me that Bill Gates needs Social Security.
Make that three things. I guess since you don’t agree with it, YOU will be refusing your Social Security when the time comes?
I would say it is our grim future, brought to us by tax paying averse Americans. You can’t get something for nothing, and nothing is what we will end up with.
Crumbling infrastructure. Cities running massive deficits. The federal government being owned by China. No, we don’t have to pay taxes. We’ll just keep putting shit on the national credit card until we default and the government collapses.
The United States will not cease to exist when the Chineese and Russians storm our beaches. It will cease to exist when the checks with the eagle on them stop being honoured at banks everywhere.
One more thing. How many years has the social security fund been raided by our illustrious politicians to pay for other projects? Answer: Since the very beginning.
Maybe if they kept their grubby crumb-snatchers off the damn money, there would be plenty of it to go around.
AT,
Agreed. Let the revamping begin.
I’m looking forward to atomictesting’s extremist libertarian future so that I can shoot all libertarians in the face with a machine gun.
It’s my choice, and you can’t take that away.
Rusty,
If I get things my way, you will have to use a registered handgun to do said shooting in the face.
For the record: I do not support ballistic profiling of weapons before they can be sold. Figuring out which gun fired which bullet by looking at them afterwards is an inexact science to say the least. IMHO, it is no more reliable than witnesses to a crime. Ten witnesses: Ten different versions of what happened.
AT,
I’m more libertarian than you think. I would rather see Ron Paul be president, than Hillary Clinton. Why else do you think I am such a strident anti-drug war, warrior?
Truth is: I defy labels, (except maybe asshole) but I can live with that.
Ren,
Once again, I get beaten to the line:
They called it “borrowing” in the beginning, but with no intention of repaying those funds, I call it stealing.
Sadly, some of these Soc. Sec. funds are actually being used to support the illegal Iraq war.
atomic,
This is a criminal issue:
I’m all for severe punishment for these crimes, but not everyone that tries to use (I worded “tries” deliberately) their insurance for legitimate causes is guilty of such behavior.
Far too often insurance companies do their best to find any loophole they can (often even spending more on lawyers to find such loopholes than it would cost to pay a legitimate claim) to avoid paying off a claim to a customer that has already paid them in the first place.
Atomic
Private insurance companies are easy to defraud. This is part of the inflationary tendencies of for-profit insurance.
666,
What can I say? Wasn’t it Foreigner that sang, “Too much time on my hands?” (chorus: and I don’t know what to do with it)
Ren,
It was Styx.
RE: Social Security.
You are only taxed for SS up to the first $96k of your income.
If we were really worried about it being underfunded, the top 20% would pay that tax on their entire incomes, but this is a country by the people but for big business.
I’m with you Ren, consumption tax is the way to go.
Ren,
It’s more a question of access to a computer (at library for me)
Rusty,
Thanx. Styx was my other guess and I blew it. I can hear Dennis DeYoung backed up by Tommy Shaw belting it out now. I feel unworthy
666,
If I had to go to a library to get online, I would never be online. There are REAL PEOPLE at libraries!
You guys are more like my inner monologue that I can’t control. I can only beat you back, one keystroke at a time. Bwahahahahaha.
*sings*
I’m proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m free.
To shoot all the Libertarians who protect what’s free for me.
And I proudly stand up next to you, in the handout line.
Thank the sociali$t God for giving me,
everything that just ain’t mine.
AT,
Well, you’re just a poet and didn’t know it.
Whatever happened to mutual sacrafice? I think that there should be mandatory service to your country (not necessarily military) in order to EARN the right to vote. Imagine all those conscripts, unfit for military duty, working in hospitals across the country.
sickness is the result of sin. when we the armies of god takeover at the next election we will cure this nation.stoning will release people from the demons grip and allow them to enter heaven.it is written that those who die of illness will roast in the fires of hell.
Ren you talk of conscripts yes amen they will be needed to bring the world to christ for christ comes with a sword to drown the world in the blood of the evildoers.let the mushroom clouds blossom my sweet lord!
this nation will not be christian until its submits to my reading of the bible.can i get an amen brother from you vomit of satan people.
reason,
I can vomit some ramen for you. Is that close enough?
Ren
good one, hope all is well with you and your loved ones.did you see where the 45 yr old man raped his daughter and put it on the internet they caught the sob thank goodness.it is stuff like this that makes me say how can you believe in a god when this kind of evil takes place.maybe its just boils down to wishful thinking by people because the world is so messed up.
reason,
Thank you. The family is doing quite well in spite of me.
People believe in God because they have been conditioned to be afraid not to. Pavlov would be proud.
Oh , THATS why they would ring bells.
septos,
It would be interesting to find out if church bells make Christians salivate. I guess it depends on wheather or not the preacher man is hucking ‘red meat’ to the congregation or not.
Ren
At nationalbanana.com they have the new larry craig/village people video and an ad for “Priest Off” repellant.
septos,
I’ve seen the Larry Craig video. Too funny!
Haven’t seen the “Priest Off” repellant, though. I’m guessing it smells like something other than little boys.
Ren, mutual sacrifice is for saps.
ME ME ME ME ME ME ME
An article from the BBC on the USA “Keeping the faith”:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7053157.stm
Normally I like to read what you have to say, Rusty. I often find myself agreeing with you about other topics and have generally respected your opinion on a broad range of topics. But everything you have had to say about Libertarians has been negative, ill-informed and unhelpful.
I’ll only say this once. I’m tired of your deluded belief that Libertarians are “selfish.” We want freedom for all people and we believe that freedom is best served when government is the least involved. We’re not against charity. We are against government coercion to force human beings to be charitable. Government (not just American government mind you, but government in general) is a terrible steward of economics. It is the belief of the great majority of people that the market is a beast to be saddled and ridden and that only good can come of instituting law to govern economic forces. This belief is incorrect in the very same way that religion is, yet it continues to cloud the minds of the vast majority.
As far as the common Libertarian stance on capitalism, it works despite its mechanism being wholly misunderstood by the layman. Capitalism works merely because where there is money to be made there will be competition and competition is a very powerful balancing economic force. The government frequently meddles with the market and we pay for it as a result. Prices become artificially high because the vast majority of people (including most politicians) do not understand the principles of economics.
I don’t expect you to understand why I, or Libertarians in general, take the stance we do. In fact, I fully expect you to continue to misunderstand out of spite and continue to be hostile toward any Libertarian you meet.
Read: http://tinyurl.com/2cf5t3 (The Traveler’s Dilemma, Scientific American)
The author says:
What he uncovered, however, in observing actual human behavior is that most human beings expect others to behave altruistically, sight unseen. In doing so, they behave altruistically themselves. It defies logic (as the author points out), yet two individuals most often defy logic and choose a value that benefits both of them.
Sorry AT, I just enjoy pushing libertarians’ buttons. It just seems to me like a political ideology of convenience. I mean, everybody’s a libertarian when the government does something they don’t like.
But hey, the world needs dreamers!
The world is overflowing with them as it is already. It is my opinion that what we need more of is people that continue to look for honest understanding of human behavior and to take into account that it is not always rational.
The less information you have about human behavior the more Libertarianism seems to defy rationality. It doesn’t make sense that individuals help one another (possibly inadvertently) by pursuing what is in their own best interest and the best interest of the survival of their family. All humans consider their family first, and their neighbor second.
Governmental influence is often more harmful than it is helpful in economics. If you put a restriction on free trade it acts as a disincentive to success. It turns overachievers into under-performers. By unnecessarily restricting the “greedy businessman” you restrict his ability to create jobs for his community and you create the poverty you were trying to prevent.
Some restrictions should be expected. Restrictions that protect the environment are an obvious example.
Other restrictions seem to be the moral thing to do but cause more problems than they solve – affirmative action being one of them. It creates a scenario where an employer is forced to hire minorities in spite of ability to perform. Sometimes it has a happy ending in that the right individual for the job also happens to be one that has been turned down by racist assholes at other companies.
It also, unfortunately, increases the likelihood that applicants for the job apply regardless of an actual desire to do the job or an ability to perform it. If the employer makes the wrong choice and the turnover for a position held by a “minority” is unusually high it can create the illusion of racism. This leads employers to keep poorly qualified employees and limits the company’s ability to produce efficiently.
By attempting to do something moral and good a situation is created that harms all of us through higher prices passed on due to lower productivity. It should seem clear that economics is not an appropriate tool for the enforcement of morality but the attitude prevails despite all evidence to the contrary.
Rusty,
Reminds me of the old Al Franken skit from SNL re: the eighties.
So AT, what’s your position on anti-trust legislation?
Anti-trust legislation is a very sticky subject. The idea and principle is sound – protect competition so that capitalism can flourish. The application of antitrust laws tends to do harm about as often as it does good. Wal-mart is a huge corporation but it does alright by the consumers of the goods it sells. It is one of the biggest employers in the country and that keeps a lot of people out of poverty. Microsoft, on the other hand, is in a niche market that they almost unilaterally dominate. It is a difficult company to compete with because they tend to buy up entire companies that compete with them or provide something they can use to compete with others. Whether that is harmful to the consumer is difficult to ascertain but the consumer certainly could do better by seeing more powerful competition to MS.
My prediction is that the internet (and all of the better, more improved networks that will follow it) will render antitrust legislation obsolete, and soon. By breaking down all of the barriers that traditionally impede trade it will tend toward a market of fierce competition. I suspect that this will also create an “every man is an island” market, though there are currently exceptions (super, super markets like Amazon.com). Lots of small companies enjoy the growing power of unhampered trade and often compete in certain markets just as well or occasionally even better than their huge corporate competition.
Microsoft has several competitors in its source code control product (widely viewed by the technical community as “complete crap”). Some of these products are head-and-shoulders above the quality of Microsoft’s product and enjoy the market leverage they have (and they provide their products much cheaper than Microsoft does).
The final frontier will be that material fabrication processes will become so good that individuals or small companies will be able to afford devices that quite literally change raw resources into finished products. A less amazing version of the “replicator” of Star Trek fantasy isn’t so far off (it’s unlikely that direct energy-to-matter devices will hit the shelves in our lifetimes). When humanity achieves the capability to design anything we want and watch a machine build it from the blueprints the vast majority of consumer products will vanish and be replaced by markets for efficiently delivering raw resources and connecting the great thinkers that design everything to the consumers that ultimately use them.
Very interesting prediction, AT.
I swear to mother earth, you people are the most angry, whiney ass, cry babies I’ve ever fucking encountered. If you don’t want to believe in God, don’t! If you don’t want to be a Christian, don’t be a Christian. But for the love of all things universal stop being such pansy ass crybabies. Do you want a fucking cookie because you’re an Atheist? Look at me! Look at me! I’m an Atheist. Who gives a fuck!
JustAGirl,
If being called a “pansy ass crybaby” is a result of sticking up for the truth and my country, then I’ll wear the label proudly.
There’s a funny thing about being a “pansy ass crybaby” though. Maybe you should look in the mirror.
Translation: Whaaaaaaaaaa, these Atheists are angry about being second class citizens. Whaaaaaa!
I find it humorous that the “pansy ass crybaby” Atheists have provided plenty of well reasoned arguments, but the (apparently) non-pansy non-ass non-crybaby JustAGirl has come here with no arguments to complain about how the “pansy ass crybaby” Atheists are sticking up for themselves.
That’s a run-on sentence, but I’m too busy complaining to worry about it.
Dear Justagirl
Yes, please, I would like a fucking cookie.
Not because I’m an atheist,(although I am) but because I have never had the experience of having a cookie that was a fucking cookie. I have seen cookies that were made in the shapes of genitalia, but none of them were actually animated.
So I an looking forward to my fucking cookie.
Thank you very much.