Comment Re:And a Liberals perspective... (Score 1) 1505
..the middle class have excellent health care through...
Middle class? What the hell is that?
..the middle class have excellent health care through...
Middle class? What the hell is that?
When Congress was debating this bill, its proponents were very emphatic that this provision was not a tax. Now, you want to argue that it is a tax?
I suspect the OP would claim that they were not one of those debating in Congress.
Without making a statement on the virtues of the heathcare law in question, I'd point you to a post by ep32g79 that gives the case law providing the federal government with the powers in question. You may reply that it's just from an "activist judge," but remember that the constitution gives the power to interpret the law to the judiciary.
Incidentally, dogs are actually smart enough to intentionally deceive their owners.
So that was his shit. That damn dog! I guess I own the mail man an apology.
As my sibling poster said, you beat me to it. I do wish I had mod points.
Y'know, the greatest threat to US security might be the US government.
In a sense I agree. We the people are the government, and we the people are generally apathetic, under educated, idiots. I believe the war on curiosity, as a grandparent poster said, is the fear of "main street" Americans of everything they don't understand. Technology is scary, so we have to keep he evil hackers at bay. Those Ai-rabs are funny looking and scary as well, so we have to attack them before they attack us. Or, worse, make "our" gas prices higher. There are large segments of the population that hold ignorance and staying inline w/ the the "right" (as in correct) thinking of the community to be paramount.
"Democracy is the theory that the people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard."
-- H. L. Mencken
[snip] If one looks at Christianity from circa 1550 they will see atrocities, brutalizing of the irreverent, and murdering of heretics. Sometimes en masse. [snip]
Yeah, and there has been a lot of repair work done to civilization since the Renaissance. We've pretty much gotten back to end of the Roman empire when Christians started mucking things up. Now, it would be irresponsible to let someone come along and vandalize it all over again.
And before you say, 'yeah but this is 2010, they should be over that in these modern times!', remember that the real world is not like a game of Civilization; not all cultures started at the same time. In a few centuries, or less, Islam will be mellowed out.
Actually, every culture is continuous from day to day. So culture did start at the same time and has been going ever since. It just changes locally over time. That's the thing about humans: we don't do very well without culture, so everyone has one... and every "peoples" has had one. What do you think the arab people we doing before Mo came along?
There's no good reason to believe that any particular culture will mimic that of Western culture like a blueprint. Western culture is the way it is because of internal and external pressures over its history. Christianity won out over a more tolerant society at its beginning and so can fundamentalist Islam now.
The only question is how much pressure can those of us who value liberty put on it, and where should it be pressed.
A morsel of genuine history is a thing so rare as to be always valuable. -- Thomas Jefferson
