The Suni / Shiite fighting are constantly fighting each other in Iraq, even leading to a named Iraq civil war...as I said. The US has completely avoided going to war with any country that is actually willing to fighting back. The question isn't whether the US would win in Panama, it's whether or not Panama would be willing to fight back. The only thing a country really has to be able to do to defend itself against the US is to make it known that they will attack the mainland US in retaliation.

Yeah, the US would kick their ass faster than we won in Vietnam. I mean against North Korea. I mean the last country we fought that wasn't dragging it's bleeding body out of a civil war. When was that, 1940?

If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.

--Thomas Jefferson

A single point is certainly a triangle, all side lengths are zero. It would be very irregular not to include a single point in the definition of triangles.

Using human neurons as a model for the future of computing might not be the utopia that we are all dreaming of....

There hasn't been any power in 70 years that has attempted or been remotely capable of overthrowing the sovereignty of US citizens over their own government.

So yes, your assumption is a safe one, the military the largest welfare organization in the US, and everyone knows it.

Yes, little more than freeloading scum. As opposed to all the government employed military welfare, government paid teaching unions, government quota taxi drivers, government guaranteed student loan payed university staff, government paid arrest-you-for-smoking-marijuana workers... Instead paying attention to the mooching class actually spending this tax money, and call the ones who work to earn it "freeloading scum".

I've heard of this happening as well. It's why I believe that the most important election anyone can vote in is for Judges. Judges decide what police are allowed to do and that will affect your life more than any Federal and even most State policies.

They tried this in Florida for DUI checkpoints. Refusing a search was sufficient to make you "suspicious". They have a judge on site and everything.

http://www.attorneys.com/dui-d...

Depends on how silly the charge is. In the case in the article, it wasn't silly. Even if they threaten to arrest you, then you should still deny permission because a search can only hurt you.

The only real question remaining is whether to rely on the courts or vigilante justice to correct the police.

"It has been objected also against a Bill of Rights, that, by enumerating particular exceptions to the grant of power, it would disparage those rights which were not placed in that enumeration; and it might follow by implication, that those rights which were not singled out, were intended to be assigned into the hands of the General Government, and were consequently insecure. This is one of the most plausible arguments I have ever heard against the admission of a bill of rights into this system; but, I conceive, that it may be guarded against. I have attempted it, as gentlemen may see by turning to the last clause of the fourth resolution."
-- James Madison

Plenty of countries would destroy the US in a direct war. North Korea, China, Iran are the three most prominent. Your statement should be "the US will never go to with a country that can defend itself." Which is why we will never go to war with the above countries.

It's not even fair to call what the US has been doing "war". When the other side doesn't hit back, it's just bullying. You can claim the US is a war when you have to worry about dying while eating dinner with your family. If the US were to attack a country that is willing to fight back, the illusion would end very quickly and be replaced with panic.

/agree

But this tends to be the result of people needed alpha leaders and looking for a singular scapegoat. It wouldn't have been any better if they had picked anyone else, it is simply away to avoid reasoning.

If that's what it takes to get the "gotta have the latest news RIGHT NOW!" crowd to leave, then I'm all for it.

Slaves aren't free to change jobs, so they aren't a counter example.

Feudal serfs aren't free to own land, so they aren't a counter example.

Steel was a monopolized industry (as are many natural resources), so steel workers aren't free to start their own steel industry, so they aren't a counter example.

Most of the countries you speak of, to start a factory you have to be friends with the local authorities, so there isn't freedom of competition there either. And an aside, we happen to have the highest (or close to it) teenage unemployment rate in the history of the world.

There are good counter examples to some common libertarian arguments, especially such as the scarcity of natural resources becoming more and more significant. However, the general libertarian argument that greater prosperity comes from greater freedom is still so historically well observed that counter-examples like the above fall apart after even the smallest amount of consideration.

With regard to this specific thread, placing more and more regulatory burdens on employers only serves to reduce the number of employers, which reduces the choices of the employees. Yes, it is possibly that there may be other artificial restrictions, such as the government-born monopolies that were mentioned above, on employers that make individual regulatory burdens less significant. But the better policy is to remove both obstructions, not to impose more.