[Daktoria]

I always get this impression that Wolfman is a coward when reading his posts. He just enjoys preying on people who are in his same demographic, but weaker than himself, and he's willing to accommodate every politically correct notion under the sun just to fit in.

Then there's the swearing... bleh. Expressing frustration is one thing, but constructing a presentable platform is another.

[The One.]

You coud try writing a lot less to explain what you mean, because by the time I got to the third paragraph I forgot what the thing was about. This made me go back to the top and start reading it again.

But eventually I figured out I had to get organized, and I got me a large pack of 5 by 7 Indez cards where I jotted your thoughts, then filled in my comments in the back. By the time I finished I had 384 cards, so I had them typed by my assistant and three hole punched and I packaged them into a Yellow Book called "Position for Dummies", which you can buy from amazon if you want.

I'm really sorry to say Wolfman, but I roughly agree with him.

Every politically active person should learn how to write in a concise manner as not to bore their audience.

[Social_Critic]

I don't know what to say about this. You "roughly" agree with me? What the hell?

If I were a violent person instead of a comedian, I would have said "Off with his index fingers" and then you would have agreed with me 100 %?

[The One.]

lol whutz.

[Wolfman]

[ignoring the irrelevant idiots]
So, I've been passing a ball around thinking about this, and I've decided I should write it down while I'm still thinking it. I don't think there's any difference between Fascism and Communism. There's a certain knee-jerk reaction there, but most people who say that are referring to the ideology being shit and creating temporary and oppressive regimes. But I'm talking about the theory behind the ideology. I don't see much difference. Fascism is basically fear and hatred of the "outsider" who happens to be a different race/ethnicity/nationality combined with often idiotic amounts of adoration for your own race/ethnicity/nationality. Replace "race/ethnicity/nationality" with "class" and you have Socialism. So I guess it isn't so strange that there are two shit ideologies that produce temporary hellhole-countries that both hate imperialism (though whoever gave nazis permission to complain about imperialism is anyone's guess).

Additional thoughts about the Idiots and the Dumb asses:

Why do they never put their money where their mouth is? We constantly hear Russkie talking about how Russia is the greatest country ever and how the US is a shithole, while living in the US and refusing to move the fuck out. But why don't we level the same criticism against the Idiots and the Dumb asses? The Idiots never shut up about how the Soviet Union, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, [insert communist shithole here], and how the US is the devil, and occasionally we get one of them flatout saying that 9/11 and other acts of terrorism were great because it was a black eye to the great satan. Hey, here's a thought: move the fuck out if you hate it so goddamn much. America's the devil and Cuba is Jesus Christ? Then why not move to Cuba?

But of course they wont. They cannot put their money where there mouths are because they're fucking pussies who don't believe what they say. They just want to sit in a coffee shop smoking pot looking like an intellectual and bitching about a country they don't want to fix, and glorifying a shithole they don't want to move to.

And we should celebrate every revolution that overthrew the Ancient Regime, a Communist, or Fascist state as a great holiday, because this is Liberalism, we always win, you always lose. The faster you accept that, the faster you'll stop being irrelevant.[/ignoring the irrelevant idiots]

[Wolfman]

Some various things I've said over the past years that I think are still worth something:

America has had immigrants coming in since our creation. What we've noticed is that it takes about 3 generations for complete integration. Give it [integration] time.

A European immigrating to the US is highly likely to end up on the dole over here for a few months. The reason is you are not going to find work immediately, and unlike a native, you are unlikely to have family or friends to lean on to help you pay rent and utilities until you can find a job. So, immigrants are always going to be highly likely to end up on the dole for a period of time after immigrating. Hell, migrating to a different region in your own country is likely to end up with you on the dole unless you had a large amount in savings and/or a job already lined up.

You don't need to ban women from service, just set the bar high enough that only those, regardless of sex, are capable of subduing suspects with ease. I wouldn't want short police officers as well.

I'm not normally one to advocate what the US does internationally, but there is something to be said for the fact that there is a country that has a military able to wipe out any country on the face of the earth able to (theoretically) enforce global peace.

Well, it's [Liberalism] the only ideology that has demonstrated long term political and economic stability post-industrial revolution aside from Communism, which still only lasted a few generations. And the remaining Communist states are, in a desperate effort to survive, adopting Liberalism as much as they can while still pretending to be Communist. Kind of like how in order for it to have some long term economic stability, Francoist Spain dropped the whole complaints about free market economics, and completely adopted Liberal ideas about how economies work.

Liberalism will eventually collapse, I grant you. It will not turn into Fascism though. That ideology is as dead as Communism.

A soldier acts for his own ends, not those of his government. This has always been the case, and is especially the case of a 14 year old who has been drafted.

Noemon, when Greece is forced to default on its overwhelming debts and Germany takes it over to get back it's ill advised investments, I will have no problem with Greek soldiers marching in the streets. And then, when the Greeks rise up under a Communist banner and kick out the Germans, who are unlikely care at all about Greece, I will have no problem with the Germans who fought the Greek Communists marching in the streets. And when the Turks take over Greece for being insane, I will have no problem what so ever with battalions from the Greek Revolutionary Army from marching in the Turkish owned streets.

Marching under an old unit banner to commemorate your forces and their actions, and being supportive of a dead ideology are different things.

And like with Christianity, there are a hundred or more moderates who only want animals to be treated humanely to every one who is just anti-animal eating. You're trying to punish the whole movement because you don't like the extremists.

A really big thing with Fascism, including Nazism, is this thing called "Social Darwinism". Now, ignoring the hilarious failures of the proponents of "Social Darwinism" in understanding Evolution, the idea is basically that individuals dominate each other through various means because they deserve to. They are smarter, better trained, have better genetics, better fighters, what have you, and that this was demonstrated in competition, like between states. "Social Darwinists" like to apply this to nations; the USSR stomped the Germans in WWII because they were genetically better fighters. We can just as easily (and just as redicuously) apply "Social Darwinism" to ideologies. Now, let's do a quick survey of history here:
Ancien Regime: Dead (KIA with Liberalism)
Fascism: Dead (KIA with Liberalism)
Communism: Critically wounded (injured in combat with Liberalism)
And what of Liberalism? Adapted, and doing just fine at the moment, thank you.

So, in short, yes, the war did prove the superiority of Liberalism, and your own ideology proves it.

Europe was heavily under the temporary thumb of Fascism in 1940 because Nazi Germany caught a bunch of people off guard. When fighting someone who was ready for war (like the UK, USSR, US, and Switzerland), they got their asses beat. Now, let's pretend for a moment that Germany and friends could have possibly, magically, beaten the Allies in WWII. The hilariously fracturing German economy would have collapsed before 1950 and sent it so far downwards, it would have made the Great Depression look pleasant by comparison. The Italian Economy was dropping the pretension of using Corporatism and was happily importing Liberal Economists to unfuck their slowly falling economy, like how Spain didn't even pay lip service to the notion after the early 50s, and just become a Liberal state run by a guy who really like Catholicism. Oh, and even if somehow the Western Axis forces could have pulled a win out of their asses in the war and managed to not completely rape their economy worse then the Great Depression (itself being a small miracle), the regimes you idolize are pretty much inherently unstable. Of the handful of places where Fascism has actually managed to take hold, they all collapsed (violently, in most places) within two years of the death of the first leader. The only Fascist state that could even be vaguely considered politically stable was the Estado Novo of Portugal, and it only lasted 40 years. And their economy only managed a molecule of success because of Liberalism.

The best your ideology can muster is short lived authoritarian regimes that requires Liberalism to even attempt to function.

Providing jobs in poor countries does not at all require invasion. If the US would raise taxes on companies which outsourced to countries other then Mexico, Mexican immigration would drop to a trickle. No invasion needed, small amount of investment from the government needed, and highly effective. I'm not familiar with immigration debates in the Euro zone, but I'm sure a similar policy could be meted out.

Christianity has been the main religion of many great philosophers and scientists, this is undeniable. However, there have been other great civilizations which were not Christian. The Romans had many developments in various fields. Should we also teach Roman Mythology in the same light as the Bible? This is also true of Jews, Greeks, Buddhists, Taoists, Shintoists, the Maya, and dozens of others. Should we teach there religious beliefs as well?

For that matter, much of the development of recent society has had to do with Communism and Capitalism, should we also teach the writings of Karl Marx and John Smith? Much of the research in the various biological fields has been under the assumption of evolution, should we teach that?

There is simply too much to be covered realistically. A primer, or mention, of the affects of religion and political indoctrination on society is enough. Anything else would require far too much time for any realistic study.

[D]uring the Colonial period the only thing Africans were taught how to do is extract the resources, not process. Also, there were numerous divisions that were artificially created which served to divide the various countries, and this is still causing tensions. A third major reason is that 'countries' were created completely artificially. Africa has 1,000 different languages, each one roughly represents a different culture. Nigeria alone has 400 different languages. Ethiopia was the only country which was never really colonized, and it shows in there ability to function. The same is mostly true with the countries in North Africa (Egypt, Libya, Morocco). While they were colonized, they already had a mostly homogeneous culture, which reduced the social impact of colonization. South Africa is doing fine because the whites quickly established a ruling class, which were able to pad the social and political impact of the ending of colonization.

Cthulhu is not owned by an energy company.

Oppressing Neo-Nazi groups isn't arbitrary, it's oppressing a group that brutally murdered millions of people.

I've been meaning to do this for awhile, but it's a big task that I've been putting off. I'm skipping some places because they will take awhile to go through. This is Europe, Latin American, Asia, and Africa.

[Wolfman]

From International Relations, Environment and Science, and Morals and Ethics.

If being able to see better is your sole grounds for a racist view, all you've done is show quite clearly how fucking retarded you are.

The idea of 'spend a little more now to save alot of money tomorrow' isn't that new or anything.

You could always use solar and/or wind as the primary source of power and back it up with a different system. I've seen studies that say we could power 30% of country with land based wind turbines, and twice that with ocean based sources (which would work out well since our population is concentrated on the coasts). Back that up with nuclear and we're golden.

Besides, it's not like we know that GMO is even safe for human consumption. Fuck, internal memos from Dow Chemical showed that the uppers in the feeding chain knew that DDT was dangerous to fucking everything on the planet and they didn't give a damn in the fifties. Hell, they still make and sell DDT, so apparently they still don't give a fuck. Who's to say that Monsanto wont do the same and lie through their teeth and call these plants good for humans when they aren't?

So, racism is an emotional, not logical thing. Well, no shit sherlock.

2 people are in a life boat and it is sinking. If one person goes overboard he will die, but the other will live. If they both stay on the boat, they will both die. The moral and rational thing to do is for one person to sacrifice themselves.

States and countries with sex ed and programs that provide free birth control (especially condoms) have much lower rates of teen pregnancy, STDs, and I recall even lower rates of teen sex. In a sentence, my position is essentially "free condoms for everyone!"

Well, if your legal system is about punishing the offender, your system probably doesn't do very well are preventing people from breaking the law.

[W]hile economists say that in the long run Monopolistic Competition will eventually turn into Pure Competition with many buyers, many sellers, no one buyer/seller being able to affect market price and the company getting Zero Economic Profit and working at the most Efficient Point of Production, that tends to not actually happen. Especially when everyone is already willing to fork over 70 bucks for the product they could get for 15.

Moral Nihilism is an irrational position to take, as humans actually have evolved a moral compass (of sorts) in the brain itself. Moral conscientiousness is natural to humans, even if the specific form of morality is often externally defined.

[E]mpathy is the most fundamental element of morality.

If you need to ask what a military target is, you should seriously reconsider whether or not you should even be having this discussion.

[T]he needs of the individuals in a society, and the needs of society itself are one in the same.

Communism can go fuck itself.

Thank you for asking the most fundamental question to all meta-ethical debate. There is no answer. There will never be an wholly accepted answer. Philosophers are still debating about the definition of Knowledge for god's sake.

No ethical system is perfect. Ideally, I'd like a system which weighs consequences against intent and likely outcome. Intent is something that cannot be known, so, I tend to account for consequences and likely outcome as to what is and isn't ethical. I'm also not sure if I'd consider it appropriate to weigh the ethical actions of someone who cannot know what is about to happen.

I've met about a hundred Libertarians here and on forums which do not exist, and all of them come in one of three forms:
1. The Free Market magically works better when it's unregulated, even though there is less then no evidence to support this simply insane concept
2. DEONTOLOGY! -followed by screaming and foaming at the mouth-
3. "The world is full of so many good and kind people, and we should all be able to get along with out anyone telling us what to do...." followed by me being diagnosed with diabetes.

The dictates of a Deontological Theory almost always come down "this is immoral because I fucking said so".

Taxation is not theft, and claiming otherwise is simply idiotic.

Taxation is voluntary. If you don't want to pay taxes, you can leave the country, work in the informal sector, live in the woods, vote out politicians who will tax in the first place, and so on. Taxation is voluntary and saying otherwise ignores reality.

I have to say, this is kinda like refusing a lung transplant to someone who smokes. While it is a disease, it's one that can be avoided. You cann't help but get pneumonia, but if you know your family has a history of alcoholism, you shouldn't drink, which is why I dont. If you think you are becoming an alcoholic, you need to stop. It is up to you to not drink or smoke, as such, I have little remorse for someone who is refused medical treatment for such things. However, I believe there does come a point where people need to be helped. AA and NA a definiatly a good thing, and hospitals should treat suicide attempts, but those are exceptions. Suicide attempts oftne have psychological reasons behind them, and those people need to be helped. If you're in AA or NA you are clearly trying to get help.

[T]here's something to be said for personnal responsibility, and the context of the events. Now, lets say I was in an accident and needed a new.... lung. whatever. If I was speeding in the snow and went flying off the side of the road, well, I should get one, but at a low priority. If I was driving along, minding my own buisness, and someone else hit me, yes I should. If I was drunk and smaked into a telephone pole, no I shouldn't.

If my self induced injury took time to develop, or risked others lives in the process, then no I should not get an organ transplant. If my self induced injury took one stupid event to happen, then I should, but at a lower priority then the general population.

If they got AIDS from sharing needles, yes. From sex, no. Most straight Americans wear condoms to prevent pergnancy, not because of the risk of STDs. It makes sense, then, that homosexuals (who get AIDS more often then heterosexuals) are less likely to wear rubbers. So, to do so is to punish a handful of people for the ethical crimes of society.

If you refuse to give up something that you aren't using anymore, and will never again have any use for, to save someone elses live, how is that not selfish?

Okay, but on the grand scale of things, how does a gay man and another gay man getting married and having sex affect any single person in the world?

It doesn't, making this is the single dumbest discussion in modern politics.

In that case the solution is quite clear. The legal institution currently known as 'Marriage' will no longer by the name of 'marriage'. It is now called 'a temporary civil union which grants a handful of rights, and is totally non-religious in nature'

Wolfman has spoken.

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[TruePolitics]

Did you create that entire opening post using your own thoughts?

[Wolfman]

And some wikipedia.

[Someone5]

I'm going to explain why I'm a feminist, and I'm going to do so in evolutionary terms. As far as I'm aware, we do not know about the population of human tribes in the paleolithic times, but we can assume that they would be roughly similar to modern hunter-gatherer societies, such as the Hadza and the Mbuti peoples, both of which live in extended family groups of 20-30 or 15-60 (respectively), with an upper limit broadly being probably around the human Dunbar Number of 150. I've done some looking, but I cannot find any information on age demographics for hunter-gatherer societies, so I'm going to assume the number of non-combatants due to age is roughly 34%, which is roughly what the break down is for modern society. This wont be exactly right, of course. The number of younglies is going to be higher in a hunter-gatherer society, and old would start in the mid to late 30s, but 34% is probably as close of a guess as I can get without conducting a lot of anthropological research I don't care to do. I'm also going to assume that 50% of the band if male, and 50% if female (though I know that this is probably inaccurate). Because I'm lazy, I'm going to work with a band that has those age and sex demographics and a population of 100. So, when we eliminate people do to age, we have 64 people, half of them being men. So, we have 32 people protecting and hunting for another 68 people.

First off, your age ranges for hunter-gatherers are way the hell off. You're giving life expectancies like they were early agriculturalists, not hunter-gatherers. For a population of hunter-gatherers, the children who live to be 15 will mostly live to be ~65 on average. Most of the deaths are in early childhood. Moreover, the notion that men hunt and women don't in hunter-gatherer societies is about as wrong as one can get; both end up gathering, the men usually end up hunting large game, and the women usually end up hunting small game. That's the norm for contemporary hunter-gatherer societies that have gotten anthropological studies. And yes, near equal division between men and women.

Let's say that every member of this tribe needs to eat an average 2,000 calories (a rough estimate for adults and children). In the unlikely situation of every male of the tribe being able to hunt at the same time (no one out of commission due to injury or illness) we have 32 people needing to bring in 200,000 calories daily, or an average of one hunter bringing in 6,250 calories, made all the more difficult by the inevitable risk of injury or illness.

Okay, first off, the large majority of their calories will come from gathering, not hunting. And of the calories that will come from hunting, both men and women would be making roughly equal contributions to that. The risks of injury relating to hunting diminish greatly from proficiency (remember, hunter-gatherers do this shit for a living, and become extremely good at it) and low-risk hunting strategies (like endurance hunting, trapping, etc).

Incidentally, a hunter-gatherer needs to spend ~20 hours a week making ends meet. That particular tidbit has raised an interesting anthropological question--why did anyone decide to pursue agriculture, considering that it was so much more work with so much less reward?

Then add in defending the band from hungry predators. Unlikely, yes, but still possible. Now the guys who just got done chasing dinner over 20 miles in triple digit weather have to fight off a hungry lion.

Note; persistence hunting requires a lot less energy than most other forms of hunting, especially if they combine it with poisons too. It's not like they go on a 20 mile continuous run--they already know where the animals are likely to go, and they don't actually have to catch up, just keep it from getting a good rest.

Or maybe, if they're lucky, they get to fight off the warriors from another band.

It's well established that non-agricultural societies have extremely limited skirmishes of that sort. Not much point in fighting it out and maybe dying when you can just move or share. It only makes sense to fight over territory and property when you've invested several months into your crops and have to get a return or starve over the winter.

So, reasonably, we should expect that males and females to do these things together. Instead of 32 out hunting and fending off predators and enemies, you have 64. You have more people to swap out to deal with injury and illness, and you don't have the same guys doing the hunting day in and day out and deal with the defense of the tribe and so on.

Sure, yeah, hunter-gatherers have a high degree of sexual parity.

So, from our conclusion that males and females would participate similarly in the hunt and in defense we should evolve with similar abilities related to hunting and fighting. Now, reasonably, the women would hunt less then the men, but that has to do with being pregnant and raising small children (breastfeeding, and all), this would explain any minor difference in males and females in relevant abilities, as does the wider set hips of women (which reduces running ability and increases risk of injury but make giving birth easier). So, there's reason to believe similarities between men and women in intelligence. And yes, men and women do have pretty much the same IQ, with Dave admitting that the difference is atmost 3 points. Fun fact: since IQ has a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15 points, a difference of 3 points is insignificant. There's a formula I could use to prove statistically that the difference is insignificant, but I am lazy as shit. Now, there are some differences in men and women in the mind, and while they alter the way we hunt, they do not hinder us in our hunting.

You seem to be putting a lot of emphasis on the hunting, but hunter-gatherers do a lot more gathering than hunting.

Now, intelligence is important in hunting and fighting for countless reasons. Knowing how to track, which animal to go after, how to hide, how to cover your scent, how to camouflage yourself, where the weak spots on the animal are, when to hit, what to hit with, and so on.

Note; humans are natural endurance hunters. You don't want to be hidden for endurance hunting. If the animal doesn't know you're there, it won't keep moving and our relative energy advantage (humans are really good at regulating body temperature compared to basically everything else on the planet) wouldn't be helpful. Human intelligence plays a role in hunting because it is useful for devising tools, learning how to use poisons, learning how to predict animal movements over long periods of time, learning how to set traps, etc. You know, actually using intelligence rather than brute force, because you're way more likely to get injured fooling around with a bow and spear than you are with your own two feet and a bit of forethought. Why attack an animal when it can turn around and gore you when you can just be patient and wait until it can't even stand up anymore?

So, as far as I'm concerned gender inequality is not only stupid and counter to the evidence that I just spent an assload of time presenting, but it is counter to our evolution. Thank you, have a nice day.

Definitely.

[Wolfman]

First off, your age ranges for hunter-gatherers are way the hell off. You're giving life expectancies like they were early agriculturalists, not hunter-gatherers. For a population of hunter-gatherers, the children who live to be 15 will mostly live to be ~65 on average. Most of the deaths are in early childhood.

I just pulled numbers out of my ass, and the age issue seems pretty much irrelevant anyways. But thank you all the same.

Moreover, the notion that men hunt and women don't in hunter-gatherer societies is about as wrong as one can get; both end up gathering, the men usually end up hunting large game, and the women usually end up hunting small game. That's the norm for contemporary hunter-gatherer societies that have gotten anthropological studies. And yes, near equal division between men and women.

I think you posted this before you read the whole post, since this is pretty much exactly the point I was making.

Okay, first off, the large majority of their calories will come from gathering, not hunting.

I'm pretty sure I posted that the way I did was to demonstrate the very large amount of demand placed on hunting-males if Dave (sexist proponent of the Paleolithic Diet) was right about early human life. But, I know that a large amount of calories came from gathering, you know it, every anthropologist ever knows it, but there are proponents of the Paleo Diet here, and a disproportionate number of the sexists here are among their ranks.

It's well established that non-agricultural societies have extremely limited skirmishes of that sort. Not much point in fighting it out and maybe dying when you can just move or share. It only makes sense to fight over territory and property when you've invested several months into your crops and have to get a return or starve over the winter.

Again, I'm aware that this is the case, I was (again) making the point of the huge demand placed on hunting-males if certain members of the forum are correct about early human society.

You don't want to be hidden for endurance hunting. If the animal doesn't know you're there, it won't keep moving and our relative energy advantage (humans are really good at regulating body temperature compared to basically everything else on the planet) wouldn't be helpful.

You want to be hidden at the start, as you need surprise to get the herd to go one way and the target to go the other. Sorry if I wasn't clear.

[Wolfman]

Law, Justice, Crime and Punishment:

I hate when people try to hijack massacres for political gain

I'm going to be honest with you: Unless you were at the trial for every minute, you don't know what all was presented in the case. The defense was saying that the child accidentally drowned in the pool. Maybe the defense brought up something that showed the child did drown. Were you there? No? Then I'm inclined to just go with what the jury found.

Ultimately the point is, what should be done if someone who was innocent was executed? With jail time fiscal reparations can be made (and normally are made), but what is to be done with execution? In that sense, execution is cruel or unusual.

Killing causes pain and suffering significantly more so then prison or any other possible sentence. Killing is devoid of humane feelings. Killing results from injury, causes grief and pain. And it is impossible to relieve by leniency. And their is the whole 'what if we fuck thing' which means the state caused injury, grief, or pain for no damn reason.

Our prison population exploded after the 'War on Drugs' started. And it makes sense, because as a common commodity becomes a black market item, groups will form to provide and protect it. That groups (be it the Mafia or Gangs) will need funding, and need to protect there share of the market. I have a feeling that 75% of US gangs would disappear in a matter of years after the legalizing of pot alone.

A quick tour of google and you find the agency regulating whatever industry a certain company would be regulated by. Give them a call, and I'm sure they'd be happy to send you any literature needed to help you. The more effective way to apply your proposal would deal with when people apply for a buisness permit, they have to also call whatever agency they would need to deal with, get the information they need, and include a confrimation number needed to finish getting the permit. This would also make it so the regulatory agency can send the owners new information as regulations get added/removed/changed.

Something I'd like to add: regulatory agencies should make regulations in such a way that the affected companies can be quickly updated.

Those are reasons why pot should be legal, not excuses to break the law.

I'm sure that if a study was done, you would find out that the vast majority of any sex or sexual orientation considers the primary use of contraception to be for preventing pregnancy, not for preventing the spread of STDs. Which explains why only condoms exist that can reduce the spread of STDs (and that's reduce, as nothing is perfect, and condoms do fail, both to prevent the spread of STDs and to prevent pregnancy). And I'm sure if you were to do a survey, you'd find that the majority of men do not like to use condoms and would rather not use them in the first place, and will do whatever they need to to not wear one.

I wont say sex is involuntary, but it's such a basic aspect of who we are, that it's incredibly foolish to tell people to just not have sex. While it's 100% effective at preventing the spread of STDs and pregnancy, it's also pretty much 100% impossible to actually use.

The point of the [People Seeds] argument is that the only truly effective way to prevent pregnancy is a method that requires unusual restrictions on your life.

There's also something called "reasonable use of force" which applies, and developing HIV/AIDS is an unreasonably stiff punishment for stupidity that is culturally ingrained.

I would disagree that humanity (or any form of life) has an ultimate goal.

[A]ctually following objective success is for fagots and homos, right?

Perhaps a Norway-like system for first offenders who aren't sentenced to life, and the normal system for repeat offenders?

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[Wolfman]

31 million slavs died as a result of WWII and the Holocaust, heavily because hitler and friends thought they had a claim to basically the entirety of habitated Russia and other Slavic lands. If neo-nazis think that Slavs are Aryan, they're even more retarded then I thought.

Honestly, after the Holocaust, can you blame Jews (or anyone else) for being paranoid about something as facially ridiculous as 'white nationalism'?"

White Nationalists" say Jews are a degenerate race of rat people who made up and/or deserved the Holocaust, but the rest of America (ie, people who don't have an extra chromosome) consider Jews White, or atleast European. And since pretty much all of the Jews in America spent the better part of 2,000 years in Europe, I think that's justified.

I'm Slavic. If you want to start talking about "European Unity" on some racial grounds, you're going to have to explain why the last attempt at race-based European unity ended with 31 million of my people dead.

I'm not the one pretending that ethnic groups that spent ten thousand years fighting each other are magically similar and want to cooperate with each other because they were all from the same continent.

I'm sorry if I have an ideological affiliation with empiricism, which says that race doesn't exist.

When people starting fondling themselves to the thought of the Statue of Liberty or blindly worshiping there country while ignoring facts to the contrary, they're just helping the inevitable destruction of that country. Outdated or not, Nationalism is a stupid idea. National Pride is another matter.

If your goal is to... prevent exposing your children to anyone other then yourself, thus guaranteeing that they have no social skills, go for it. If you want to have socially functioning children, try not doing that.

Who do I trust to teach me chemistry: a guy with a master's degree in Chemistry, or my neighbor who never went to college? Who do I trust to teach me history, a guy with a bachelor's in history, or my mom the business major?

The purpose of doctors and medical care is to keep you alive comfortably as long as possible. The purpose of doctors is to then aid you in your final transition into death when the time comes. Think of a hospice, they keep you comfortable until you die.

If not to protect it's citizens, what does the government do?

Our health care sucks because we focus on treatment, little attention is paid to prevention.

...pro-profit, privately owned Fire Fighters would simply stand by and let houses burn because they weren't paid to protect the burning house.

Arguments against decades of empiricism which are not based on empiricism can be ignored.

If I was going to try to solve our problems, I would probably start by sitting down with public and private colleges, companies and charities and trying to hammer out some kind of agreement such that federal student aid only went to funding for academic resources, and include charity work as a requirement for federal student aid, and see if companies would be willing to fund an individual student's college education, conditional that the student works for the company for an agreed upon number of years after.

I'd broadcast the proceeding on CSPAN. I would rather have government and private companies be partners in achieving what is everyone's best interest anyways then have government telling business what to do, which creates an unnecessary sense that the two are in conflict. I cannot think of anything off of the top of my head about education, but we could imagine the government deciding that businesses must pay a tax based on the amount of street space they have, with the money being used to fund road maintenance in the CBD. Many businesses would do whatever they could to fight the law being passed, manipulate official estimates of their street exposure, or directly manipulate their street exposure. If government and those businesses were working together, the larger companies in the CBD could say "That would hurt our revenue, and as a private corporation we have a legal obligation to our shareholders to produce a profit. How about this: a few of us large corporations will pay the tax, but signs get put up on the roads outside our building saying something like 'this road maintained by KFC'". Then the road work is getting done, the companies get advertising, and in the end, everyone wins.

I think the unions should remain, but a Corporation should be the specific method of structure, where the Administration, Teachers, and the community have a voice in the goings-ons of a specific school. And I think the issue of how to measure the performance of a teachers is an issue. Grades can be fudged to make a teacher seem better or worse then they are, and requiring nationalized tests encourages teachers to teach to the test, which tends to mean that "extra" things like art, music, and PE/gym get axed, and students only learn what's on the test, instead of a broad understanding of the subject.

I say get rid of school districts as a whole. If you can physically get to a school, you can go there, even if it means a long commute. After a certain distance though, the school wouldn't need to provide a ride.

So, because Hitler called himself a Socialist that makes him a Socialist? Fine, then North Korea is a Republic and I'm the Pope.

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=133226

Nationalism, Health and Education, and Media.

[skeptic-1]

Wolfman - I do believe that you hit the nail on the head regarding the main left-right split.

As a going in position, I believe that we can agree that an acknowledged reality on both sides is that disparities exist. Where the split occurs is what to do about it. As you accurately stated, the right accepts such as natural while the left feels compelled to fix it. And, therein lies the problem.

By "fixing" such perceived "problems" control is required. So, the question comes down to how much control will be permitted - or, how much freedom will we surrender to Washington (and other) bureaucrats in order to have them fix problems that they define?

The Right represents the moneyed interests who will go to ANY length to protect it.

The Far Left represents either those who feel or actually cannot compete for reasons (some very good) blamed on the Right

The rest pay their money and take their chances !