The Sage Garden

[Oakvale]

Am I somehow wrong?

You aren't, but again, the whole point of this thread is to condemn those of us who don't buy into the nonsensical liberal consensus of this forum.

Or more likely to mock the straight-faced use of the (italicized!) proletariat and the illin' burn "you're a retrograde."

[Meursault]

How is it mockable? You haven't contributed a valuable thought in years. Try to work on the substance of your posts before criticizing the style of mine.

[Paul Kemp]

Boy, this Meursault character really is The Worst.

[Oakvale]

Boy, this Meursault character really is The Worst.

Speak for yourself Heinreich.

[Cassius]

Damn you!! My status as monopoly supplier of unpopular and unimplementable views is coming under threat. I need to go bigger!! Nay, bigger and better!! Out with small fry monarchism and endorsement of inequality is a good thing!!!! In with open support for the Marian burnings and Tomas de Torquemada!! Heeheeheeheeheeheeeeeeearghhh... suffers seizure and dies, accidentally impaling himself upon a crucifix

Pathetic attention whoring over and done with for today

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Like wading through treacle, except that at least treacle tastes nice:

@Simfan34 and BRTD:

This is why I suggest that most rather than all blame go to commanding figures. Folks carrying out policies at the ground level still have some moral culpability and some are probably horrible folks. But let's think this through a bit.

Even in your more extreme example what alternative does a pawn on the chessboard have but to hold their ground or march? The stubborn idealist may be willing to ruin their career, be jailed, tortured, killed, or otherwise punished to make a point of abstaining from participation in a horrific act. There are some folk willing to risk everything to abandon their duties in hopes of escaping. But when push comes to shove a soldier or agent is often selfish and submits to being reduced to representing part of a machine - a part that must either function as desired by superiors or discarded as faulty. It becomes a matter of either saving oneself or others. And even if the latter is ones preferred path, what if there are people (e.g. friends, relatives) who need them back home? How would they be affected if one were gone, or if the regime in power threatens them for leverage? I will admit we are all free to some extent, yet the people at the tip of the state's spear are often in poor positions to get everything they want.

Moreover, as parts of the aforementioned machine my (perhaps mistaken) understanding is they are conditioned to react decisively, unquestioningly, and even violently in certain scenarios without dwelling on moral dilemmas. The soldier fires as if by reflex because hesitation recklessly allows the Enemy windows of opportunity to deliver a killing blow to oneself or a comrade. Assertive dissent - especially in the presence of associates - destabilizes hierarchies needed for groups to reliably work well under adverse conditions. For the field agent, perhaps failure will affect the outcome of larger conflicts and the well-beings of many people beyond their own narrow scope of vision while carrying out missions. Who knows?

A corporatist logic is at work, you see. Every person has a specialized purpose, every order has its justifications, and for the Cause to advance everyone needs to work as if a cell in the body of a mighty, single-minded superorganism. Mix in propaganda and a lack of advanced comprehension of either international relations or politics and what you get a fair amount of the time is service-oriented workers who feel they make the world a better place - if even through morally complex, controversial means - and that enemies are dangerous and/or evil enough to deserve being cheated or harmed.

All of that, of course, is aside from what I strongly suspect is the fact that lots of armed public servants in the military and groups like the CIA put their lives on the line without personally getting involved in any shady business. Employment by the CIA for example is not by default a HP stamp on ones character. Judge folks on an individual rather than collective basis, eh? Likewise could be said of many of those who were called into service long ago for organizations that at least in part fought, inspired fear, or otherwise oppressed on behalf of authoritarian regimes.

[Morning in Atlas]

Not Atlas, but whatever:

One time my uncle said that Obama would be a Reagan Republican if he was in the 1980s.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Of all the myriad cases where a mainstream religion gets a free pass and people refuse to pass judgement because religion exists in a realm where critical thinking and reason dare not trespass, routine male genital disfigurement is the most thoroughly revolting.  To impose such an irreversable thing on a baby who, obviously cannot consent, should be a felony and cause for widespread social disgust. I don't know how people can willingly chose to ignore such a gross and commonplace violation of personal autonony.

[Meursault]

Anything critical of Christianity will inevitably be posted by Nathan in this thread.

[Flake]

Anything critical of Christianity will inevitably be posted by Nathan in this thread.

you seem a bit on the edge tonight

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Anything critical of Christianity will inevitably be posted by Nathan in this thread.

memphis's post wasn't critical of Christianity, but you've already established that you don't care about what Christianity as a religion is actually like, just the caricature of it that exists for you, so I'm not surprised that you think it was.

[Meursault]

I was involuntarily mutilated in the name of your Redeemer. I would like to take a scourge into a convent and flay the breasts off a nun, as a token of my appreciation.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I was involuntarily mutilated in the name of your Redeemer. I would like to take a scourge into a convent and flay the breasts off a nun, as a token of my appreciation.

Don't blame the nuns for your birth denomination's apparent unfamiliarity with Acts 15.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Circumcision is not a Christian ritual. In fact the New Testament even discourages ritual circumcision.

If you disagree with the hygienic reasons as to why in the US many non-Jews/Muslims are circumcized that's one thing but it's not something you can blame Christianity for. It's worth noting in some of the countries with the highest Christian ovservence rates in the world the circumcision rate is close to zero.

[traininthedistance]

Good gravy, intactivists are the worst.

[Meursault]

It wasn't even religious, except in a second-hand cultural sense. I was mutilated because, fifteen centuries ago, my Gallic ancestors did not have it in them to defend their traditional faith from the Cross.

My point is only that I believe in doing to others what has been done unto me. In this case it means showing the Christian Era the door, as it did the Aqe of Antiquity before it. And all because it's indirectly responsible for my absence of a foreskin.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Agreed. They're quite annoying even when they don't get the facts this blatantly wrong.

My personal favorite was the radical feminist who argued that circumcision was yet another tool of the patriarchy...and responsible for increasing the rape rate.

To traininthedistance btw.

[memphis]

Anything critical of Christianity will inevitably be posted by Nathan in this thread.

It has nothing to do with religion in this case. His contempt for all things masculine is the issue in this circumstance. Should the issue be genital cutting on female babies, he would be the first to break out the victimhood rhetoric.

[Meursault]

He is a Christian; of course he loathes genuine masculinity. Even the most stereotypical Southern Bible-thumping outdoorsman is basically an anti-masculine sentimentalist - his "God is Love", after all.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

It wasn't even religious, except in a second-hand cultural sense. I was mutilated because, fifteen centuries ago, my Gallic ancestors did not have it in them to defend their traditional faith from the Cross.

My point is only that I believe in doing to others what has been done unto me. In this case it means showing the Christian Era the door, as it did the Aqe of Antiquity before it. And all because it's indirectly responsible for my absence of a foreskin.

No, you still don't know what you're talking about, sorry.

Anything critical of Christianity will inevitably be posted by Nathan in this thread.

It has nothing to do with religion in this case. His contempt for all things masculine is the issue in this circumstance. Should the issue be genital cutting on female babies, he would be the first to break out the victimhood rhetoric.

memphis: Defender of the defended! Voice for the vocal! He Helps The Well-Served!

He is a Christian; of course he loathes genuine masculinity. Even the most stereotypical Southern Bible-thumping outdoorsman is basically an anti-masculine sentimentalist - his "God is Love", after all.

The problem is you seem to be going out of your way to define masculinity in such a way as to make it something that richly deserves to be rooted out and extirpated. It needn't be that way.

[Meursault]

That goes doubly so for those absurd homosexuals in spandex who bend phone books and break bricks to impress children at tent revivals, incidentally.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

That goes doubly so for those absurd homosexuals in spandex who bend phone books and break bricks to impress children at tent revivals, incidentally.

Somehow I find the fact that you use 'homosexual' as a noun in informal writing completely unsurprising.

[Meursault]

I use nouns for everything. They're wonderfully forceful.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I use nouns for everything. They're wonderfully forceful.

That's actually part of why I find it unsurprising. It suits your writing style and it's something that a lot of people consider impolitic and unkind, so it makes perfect sense for you on no fewer than two levels.

[memphis]

Those who have had parts of their genitals cut and removed as babies are universally "defended" and "well served?" Is this before or after they are shipped off to war and shoved down into coal mines? What a strange, delusional world you live in, Nathan.