ParanoiA

Bullshit. He's not anti-homosexual, he's anti gay marriage. He still openly works for what he believes in. He believes you are just as much of a bigot as you believe he is. Yet, he has the class to be civil about it and keep it philosophical. Tell me what "rights" you think he's trying to deny. By that logic then, all of politics is personal. Tell me how that works for you. Tell me how society achieves progress by ridiculing them into it. How many hearts and minds have you changed by demonizing them and dismissing their concerns? All that does is allow you a channel for the emotive component, which has no place in sound reason. You know this already. Tell me how standing against state recognized gay marriage is responsible for being denied a chance to visit your dying partner of 20 years. That sounds like hospital policy, not government. Why do those bigots get a free pass for exercising prejudice? I don't believe Warren would support that policy at all, but I have no proof. Only his character. Yes I would. Particularly if there were a prolific neo-nazi movement here to deal with and some kind of middle ground was reached between them and Obama to achieve this. That's how you destroy an intolerant enemy. You're proposing more of a George Bush solution where you exercise as much prejudice to irradicate prejudice - which in turn creates more prejudice. Try changing their minds with clinical, cold logic and leading by example. Demonstrating hypocrisy by being a hypocrite isn't going to change anyone's mind and will fuel their bigotry movement.

Well, it does seem like a good idea. And I would think the behavior of Bush would serve as an example of why it's needed. Certainly smells like a check created by the GOP in light of their guy vacating office rather than a responsible move. Surprise.

But the name doesn't exercise any trauma. And in a truly tolerant society, there would be no uncivil consequence. The child abuse will come from those that do not practice tolerance and those who do not critically think and therefore not realize his name was given to him, to all of us, in fact. The parents should be ashamed of themselves to honor such an insane, racist mass murderer as Adolf, and are quite selfish in creating the opportunity for society to exercise their intolerance on the poor kid. No doubt. I wonder how many talk shows they'll profit from before this is done. That's hilarious. While I enjoy seeing a business exercise some backbone with regard to intolerance, I would have preferred a business other than Wal-Mart, and an incident other than this one. As it stands, I'm still boycotting Wal-Mart.

Warren has more class than most who stand against him. He served food to those protesting him for crying out loud. Warren and Obama are putting actions to our words. They listened and now the partisan idealogues are whining because they want politics as usual. They want the never ending fight that gets personal and stays personal. They like the childish petty bullshit we had for 2 years up to the election - they want that to continue indefinitely. Obama appears to be walking the walk. Staying true to his word that our differences are philosophical, not personal. And it appears some here have something to learn from that. Warren is a class act. He treated Obama quite respectfully as host of the Saddleback forum and you can tell he appreciated it. It was the most beneficial, substative, civil "debate" of all of them.

There's nothing inaccurate about pointing out that fighting, for self-defense or retaliation or otherwise, brought peace and democracy back to Europe in WWII. The inaccuracy is pimping flowery statements with holes in them. I'm a non-interventionist type, so I appreciate the poetic intent behind his statement, however it's wrong.

No doubt. Sad isn't it?

Ah, got me. I did not detect it. Sorry. I guess I'm a little thick, which I'm sure doesn't surprise anyone here. Well' date=' that would only be true if my suggestion was merely about replacing the [i']word[/i] "marriage" with the phrase "civil unions". Instead, I propose to replace the concept of marriage (man and woman) with the concept of civil unions (any combination of consensual humans) in terms of state recognition. That equates to an actual functional difference, as opposed to symbolic pandering.

Apparently you misunderstood my post, I do mean all marriages should be called civil unions. Man and woman, man and man, woman and woman, any combination and any quantity. The difference is that the term civil union is generic, more accurate and relieves the legislature from debating definitions of words which they have no business doing. The word "marriage" IS the issue. Civil Union applies to all unions and the word "marriage" can be batted about in free society all they want without any consequence to anyone's rights and privileges. And this isn't political correctness, it's correcting a political mistake. "Marriage", as defined by lexicographers, singles out man and woman unions only, and grants rights and privilege that many of us believe should be granted all unions, not just nonfamilial monogamous hetero ones.

Except that there's truth in it. World War II wasn't ended with love and effection.

No, that example doesn't demonstrate my insistance on principle. It's as if we're trying to end slavery and I'm focused on the objective reality that "all men are created equal" with "inalienable rights" and arguing for their freedom on those grounds, while others are more concerned with "pragmatics" and shoot for simply freeing them from the cotton fields as a political reality. Another thing I've shared on this forum before is the lack of appreciation for compromise by us. What is the use for us, a group of blokes on an academic discussion board, to compromise? What function does that serve? We're not legislators, and we're not operating in the capacity of any potential consequence to law. Compromise is for politicians. I'm not sure what value compromise brings to a discussion forum, when all it does is remove key dynamics from a discussion. Arguing the heart of a given problem, whether its global warming or government intrusion on marriage, is the responsible thing to do. Ignoring it may be useful for passing legislation, creating political reality, but serves no purpose to human understanding and personal growth and ultimately keeps mankind's expectations low and uneventful. Nothing is blocking the discussion you're proposing to have. It's just that I have no inclination to engage in it. Don't misinterpret that as a rejection, I just have nothing to offer. My mind just doesn't work that way. So my posts are directed at the issue of government intrusion, while others are directed at parity in this intrusion. No reason to shut either direction down, as far as I can tell. I can agree with that. That's why I proposed the concept of "civil union" to replace "marriage". I also proposed any combination of humans to qualify for that union, which includes any quantity and mix of sexes, family, whatever.

Well, you're presuming it will never work which is an opinion I don't share and is the obvious point of contention since the downstream logic checks out for both of us. If it actually would never work, then obviously one would be silly to waste energy on it. If it will work then obviously one would be silly not to treat to cure, which would arguably help the most people. So, it's a difference of outlook I guess. For me, I can't be bothered with subjective prescience. If I believe the government should butt out, then that's my stand. The potential for political success just doesn't matter to my philosophical conclusions.

We have a free market about as much as we are a free country. It would be nice if we could live up to those principles and enable both to be pedantically true. We're too intolerant and controlling for that, from what I've seen.

Well sure, but as I've also pointed out before on this forum, an argument for what is, is not an argument for what should be. It may be a solution that cannot be implemented, but it is the correct solution, in my opinion. So what happens if my wife and I want to be a "company" so we can have those benefits? Or can my house be a church? Is there a law banning religions that don't utilize a "god"? Is the law supposed to change to reconcile the evolution of those institutions or are those institutions supposed to stay static with respect to the law? Honestly, I'm not sure yet as I can see pros and cons either way. I'm all for it. At least, in terms of state recognition if we insist on a nosey, intrusive government that grants itself the authority to regulate the label on intimate human relationships.

Then refer back to my earlier post where I stated that it's not our stupid idea to use a society's private construct of intimate relationships labelled "marriage" as a basis for tax relief, and etc. It's dumb. They should be the ones running around in circles changing laws, rewriting laws when society exercises its right to pliably flex it's private construct of "marriage". Just like the private construct of "gangs". If the government started giving tax breaks and creating inheritence legislation in reverence to gangs based on their "gang status" then I doubt we would pass legislation to ban police from joining "gangs", just because it's an affront to the traditional notion of "gangs". That's essentially what is going on here in california, and really all over the country. Governments have this queer practice of using society's private constructs as a basis for legal consequences, and then they want to act all indignified as we freely exercise our right to evolve those constructs. They need to do better. They need a more thoughtful method to establish these consequences. I don't support banning gay marriage, nor allowing gay marriage because I don't support government having any authority over consensual social constructs by private citizens.

My argument is not that "it's legal today". Read my statement again, carefully....I was demonstrating that to make it "illegal" would require you to write legislation that says I can *not* mount a camera on my property. It also would require you to to write legislation that regulates what information I share on the internet - freedom of speech. My statement points out the fundamental flaw of discussing its legality, since you would have to dramatically trample our rights in order to make such a thing illegal in the first place. You would have to strip freedom of speech, yet somehow give the press a pass with their cameras (which introduces a nasty potential for a consolidated information and news source which is exactly what you need to oppress and control your citizenry, see North Korea). And I haven't even tried to open the can of worms inherent in trashing our civil liberties to the extent of regulating electronic gizmos on my own property. Insane. Yes the internet has near perfect memory, and you did just make the claim that all of us have done something stupid in public, so what are you worried about? Anyone who exploits you has something to be exploited about themselves, according to your statement, so again, what's the problem? Almost seems like this could actually civilize us. Maybe humans will stop pretending they're anonymous and start treating strangers fairly. Maybe our empathy will evolve another step.

I wish I could...

Yeah, I watched an episode of something like that and I was fascinated with the bit on eyes. I think it was presented as a defense of evolution, or at least this program was. Too bad it's cancelled, I enjoyed it. I actually watch alot of this stuff. It's the one thing my wife and I can agree on, which keeps me from having to watch unreality TV. And, like you all have said, they do a good job of dumbing it down for me complete with flashy CGI.

That's interesting. My wife and I were talking about this the other day and we agreed that if we were to leave "security" behind for our kids, we'd rather it be a family business of some kind than gobs of money and assets - for precisely that reason. I suppose they could just sell it and undermine our efforts, but it would seem a better attempt at motivating self responsibility than straight up cash. I might have to check out that book, sounds good. I'm still trying to squeeze in time to finish Al Gore's Assault on Reason.

I should have known. Well I'll bet you two would really have a field day on the program I watched last night on theoretical alien life forms. Even I was shaking my head and I know nothing. Of course, they did qualify their content as theoretical. With your interest in locomotion, Mokele, you might have had a good laugh at their three legged theoretical lifeform that featured a "stool" at the base where the three legs form one flat surface that they theorized would move using scales underneath. This was due to the increase in gravity (3x earth's gravity) on this theoretical planet. They reasoned that with that kind of gravity, the legs would likely not come off the ground, and therefore would evolve to merge together, using the scales for locomotion.

You said "unnecessary pain", and I'm arguing that the pain is necessary. Pain keeps you from sticking your hand in the fire. How well do you think humans could take care of themselves without the benefit of physical pain? Ask a leper. In the market place, when a business is performing poorly, capital is being utilized badly, inefficiently. That business needs to fold so that capital can be released and used by other businesses or someone else who perhaps can perform better. And so on. That's the "pain" I'm talking about. The business end of natural selection in the market place. The big three have performed poorly. So poorly that they're about to fold. When you bail business out of bad investment, then the "pain" of failure has not happened. The proverbial hand has not hurt and does not recoil from the fire. Selection has not occured. I'm saying that the checks and balances of the market only work if you allow them to play out. Bad business is supposed to fail, which relieves the capital to work for good business. Propping up the big three, artificially, punishes those auto companies that are doing well - that aren't costing you and I anything, are providing revenue to our government, jobs for our people, contributing positively to the economy. It punishes them because you are keeping badly performing business in the market place, reducing their customer base, and etc. And it makes no sense in the first place. Why on earth would you reward a business that needs your tax support over a business that doesn't need it at all? Business that performs well, is business that typically grows, augmenting employment, tax revenues and etc. Business that performs poorly isn't growing, typically cuts employment and in this case will cost us revenue. It's insane. Now, about the struggle. The government leaves everyone to struggle on their own because WE are the government. It's YOUR life dude, not ours. It's your responsibility to gather resources to take care of yourself. You think the government is supposed to swoop in every time you're having a "difficult time"? Our government is not your nanny. We are a society that governs itself. We aren't served by a King. There is no "central" control with a mission statement to remove struggle from your life. The government's job is not to make life easy on you. The government's job is to provide a framework of law and order so humans can cooperate on equal footing, free to capitalize to their merit. Feel free to trade as shrewd as you are able, but no, it's not our job to feed you. Or to find you a job. Or to fetch you an Xbox. Lucky for you, we do have an exhaustive entitlement system that breeds generation after generation of unappreciative, uneducated little twits that think it's our duty to provide for them, that they are "owed", and etc, and it's likely you were misguided by one of them.

I was watching the Discovery Channel, or the Science Channel the other night and it occured to me that maybe, just maybe, scientists watch these shows and shake their heads like my dad does when he watches ER or House (he's a respiratory therapist). So, when you're watching something on Discovery / Science / National Geo and they're discussing something in your particular field of expertise, do you all throw up your proverbial hands at how they're mangling the details and facts, or do these networks do a pretty good job of getting it right?

Well that's certainly a defensible argument. I do worry about that too. However, I'd rather a foreign country fill the void with a capitalist effort rather than keeping it american by government ownership, however partial it may be. And I agree, it's not like this is an easy decision to live with. I do see good arguments both ways. I guess what I'm most concerned about is the obsession with the elimination of 'struggle'. I don't think it's called-for to presume we need to manage the economy so perfectly, precisely, to mitigate the effects of the business cycle. The effects are part of the "check" process. Any process that attempts to rid the pain undermines the necessity of that pain, which I believe is required. If someone could paint me a more detailed, specific picture of the kinds of snowballs the fall of the big 3 would cause, I might be more inclined to change my position. So far, I just haven't heard anything that justifies avoiding this badly needed pain. In light of the dollar, the ridiculous national debt and the credit market meltdown, it appears we need to grin and bear it.

No, see, that's just it. I don't see it as static at all. You just demonstrated a faith in static consequences by presuming these manufacturers will fall without anything to fill the void. I have no reason to think that. History shows that other companies - other opportunists and profit motivated people - will take advantage and buy in. You really believe that no one will swoop in to grab this market? This highly profitable market of selling automobiles? Plants already built? While the rest of the auto manufacturers are rolling in profit, no one will take notice and jump when these failures finally fail? No, my take is more of a trust in the dynamics. I trust that capitalists will remain as predictable as they have been in the past. The bad investment needs to be checked. I simply disagree with the volcano analogy. I see no such catastrophe on the horizon. I see opportunity made possible by the corpses of fallen business. Just my opinion.

Ah, very true.