Gah, my kingdom for mod points! Mod parent up please!

Um, huh?

I speak out against fanatical atheists and ask for more ordinary atheists to speak up for us, and therefore I'm a fanatic? Really?

How ridiculous.

I'm also an Atheist, and if you think we aren't discriminated against, you're just ignorant. Fighting that is the cause you *ought* to have. In fact our lack of community is part of the problem. American society does not consider us normal people, and to counter that we need a non-crazy voice. When normal, well adjusted Atheists like you deny our community, you cede our voice to the loudest and angriest among us. That's the self harm I wrote about above.

Talk about confirming our stereotypes of Europeans. The US government are christo-fascist lunatics, therefore islamo-fascist lunatics in Iran would be better? God damn, man, get some perspective.

I'm sorry, what? Are you trying to say we can't speak against religion here? That's... retarded. Our Atheists are so noisy they actually harm their own cause.

I think the EU is great, and I'm not the least bit interested in bashing Europe, but if you're going to complain about free speech in America you at least need to know what the fuck you're talking about.

I'd argue authorial intent matters, though. Accidental puns deserve their own word.

I'd love to pretend otherwise, but was really just a lucky typo. Thus the mondegreen discussion above.

Oh, fuck me, that's embarrassing. And now it's +5 Insightful. I love the spotlight!

Your reply went [whoosh] over my head ;)

in 3... 2... 1...

"your goal is noble, i'm not criticizing that. but you must include the fact that the goal is harder for the usa. genuinely, ideologically neutrally, harder"

"The USA is different, full stop", and "the USA is different, let's handle it this way" both include the same true statement, but each provokes a very different reaction in my mind. They are each a members of the tradition of American Exceptionalism, but the former is the domain of, well, regressive, hand-waving, fuckers. The latter much less so.

Which isn't to say it's anyone's *responsibility* to avoid looking regressive, but trying to think of reasons not to leaves me with a short list - disrespect for the parent (or the subject entirely), or lack of time, or something along those lines. Anyway, I ramble.

While I won't say you're wrong, I dislike this line of argument. Poor connectivity hinders American interests. Discourse on *why* it's poor, instead of the *effects* of it being poor, seems like a distraction at best.

At worst it's special pleading.

I know that's not your argument (cause I've read your posts for a while), but if you'd posted it anonymously I wouldn't know it from yet another "don't tread on me, America is different" excuses.

Who's spread out and who isn't is a waste of time. How we're going to get every American the best connectivity in the world matters.

Thanks, that's pretty interesting ;)

"China has major human rights problems, but coerced labor in its manufacturing sector isn't one of them. They do seem to be responding well on environmental issues recently, and they took the consumer health / quality errors very seriously."

Thank you. Waving your hands at "Chinese slave labor" as a way to dismiss competition really grates at this point. Xenophobes: would you at least get your anti-China biases into the 21st century? Ain't slave labor at all. Employment in China is overwhelmingly voluntary, with wages set by more or less the same market forces as ours in the West.

Chinese WANT manufacturing jobs because they're EASIER and pay BETTER than the farm alternatives. Time to step out of the 1980s, guys. If you want to complain about Chinese, the current fashion is to rail against "Mercantilism". Read up on it and get back to us after that. Christ.

"Do *you* think it's the right choice of word to describe someone who's defending their country against an invading army?"

Wait wait, - "defending"?! That's one hell of a loaded word. The insurgency in Iraq is best known for blowing up churches, running protection rackets, and assassinating Iraqi police officers. How can you characterize that as "defending"? That's a bizarre use of the word. Their efforts to hinder US forces amount to very little when compared to their efforts at murdering Iraqis.

Come on. The world is not binary. America and its opponents can simultaneously be wrong. You can make your point without using loaded words and mischaracterizations.