ScottSA

It's immoral for Canada's government to address a "poverty gap" by redistribution, so the money would be better burned than handed out to undeserving lumpenproletariat. I can't think of anything that would perpetuate the enculturation of poverty faster than making it more comfortable. Such safety net as our society should have ought to be confined to those who cannot help themselves, not to those who don't feel like helping themselves.

How very true

Wow... what an insight! Definitely a key argument in the pro-war case. Makes all the difference. Sorry, but your post was inane and not worthy of serious comment. It's a common leftist mistake, to be sure; mistaking a leftist sense of what "ought" to be for what "is," but it doesn't have any bearing on the real world.

From Denmark, where the Eurabian civil wars will start: The place where my grandfather used to live, and where I sometimes played as a child, now lies within a Muslim area. Today it’s a very unsafe place with the problems I described above and much more, smaller things like gender separation, halal this and haram that and constant demands for special treatment for the mostly unemployed population of the area. The only group of people behaving in this destructive way are Muslims. And it’s not just a few, as some might think; it’s a collective pattern that they repeat everywhere, wherever they become a local majority. The visible troublemakers might only be a small percentage, but the collective pattern always seems to be the same. It’s Islam itself as a whole that creates these problems, and for most common people this is obvious. I get so tired of intellectuals who try to find ways to explain this simple fact away. And many have tried. - - - - - - - - - - There are lots of Muslims who are kind and peaceful as individuals, that’s true. But they still show the same collective patterns when enough of them get together. They start to see themselves as opposed to the non-Muslims around them. To target Jihad and Sharia as the real reason for the problems is just one more clever way to try to excuse Islam. And while intellectuals play mind games, teenage girls get raped. And yes, it makes me hostile, as it should, but I am sorry for directing it at you. The essence of the problem comes from the Muslim identification as being in opposition to other groups. If we somehow make all Muslims sign a treaty or a contract, saying that they reject Jihad and Sharia, and we let them keep the identification as Muslims, they will simply hide their belief in Jihad and Sharia from us and keep it to themselves until they feel ready to confront us. As long as they can identify themselves as Muslims, it will be used to control the behavior of people within their system, and at the same time tell us what we want to hear. Therefore we must strike at this identification, by banning Muslim organization, symbolism and garments that are used to signal that people are Muslim. By doing this we can remove the iron grip the Muslim community has over its members, and then it be will possible to slowly start to make things more positive and peaceful for everyone. I am pretty sure that many of those we call moderates would be happy about this, secretly at first. Or we can sit on our moral high horses and wait for the whole thing to blow, while we argue details about how many peaceful Muslims there are or what verses we think are the most evil. We can let our children and people who don’t have the resources to relocate be the foot soldiers in a war, a war they never asked for and that we refuse to even acknowledge, while we convince ourselves that this somehow makes us better then others.http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2007/06/...igh-horses.html

I have serious qualms about making the public sphere into a Panopticon. Sure it helps catch criminals and may even cut down on crime, but it surely must reduce civil liberty too. It seems to me that we ought to look at the root of what is happening...and I don't mean the ridiculous leftist "root causes" of crime.

I was with you to the first part, but after that you went in the wrong direction. The money lies in exploiting and amplifying the alleged "crisis." There is an entire industry...nay, industries...built up around the premise that a ) GW is manmade, and B ) that it is a disaster. In fact, a whole new subfield has arisen within the media itself: "environmmental reporters." The money doesn't lie in keeping a debate going, the money lies in building an ever more horrendous scenario and shitting on alleged "deniers" (I love this attempt to cast the other side in the terminology of holocaust deniers. I think I'll start refering to GW proponents as "mass murdering shitheads," just to strengthen my case to the same degree mass murdering shitheads believe they are by invoking the holocaust).

The only dumb thing here is your claim that the Allies killed fascism. They didn't. They defeated the Axis powers and nothing more. The reason fascism is currently slithering along the bottom of hard to find ponds is because the fascists themselves brutally murdered millions of gypsy's, jews, poles, russians and whoever else they found to be unproductive and/or undesireable. Thats what killed fascism - a botched suicide. Good grief, you're completely deluded. You think if Hitler and Mussolini had not been stopped by WW II, followed by worldwide sanction against such fascist regimes as were left, that fascism would have disappeared simply because of Hitler's actions? That's ridiculous.

Great. How do you suggest we go about doing that? Turn off your computer. It'll save the electricity.

:lol: This has got to be the dumb quote of the day!

Well, I'll await your argument that fascism is as intact and full of vigour as it was before WW II. Such life as it has is slithering along the bottom of hard to find ponds, with virtually no chance of ever influencing anything. So you can claim that it survived intact, but you're going to look pretty dumb trying.

I couldn't have said it better myself. No one could. What he said amounts to "maybe our influence has an effect, and I believe it does." What more can be said by anyone? And so what?Everyone is in favor of weaning us off non-renewable energy and making better use of resources...how can one argue with that? But that's often used as a mask for throwing ridiculous amounts of money at a problem that may not even exist. It's like the feminist ploy of howling for "equity hiring" and endless special considerations, and then, when called on it, retreating to the defense that all they ever asked for was "equality." Oh, and reducing CO2 is quite different from cleaning up the planet.

I agree. I don't see the utility of it either, nor the feasability, let alone the supposed need. Despite the visionary rhetoric , he can't explain what Islamism is - other than it being the religion itself - and therefore, of necessity, stomping out Islamism actually means religious war with the end goal of allowing folks to be Muslims only under state sanction. Its a fantasy. The same fantasy that allows him use the defeat of Nazi Germany by the Allies as an example of how 'Islamism' can be defeated. He ignores the fact that the Allies directed thier warmaking efforts to destruction of the German industrial and transportation capacities wich allowed Germany to make war effectively, all at great cost in wealth for the nations involved, not to mention 10's of millions slain. Perhaps there is some sort of 'Islamist' industrial base we could strike? or some sort of 'Islamist' command and control network to be disabled through strategic bombing? By what means and at what cost is ScottSA proposing we 'Stomp Islamism' via methods of armed might? Its alll pure fantasism. Yes of course. You seem to have missed the entire argument over the fact that fascism was not confined to Germany, and indeed had roots throughout Europe and even in Britain and America. But hey, that doesn't fit your nonsensical stance that Islamism can't be defeated. And come to that, where did you ever get the notion that I can't define Islamism? Read the thread before leaping into it and making an ass of yourself.

The Sex Party doesn't sound very inclusive. What about the virgins? Maybe someone should start a "Virgin Party of B.C."? I think they have one already... They're called Young Conservatives...... I didn't find the young ladies in that party to be particularly virginal when I was there...quite the contrary. The young NDP, on the other hand, hated men, so that didn't make for loose trousers...thank God...have you ever seen a young NDP woman? Yuck!

One has to differentiate between non-rational and irrational. In religious terms: Non-rational is our belief that life has meaning and human beings are spiritual creatures. In other words, even the non-religious people can seek meaning and spirituality while understanding that these are not absolutes bestowed upon us by a caring and personal god. We can seek meaning and spirituality in our lives because it is "good", not because it has a rational basis. Irrational beliefs are a belief in magic, prayer, creation science, divine rewards and punishments, the after life, stigmata, suicide bombing, going to war in the name of god, crying statues of the virgin mary, images of jesus in pieces of toast, virgin birth, sons of god, resurrection, and so on. Andrew The categories are fine...funny how the components of each are completely arbitrary according to what you believe.

This is a mistake in an otherwise well researched post. Hostility to the Jews is as old as the origins of Islam, when Mohammed slaughtered and enslaved two entire Jewish tribes, branding them "pigs and apes." Since then Jews have lived as Dhimmis under Islam wherever Islam ruled. Naturally, Islamic apologists claim this as "tolerant" behavior, but its far from it.

Pardon? *zing* What was that?

My mistake. I had focused on the part of your post that identified the religion as as scourge. Long day, I have been up all night trying to write for a deadline. Still, I'd appreciate being pointed to an exchange rather than having you act as you did. Civility on a BB? What a ridiculous concept.

I would think that you'd want to rephrase this statement, since it blows an enormous hole in the hull of your argument. Still can't answer the question eh? I have no idea where it came from. Maybe it came from man, maybe it came from cows, and maybe it blew out Barney's ass. All of which is completely irrelevant if GW has happened before. Since GW has happened before, many times, never by the agency of humans, then why are you hinging your argument on the presence of CO2? My understanding is that CO2 is if anything an aftereffect of warming and not a causal agent. Now that we've got that out of the way, you freely admit that the climate has changed before, through warming and cooling spells, yet paradoxically claim that this particular worming spell must be the result of an agent never present in previous warming spells: humans.

You can ease off on the remarks. You may have had the exchange with someone else but you didn't have it with me. I don't follow every single post you make and if you follow my responses over the last little bit in this thread, I have been asking you what you actually mean. I had the exchange with you. It was in answer to one of your posts, on the last page. http://www.mapleleafweb.com/forums//index....pic=6191&st=915

Such as? Indeed. Damn good question. I take it you haven't been reading the thread you've been arguing in either, eh wot?

If spirit and identity are not one in the same, then "you" are gone when you pass away. "You" don't continue on in another life. "You" don't get 72 virgins. "You" only live once. I would have thought that's self-evident. Otherwise you'd be up for breakfast the next day, right?

This is the first I have heard you say expand the war. The question is to where and how. What forces are currently available to do that? You should read the posts you're debating if you want not to be taken as a lightweight. I said: "...put some real muscle behind the war effort, including expanding it if necessary to Syria and almost certainly Iran." But those are only suggestions. Limited war doesn't work against a global phenomenon. Total war does. There's no sense in re-enacting Vietnam and hoping for the fall of Berlin. The forces to do that are easily...easily...available. Rome at its height never had it so good.

I would think that you'd want to rephrase this statement, since it blows an enormous hole in the hull of your argument.

I already said there was nothing before the Universe. Who says matter can't originate from nothing? Matter can in fact originate from nothing, and it's seems a lot more probable than saying that God originated from nothing, don't you think? You are twisting my words. I'm not sure if you are intentionally twisting them, or whether you don't understand what I am saying. I'll try to be clear as possible. Both matter and God can, in theory, be created. In fact, we know that matter can be created from nothing. What we don't know is whether God can be created from nothing, but since God is much much more intelligent/complex than simple matter, it is much less likely for God to be created out of nothing. In my argument you quoted above, I said God must have been created in order to exist. I never said it was impossible for God to be created. Again, if you think I said this please show me where so that I can correct this mistake... I'm not a pysicist, but I don't recall ever having seen a claim that matter can originate from nothing. Nor do I recall a claim that time has no beginning or space no limit. Yet you accept all of these paradoxs without blinking, while claiming that another paradox proves that God doesn't exist. The argument that it's more likely that an infinitely complex universe, governed by laws, can pop into existence out of nothing simply because it's less complex than God, is stretching your argument to the breaking point, wouldn't you say? And frankly the entire exercise is a bit of a red herring, since virtually all monotheisms posit God in some way as the beginning and end, an "always." Its a paradox, to be sure, but hardly more of a paradox than the existence of the universe.

I don't disagree. Germany, on the other hand, was a battle all the way to the capital. As I have said though, if we are comparing Germany to Afghanistan, the same long term occupation strategy doesn't hold. Al Qaeda decamped and are elsewhere now for the most part. Which is why I suggested expanding the war, to which you replied that external force doesn't work. It does work. It just has to be comprehensive, and it has to come from a society that believes in itself.