Of course governments can censor speech and cut off Internet access, that's their prerogative.

Just to be 100% sure here: You are arguing that governments have a right to to censor speech and cut off Internet access (like I have a right to shoot a robber that breaks into my house during night and attacks me), not that are able to censor speech and cut off Internet access (like a gang of robbers can kill you and steal your stuff)? Your talk about sovereign governments and prerogative makes me suspect you view it as a right. If I understand you correctly: What is it, in your view, that give a government (or organization of governments like the UN for that matter) that right?

Neither is going from 6-7 children/woman to 2-3 children/woman as many countries have done in a generation or two.

There could still be genes that directly or indirectly cause someone to resist the cultural pressure to only have 2-3 children. A gene that make you want many children is an example of the first. A gene that make you more likely to become a quiverfull Christian is an example of the last. At the same time other genes may cause one to follow the trend or go beyond it. Examples may be genes that makes you conform to your surrounding culture, genes that causes you to view children as a burden (that, because of medical advances and the current legal system, can be aborted with little risk for anyone involved except the fetus) or genes that makes you not care if the children you pay for are your own or belong to someone else. The culture of having few or no children is, to the genes of the population that adopt it, like any other disaster: it selects for those that have many children (that again will have many children) in it over those that won't (/can't).

If this was true inflation would be easy to fix: Just add gold or silver to the coins until spending them hurts.

Or if you knew that when they did wrong it could be amended just by a proper re-vote instead of having to implement drastic measures like carving the right to bear arms into a constitution which will fly out of the window anyway if a government really wants to implement evil...

Democracy is no guarantee that you can trust the government. If a politician knows that the electorate can't stop him he may decide to end democracy if the electorate chose the "wrong" option. If the electorate is well armed he is forced to think twice as he may get hurt while ending democracy. If democracy remains it still won't stop the majority from following the European tradition* of voting to violate the God given rights of other people. If the minority is well armed the majority is forced to think twice as they may get hurt while implementing the new policy.

Information the government has on you won't disappear when the government changes. In the future the government, with or without the consent of the voters, may use DNA to choose their next victims. The DNA of some individual they want to get rid of can be planted as false evidence of a crime. Targeted bio weapons may also appear. When the Nazis invaded Norway during WWII they found government registers that specified if the person on the list was Jewish or not. Guess how this information was used.

* The popularity of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin among their European subjects wasn't unique. Here in Norway the Labor party government did forced sterilizations (link in Norwegian) as a part of its socialized medicine. People kept voting for them. (The law was removed in 1977. The Labor party is a part of the current ruling coalition. An award carrying the name of Karl Evang's name is still handed out. As far as I know the Labor party no longer support forced sterilization)

And you can't see how ridiculous that is and how it utterly defeats the purpose of patents?

The point of the suggestion is to utterly defeat patents when it comes to software. If the suggestion is more or less ridiculous than the idea that the government has a right to grant the artificial monopolies we call patents in the first place (and that it should do so if it has this right) is an issue I have yet to make up my mind on. Ignoring my own views a case for patents can be made like this: A small inventor creates a new device. To produce it he needs to set up a production lines and distribution. While doing this a large competitor that has factories and a distribution network hears about the new competitor and copies his invention from an early prototype found in the trash. The small inventor is now without any advantage from his invention over his competitor. As he knows this will happen the small inventor has no motivation to produce his invention in the first place. He therefore keeps his invention secret without producing anything based on it. Patents prevent this. Even if the government has a right to grant patents and this argument is a valid reason to do it it doesn't hold for patenting software as there is no cost in copying software and it can be distributed via the internet as a download. It is hard to create a law that makes it possible to patent hardware but not software as lawyers will find loop holes so their clients can patent software. Stallman's suggestion is an elegant way to avoid software patents as the patents only will apply to implementations in hardware.

Lets just imagine a simple case WRT to Stallman's suggestion. You implement an algorithm in hardware using discrete logic. You patent it. I implement the same algorithm purely in software on a general purpose computer. Is your patent applicable to my software?

No. Your implementation is software on a general purpose computer. My patent therefore won't apply. If you later implement it in hardware you are will need a license.

Mitt Romney is a Mormon. Mormonism is as far away from Christianity as Islam is. Like Islam its possible to argue that it's an extreme heresy and not a separate religion or that it's a separate religion and not an extreme heresy. Isn't the American Taliban a story based on us bible believing protestants that accept the common creeds as the correct interpretation of the Bible and how some of us have recovered from the theological errors that caused us to stay away from politics?

Yes! In stead of those evil capitalists forcing people to do things by paying them people should just do what the government tells them to do. In return the government should give them what they need. That would be true freedom. Freedom is slavery!

The time you used writing your post could have been spent earning money you could have spent feeding a starving child. Do you hope you get cardiac arrest and die or are you a hypocrite?

Is this "proof" a parody?

We can study empirically whether gay marriage or abortion is a net benefit/harm to society.

By what standard will you measure benefit or a harm? We would not even be able to agree if an effect is good, neutral or bad for many. More detailed weights would be even harder to agree on. Even if you assume that everyone would convert to a system of moral where net harm/benefit to society was the basis and abortion in it self was viewed as neutral you would not be able to agree. I'll narrow it down to one (small) effect: If you impregnate a woman in a society with no abortion there is a strong pressure on you to marry her and take care of your child. In a society with abortion you have the excuse that she could have aborted the child so the pressure evaporates. Here is a sample of some consequences this will give different people:

• if the child is wanted by his mother he will grow up without a father. This increase the probability of the child having a lower quality of life. For sons it increase the probability of him ending up as a violent criminal. The consequence reaches his victims.
• a pregnant woman can no longer be sure the her child's father will support her.
• an attractive man no longer have to think twice about having sex. He can have sex with more partners and more often.
• a less attractive man will, depending on how attractive he is, gets less sex, sex with less attractive women or no sex at all since women looking for sex can now get it from the more attractive men.
• a less attractive woman that don't realize how (most) men and (most) women are different can now have sex with more attractive men. The sex she is getting fools her into believing that she can get one of those men to commit to her.
• If she finally realize that it's not possible she is now less attractive that she was when the sex fooled her. If she realize that most men are different from her she now can choose between settling for even less than she could have gotten, prepare for growing old alone or try to ignore what she now knows. She'll probably end up bitter about how men won't commit.

Who shall decide if the consequence that an attractive man can have more sex and the less attractive man less sex is a good thing? The (average) football player or the (average) Slashdot reader? The twenty year old girl or the 39 year old woman that just bought her first cat since she knows there never will be a child? Who shall decide what weight a single violent crime has compared to sex with no consequences? The unattractive guy that just got mugged or the attractive guy that just had a threesome?

Personally I don't care about benefit/harm to society when considering moral issues, including the subset of morals that apply to governments. I'm just trying to understand how you think.

Unless the government interferes there is no more burden on the employee that want a part of the compensation for his work to be condoms than on the employee that want a part of his compensation to be gold coins. All they have to do is to find an employer that will agree to compensate them the way they prefer.

The Roman Catholic own his business. The government don't own it. It is his. He should be free to offer to trade money (and only money) for work instead of money and condoms. An employee should be free to accept the offer, reject it or try to negotiate. A Roman Catholic employee owns his capacity for work. The government don't own it. It is his. He should be free to offer to trade his work for money (and only money) instead of money and condoms. An employer should be free to accept his offer, reject it or try to negotiate. If an employer and an employee can't agree on the conditions for a trade no trade is done. No one has forced anyone to do anything.*
By creating a law that forbids employing people without giving a part of their compensation for the work in condoms the government points a gun to all employers and potential employers heads and tell them to do it, fire all employees or risk government violence. Before Roman Catholic employers were free to not pay for contraception for their employees. After they are no longer free to not pay for contraception for their employees. The government is forcing the view that it's OK to pay for contraception on Roman Catholic employers. It is also forcing Roman Catholic employees to accept a promise of free condoms as part of their pay. You seem to believe that forcing beliefs on someone is wrong. You should therefore oppose this kind of laws.

* If any Roman Catholics reading this feel the argument is to secular please let this Protestant give you some pointers concerning what the Bible your own church agree is the Word of God (Dei Verbum) has to say about property rights: Exodus 22:1-9, 1 Kings 21:1-20, Leviticus 19:11-15, Romans 2:21, Acts 5:4

I apologize for putting words in your mouth. I should have referred to pro contraceptives views and the pro contraceptives side instead.

Are you referring to the situation where the government wants to force your views on contraceptives on Catholic employers? In that case: no one holds a gun to your head and force you to work for a catholic. If you want condoms you can pay for them using your own money, try to find someone that will give them to you for free or find a new employer that will give you condoms. It's only one side doing any forcing here: your side.

Am I correct to assume you are referring to (a misunderstanding of) the case law in Exodus 2:22 and that your argument goes something like this: "Exodus 2:22 has a mild punishment for killing an unborn child. It is therefore a non person"? The KJV translates Exodos 2:22 as:

Assuming that the child is dead is to jump to conclusions. The Hebrew term for miscarriage, nephel, is not used in this verse. The context don't imply that the child is dead. Because of this I don't see a need to argue that the mild punishment in this case don't imply that the child is a non person even if it was stillborn so I'll stop here.