Another day, another outraged Christian. Parents in a Utah school district were horrified to discover a link on the district web page to an evil essay:
The new battle centers on a link on the district's Web page that was quietly removed on Feb. 16. Titled "America: Republic or Democracy?" the link led directly to an essay by William P. Meyers, a California-based writer who heralds his belief that Jesus Christ is one in a long string of "historic vampires."
I, too, am deeply offended. Meyers doesn't know how to spell his own name, and everyone knows Jesus wasn't a vampire — he was a zombie.
But here's another weird thing: you can read the offensive essay, and what you'll discover is that it says nothing about Jesus or vampires. It's about the nature of the US government, which he explains is not a simple democracy, but a republic that evolved towards more democratic representation gradually, which is not a contentious issue at all, or shouldn't be. It also points out something that is probably even more offensive to the purists who worship the founding fathers like a council of demigods: among the motives of the American revolution was a demand to protect the institution of slavery, and the desire of acquisitive land speculators to seize more native American land.
Uh-oh. Questioning the nobility of our forefathers? Trouble.
And then the essay concludes with another obvious, simple piece of reporting:
There are no longer any voter-qualification impediments to democracy in the United States. But many have noted that the will of the people has tended not to prevail, and that a majority of people eligible to vote are so discouraged that they do not vote. The main reason for this is the buying and selling of elections and politicians by the wealthier class of citizens and their special interest groups. A year or more before elections take place, the winner is decided by those who vote with dollars. But this is a defect in democracy, not a reason to abandon it. The answer is to cure the defect, not to attempt to destroy our representative democracy.
Hmm, I think I like this guy even if he does consistently misspell his name. Unfortunately, to constitutive conservatives like the yahoos in Utah, the message in the essay is…creeping socialism! And they get even more hysterical:
[Meyers] believes in anarchy, pagan worship and that Jesus was just a leader of a small cult and is a real vampire! He advocates radical socialism, limiting families to two children, abortion to term, homosexuality, worshipping the sun instead of a 'dead Jesus,' saying that Mary was just an unwed pregnant teenager, and many other socialist political views, just two clicks from the district's home page. ... All this was linked directly from Alpine School District's Web site.
No, it wasn't. It actually took a fair amount of digging to find out what the heck they're talking about. Here is his position on abortion and birth control — it's not at all inflammatory, and includes some simple common sense, like "It is not an appropriate role of government to try to boss people's sex lives around." He does not advocate sun worship, in fact proposes quite the opposite. The vampire story is an introduction to a book, and isn't even on the same site.
If it weren't for a howling mob of witchhunters trying to find cause to censor a short, simple essay on American history that they found offensive, I wouldn't have found any of that. It is interesting that they don't actually address any of the content of that one essay, but instead have to resort to mad, flailing character assassination to silence a simple explanation of historical facts that did not fit their deranged view of the world.
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My friends and I decided long ago that Jesus was a Toreador, unable to resist the high drama of being martyred. If he hasn't since suffered the Final Death, he's likely slumming it as a homeless green energy protester somewhere.
::::Looks at crazy::::
::::Looks again:::::
*Blink* *Blink blink*
LOL Wut?
They just make shit up, don't they?
Sadly, that doesn't stop becoming a registered voter and voting and having your vote count in the USA from being difficult. The Republicans are big on filtering voters by requiring their possession of state identification cards (not the separately acquired voter registration cards), for instance, and then you have gerrymandering, the electoral college, elections on business days, and residency requirements.
Making shit up is not the only approach to history in Utah. Burying or papering over shameful treatment of Native Americans and of all dark-skinned people, especially black Americans, is par for the course.
Once the history is hidden from view, they make up a better story and start putting it about. One of their recent ploys is to give awards to groups they previously mistreated.
Some people are not happy unless they have something to complain about.
Yeah, but Utah made having a miscarriage prosecutable as criminal homicide, so the levels of crazy there are obviously pretty high.
If they weren't at the forefront of defending my right to porn, I'd suggest glassing the whole state and starting over:
http://threepanelsoul.com/view.php?date=2009-06-23
So, the food the Mormons store away in their community larders and divvy out to members in times of need: that's a capitalist thing, not a socialist one then?
When words mean whatever you think it's politically expedient for them to mean, you've won the victory over yourself. You love Big Brother.
Utah is one of the least democratic states in the USA. A borderline theocracy. One of their many tricks to keep power is gerrymandering.
It is flagrant and obvious, the Mormons know it and they don't care who knows. Part of the criteria for gerrymandering is being a pagan or gentile, religious discrimination. They stuff all of those people into as few a districts as they can.
Given that Communist states banned homosexually, whomped environmentalists, and lived the Dominionist dream of valuing and rewarding women almost entirely on how many children they spawned, you think the American right wing would worship people like Nicolae Ceausescu as the Second Coming of Jesus Christ and spew forth incoherent screeds in favor of him, not against him.
"My friends and I decided long ago that Jesus was a Toreador"
I miss Vampire the Masquerade. The Malkavanians were the best.
The one thing I really despise about Liberals Who Know Everything About the Constitution and How it Ought To Operate is that they cant see how an adherence to the original intent of the Constitution (limited Federal Government, active State Gov) would allow for a greater expression of contemporary liberal politics is many parts of the country.
People in Texas dont believe what People in Minnesota believe.
Yet every 4 years Americans engage in this fantasy that the Pres. election is going to solve something for the Country, when in fact it is just a temporary, and minor, indicator of the pendulum swing of the electorate's views, and we wind up with a craptacular middle of the road compromise.
If the majority of Minnesotans, for ex., want socialized medicine they ought to have it. Where I get off is when they try to force it on the Texans who dont want it. If Minnesota goes on to produce a kick-ass health system, other Americans will take notice and have incentive to move up there, or create one in their state. If Texans lower costs through competition, well, other Americans might want to emulate that.
I dont know what the right answer is, why dont we try a few different things.
"nooooooo" everyone yells, it must be Federal, it must be nationwide, it must be uniform. The idea of competing mini-democracies is just too much for folks to handle.
Liberty can increase through states rights. The closer you are to your government the more power you have and the more responsive it will be to you.
clickety click click click
Ah! somwhere else on the same site.
From the news story:
I'd say none of those thing are socialist, but then I remembered anything evil is socialist.
My guess? Well maybe I'm a bit biased on the subject, but I think it's us homos who pushed it over the threshold this time. :)
Gerrymandering works. Mormons make up 65% of the population. 90% of the legislators are LDS.
It really pisses me off when people say something like this. I mean com...
oh nevermind.
See, the problem there is that doing so would require them to acknowledge or understand that communism is a political ideology independent of the people who claim to be communists and not "the thing they were taught to hate and fear" in the fifties.
One of the minor sports in Utah among the hordes of wingnuts is trying to get rid of books they don't like in libraries.
They often target schools although occasionally they target public libraries as well. It doesn't take much for them to target a book either.
They got the wrong Meyers, maybe?
http://www.iiipublishing.com/books/books_main.html
I suggest you look at why the EU insists on member stares having minimun standarss with regards access to healthcare, social care, employment rights etc.
It was because they realises that allowing each member state to so its own thing would result in some states lowering standards, and thus taxes, in order to encourage business to setup shop in that state rather than other. Given that free movement of people, goods and services is a key issue in the EU it was realised that not requring minimum standards would result in a race to the bottom and that EU citizens would be the ones to lose out.
It doesn't take much for someone in Utah to challenge a book in a library. One tried to get rid of a Twilight book, written by a Mormon. I've heard they aren't very good but that isn't a reason to remove them from a library.
But I thought all Christians are vampires. Don't they drink blood every Sunday?
It's really very simple. Socialism is evil. Anything that goes against my prejudices is evil. Anything that goes against my prejudices is Socialism.
@Equisetum #19, no, that's only the Catholics who drink blood. Protestants view Communion as symbolism, not literal Jesus-eating. And depending on whom you ask, Catholics aren't "really" Christians, anyway.
Have they never seen the musical 1776? A very significant portion of the play is the debate between Adams and Rutledge over slavery, and probably the most dramatic moment in the whole show is Rutledge's song about the slave trade and Boston's role in it.
The point being that this is no obscure footnote in the Declaration of Independance that everyone has forgotten about. For anyone to be shocked (shocked I tell you) that preservation of slavery was integral to the founding of America is "inconceivable".
Welcome to theocracy. Set your watches back 400 years. Mormons are 59% of the Utah population and projections are they may fall below 50% in a few decades. Maybe, but the LDS leadership is always telling the members to crank up those baby making factories that pagans call....women.
The Mormons plan was to originally set up their own country, zion or deseret or some such. The USA build a fort above the city with the guns pointed towards the city. Fort Douglas is still there, just in case they try it again. Although de facto they already did it anyway.
"Liberty can increase through states rights. The closer you are to your government the more power you have and the more responsive it will be to you."
Dare we ask for an actually, real-life example of the liberty increasing states rights? Also, may we have a citation regarding local governments being more responsive than the federal governments, much less more effective? I deal with my Congress people regularly. They and their staffs have been effective and prompt to all my requests for assistance.
When I became unemployed, I began lobbying my state reps and delegates for help after MD Unemployment cut off my assistance, repeatedly, after I yelled at one of their staff members for being road and refusing to identify themselves. 18 months later, I am still jobless, but no employment for me.
In concluding my rant, when you rail against the Federal Government, regulation, or other government done things, it makes you look smart if you know why those things exist. Yes, some laws were wrong, while some have outgrown their usefulness. Some were bought by corporate interests. However, many laws came about because people lobbied for them in order to right horrific wrongs and awful situations. As an example, the government increased in size, scope, and activity during the Great Depression because local and state governments, private charities, extended family networks, private sector employee benefits, mutual assistance organizations including trade unions failed, spectacularly, to cope with the situation. The Feds were turned to when all over options short of armed revolution were tried.
"Dare we ask for an actually, real-life example of the liberty increasing states rights?"
In Virginia I cant buy liquor on Sundays.
In California I can buy liquor on Sundays.
Californian drinkers are more free, thanks to the ability of states to regulate some of their own drinking laws.
If that law were handled Federally drinkers nationwide would be less free.
At least now I know what all the foofaraws about republic/democracy are all about. The local Tea Peeps are constantly harping on anyone who says the US is a democracy. "No! No! Its a republic!" Then they congratulate each other for being so astute.
But they rag on me when I point out that "your" and "you're" aren't interchangable. That makes me an elitist.
We tried states rights back when we first gained independence. It failed.
Also, Minnesota has excellent health care, especially compared to Texas. We actually have rudimentary socialized medicine with MNCare.
You know what's even worse? The street outside the school links directly to both Bourbon Street and Haight-Ashbury! Please, won't someone think of the children!
Why is this confusing to people? A person can be a sadistic, child-torturing, book-burning, fascist Cubs-fan and STILL be capable of publishing an interesting, informative, and factually correct piece of writing. Bias is real, of course, but it is also pretty close to the weakest counter-argument anyone can make because it's so easy to do. Hell, I've been guilty of it in the past myself. However, the key to intelligent discourse is addressing and considering the argument and not the arguer. That's a word, right? Anyway, the second you accuse someone of bias and categorically dismiss their argument without any critical thought is the second you reveal how lazy you are.
@ 25
If the federal law said that you can buy liquor on Sunday, wouldn't that make the Virginians more free without making the Californians less free? Pareto Superior!
Methinks the laws themselves are at least as important as which level of government is making them.
formatting fail on my previous comment. whoops.
mfd512 #10
I think we settled who has the reins and the major responsibilities - including protecting citizens and advancing there best interests.
Since about 1830 to now (including within that period a bloody Civil War and at least 2 major amendments) the role of the FG relative to States has weighted toward the FG.
There seems to me (and others that really count) moral and practical reasons for this. And since often people MUST be fluid and mobile (moving State to State) in order to provide for their families some consistency is deserved by us as citizens. Further since corps are "citizens" often in a different State they need some consistency to operate more efficiently.
Beyond that - empirically Texans enjoy the benefits of a FEDERAL government more than New Yorkers do. Just one example like Medicaid and the Federal match shows the disparity (Texas about 20% higher with an outlay for children about 25% higher).
Here is my point - for all the yapping about "no damn socialist pinko commies in my state" the people of the reddest states would be at a tremendous loss without the beneficence of that evil bad boogyman FG.
And don't get me started on what I witnessed during the 60's. I say thank the FSM for the FG!!
Bullshit.
In fact we already have state control of most issues which could result in more freedom by that means. Recreational drug laws and liquor laws are handled at the state level and there is potential for freedom there. But the lack of antidiscrimination laws would result in a tremendous loss of freedom for minority groups in the South, so that sort of thing needs to be handled at the federal level.
I wonder if you'll have the decency to admit this, or if you'll come out in defense of racist discrimination. Odds are on the latter.
There are some things which remain that should yet be devolved to the states -- the National Minimum Drinking Age Act is one such embarrassment -- but one of the many things I really despise about right-wing libertarians is that they usually won't admit that freedom can be increased by the federal government in those cases where adhering to the the white supremacist slogan of "states' rights" would result in states limiting individuals' rights.
The "freedom" you assert here is the "freedom" to deny affordable health care to one's neighbor, the "freedom" to limit another person's freedom.
There is no more reason to defend this than to defend your freedom to actively murder your neighbor. Indeed you would be more free if you could murder anyone you wanted to, but you'd be dramatically lowering the freedom of everyone around you.
shit, blockquote fail. for clarity's sake, let's try again:
wait, what? which communist countries are you talking about?
the two I'm familiar with, Poland and the GDR, were far ahead of the West in terms of gender equality. the GDR had gender equality enshrined in its constitution, abortion and other forms of birth control were legal and easy to come by pretty much from the start, and even in terms of real everyday life women in the 60's and 70's there were at the stage women in america are now. no one accused my mom or her friends of going to college to get her MRS. degree, and none of the female students were treated by professors as personal assistants. Certainly my mother the physics student was harassed and treated more fairly then and there, than a lot of female physics/math students are now here in the U.S.
:-/
@ 26
I never understood that argument either. A republic and a democracy are not mutually exclusive types of government. The US is both, as is France. The UK is a democracy but not a republic. China is a republic but not a democracy.
"Indeed you would be more free if you could murder anyone you wanted to, but you'd be dramatically lowering the freedom of everyone around you."
Im glad we agree that one persons freedoms end where anothers begin.
I wonder if you'll have the decency to admit the following:
Declaring access to healthcare a right in the same sense that freedom of speech is a right doesnt work. It doesnt work because access to healthcare requires something from someone else in order to satisfy it. A doctor is forced to treat someone on financial terms s/he would not otherwise do so, thereby lowering that doctors freedom, just as you point say in your above quote. Freedom fail.
Freedom of speech doesnt require anyone to do anthing else. It doesnt lower anyone else's freedom. Neither does freedom of movement.
Another way to look at it: Our enumerated rights are supposed to be permanent, eternal, existing long before the Constitution. In the paleolithic, when one man beat another man because he didnt like what he grunted, he violated his eternal, natural right to free speech.
Tell me who violated paleolithic mans rights when he didnt have access to the latest in stroke therapy?
None of which is to argue against healthcare per se. It just isnt a Constitutional right.
Yes, states rights were used to maintain discrimination. I have no problem admitting that. There is, however, more to the idea.
@ 37
Your rights are defined by the society in which you live. The idea of 'natural' rights is absurd since a right is an idea of what should be, not what is.
Sorry, I have to say I think Colorado Springs is in the running for looniest place evar: Offensive Puppet Cleavage. Check please!
mfdbunchanumbers:
And you really expect us to not look past the traditional use of "state's rights" as a dog whistle for "waaaah they want us to stop oppressing someone"?
14th amendment trumps 10th. Get over it.
I should say "not to acknowledge"...
I've noticed the same phenomenon when one mentions works by David Duke. Cue growling in 3...2...1...
"They got the wrong Meyers, maybe?"
I sure as hell thought three quarters of the way through that the punchline would be that she googled Meyers, misspelled somehow, and ended up here.
If anyone is interested there is a classic (not to say, kinda awful) cult-fiction book called "The Last Days of Christ the Vampire" in which a group of 80's punk rockers must do battle with the forces of darkness and their leader, the demoniac vampire: Jesus Christ!
Not surprisingly, it's put out by the same people who publish "Vampires or Gods?"
I wouldn't necessary recommend that anyone read it, but it is interesting: http://www.iiipublishing.com/cv.htm
And the dim little fuckosaurus cannot understand why people do not take him seriously and think that he is a miserable racist and misogynist waste of time.
Whine. Whine some more. So sorry that most of us cannot take seriously any pronouncement of the Ku Klux Klan.
Eatmykant, I had a copy of the book years ago.
"Your rights are defined by the society in which you live. The idea of 'natural' rights is absurd since a right is an idea of what should be, not what is."
Promii,
You can pretend natural law is not the underlying doctrine for the U.S. Constitution, but you'd be pretending.
there's no such thing as "natural law". what an absurd thing. the closest we can come to that are the basic instinct of humans as a social species: cooperation, empathy and sharing with the in-group, aggression, defense and competition with the out-group
which isn't anywhere in the constitution.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_law
Jadehawk, maybe you are unaware of the philosophical history here.
Or maybe you take issue with use of the word 'natural' in this context.
Whatever, but there it is.
I was not making any statements about the US Constitution. Even if natural law is the underlying concept behind the constitution, that does not automatically make it a valid concept.
Jadehawk, I think mfd512 was quoting some prime Fuckosaurus. But I would think that David Duke would argue that light skinned person being a superior person is a natural right.
I will wait for our little racist to come rushing to Duke's defense.
'snort'
So, if someone came along and suggested a law by which someone was forced (for example) to issue someone a voter ID, even they didn't like the color of their skin, you'd be opposed to it, right?
After all, it would be lowering the issuer's freedom.
Yes?
And before you respond with "If you are an ID card issuer, it is your job to issue cards," please just replace that with "If you are a medical doctor..."
Get the idea?
I am sorry, I misread what was going on here. But in my defense, the fuckosaurus has made that argument.
You're a fool.
Declaring freedom of speech a right also requires something from someone else in order to satisfy it.
Specifically, we take tax money from lots of people who never exercise their right to free speech, in order to operate court systems that protect those of us who do. There are no protected freedoms that do not rely similarly on coercive taxation.
It's not the doctor's "freedom" in question. The doctor is paid either way. It's your "freedom" to deny medical treatment to your neighbors that's at stake, not the doctor's.
So the question is, is the freedom to negligently kill one's neighbors more important than the freedom to stay alive during hard times in a community that one has previously and will again work to support.
I can't believe you thought this was so clever that you said it twice. What a fool. If freedom of speech and movement didn't require anyone else to sacrifice other freedoms, then there's have been no need to fight a revolutionary war or draft a constitution or collect taxes to implement that new freer government.
Come the fuck on. The right to not quarter military troops during peacetime, the right to petition government, the right to be free from double jeopardy, the right to trial by jury? These things are inventions of the modern era, unique to our circumstances, having no meaning or relevance to paleolithic people.
No, "states' rights" is exclusively a white supremacist slogan. States do not have rights. Individuals have rights. "States' rights" were invented only to steal rights from individuals and transfer them to white-run governments.
I take issue with making up concepts that do not correspond and reflect to reality. I care about as little about philosophical waxing about "natural law" and "freedoms" as I care about theology.
Because here in reality, there is no such thing as "natural" laws. they're all man-made, all defined and decided by their societies exclusively. And here in the real world, "freedom" is not a philosophical concept, it is the reality of how much of a person's life is determined by them as opposed to by others and/or their social and natural environment. And as such, the U.S. is one of the least free developed countries.
Thump!
This is your Molly nomination for February, Anri. Feel free to remind me next Molly thread.
mfd512 #37
I just cannot say this with more finesse - sorry - but you are so wrong and so immature in your thinking it seems like you you just finished reading "Atlas Shrugged" or something and you still have a wet feeling.
People formed (or turned themselves over to) governments to protect themselves from getting killed for grunting wrong AND to have some measure of a safety net, some level of fairness, and some measure of order and rightness they could trust. To varying degrees these has been the major motivators and history is replete with this played out to the good.
We in particular wanted to form a more perfect union. One can LEGITIMATELY read that as a more perfect relationship between individuals and their government as well as among States facilitated by the FG. Hamilton and Marshall certainly did.
You probably would argue otherwise but since early 1830 the words "general welfare" in the Constitution have meant just about anything that the FG has to do to protect the Union and freedom and rights of it Citizens, and to secure a stable and productive environment for Citizens so that they can advance the Union.
From very early on - since 1788 I'd say - but especially since 1830 - we have NOT followed your strict constructionist view and for good reasons. It was obvious it was wrong.
You cannot see that health care coverage in this modern era is an essential part of commerce? That it is in the best interests of the Union to ensure its Citizens are not only healthy but not drained for resources when shit happens?
You cannot see that your perverted libertarian view has no play on the international stage - at least anywhere most of us would want to live?
You do not see something wrong that you have NO large scale working model to show us of your Ayn Rand view in operation?
You do not see how absurd your STRAW MAN about the doctor forced to do whatever is?
Look you probably are a great person and well intentioned. But grow up - life is not some romance novel posing as high political philosophy written by an escapee from a corrupt communist country in the 1st half of 20th Century.
@mfd512
Freedom. I don't think you really understand the concept.
One aspect of freedom can really only be defined in terms of opportunity. I don't have the freedom to fly a plane because I don't have the opportunity to do so.
But there is another facet to freedom. You don't have the freedom to practice vivisection on your cat, even though we recognize that the cat is your property. You may have, in fact, the opportunity to do so, but you are undoubtedly aware that as a society we have agreed that even though you own that bit of property, the cat has the right to expect freedom from vivisection.
This wasn't always the case. But by your viewpoint, your freedom has been restricted even though it doesn't impact the freedom of another person. It does, in fact, only impact the freedom of your cat.
So even though you may have opportunity, you don't perform the action because you recognize that you also have the freedom to accept the consequences. Also, you may love your cat and have no inclination to perform such an action.
So we have two types of restrictions on freedom. Freedom restricted because of lack of opportunity, and freedom restricted because of the consequences society exacts on you when you take an opportunity which society discourages.
Many people, especially the people who argue that freedom should only be limited when you affect other people, ignore the first limitation.
Of these two limiting factors of freedom, the first is far more restrictive. Most people are fine with abiding by the various rules of society, regardless of the fact we put consequences on these rules. Most people don't have any desire to hurt, main, or kill. Most people have limited desires to steal or vandalize. And when they, by chance of design, perform these actions, most people understand that they will likely face consequences.
However, the limitation to a person's freedom imposed because of limited opportunities are far more restrictive and less obvious.
However, there is a somewhat affective way to measure this amount of freedom. You can get an idea of how limited a person's freedom is through looking at their discretionary income. Not disposable income, but discretionary income. That is, the amount of money a person has left over each month after all the bills are payed.
Opportunities have a cost. Writing a novel is at the cost of the opportunity of, say, joining a bowling league. Opportunities also come with a price tag. The more discretionary income a person has, the more likely that they cay pay that price. If the amount of money you have left over at the end of the month is less than $100, then chances are you will never be able to afford that sailboat you wanted. Your freedom is limited because your discretionary income is low. (I'm not advocating that everyone should get everything they desire, I'm simply pointing out how discretionary income is a good surrogate for freedom of opportunity.)
Now, health care is an interesting issue. I'm currently unemployed and paying $100/month for health care under COBRA. In a few months it will go to about $300/month, still under COBRA. My unemployment is $650/month. With those two figures in mind, my discretionary income is $550, that is that's how much money I can plow back into the economic engine. In a few months, I'll be only able to put back $350/month. (This is only a n example, I have a significant number of other bills which drops my discretionary spending to zero.)
Multiply my situation by 100 million and you can see why people aren't buying anything. This means companies aren't producing anything, which means, no one is working, which means discretionary spending drops again.
National health care, a public option like an extended medicare system, provides an increase in freedom for all consumers. It does so because it increases discretionary income (or reduces mandatory bills, you can look at it both ways).
In fact, any local, state, or federal, corporate, financial institution, policy which increases discretionary income reduces the barriers to the second type of freedom, freedom of opportunity.
As for your doctor. The restriction on his freedom is of the first type, society expects that he will treat people for a reasonable wage. If the doctor thinks that his freedom is being curtailed because of the laws of society, he has the freedom of opportunity to quit.
Probably Romania only. Ceauşescu was a very weird dictator, so much so that at the end almost nobody seems to have believed the propaganda anymore.
Internets won, I can go home.
Ceauşescu also outlawed abortion completely…
Internets won again, and I can still go home! Maybe I should actually, you know, do it… :o)
Didn't the CCCP have a medal of motherhood or summat foe women contributing ten or more son to the Motherland?
Me loves me some Google
Ah, Ceauşescu. I forget - was it him or his wife that did all the chemical research in the country?
:-o
Man. I thought only the Nazis had done that. (Silver Mother Cross: 4 children, Golden Mother Cross: 8 children…) The first poster on that page is pure National Socialism.
Oh Flying Spaghetti Monster. That's MY school district from when I was a wee thing. (My stake president was the superintendent while I was a student. I used to harangue him about school lunches.) Looks like I may have some letter writing to do when I get home later.
Sometimes I wonder how I squeaked through my education with the teachers I did, because many of them were awesome and well above this sort of thing. Maybe parents were going batshit all around me and I never knew it, although I tend to feel like my education happened in the eye of a hurricane. I've since read about several incidents at my old school that happened after I left where parents protested the curriculum or a teacher's actions. I read about those incidents, and I'm all, "Wow, good thing they didn't know about Teacher X or Teacher Y." (Without naming names, even though most of these good folks are now retired.) I had an English teacher who was a member of the Utah Humanist Society, had an ERA poster on the wall, and a Darwin fish on her computer cabinet. She would challenge our notions about homogenity and really get us to examine our texts for privilege. She stayed strictly to her subject, but taught English as a class for life. I had a science teacher who taught us evolution and who had a knack for getting us to really enjoy science. I had an art teacher who was unafraid of the ideas teenage brains dredge up: mortality, sex, power, wanting to shock people. She never censored me or told me my work was too dark. My AcaDec advisor let me cart one of the fetus-in-a-jars around school when I asked to sketch it for an art project. My history teachers, particularly my Asian history teacher and my European history teacher, who made sure we understood that history was written by the winners and that a lot of folks were marginalised in textbooks. Likewise, my librarians were all pretty awesome. (They knew me pretty well, since I would check out about five books a day. At one point my parents had to request that the librarians NOT let me check out books since I wasn't doing homework but just read all day long.) All these wonderful teachers in THAT school district. I sometimes wonder how I got that lucky. As I said, a few years later, after English teacher had retired, a new English teacher found herself at the center of one of those parental conflicts where they thought their babies were being exposed to toxic ideas. (I can't find the news article, but I think the idea the parents were protesting was that you should treat gay folks with dignity as fellow human beings.)
I think the ASD fell afoul when they removed the article. They've undermined any arguments they could have made for academic freedom by tacitly admitting to an agenda of "please the parents". It's just that most of the parents will be Mormon and what they say is determined by what church leaders tell 'em. (Utah County is the densest Mormon population in the world. And when I was a kid, one of the whitest as well. The place does not know the meaning of "diversity" and is one of the reasons I have a small distaste for suburban living. Monocultures tend to be unhealthy.)
All this immorality is only two clicks away from our website!...followed by several dozen more clicks. What is that supposed to mean anyway? As if you can choose who links to your web page? Or as if it even matters?
I'm sorry Prof. Meyers, but I'm going to have to disagree with you. Jesus was clearly a werewolf. Why do you think it took three days for his resurrection? He needed to wait until the next full moon!
Personally, I'm offended by the misuse of the word "Republic" to mean "Representative Democracy".
"Natural Law"? mfd512, are you one of those people who buys into the Emmerich de Vattel/"Law of Nations" meme? The US legal system was based on English common law and Enlightenment thinking on the relationships of church, state, and people. There's no evidence that Vattel's works were even under consideration, and "natural law" is far too vague a term to really mean any specific conception of it.
Pepperbeast, #65:
Considering it's a quote mine from Benjamin Franklin, I see where you're coming from. A representative democracy is indeed a republic (though when talking about democratic constitutional monarchies like the UK or Spain that term isn't usually used), but not all republics are democratic (Rome for example, or the Soviet Union under everyone but Stalin).
I am more open to worshipping the Sun than worshipping a mytical man named Jesus.
Pleaaaase, guys. Don't miss the point. See if you can focus on the real issue: The struggle between Democracy, and Plutocracy. This last backed by the conservative and/or brainwashed fascist religious right. What's your opinion.
Titus Flavius Vespasianus
Actually he doesn't quite say Jesus was a vampire. He says that some humans may be immortal and this gave rise to the legends of immortal gods and vampires.
An off beat idea but pretty tame IMO. Not much different from the common idea that they are all mythological made up entities.
There is of course, absolutely no proof that immortals exist and walk among us. I myself am not much over a 1000 years old and am partial to wine, not blood. :>).
Not sure what the 2 clicks criteria is about. Everything on the internet is a click or two away. Try clicking on scienceblogs pharyngula and this thread for an areligious thrill.
Aren't Mormons protected from bad influences by their magic underwear?
Oh, and seagulls.
I'm wondering how well they would treat a long-haired, bearded middle easterner showing up in their state to perform magic.
And we wouldn't have read it, either. Thanks Mighty Witchhunters of Utah! I hope Mr. Meyers gets about a million hits on his website today.
Dare we ask for an actually, real-life example of the liberty increasing states rights?
The liberty of Southern gentlemen was increased through their ability to own other humans....
The liberty of homophobes in California to discriminate against LGBT people was increased by the passage of Proposition 8.
I'm really impressed that you understand more about how and why human societies developed complex hierarchies and social structures than any specialists in the field. Errr ... not!
The implication that governments (as opposed to societies without formal government) were formed because a person or group acted deliberately for a given set of particular reasons sounds rather naive to me based on our current state of knowledge. Our suppositions about the human past should also be based on evidence, not 'common sense' assumptions. It's a field that suffers from evidence gaps, like many others. I doubt you can back up your 'hypothesis' with evidence, or whether you've even thought about trying to do so.
Needless to say, other hypotheses are available, e.g. government originated in the more or less forcible seizure and maintenance of relatively higher status and greater resources by individuals or groups, over the people being governed.
I'm sure I could think of some more if I had time.
The liberty of homophobes in California to discriminate against LGBT people was increased by the passage of Proposition 8.
The liberty of homophobes all across the country have been increase through the multiple constitutional amendments that the bigots have placed on the ballot.
You can pretend natural law is not the underlying doctrine for the U.S. Constitution, but you'd be pretending. mfdnumbers
So much the worse for the US constitution. "Natural law" is a load of crap.
I think the Mormons would really have liked Ceauşescu. He saw eye to eye with their fabulous Abortion Law. I really like the fact that you can apparently be charged with criminal homicide for having a miscarriage. That's quality.
That's the kind of forward thinking that let Romania lead the world in Dickensian hellscaping, having more tribes of abandoned children living in steam tunnels through organized thievery against the surface dwellers than any other country.
Pen #75 what is a society without formal government? A tribe? What are chiefs or councils or leaders or rules in them?
You fail also to give me credit BTW to the "turned themselves over to them" statement.
I never implied I was expert - but I'm not without a cultivated interest..
What are you arguing here? That I am totally wrong? Let's do an experiment: I accept your "e.g. government originated in the more or less forcible seizure and maintenance of relatively higher status and greater resources by individuals or groups, over the people being governed. " as one motivator (cause). But do you disagree that governments - especially those formed thus - have to expend a lot of energy maintaining their hold unless they add value in some way to the "citizens".
Romans were ruthless when people bucked them - but when they in their grove a lot of the forced subjects ate up Pax Romana. Would not want to live under Genghis Khan but his government added value to citizens in many ways relative to the times.
We (the good old USA) formed a government for the people. We could have been more loose about it. The form and leaders were not thrust upon us as I believe your statement outlines (in other words we had a motivation more directly associated with my main motivators.
Certainly in more modern times the people (although they can be wrong or mislead) have formed their governments along my lines.
But I again freely admit I am not expert nor am I stating every nuance and perturbation.
Again do you see my premise as totally invalid?
I accept your point that the reasons are many and varied and run the gamut. And I accept your "e.g.". But do not see any of that invalidating my general premise.
You make it sound as though all Minnesotans and Texans desire the same things. They don't. What about the Texans who want a health system? Must they all move to Minnesota to get one?
Because every time some new idea is proposed, conservatives yell, "That's not the way we do things in the US! It's unAmerican. It's socialist...communist...fascist...progressivism...the work of Satan"?
Maybe you haven't noticed, but the world is vastly different place since the days of 13 separate colonies. (I need to keep reminding my conservative friends of this as they don't seem to have noticed.)
Yeah, the liberty to declare bankruptcy if you get sick and have no healthcare. The liberty to die because you can't afford healthcare.
*snort* My local government can't even manage to fix the potholes in the streets.
Local governments are also more susceptible to being swayed by locally influential groups who end up denying their community neighbors rights and benefits. Hence school boards who decide to teach creationism in science class, or local governments that remove unpopular books from public libraries, or put the nice new recreation center near the homes of the politically well-connected instead of in the neighborhood which needs it the most.
"Natural law" is polar bears ripping apart baby seals for dinner, or hamsters eating their young, or female praying mantises eating their mates.
If "natural law" is so natural, why wasn't it obvious and practiced throughout history?
"Natural law" is to government as "guaranteed all-natural side-effect free" is to effective science-based medicine.
Obvious example: the right still provided in some state constitutions that allows atheists not to hold elective offices.
That was a nice example of why, despite that kernel of Common Sense, ALL the Big-L Libertarians and 90% (approx.) of anyone willing to claim the label are as loony as any cult member. They actually believe that people in the real world act in accordance with the nonsense, however pure or nice, they believe in (and with as much obtuseness as Ken Ham believes in the Bible as Science).
And this wingding actually ADDS IN the most patently dishonest idea of all when he demands "returning" to the original constitution with a "State's Rights" interpretation.
For all but the looniest of these, what "liberty" means is "no taxes on my profits" and what "Constitutional Protections" means is protection of their own advantages.
Another unneeded example that anyone who names themselves as "conservative" might as well be wearing either a beanie with a propeller or a hood. They no longer EVER deserve respect until they set aside their "philosophy" and present real ideas and plans (not that I've heard of such things from this cancerous political faction in over 30 years - and those were largely useless or bad), and are willing to negotiate their implementation.
mfd512 #10
"Original intent" often means "I have an opinion about the Constitution that most people disagree with."
The writers of the Constitution, aka Founding Fathers, were a contentious lot who hardly agreed on any one thing, let alone looneytarian notions. Every sentence, sometimes every word, in the Constitution and Bill of Rights were compromises. Few agreed wholeheartedly with any particular part. Thus looking to the Founding Fathers for "original intent" is silly. It varies amongst them. Not to mention that "original intent" is just as open to interpretation as the Constitution itself because while there's lots of explicit data, they're from many contradictory sources.
I have placed a link to the offending essay on my AP English website (public school, midwest.) I will be offering it to my students as part of a cluster of essays we read each year to understand how external events can change the ethos of a writer. Sandy Kempner's joking, mellow letter home from Vietnam is AP Exam material because he is killed two months later. PZ Meereyeyers'
psychosexual paeans to various tentacled fish are weirdly appealing because he receives regular e-mails from Lucifer. That sort of thing.
I will urge the rest of the AP English teachers to do the same, and they will obey after forming a complex hierarchy of committees of course. AP English teachers are, like all teachers, very interested in new lessons they do not have to conceive or prepare themselves. 200,000 of the nation's most promising students will therefore be exposed to the texts in question and, being resourceful seekers of extra credit, will act upon inducements to read the Vampire-Jesus one too. We will then supply them with the prose written by the censorious pharisees from Orem and urge them to make a comparison.
Result, in AP English terms: Kablooey.
ice9
Religiously-articulated distress is the expression of real distress and the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. But the demand to give up the illusion about its condition must include the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions.