http://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=15543
ACLU does not care when Crisis Pregnancy Centers are unconstitutionally coerced into forced speech.
But if someone decides to heckle a priest during Mass, then of course the ACLU will call it a constitutional right.
Bastards.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Landis This man is a slashdotter who is a scientist at NASA.
See what he wrote in http://www.geoffreylandis.com/politics.html
Specifically,
Right at the moment, I think that the liberal/conservative divide is the single most harmful thing about American politics. Politicians don't seem to care about solving problems, they only want to know whether a particular idea is liberal or conservative, and then, presto, they are for/against it.
I don't agree with him 100%, but I do agree with the principle that we would be more open to ideas from people whose overall ideologies we do not share.
Look what happens in the abortion debate, for example. Pro-lifers have been deemed "anti-woman" and therefore _every_ proposal they make, such as requiring parental permission for a young girl to have an abortion, is immediately discarded.
People should debate looking for Truth, instead of trying to prove that the opponent is stupid and evil.
Also, people should not commit themselves to one specific political party.
Just because you are worried about AGW, it does not mean you should become an obedient Democrat.
Just because you are pro-life, it does not mean you should become an obedient Republican.
Republicans are sometimes right, Democrats are sometimes right, and often they're both wrong.
I don't understand the minimum wage legislation. By forcefully mandating the minimum wage to be M, the government ensures that people whose productivity is lower than M will be unemployed. This is specially true for youth and unskilled people. And unemployment among youth can create a vicious circle: he is unskilled because he never worked, and he cannot find a job because he is unskilled.
If the government allowed a young man to work for less than M, then he could gain the experience needed for getting a better job.
So it seems that the minimum-wage legislation only achieves unemployment and dependency.
Would it not be better to let a poor person work for less than M, and help that person with a negative income tax? That is, the government would give the person r * (M - W), where M is the minimum wage, M is his actual wage, and r is a positive real number smaller than 1.
This way we would encourage people to work, and gain the experience to get a better job.
The Catholic Church is often libeled as a right-wing organization, which is preposterous.
In economic matters, the Catholic Church is quite leftist. In immigration and environmentalism too. Regarding "affirmative action" it seems to be neutral, because I have never seen a priest or bishop touch this subject. It opposes the death penalty. In foreign policy, it seems to be non-interventionist (Pope John Paul II opposed the Iraq War, many bishops oppose the Cuban Embargo, etc.).
The Catholic Church is only conservative regarding life and family values. It is not a right-wing organization by any sane measure. This includes Opus Dei, which is a faithful Christian organization.
The Left libels the Church as being "right-wing", and Opus Dei as being "far-right", because the Left only accepts opposition in economic matters. Their view of a healthy political environment is one where the Left supports economic socialism and cultural Marxism (gender ideology, abortion, homosexualism, affirmative action, etc.) and the Right supports economic liberalism but agrees with cultural Marxism.
That someone dares to think outside that box, and oppose cultural Marxism (as the Church does) is seen as preposterous. The Left will even censor it (via "hate speech" laws) wherever it can.
In short: the Church transcends politics, and no political party represents the Church.
The world would be a far better place if the following wise words were followed:
Found out about this today. Richard Dawkins supports not only abortion but infanticide: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWkJ6cZ0FY8
See the following comments of mine:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2999311&cid=40749863
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2999311&cid=40745031
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2999311&cid=40744963
Also click on "Parent" to see them in context.
Can they really be described as "Troll" or "Flamebait"? Are they against Slashdot comment guidelines?
Slashdot is a very biased place. If I praise open source or bash Microsoft, then I easily get moded up, even if my post is uncreative and mediocre.
But if I defend the right to life, or the preservation of marriage, or religious tolerance, then I get modded "troll" or "flamebait", even if I am honest and reasonably polite.
If I wanted to play the game, I could simply write twenty "Linux rocks!" comments for every "religious freedom is a human right according to the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights" comment. Then I would have infinite Karma.
But I do not want to do that.
* Note 1: not all conservatives are faithful Catholics and not all faithful Catholics are conservatives, but I happen to be both.
** Note 2: I _do not_ claim to be a _good_ Catholic. That will be judged by Jesus. I only claim to be a "faithful" Catholic. By that I mean that I support Catholic teaching, support the Church itself, and frequent the sacraments.
There is no global overpopulation. Some places (such as Japan) are already experiencing population aging and decline, which is bad in many ways. Other places (such as the USA and specially Europe) already have sub-replacement fertility rates, and their population only grows because of demographic lag and immigration. It is predicted the the European Union population (now at 503M) will reach zero natural population increase by 2015 and zero total population increase in 2035 (at 520M), then start declining.
The USA will grow from 310M in 2010 to 403M in 2050. [1]
Asia will increase from 4.2B in 2010 to 5.1B in 2050, then start declining. [2]
The only region that is really growing is Africa. It will increase from 1B in 2010 to 2.2B in 2050. [2] Then its population density will be 73/km2. [3] Compare that to the current population density in Portugal (115/km2), in South Korea (487/km2) and in Taiwan (641/km2). [4]
Global population is predicted to grow from 7B in 2011 to 9B in 2050 and 10B in 2100 [5] and start falling soon after [6].
And according to [7], 40-50% of America-produced food is thrown away. According to [8], 1/3 of the world food is thrown away.
And this does not take into account that people eat, just for pleasure, excessive quantities of resource-intensive food (such as meat). If Americans/Europeans want to help the poor, an easy way would be to decrease (say, by 30%) their diet of meat. This will immediately reduce food demand and, for double bonus, the saved money can be donated to charity. And much arable land is wasted on subsidized inefficient corn-based ethanol. You can lobby your government to stop that.
Plus, there does not seem to be a negative correlation between population density and GDP per capita. [9]
African hunger is not caused by overpopulation. It is caused by corrupt and authoritarian governments, and by guerrillas/terrorists motivated by Marxism, Islamism, ethnic hate or simply greed.
Overpopulation fear-mongering is very old - at least as old as Malthus. One of its more recent incarnations was the 1968 book "The Population Bomb", which predicted mass starvation to occur in the 1970s.
Anyway, for better or for worse, there is already strong action taken by individuals, foundations, and Western governments, to restrict fertility in Africa.
1 : http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Analytical-Figures/htm/fig_11.htm
2 : http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Analytical-Figures/htm/fig_2.htm
3 : According to [2], Africa will have 2.2B people in 2050, and according to Google[10] and Wikipedia [11], the area of Africa is 30,221,532 km2
4 : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependent_territories_by_population_density
5 : http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Analytical-Figures/htm/fig_1.htm
6 : http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Analytical-Figures/htm/fig_6.htm
7 : http://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/news/ng.asp?id=56376-us-wastes-half
8 : http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/74192/icode/
9 : http://sanamagan.wordpress.com/2011/03/10/population-population-density-gdp-per-capita-ppp/
10 : https://www.google.com.br/search?q=africa+area
11 : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Africa
I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning. -- Plato
