Hugo

No, but theft is the same thing as redistribution. The more you redistribute, the poorer we all become. Look at Cuba and China, and for a more moderate example look at Sweden or Norway. Sweden has not had any economic growth for 8 years (which means, good luck finding any work). 25% of Norwegians do not earn enough to feed and house themselves. You need to understand economics before you start talking about this. It's counter-intuitive. Trying to help people and redistributing wealth ends up making them poorer and worse off. A good quote for you to ponder: "It's amazing how an idea can look so good on paper that it can be proven wrong 9 times out of 10 and still be widely believed, like state interference in the economy. It's also amazing how an idea can be proven right 9 times out of 10 and still be widely disbelieved, like the concept of free markets." (Thomas Sowell)

In the way that they are provided now, that has a ring of truth to it. However, they are services which are paid for, and the strength of the argument varies from case to case. Healthcare, for instance, is currently a case of wealth redistribution because many who don't benefit from it pay for it. But for police forces, everybody benefits from it even if they have never been a victim of crime (crime prevention, land values, economic benefits etc) so taxation is fair as it is a simple provision of services in exchange for a fee. Not that taxes are theft, but that they are a necessary evil that should be kept to a bare minimum. I believe that the individual citizen should be the ultimate agent of his own destiny as far as possible, and not the State. That includes how his property and wealth are used and disposed of.

I believe that all religions are essentially distant descendants of a common source. Therefore, the God worshipped in each is essentially the same being. Christianity and Islam are both offshoots of Judaism, for one example. The origins of religion are buried so far back in the history of time that we can never be certain of them and are compounded by translations, dead languages, cultural differences and hostilities and, of course, the human touch, especially when concerning a being and concepts that are beyond our ability fully comprehend. If twenty people witness a car accident, each will give the police a different version of events. It's like that. Of course, I have no conclusive evidence of this, but it makes the most sense to me out of all the alternatives. A good argument I heard on this was that if you take a car to pieces, put all the parts in a giant mixing machine and mix them for a million years you will never end up with a complete car. If you look at the incredible complexity of the universe and the fact that it all works, deliberate design is the only realistic conclusion. Anything else is self-delusional and irrational. To speak of "natural processes" is very well, but who or what set these processes in motion? An automated assembly line can run virtually unsupervised, but somebody has to design and build the thing and then actually throw the switch. Until then, it will just sit there and produce nothing. A being that is omnipotent, omniscient and exists outside of both space and time is necessarily beyond all human comprehension. Our attempts to describe such a being are like the efforts of ants describing human society. Knowledge of the functioning of the universe does not discount the existence of God. Let me give you an example. In the Old Testament, the rainbow is a symbol of the Covenant between humankind and God after the flood ended. Now, we know that rainbows are the refraction of light through airborne water drops, but just because we know how it is done, can we assume why it is done? For another example, let's say the police are investigating a murder. A man has taken a knife and stabbed to death his wife of many years. Let's say it was witnessed by several people and videotaped. The police know exactly how the killing was performed, but unless the murderer tells us and we can be absolutely sure that he is not lying, we will never know why it was done.

That doesn't follow, because none of the above are redistributions of wealth.

A thief's priority is also to redistribute the wealth.

Um... somebody pried the badge off the back of my car a month or so ago. That's about all. I've lived in big cities and I won't go back. The town I live in right now is large enough to have everything I want available, but it still has that small-town feel and thus crime isn't really that much of a problem. Apart from Dalton McGuinty's hand being in my pocket all the time. He's been slapped with a lawsuit by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation for breach of contract as he signed a declaration that he would abide by the Ontario Taxpayer Protection Act and wouldn't raise taxes without calling a referendum first. But he's the only criminal having a major effect on me.

There doesn't need to be. Their existence now is proof that they were not destroyed after 1991.

Probably, but then Canada was not bound by several UN resolutions to destroy all such weapons and abandon efforts at development and manufacture as the conditions for a peace signed 12 years previously.

Alright, this is the last time I'm going to do this. You said: which is wrong. End of story. There is precedent for exactly what you say cannot be done. If you want to change your statement, go ahead, but let's not pretend that's not what you are doing. We are not idiots here. Any further ducking and diving on your part regarding this point will be ignored. It's a waste of time and bandwidth. You were wrong. Be a man and admit it, and then we can move on. It seems that you are the only person in this thread who doesn't like that article. It seemed pretty clear-cut to me. It was not an opinion column, it was a series of facts correctly cited from good sources designed to dispel common misconceptions and ignorance. Once again, you are trying to twist things around and muddy the waters to try and hide the fact that you were wrong. You said the invasion of Iraq was illegal. It wasn't. You were wrong - again. Now, stop being childish. If you will insist on making such ridiculous posts, don't be surprised when they are blown out of the water on such a regular basis. This forum is not one of your lefty love-ins, you actually have to defend your statements here. Why don't you cite the exact facts of this incident, from a viable source (a reputable news agency will do), and we can discuss that?

Yes, you are. You originally said, which is wrong. Do you understand this yet, the third time around? You didn't say "unilaterally", you didn't say "in Latin America" or any other points that were not included in any way in your original statement. You simply said the above, pure and simple, and if you did not mean it you should have said it. But you did mean it, you won't retract it and you are so arrogant that you'll happily go on digging a deeper hole for yourself forever. Say hi to China when you get there. It cited the necessary facts from the Iraqi Information Ministry and Human Rights Watch, which you yourself quoted. Ah, so if we don't use clusterbombs and DU munitions there won't be any more casualties? The terrorists in Iraq seem to be killing a lot of people without those weapons. Until they make international law it doesn't matter what they say. You can have a hundred judges denounce a sentence, but it's the one judge who handed it down who gets to make law. I don't need a law degree to understand that, do you? And what you were talking about was a breach of law, not a question of ethics. It's a technicality, and technically the invasion was legal. And if the police deliberately kill perpetrators or accidentally kill innocents in the pursuit of criminals? Seems to me, nevertheless, that Moore is getting plenty of attention and box-office success for a guy whose freedom of speech is being squashed. I think it does. In wartime, it's been a long-standing tradition that even free countries will place tight restrictions on the press if to avoid doing so would compromise their military success. Same thing here.

I think the whole problem in this thread is the sweeping statements. Some say the young can't be trusted to vote, some say they can. The truth is that we are all individuals. I know teenagers who are very politically astute and I'd happily give them a vote, even if they wouldn't vote the way I would, because I know they would use that power responsibly. On the other hand, I personally know 50-year-olds who are voting and don't even know the most basic details of the party they are voting for. I heard loads of people in the last Ontario provincial election decrying the Tories for "taking money away from public schools and giving it to private schools." The actual election promise they made was that they would give a tax credit to families who had children in private schools to compensate for the fact that they paid for public schools in taxes but did not use them. Chinese Whispers. The question, to my mind, when awarding somebody the vote is not "how old is he?" but "how likely is he to abuse his vote?" I think it would be better to establish some simple tests of basic political and campaign knowledge and give the vote to anyone who can pass.

I appreciate your attempt at a bait-and-switch. However, you originally said: which has been proven wrong. That's my point. Yet again, you are trying to pull the argument off-course in the hope that obfuscation will lead people to forget your ignorance. Again, it isn't working. As August said, this is about cluster munitions, not Iraqi civilian bodycounts. I think my source is more relevant to the argument. Even with the highly suspect figures from the Iraqi Information Ministry the simple fact is that the invasion of Iraq saved thousands (if not a greater magnitude) of civilian lives. If you say so. He's been quoting reams of international law and UN resolutions, and your pathetic riposte is a treatise from a bunch of leftist nobodies meeting in a basement. I read the thread and was quite amused by your flailing. Crimes worse than Saddam's? Crimes even a tenth as bad as Saddam's? Once again, KK has beaten me to refuting this argument. I have to say he did it with his usual aplomb, however. In a warzone, during a war, with terrorists running around? I'm sure they did. The media outlets in the Middle East have been notable for espousing the cause of terrorism and broadcasting promises of cash prizes to terrorists. Quite simply, at this time a free Iraqi press is a big security risk and endangers innocent lives. In ten years we shall see.

One exception, I could believe. Two enormous and glaring exceptions, no. Your rule is invalidated. Can you bring about democracy by drastically cuttingthe numbers of women and children being killed? I think KK has already thoroughly debunked this idea. Who is crushing freedom of the press? Pop quiz: what overweight, left-wing demagogue has just released a highly-publicised movie in the US that goes to great lengths bashing and demonising the Bush administration?

Oh. Perhaps you should tell the Germans and the Japanese, they don't seem to have learnt that lesson. Why?

By that you mean "veer more towards the far left than the current, left-of-center position." It's disappointing that there is no real choice for a right-wing party in Canada anymore. Despite the name, the Conservatives are anything but as Harper is trying his best to reign in all so-cons, reassuring voters that he'll protect abortion and won't legislate against gay marriage, and their fiscal policies are quite left-leaning - socialised medicine, government-run business, etc. and while the Cons may promise to lower taxes, Canadians would still remain one of the most heavily taxed peoples in the world. It reminds me of the last Ontario election. The only question being asked of the electorate is, "how would you like your socialism?" There's nothing viable in Canada that is anything close to, say, the Republican Party. It's all left-of-centre. I also think this will be a trying time for confederacy. Quebec has been very happy to support the Bloc this time around, and should Charest lose the next provincial election it'll be clear that Quebec is seriously pushing away from the rest of Canada. I also anticipate that the Western Canadian separatist movement will gain strength after this election. Alberta basically foots the bill for the rest of Canada, and the rest of the country, in particular Ontario, has made it clear that they are happy to take Albertan money to pay for their social experiments but are not prepared to give the West any kind of political respect. If I was Albertan at this point I'd be hopping mad. Any comments from Albertans?

No, you are not. You are encouraging us to look at opinion columns from one highly biased and prejudiced website. This site isn't gospel. As I've shown, it isn't even good punditry. You are one of their larger contributors and, as we've seen in this thread and in others, you aren't capable of a good debate and the kind of objective writing that I would expect and hope for. Others include the clown who wrote the column I cited above, written with bigotry and little to no supporting proofs. If there was a big picture, a global trend, you'd be able to show it with global data and big-picture evidence, like standards of living, life expectancies, real income, relative income and so forth. Unfortunately, all that evidence is against you, so instead you rant about the "context" without ever alluding to what that context is, other than a collection of half-baked left-biased opinion columns. When you say "big picture" you mean "little picture." You are making some examples of a few local and individual instances - softwood lumber, Shell oil, etc. - and asking us to judge an entire economic modus by them. As long as you restrict your arguments to, say, Shell oil, you are not making an argument against globalisation but against Shell oil. For instance, let's say I tell you that white males are all rapists and murderers, and for my proof I talk about nothing but Ted Bundy. As long as I do that, I'm not making an argument about white males, but about Ted Bundy. To make it about white males, I would need to show evidence of a widespread trend towards what I'm arguing is a near-universal for white males. That is what you need to do: expand your evidence to fit your actual argument. In summary: 1) Opinion columns are not evidence. 2) The "big picture" has big evidence to support it, not conjecture. 3) Do your own research.

Your reluctance to cite a single piece of evidence disturbs me. Let's summarise: Me: Can I see some evidence of your assertations? You: There's loads of evidence out there. Me: Can I see some? You: You can start looking for some here. Me: But can you tell me what specifically leads you to believe what you believe? You: I already told you where to start looking. Me: Can you give me your evidence? You: I can't believe you don't start looking. Unless, of course, you're telling me that your ideas are based solely on rhetoric, opinion and prejudice, because that's all you've shown me, and that's all you claim you want me to see. Then do! How many times must you be asked a single question? I have, far more than you. That's why I can defend my ideas, and you cannot. You see what I mean, August? No evidence, no citations, no proof. Just sweeping statements and rhetoric.

As August has alluded to, the likely cause of these problems with teenage/adult crime, sexual problems etc. is not the fact that they have a single-parent home, but of parental neglect, lack of attention and role models etc. However, one way to guarantee parental neglect, lack of attention and inappropriate role models is to have a single-parent home. It's a cause of the cause. There's just less attention, fewer good role models, less time, less money. You said: Actually, you would. You'd have a choice between a rock and a hard place. You can either work full-time to provide for your kids materially, but then between full-time work and running a household it's unlikely you'll have much time left for actually raising them. Or you can go on welfare, spend plenty of time with them but ensure that they are at a material disadvantage so they aren't eating much nutritious food, aren't able to participate in extra-curricular activities and sports, can't get good dental coverage etc. Either way, your parenting has suffered a huge blow. You can possibly sidestep a lot of problems if your wife had a big life insurance policy, if you won the lottery etc. however, most people in that situation do not have those safety nets. In the absence of two parents, children are likely to fill the gap. Not only mass media but also far worse substitutes such as criminal gangs may act in loco parentis. Bearing in mind the apparently huge problems homosexuals have with drug abuse, suicidal tendencies, violent behaviour, decreased lifespan and so forth, combined with the fact that (as several Dutch studies have shown) these problems get worse with societal acceptance, not better, we can surmise that homosexuality is not the causing factor of these problems but whatever underlying psychological problem is causing the sexual identity crisis is probably also causing the tendency towards self-destructive behaviour. In any case, people with violent and self-destructive tendencies do not make good parents no matter what causes those tendencies. As an aside, I'd like to add that our society has always concentrated on the self. Cultures that have not were those like feudal Japan, but Western society has always focused on the self. The difference is how that focus is interpreted. Nowadays, the focus is upon "finding yourself" and "discovering yourself", rather than upon "improving yourself." I blame this for a lot of our spiritual problems today. It's easy to find yourself. Me, I'm sitting at my computer. What we need to ask is how we can be better human beings.

If those links lead to the facts and figures I want, it should not be asking a big favour of you to find a few examples, should it? Especially seeing as how you are not only a regular visitor but a substantial contributor to that site?

You put one link up. It was to a whole website, not a document or study, and the site was a series of opinion columns seemingly starring you. This was the sum total of your sorry excuses for evidence and fact. That's right, I want to talk about facts and figures, not about feelings and opinions. You seem to have this idea that rhetoric is fact, and that prejudice is as valid as evidence, but you are mistaken. Even though you wouldn't admit it you should have learnt that in our exchange, although I notice you are flailing wildly in a similar fashion in your exchanges with KrustyKidd so we can probably surmise that you are one of those people who just won't learn. I hope your career as a drunkard works out better than your career as a political pundit.

The simple fact is that the "loving and stable home" you seek is less available in single-parent households or in same-sex parent households. The correlation has been clearly documented. As I say, if you have contradictory evidence you are welcome to cite it. But I find it interesting that both you and August disagree with me and have not cited a single source to back yourselves up. No, and if I had been raised in Nazi Germany I wouldn't necessarily be a Nazi, either. But what we are discussing here is trends, and as I said, the issues of race and poverty sink into irrelevancy when faced with the correlation between youth crime and single-parent households. That means that the only significant correlation is the single-parent aspect. Race is insignificant. Poverty is insignificant. Geographical area is insignificant except inasmuch as it puts a child in an area with a high proportion of single-parent households. Tell me what the true factor behind this correlation between juvenile and adult crime and being raised in a single-parent home is, Michael, if it's not what I claim.

I disagree. I think that sociologists and psychiatrists working at universities will not benefit if the government allocates funds to solving the problems they find. They are paid to research, not to find specific results. Those were the researchers conducting virtually all of the studies I cited. If you have some studies that show that single-parent households do not lead to increased crime, or that same-sex parents do not lead to increased sexual identity and behavioural problems or incidence of disease, please share it.

The children of single-parent families are more likely to commit crimes as juveniles and adults. That comes from Wade C. Mackey, who is a professor of anthropology at El Paso Community College in Texas and the author of Fathering Behaviors. Young black males from single parent households are twice as likely to become criminals as those who have two parents at home. If that young black male comes from a neighbourhood with an abundance of other single-parent households, that chance is tripled. That comes from a study conducted for Department of Health and Human Services. Interestingly, a Canadian study found that an increase of $100-200 in annual welfare payments increased the odds that a poor woman would become a single parent by 5%. In the US, a 50% increase in the value of food stamps led to a 43% increase in fatherless households. This problem is well-documented and judged extremely serious. Experts have testified before Senate committees that the increasing dearth of two-parent households will create an escalating crime level for the next 15 years, assuming the problem was eradicated today. Regarding same-sex parents: The National Gay & Lesbian Domestic Violence Network reports that "The probability of violence occurring in a gay couple is mathematically double the probability of that in a heterosexual couple." I'm sure we need no primer on the results upon children of a violent household. A major Australian newspaper reported of a British sociologist's review of 144 academic papers on homosexual parenting: "Children raised by gay couples will suffer serious problems in later life, a study into parenting has found. The biggest investigation into same-sex parenting to be published in Europe claims children brought up by gay couples are more likely to experiment with homosexual behavior and be confused about their sexuality." The Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry published a study of 4,000 high school students by Harvard Medical School, which found that "gay-lesbian-bisexual youth report disproportionate risk for a variety of health risk and problem behaviors...engag(ing) in twice the mean number of risk behaviors as did the overall population." "GLB orientation was associated with increased...use of cocaine (and other illegal) drugs. GLB youth were more likely to report using tobacco, marijuana, and cocaine before 13 years of age. Among sexual risk behaviors, sexual intercourse before 13 years of age, sexual intercourse with four or more partners...and sexual contact against one's will all were associated with GLB orientation." Associated Press reported last June that a "new study by two University of Southern California sociologists says children with lesbian or gay parents...are probably more likely to explore homosexual activity themselves...(and) grow up to be more open to homoerotic relations." This might not be a problem, except for the fact that the Center for Disease Control reports that youths who experiment with homosexual relationships are between 17 and 21 times as likely to contract various STDs as those who are not.

Blair, you have been repeatedly asked to prove your points and you have not. You have just finished making wildly sweeping statements like "You are saying that capitalism has caused us to advance, but you are wrong." without any cited evidence. I have already explained to you why your existing citations are inadequate, and you have not addressed that at all, in fact, your evidence has dropped from "inadequate" to "nonexistent." Capitalism has existed since the late 18th Century when the first capitalist thinkers such as Adam Smith began putting their ideas on paper and the first capitalist statesmen such as Benjamin Franklin began acting upon them. Anything prior to that, and you are discussing other economies. Your whole argument smacks of gross ignorance and this is one further example.

I am well aware that the only thing that would satisfy you at this stage would be for me to respond, in detail, to the particular and isolated incidents you cite even though I have repeatedly given my valid reason for not doing so. Basically, you are trying to hide the forest with the trees. You're aware that you cannot defend your argument, so you are hoping to side-track the debate into a number of smaller issues and, in so doing, lose the main one. Unfortunately, I wasn't born yesterday and I'm not particularly interested in seeing you deliberately stall this discussion. Hence you have ignored my perfectly valid rebuttal, hoping that others reading this thread are gullible enough to believe that I had none. They aren't. I think we will see if you can actually defend yourself. If I'm ignored again, we'll know the answer to that, won't we? I'm aware of it already, thanks. Some of the information I've based my assertions on comes from it.