The Sam Spade Memorial Good Post Gallery

[Mr. Smith]

It's a two way street. 

On the internet, people don't really know you or get your irony.  It's totally fine among friends to make an ironic joke that you know won't hurt anyone's feelings.  But, with something like a disability, you should be conscientious and realize that you can really hurt someone's feelings.  Imagine people who have real issues or family members who are disabled.  You can transport those people to a moment where they were being made fun of or dredge up awful stuff.

On the other hand, people need to try to take things in the spirit in which its intended.  People shouldn't try to totally censor jokes or ideas, without understanding the context.  There is a problem with people actively trying to be offended and play gotcha on pretty innocent slips of the tongue.  And, we should all try to understand people in an honest, fair way.

All that said, I find it distasteful that some people want to put the entire burden on the listener.  As if it's up to them to find out what you really think and feel, as opposed to what you said.  Is it really that hard to think before you speak and question whether you need to use loaded, powerful language in public or casual conversation?  Is it that hard not to say "retard" when you mean "stupid" or "dumb?"  For me, I really don't mind editing those words because I think disabled people have it hard enough and it's extremely easy to just watch what I say a bit.

[Mr. Smith]

The problem with Politically Correct English as it tends to be used on the Atlas (and elsewhere on the internet) is that it has more to do with affirming the speaker's status and self-image than with demonstrating any real commitment to social or economic equality. Freddie deBoer's thoughts on the subject are thoughtful and clarifying (video - also see his post on critique drift), the fact that Snowstalker has mentioned him notwithstanding.

Whether you want to call this "political correctness" (and accept all of the baggage that comes with this term), left-wing language policing, or something else, it harms the causes that anyone on the left ought to care about by alienating and excluding people who cannot immediately and flawlessly adopt to elaborate and unfamiliar codes of language etiquette.¹ And, at its worst, this sanitized dialect functions as euphemism, making us feel better about some terrible aspect of reality just because we've come up with a nice word for it.

These are exactly the points that TNF makes in the post that set off this debate: (1) language policing/political correctness can stifle debate or deflects it toward separate concerns about language use (these may be substantive concerns, but they are frequently irrelevant to the original subject of discussion), (2) that a person's actual circumstances bear more heavily on him or her than whether other people use the correct, anodyne vocabulary to describe those circumstances, and (3) that the manner in which R2D2 addressed Turkisblau was at all likely to change Turkisblau's behavior - or even intended to in the first place.

¹ Which is not to suggest that this problem is uniquely endemic to the left. Anyone who has watched Fox News for twenty minutes is familiar with the bizarre world of right-wing political correctness, in which you are likely to take criticism for your language if it is not purposely offensive enough.

Exactly this.

And one risks the trap of accidentally feeding into the persecution complex of the genuinely horrible by taking an intolerant of intolerance position, which will take sway the uninformed towards those thoughts.

[Mr. Smith]

Never.

Seriously, I don't give a flip about that. I don't understand why there are some people who are using marijuana as an attack against posters. This is an another example of the annoying liberals of this forum who promote "tolerance" but can't tolerate those who don't have the same way of life than them.

-Windjammer

[Mr. Smith]

I just wanted to chime in on the whole PC debate and say that I think almost everyone participating in it is wrong.

Political Correctness is often dumb, identity politics is a plague, but communism is worse and being a d*ck to people and ignoring discrimination is not all that edgy.

This exactly. You've practically summed up a good Mechaman essay I was going to put here and done it with less cursing.

Like everything else, what is considered PC/non-PC should come from a consensus based on the masses and the group affected, and as the term loses or gains offensive power this consensus should be checked.

And it must be critiqued.

Unfortunately many here seem to conflate critique to complaint.

[Mr. Smith]

I don't have an opinion, because fat people are far too diverse of a group to pigeonhole into neat little categories like 'Freedom Fighter' or 'Horrible Person.' Beyond that, what are we even defining as 'fat'? Obese? Overweight? The idea of what a fat person is varies from person to person and is in part derived from how we view ourselves in comparison to others, what we find attractive, etc.

I will make the prediction that this thread will not end well, though.

[Mr. Smith]

The thing is... you are very, very American. Even your complaints about America are strikingly American. I doubt you would be happy anywhere else.

[Mr. Smith]

His "conservatism" was more in the interest of taking liberal elites and social workers, while his "liberalism" was largely in the interest of getting ahead of and/or coercing liberal ideas so they couldn't campaign on them. His presidency, in retrospect, has few things policy-related that should appeal to either a liberal or a conservative, this in the political success, he contributed greatly to the rightward bent of the nation, though he can hardly be attributed with having triggered such a thing. Even discussing his personal views is a difficult task, as different aides and recordings will tell you different things. His racial policy is itself a strange phenomenon. He advanced agencies like the Office of Minority Business Enterprise, somehow became the "greatest school desegregator in history", and according to Buchanan and others had genuine concern for African-Americans, while at the same time scuttling busing, advancing various "tough on crime" tactics that would affect blacks, and is on record saying that he preferred abortion in the case of a mixed-race child. He as well signed legislation in 1974 that would be viewed favorably by proponents of "community-oriented policing". It's ironic, of course, that conservatives rebelled against Ford and not him, since Ford, while likely personally more liberal, presided over a more conservative economic approach and started rolling back detente under the guidance of Rumsfeld and Cheney, though one could reason that, regardless of who held office by 1976, conservatives would have attempted to oust him. It's as well ironic that a man who had been able to churn such vitriol and hatred from the left nevertheless almost won the presidency in 1960 and won a landslide in 1972. This irony is as well at the crux of Nixonism, pitting all sides against each other to win vast swaths of the middle and the right. Hell, in 1960, you could've stated, with history on your side, that Nixon was the candidate more favorable to civil rights. His presidency is a good example of the triumphs and failues of both ideologies on the American political scene. He was able to placate New Deal liberalism enough to not offend a good deal of its benficiaries, while also doing so in the name of a middle class conservatism. Someone to his right would have threatened the New Deal benefits that many Americans were attached to, someone to his left would have threatened the cultural sensibilities of middle America. He adopted several personas, and pursued policies to the detriment of each of them. The man who was endorsed by unions in his re-election nevertheless pursued free trade; the man who had friends in the business world and was backed by them signed into law the EPA and other environmental protections; the anti-communist who would protect you from the Soviets sought detente; the centrist who didn't threaten the status quo made himself the bedfellow of Dixiecrats and spoke to anti-war protesters at the Lincoln Memorial. My "conclusion" would be that he simply was a conservative interested in co-opting the liberal policies that were in vogue, while also taking up the mantle of the conservative rhetoric that was becoming popular. However, he goes well beyond a simple one-word or even one-sentence explanation. If you examined the presidencies of any other president after him, you might run into a similar debate, but the causes for question about their ideologies were exceptions. For Nixon, the contradictions were the rule. 

...Damn you, you beat me to it.

[Mr. Smith]

Let's get one thing straight: the GOP isn't on the cusp of some awe-inspiring reinvention of itself, the country isn't on the precipice of a realignment, and the traditional elements of the Democratic Party aren't in any danger of abandoning it within the next generation.

The Republican realignment beginning in the 1980s happened because three elements were present:

1) A generation of prosperity. We obviously haven't had that for ages, and it's not just around the riverbend. Even if it were, it would need to be consistently present for a decade or two before it could affect the political discourse enough to upend the key players in each party. People make stupid decisions, politically-speaking, when there is unbounding prosperity (like voting to eliminate surpluses, and pissing in their pants whenever a moderate downturn occurs because they have no idea what a supply-side depression really looks like).

2) A bunch of dumb kids unaware of Republicans. The dominance of Democrats for decades finally gave away to enough (young) people growing up in said prosperity and not personally experiencing Republican policies to actually be stupid enough to vote for them. Everyone with a politically-aware mind these days - or even just a basic understanding of cultural norms - knows that the GOP is a bigoted group of old, white farts that hate gays, minorities, women and just about anyone else. Economically, most almost remember or know who was responsible for the latest recession.

3) Persistent Republican moderation. When you're a poor, poor perpetual political minority for decades, what do you do? You act as if you agree with the majority more often than not, soften your rhetoric and pretend to be in it for the people. The Republicans have literally never done that since the 1980s, and they're not about to start now. Further ensuring this will continue is the fact that their hyped-up extremist Baby Boomer crowd is going to live substantially longer than any other American generation; expect the bulk of them to continue voting well into their 80s.

[Mr. Smith]

Why does the left not favor scholarships or vouchers? Why are they insistent on keeping kids in public schools that are failing? They don't want private or charter schools to exist, despite them doing better than public schools. If they care about the poor so much, they should want poorer kids who generally go to worse off schools to go to better ones, increasing their chance of not being poor in the future.

If I had to guess, I would say its because they're (and by they I mean left wing organizations and big money) a puppet for labor and teacher's unions.

What evidence do you have that public schools are 'failing', relative to charter schools or private schools? The methods that have been invented to test how well schools and students are doing in school always seem to find that schools are 'failing' and students are falling behind precisely because that's what they were designed to do. Pretending otherwise is naive. We have no way of accurately comparing education statistics when the U.S. school system is not comparable between tiered systems like in Germany (and most studies erroneously compare the average American student with students in elite German Gymnasiums or the highest ranked students in Shanghai), and attempts to do so are disingenuous on the very face of it, because you're not using comparable tests. Beyond that, how does one even begin to quantify knowledge?

There's also literally zero evidence that charter schools perform better than public schools. Private schools may perform better in certain cases, but this comes in part from the fact that these schools are well funded by the parents who have the money to send their children to these schools in the first place. Nothing is more of a determinant of how well schools 'perform' than the access these schools have to adequate educational materials, teaching staff, learning facilities, and, most important of all, the socioeconomic background of the students in question. The children of the employing class have no problem paying attention in school on account of say, hunger. You can't say that about kids who grow up in working class towns or ghettos where a lot of them don't get enough to eat, especially when you take into account that half of all U.S. public school students live in poverty.

Education is not going to solve poverty. Poverty is the result of a lack of money, not the result of the lack of an education. There are plenty of PhDs working at McDonald's these days, or, even those who have managed to land a job aren't being paid all that much. Just using that example alone, in academia, the proportion of adjuncts to tenure track professors is heavily weighed in the former direction, which means a lot more workers without benefits, without a retirement plan, without job security, and with low wages. This is purely anecdotal, but I have a friend who works as an adjunct and only makes about $30,000/year. So much for education being a path out of poverty! The United States has plenty of people with college degrees who either can't use them for want of job openings or because they've been certified with skills that are obsolete or unneeded.

The fact of the matter is that the Left favors high quality public schooling for everyone because most people can't afford public schooling and even if they could, there's something inherently unfair about making people pay for the privilege of being educated. This is a debate that we had in the early 1800s and won because most people agree with the left that the circumstances in which a child is born and brought up in should not deny them the most rudimentary abilities of citizenship, i.e. reading, writing, etc.

School choice would ultimately result in private schools jacking up tuition (after all, they've got the voucher, which essentially subsidizes a good portion of their total income, so why wouldn't they try to make even more? They are a capitalist enterprise, after all!) and would result in even more racial segregation, combined with, of course, religious quackery being inserted into the day to day education of students. I for one am not willing to sacrifice millions of people to daily sermons from pedophile priests on piety or snake oil salesmen teaching whatever 'science' benefits the bottom line of the company who owns the schools.

The assertion that the left (which, I assume in reality you're talking about liberals here) is under the thumb of the teachers' unions is cute. The Democratic Party is full of full-time union-haters like Chicago's Rahm Emanuel, who forced the Chicago Teachers' Union into a strike three years ago and has shut down schools across Chicago and appointed his cronies to the Chicago Board of Education. In Philadelphia last year, the city government cancelled its contract with the teachers union and forced a strike, and in Seattle just recently, the Democratic Party controlled local government picked a fight with teachers. Barack Obama, the head honcho of this entire operation, has put in motion the stealth privatization of education via Race to the Top and the Common Core system, and he's backed to the hilt of course by right-wingers Arne Duncan and former DC public school superintended Michelle Rhee. DC, of course, with its entirely Democratic Party run municipal government, was a trailblazer in the effort to destroy teachers' unions and public education.

Andrew Cuomo wants to destroy the 'public school monopoly', and Hillary Clinton has likewise been a big-time backer of so-called 'reform' efforts. Perhaps the actual left is tied to the teachers' unions, but the liberal left, of which you and other right-wingers refer to when you ask these kinds of questions, is certainly not in the pocket of the teachers' unions.

You should do some research before you come in brandishing wild, nonsensical arguments about how much the 'left' doesn't care about poor kids because it doesn't want to subject them to PepsiCola Elementary School or the Church of the Holy Pedophile Middle School.

[Mr. Smith]

One key factor to look at, is whether by virtue of students having the option to vote with their feet, and leave the comprehensive public school system, that such competition, and fear of empty desks and loss of public school teacher jobs, will incentivize the public schools to offer a better educational product because they no longer have a captive student monopoly.

The problem is that not all students are able to vote with their feet.

For children living in poverty, without access to a private vehicle, or with two working parents it is oftentimes simply not possible for them to do anything other than be bused to their local public school.  "School choice" would be a much more serious proposal if taxpayers were going to foot the bill for a single student to be bused 90 minutes one-direction twice a day. A student's ability to get a good education should not be dependent on the willingness of his parents to transport him to school.     

Vouchers are a waste of public money - the students who need them the most are often unable to take advantage of them due to a variety of demographic/socioeconomic factors beyond the State's control, and the students who do take advantage of them are often already the most high-achieving students in their respective districts.  The money spent on vouchers would be much better utilized helping to lessen the inherent disadvantages that some students face due to their backgrounds.

[Mr. Smith]

Overall FF. I could do without the economic nationalism, the opposition to the TPP on jingoistic/conservative grounds, the fellation of Denmark and i kind of wish he put more effort into an interesting/radical/remotely cohesive campaign focused around the failures of America's foreign policy rather than a collection of random progressive pipe dreams that will never pass congress. Still would vote for him, because the idea of an old NY Jewish guy who complains about stuff becoming president is comedy gold.

I think you mean on populist, demonizing-business grounds.  The obvious backbone of conservatism...

I'm not going to lie, you've intrigued me about how politics are in the UK, but you'll find very few Americans who associate being a protectionist in 2015 with being "conservative" on the issue.

protectionism is, and always will be, a right-wing policy. Demonising the foreign and undercutting average Joe's pocket books for the benefit of a handful of domestic cartels make it the definition of conservatism (I reject clearly unhelpful and farcical definitions of conservatism created via adverting like "small government"). Sure, some left-wingers co-opt the arguments of the right (it's an ancient politicla tactic), but that doesn't mean it magically becomes left-wing to base your entire economic philosophy around jingoistic "RAH RAH MUH NATION FIRST" grounds.

People who oppose free trade do not think they're undercutting the average Joe's pocket book and in fact think they're doing just the opposite.  Conversely, the business powers that be strongly support free trade, as do the politicians (mainly Republicans) who claim to be pro-business.  I'd argue pro-business policies have as much of a place in the heart of traditional American conservatism as does nationalism.  Liberal protectionists are NOT basing their entire economic ideology on your so-labeled "nation first jingoism," they base it on what policies they think will help the poor, even if it's at the expense of American business (another backbone of historical American liberalism).  Even looking at it from a perspective that conservatism is more or less synonymous with nationalism, isn't the whole premise of nationalism looking out for your nation's and its citizens first and foremost (i.e., pursuing policies that mainly or even only help YOUR nation)?  The RNC has made it very clear that it believes free trade helps American business and that what helps American business helps America.  In the 1800s, sure, some protectionism helped our businesses thrive at home, but given our standing in the 21st Century global economy, that's just not the case anymore and hasn't been for a long time.

[Mr. Smith]

I came across this posted in the Good Post Gallery.

Most students are studying under the pall of five-figure debt, marginal job prospects at graduation, and parents whose retirement remains totally unsecured. Nearly half of them won't finish their degrees, and increasingly large shares attend "schools" that we wouldn't recognize as institutions of higher learning in the first place. Many are "non-traditional" students, which usually entails balancing one's studies with menial service sector work, child care, or elder care.

snip

across most walks of life in the United States, "higher education" has come to resemble nothing so much as Saturn devouring his young.

Lately I've been finding this rhetoric ringing hollow. That's not to pick on Maddy or Averroes. This sort of argument about economic decline can be found all across the internet from both left and right.

I won't bore you with some tedious story about how hard I worked and how I did everything right, but to make a long story short, my wife and I both graduated without too much student debt and make reasonable incomes. Our parents are both set to retire in the next few years and will have comfortable if somewhat modest retirements. There is also economic data out there, that would suggest that while things are not booming, the middle class is not on the major decline some make it out to be.

Am I completely in the wrong here? Or do others feel similar to me? Is "the system" working?

This sounds more or less like

"I got mine Jack, now root, hog, or die!"

You are part of what used to be rather normal.  Most people could expect that... but the trend/momentum is really what drives peoples' feelings about the state of things.  The fact is, is that it is getting harder and harder to achieve normal middle class life (the blue collar route shut long ago... the white collar route has red flags and flashing lights all over it indicating it, too, is shrinking).

We could be doing so much better.  We could be using technology and our resources, as crabcake said, to really provide hope and meaningful changes to peoples lives (like, you know... adequate medical and dental benefits for everyone, adequate access to nutritious food (ie not processed simple sugars mixed with cheap vegetable fat) and a basic income security that means everyone can achieve a good work/life balance that allows them to be with their families).

[Mr. Smith]

Nate really is on a role

This very likely falls under the umbrella of 'easier said than done', but wouldn't one think a simple solution to that, as an individual man in a specific couple trying to decide whether or not to have children, would be to resolve to do more housework and child care and monitor oneself to make sure one does?

Also it's, you know, unbelievably creepy that you think that men who want kids want them only or primarily in order 'to have something that generates acknowledgement in society', but, you know, whatever. (For the record, even if this is true, it's better solved by cultivating more constructive attitudes towards children and fatherhood, not avoiding fatherhood on principle because the desire to be a father is somehow inherently bad.)

[Mr. Smith]

Here is a 'holiday special' post (because this issue matters a great deal to me and I can't not respond to it)

It matters a great deal to me as well, I suspect not for entirely dissimilar reasons.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

I hardly think acknowledging and being sincere about the burdensome aspects of being a caregiver and processing the experience as salutary are mutually exclusive, but what do I know, it's not like I've been on both ends of this dynamic at different times in my life or anything.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Excuse me?

I simply don't think it's morally acceptable to cut a swath through one's own children in order to selectively decide what aspects of one's life they inherit. You can sneer at this (and yes, you are sneering, and have been for months if not years) and imply that it means my attitudes towards people's inner eugenic thought processes are wicked and unfair all you like but all doing so accomplishes is frustrating me and making me hope you never speak to me again.

I don't wish to discuss this or any related subject with you further.

[Mr. Smith]

None of the issues that Dems ran with (ok, maybe gun control) is necessary poison or cause for immediate concern. But  the Dems did an awful job at framing these issues. Police reform was an issue that Dems jumped the gun on, associating it with the activist movement BLM rather than integrating BLM's raw and real energy within the platform in a way that is relevant to all people (I.e. even though white people are also liable to get bonked by a uniformed thug, the dem messaging allowed it to be compartmentalised as "an issue for blacks" which robbed it of its potential).

Yeah, things like BLM drive me nuts.

Because of my history, I relate a lot of things to the gay rights movement, and this could have gone the path of either of our two most prominent issues:  employment protections and marriage equality.

Employment protections have been a major priority for the Human Rights Campaign for decades, dating back to a time when marriage equality was still a fringe issue.  I think the reason for its failure to date is that it ultimately doesn't have universal appeal.

The underlying assumption is that America must have groups with a different legal status.  (African-American affirmative action is probably the most prominent example.)  These separate legal statuses started as remedies for the most blatant historical discrimination, but liberals seem to want to see how many additional victim groups can be added to the list.  Although not intentional, issues like employment protections (for an enumerated and ever-growing laundry list of small groups, of course) produce an image of a Liberalism that wants to balkanize America as much as possible.

In contrast, marriage equality has more of a universal appeal.  In this case, it was individual gay couples who were fighting for the right to be treated the same as all other couples.  (In contrast to the operatives pushing for employment protections, marriage equality was much less of a top-down issue, and it was never really the darling of the gay political leadership.  There may be a lesson in there somewhere.)

Coinciding with the rise of the marriage issue, increasing numbers of people began coming out of the closet, so the absence of same-sex marriage meant that nearly every American knew someone who could never marry anyone they ever fell in love with.  The "separate legal status" issue was flipped on its head, with those opposed to marriage equality seeming to be the ones to want gays to have a separate legal status.

But enough of my rant on gay rights issues.  Back to Black Lives Matter.

This would have been so easy to make a universal issue.  Police overreach, in theory, is an issue that should make large numbers of people uneasy.  Although it might be applied disproportionately to minorities, it has probably affected, to some degree, large swaths of the population.  There are even those on the Right who probably would have complained just as loudly against an overzealous government and against government employees.

Instead, BLM made this a Blacks-only movement.  Police overreach became a "Black" issue.  Other people need not concern themselves.  There was a point in time when this could have become an "American" issue, but that opportunity seems to have been squandered.  

On the whole, I have a negative opinion of Social Justice Warriors.  They mean well, and I often agree with their goals, but sometimes it seems as if being right--after all, if you're right, you should never compromise on anything less than total victory--is just more important than actually achieving anything.

End of rant.


Back to the gay marriage issue, it seems to me that there were even conservative arguments for marriage equality.  If you argue that the opposite of marriage is not abstinence (which is absurd) but cohabitation, then you could argue that opponents of marriage equality were undermining marriage by creating a large number of couples who were becoming role models for how to live without marriage.

Out of curiosity, are domestic partnership registries even still around?  I never hear anyone talk about them anymore.

[Mr. Smith]

Sobering numbers on out-of-wedlock births.

Also, is it just me, or is there something a bit laughable about the fact that a majority of Americans say that it's OK to have children out of wedlock, yet very few who will claim that having an affair is acceptable? I'm not saying that it's incoherent, I just think that it's telling that more of us are bothered by a betrayal of our romantic ideals about marriage than we are about the failure of marriage as a structure for sustaining stable families.

A stable, committed relationship doesn't require marriage. Indeed, the former without the latter is increasingly common. While this trend might be unfortunate in some respect, calling it "morally unacceptable" strikes me as a bit of a stretch.

I completely disagree. Marriage isn't just a word or an arbitrary contrivance; it is the legal, social, and spiritual structure on which families are built. Our personal feelings about a relationship's stability and commitment level are insufficient.

This is a very bizarre statement. Why should someone surrender their relationship to past foundations of family structure if that relationship is healthy and good? It's obvious/clear that out of wedlock birth is a disturbing trend but we can't generalize here and start arguing that it's immoral; there are plenty of people who deliberately/intentionally avoid marriage and who have fine families.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Gambling being immoral is stupid. If you don't let people too irresponsible to not screw themselves do it, any ethical problems vanish.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Why the f**k should anything else matter in a relationship!?!

You must be logged in to read this quote.

The nuclear family being any more inherently stable then other systems is BS. Marriage doesn't magically grant stability, and its not the job of some collective to decide the stability of an individual relationship

The idea of marriage goes beyond love. Marriage is an institution, that means your relationship is strong, and you remain committed to each other for life. This is inherently more superior than other relationships. However do I think that children being born out of wedlock is inherently unacceptable, no, as any sort of sex may result to such an arrangement, and for that, I would have to say pre-marital sex is also unacceptable. However, having babies, should be done within the realm of marriage, and marriage extends more beyond one's relationships, and the "idea", that marriage is all about one's love for each other, which causes the high divorce rates in western countries, which causes pain to the children, who many a time are a victim of divorce.

[Mr. Smith]

This has been the case for nearly 2000 years.

Are you being serious? Because centuries of Christian dominance in Europe would tell you otherwise.

Roman persecution, other European pagans, Islamic invasions, religious violence in the Reformation, the rise of Communism.  Had Hitler been successful he had plans to eventually eliminate Christianity as well.

And then, of course, there is the rest of the world.

No pagans have killed as many Christians for religious reasons as Christians did. As I said, killing Christians seems to be the main Christian doctrine: at least, it is the one thing they all happily do.

Well, pagans were a non-factor in most of Europe for the last millennium, that's for sure.

Well, nor do Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, etc. taken all together compare in the number of Christians murdered for religious reasons with Christians. Killing Christians is the main Christian doctrine. Historically, if there is a religion of murder, war and cannibalism, then Christianity is it.

You may be overestimating the degree to which Christianity, as a religious faith, is itself responsible for these centuries of heinous crimes. There's nothing in Christian doctrine that legitimizes the crimes committed by countless numbers of its adherents. In reality, the problem isn't Christianity, but rather the cultures that adopted Christianity. Numerous Protestant sects, despite being quite small, were fundamentally opposed to the violence that dominated their societies - such as the Quakers. Whereas, and more numerous, other sects were perfectly happy to engage in bloodshed and conquest while preaching "love thy neighbor as thyself." Even when conducted in the name of Christianity and condoned by Christian leadership, the crimes were those of the political system those Christians largely inherited.

Consider how Christianity in the Mediterranean vastly differed between each ethnic group and their respective cultural traditions. When the Roman leadership converted to Christianity, they justified their expansionism and persecutions of threats to their new political leadership through references to their faith. The persecution and forced conversion of Northern European Pagans was no different; it was for political purposes, with Christianity as the excuse. Remember, at this time the Church forbade Mass to be recited in any tongue other than Latin and for the congregants to have access to Bibles. They used the Roman Church to expand their political power; similar actions were conducted in the Greek dominated East, albeit to a less severe extent. The Levant, Ethiopia, and Egypt also had a less aggressive form of Christianity compared with the Roman dominated West. In Eastern Europe, the Eastern Orthodox Churches preferred the protection of the Islamic Ottoman Empire and the Sultans to the threat of the Roman West. It was the Roman West who even attacked Constantinople and attempted to reconquer the Levant from the Muslims, which largely fell apart due to the Roman Church wanting to dominate the largely Orthodox and Oriental Christian natives. Look what happened in Spain following the defeat of the Caliphate: Muslims were killed, expelled, or persecuted, followed swiftly by the expulsion of the local Jewish populace that took refuge largely in the Muslim lands of North Africa and the Ottoman Empire.

The problem is clearly not Christianity as a faith, but rather the cultural inheritors of the Roman imperialistic mindset. Unfortunately for the world, it was those same people who, due largely to Ottoman blockades that strangled Western Europe's trade with Asia, were compelled to sail around the Middle East and thus discovered, then persecuted and exterminated millions of people, the "new world."

[Mr. Smith]

Comedy is subjective. Who are you to tell me or anyone else what is or isn't funny?

Perhaps you would prefer that I write posts expounding someone else's opinions? What an inane line of crap.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Obama after her death:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Oh, my, how transgressive! Shock humor is stupid and overplayed, and Joan Rivers was neither thought-provoking nor particularly funny. Obama’s comment, if sincere, is far from his first show of poor judgment and infatuation with celebrity gossip culture. Most likely he was just responding to the death of public figure in a respectful and politically correct way.
[/quote]

[Mr. Smith]

One of the more unfortunate developments in American politics is the belief that people who perhaps aren't as "book smart" or university-educated have political opinions that should be weighed less than people are are educated at a univeristy/have high iq/etc.

This criticism goes both ways, btw. Conservatives often depict the inner cities in this manner, and liberals are increasingly treating rural/small town areas like this, as well.

I believe it is against the very spirit of democracy to make raw "intelligence" an issue when choosing how to view voters. It opens up a can of worms that at one point justified limited suffrage and lack of voting rights.

But I also believe this issue goes even deeper and is profoundly dangerous on a moral level, as well. Intelligence, at least measured by IQ, is a characteristic beyond the control of someone. Choosing to measure their worth by it is an example of bigotry, intolerance, and ignorance. It assumes that because you may not be great at academic matters, you have nothing interesting to say or add to a conversation, or that your experiences, and reactions to those experiences, do not matter. It's an example of that erasing the value of a soul, using materialistic foundations. History tells us that judging people based on physical or mental characterists can lead to nasty outcomes.

I am reminded of CS Lewis' marvelous work "The Abolition of Man". Using raw materialistic measures, such as skin color, race, gender, and Cognitive capacity, to explain man actually explains him away. His kindness, his morality, his skills, his capabilities, the invisible light inside of him, is forgotten.

Rural trump voters and inner city democrats have souls, and those souls are beautiful, and they  are some of the most valuable things society can have.

I am reminded of another CS lewis work, "The Pilgrim's Regress". John, a young boy, is captured by a giant, who when he stares at you, sees through you , and turns you into what your insides look like- terrible skeletons and hideous organs, tubes, and spongy tissue. John was put in a dungeon with many of these monstrous skeletons who were the giants' victims.

A woman, lady reason, eventually rescues John from the dungeon.

You must be logged in to read this quote.