Is arming locals really that bad an idea though? Our problem in the past was that we picked religious zealots as our allies and armed them, while ignoring the not-so-religious ones we could have supported. Here with ISIS, we could arm the Kurds and support them; the Kurds are not terribly religious (not too different from your typical Sunday Christians here in the US), and are willing to fight ISIS, but we don't want to support them too much because we don't want them demanding their own state, because that works against our interest in keeping the region destabilized. If we stopped working towards keeping the region unstable, and instead helped out groups like the Kurds who want independence, which would make the whole region far more stable, groups like ISIS would die out.

Unfortunately, there are always going to be radicals, and eventually, some extremist is going to get the wrong idea and decide to start their own "terrorist state". Even the most peaceful religions, like Buddhism, have their radicals that go around pillaging.

You do realize that Republicans of today aren't the same as the Republicans of the 1860s, right? When it comes to the oldest Republicans still alive and in power today, they're still 6 or 7 generations removed from the Republicans of those days. Political parties can undergo massive changes within just a single generation. When you're talking 6 to 10 generations difference, the policies sure as fuck aren't the same!

Exactly. The Republicans you speak of are from the Civil War era, and the policies of that time are quite different from those today; it's a similar case with the Democrats, who also happened to be have different policies from nowadays during that era.

Even then (on a different note), the Thirteenth Amendment was the statute that actually freed the slaves.

Well, there you go... It's harder to replace a middle-aged parent with much more life experience than a teenager who can be replaced easier. The parents of the MILF are probably old enough they can't replace her, but the teenager's parents are more likely to be capable of replacing the teenager, so you value them that way.

On the other hand, you could argue that since the middle aged parent has much less productive life remaining, letting them die reduces the oppurtunity costs to society vs. letting the teenager die.

Also, considering the age of the parents, they may not be able to have healthy kids that survive or kids at all, which, in that case, they wouldn't be that much use either, also considering that the teen may be ever so slightly genetically advantaged, being their offspring.