Thank god I will live for 4 more years!

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Nov 5 2004, 12:13 pm
In response to Xooxer
Xooxer wrote:
Prove it. I don't see anything that even suggests that.

~X

I don't think that a person is evil because they don't conform to your rigid, fairly skewed view of the world.

If you define being evil by being responsible for killing, then you're evil too. If pay taxes in this country, then you have a hand in the support of the war, the death penalty...all of that. If you were a truly virtuous person and you held tight to the belief that all of that was evil, then you'd refuse to pay taxes. Or move out of this country. Heck, just by living in this country with the belief that an evil person is in charge shows your lack of virtue and/or weakness of character.

Anyway, I'll stop posting in this thread, because fanatical points of view (on either side) irritate me.
Nov 5 2004, 12:29 pm
In response to Xooxer
Xooxer wrote:
No, he didn't pull the trigger, but he put them in harm's way knowing they would die. If I was to push you in front of a moving bus, you couldn't blame the busdriver for hitting you, could you?

No, because that is different. You push someone in front of a bus because you want them to die. You don't send troops off to war for the same reason, rather the opposite, though you know that some still will.

I don't recognise people of a country fighting within their own borders against an invading force as terorists.

By that logic, we shouldn't be trying to fight terrorism on its own turf at all, not even to bomb terrorist training camps.

No, we do not. There is such a thing as a peaceful resolution, civility and humanity. Or have we forgoten that?

No, we haven't forgotten that. They tried that for years and it failed.

Think of the Civil War. How many Americans died there? I don't see you grieving and blaming the president for that.

What? Bush wasn't even alive then. The notion is rediculous. If you mean President in office then, then yes, I do blame him. He should have resolved the issues between the north and south before it came to blows. He failed his country.

And you should do your studying. The rulers did try to avoid that war, they tried very hard. Compromise after compromise was made for them, but in the end the slaveholders were stubborn and refused to do the right thing.

Kerry may have killed some Middle Easterners, I don't know, but as far as I know, everytime he tried, he would injure himself. He's an idiot.

Uh, yeah. Where is Vietname again? Don't hurt yourself now.

So he slipped up and typed the wrong thing, big deal. The point still remains. But aside from that, it brings up the point that he had to have a weapon if he were to injur himself, which goes to show that he was on the offensive and you have no more excuses about how he has never killed anyone. If he had to in that war, I am sure he would have and he had the weapon to do it. If he wouldn't have, then that only goes to show a weakness.
Nov 5 2004, 12:38 pm
In response to Xooxer
Xooxer wrote:
Hold it right there. No one has taken away any rights. I don't like the policies GWB put into place, but he hasn't taken my rights away. Name these right, if you can.

~X

I didn't mean George Bush himself. I was talking more about Congress at the time, and Congress while bill Clinton was in office. The Digital Millenium Copyright Act and the PATRIOT act are those that I was referring to.
Nov 5 2004, 12:46 pm
In response to Zlegend2
It's ok. I forgive you.

I didn't know that cost the nation two trillion dollars. You should try some new contractors.
Nov 5 2004, 12:47 pm
In response to Zlegend2
But you see. He didn't just spend it. He spent 1 trillion more than he ever had.
Nov 5 2004, 12:52 pm
In response to JordanUl
JordanUl wrote:
But you see. He didn't just spend it. He spent 1 trillion more than he ever had.


He never had any of it. You obviously didn't read my previous reply to your intitial statment. The simple truth of it is the government never has any of the money it spends; a surplus simply means they dind't spend as much as they thought they would.
Nov 5 2004, 1:01 pm
In response to Jmurph
Collage educated people are known for being liberal, as are collage students. Being collage educated does not make you intelligent, although it has a high chance of making you liberal, which means your most likely going to vote for a democrat. Also, saying that the votes of intelligent people went to Kerry is a huge slap in the face for any republican. Intelligent people vote for either side, you also have your mindless section of society who are not well-informed. You have your groups who vote for each candidate, yet both sides insist on name-calling of the other. I've seen republicans in this discussion call democrats the "less intelligent" of the two, and vice versa, however I don't think either opinion is the case. You have intelligent people on both sides of the line, yet all they have to say is simply their opinion, and when it comes down to it, your opinion doesn't matter, because you cannot force it upon someone against their will.
Nov 5 2004, 1:11 pm
In response to Jotdaniel
I replied to you?
Nov 5 2004, 1:15 pm
In response to GokuDBZ3128
It's no Jay Leno.
Nov 5 2004, 1:15 pm
In response to JordanUl
Jotdaniel wrote:
JordanUl wrote:
But you see. He didn't just spend it. He spent 1 trillion more than he ever had.


He never had any of it. You obviously didn't read my previous reply to your intitial statment. The simple truth of it is the government never has any of the money it spends; a surplus simply means they dind't spend as much as they thought they would.
Nov 5 2004, 1:23 pm
In response to Xooxer
Xooxer wrote:
Genesis has a creation theory, so therefore, anyone that has a theory about creation is religios, becuase Gensis is a religious book? So you mean to say that believing in humanity is a religious belief, becuase you believe that we were created by God, who is a religious figure in your mind, therefore I must be religious, because I can't deny my own existence? Sounds pretty fundamentalist to me. No wonder you like Bush so much.

What you said there doesn't make much sense, and besides that it doesn't have much to do with what I said. At least, I don't think it does based off of what I can pick out of it.

Uh, actually, I find the bible to do just the opposite. It's a horrendous text to base your moral values on. There are numerous passages that promote slavery, murder, child abuse, incest and much more.

It does not promote slavery, though it does not demote it either. This is not a bad thing though, since the slavery it mentions is quite different than the slavery people think about from a few centuries ago. Biblical slavery gives slaves more rights to slaves, gives penalties for mistreating them. Besides that, it doesn't allow you to just kidnap someone and take them as a slave, rather biblical slavery came about from people who built up unpayable debts (usually through illegal means such as multiple indebtedness where you can't hand the collateral over). All said, biblical slavery was nothing like 19th century slavery.

No, it does not promote murder. That is rediculous. It does speak of some old penalties for crime which are quite stiff, however. Though our government punishes for some things that aren't even wrong at all, which - although not quite as bad - is still comparible to overstrict penalties for crimes.

It does not promote child abuse either. Disciplining a child is nessessary in many instances, to spare that when needed is to spoil the child so that it may very well grow up to do much worse than what you would have otherwise done to the child.

It also does not promote incest. The only time it even talks about incest and not putting it in a bad light is when there is no other option, when there are aren't enough people to not be incest.

Right, and I would rather have a leader who thought for himself, instead of relying on professional writers to make his major speaches, yet most presidents do that and there is nothing actually wrong about it. We don't get to know their mind as well when the thoughts aren't coming directly from them but rather indirectly through someone elses pen.

That's a complete contradiction to what you said previously. Good Christians adhere to the bible, their thoughts come from the writtings of men who died millenia ago. I think speach writters have their place, but they don't dictate to the speaker what to believe, they just convey the speaker's words in a more eloquent way, with some political spin. You want a good christian in the whitehouse. Fine, but don't also ask for one who thinks for himself, because the two are practically mutually exclusive.

It is not a contradiction. There is a difference between having your own views altered by something and acting on those views and having a speach writer take your words and alter them. One is changing your views and telling it like it is, the other is keeping your views but changing what you tell people. If presidents would just walk up and speak exactly what is on their mind we would understand much better what their thought process is and be better able to judge whether it is good or not. Instead, the speach writers change their thoughts into something that sounds pleasing whether it really is or not.

What does listening to what some preacher says about right and wrong have to do with anything?

Because your president does. Or is he not a good christian now?

I don't think you are in a position to say he is a puppet of his religious leaders. Perhaps he is, though I highly doubt it. It is best to come to conclusions on your own generally.

Jesus was a preacher, so were the apostles. You going to just dismiss all thier words too? Sure, they didn't have huge buildings, or fancy robes, but they preached about God to the masses.

That is not the same. There is a big difference between Jesus and the preacher down the road. However, even if you don't believe that you still should believe that there is a difference between reading information on a subject and having someone stand by telling you exactly what to believe and how to believe it. I can read through all the books on biology I want and just not believe the stuff that isn't proven, and I do happen to do that; but I am not going to listen to someone whose only purpose is to babble at me about how my view is wrong and that I must change it. So, that is not the same.

Even if it were though, the bible specifically says within it that you must test it. It doesn't say anything about blind faith as many people would have you believe these days (those are usually the true religious nutjobs), rather it says within it that you must test it and come to the understanding on your own, whatever the end result of that testing might be.

Then you should have voted against him, as that is what we have. He may not be holding a gun to your head and telling you to pray to his Lord, but his policies stem directly from his religious beliefs.

The only thing I can think of that you can even begin to think might be religious infringement on the government is the whole homosexual thing, but the legal setup for that is already screwed up anyway in such a way that even many non-Christians are against it. I'm not going to go into that whole issue, though I have stated some ideas of mine on it elsewhere in this thread. However, I will also add here that the entire legal acknowledgement of marriage should be abolished. It is not the government's place to meddle in there, and I am probably not even going to go through with the legal part if I marry. You can use a will to decide who your things go to after you pass, and that is the main point most people bring up with me when they talk about legal marriage.

Other than that, I can't think of anything he is doing that is strictly religious based.
Nov 5 2004, 1:26 pm
In response to Theodis
First of all, I am sorry if you thought I was saying Republican voters are less intelligent. What I meant to say is that they seem to be less educated. Of course this doesn't apply in every case (Bush himself is a Yale grad, for example). But, studies indicate people who are more informed tend to lean Democratic for whatever reason. And it was college educated voters, not college voters BTW (although the young tend to lean liberal/Democrat, too).

Second, I find the concept that higher education leans liberal very interesting. I haven't seen much to verify this suppossed bias, but assuming it exists it is interested that the educated would lean liberal. Why might that be?

Perhaps, it is about taxes. Except that professors pay taxes just like everyone else, in many cases at the higher brackets. Additionally, progressive tax schemes don't seem unjust at all: why wouldn't someone who makes more, has more disposable income, and has benefitted from the country more pay more in taxes? It seems like it would make far less sense to tax at a flat rate, as that would hit the poor much harder (someone earning $10,000 is going to miss 15% much more than someone making $100,000, and they more than someone making $1,000,000 or a corporation making $1,000,000,000).

But maybe, just maybe, it's because classical liberalism sees learning and education as strengths whereas neo-conservatism seems to be very anti-intellectual, eschewing education for indoctrination. Even classical conservatives saw the value of liberal ideals- Herbert Hoover and Dwight Eisenhower both claimed the mantle of liberalism. But then again, classical conservatives ran on platforms of fiscal responsibility very unlike the neo-conservatives who are more accurately authoritarian expansionists who, ironically, seem to embrace the irresponsible unchecked spending that they villify in liberals.

Indeed, it was Eisenhower who warned of falling prey to the military-industrial complex, and interestingly, Christian philosophy that warned of the tainting of the spiritual with the physical (you cannot serve two masters, God and Mammon (money)). And yet, what is the current administration but an amalgamation of large industrial and military interests coated with slick appeals to God's faithful?

I believe an informed electorate will hold poor leaders accountable. That hasn't happened in a while. I guess Jefferson was right.
Nov 5 2004, 1:32 pm
In response to XxXSonGokouXxX
Murder (aka abortion) should never be a choice everyone has at their fingertips.

You speak of rights? What about the rights of that new person? Doesn't it have the right to live? This is why I am extremely concerned about that issue. By the time I am very old it might be common and extend to the other end of the spectrum as well, and my children might be able to legally put me down for being a hastle and not providing anything in return. Hey, why don't we put down everyone with genetic defects as well?
Nov 5 2004, 1:38 pm
In response to Loduwijk
Abortion will be made illegal one day, but, not anytime soon, I presume.
Nov 5 2004, 2:10 pm
In response to Jmurph
Second, I find the concept that higher education leans liberal very interesting. I haven't seen much to verify this suppossed bias, but assuming it exists it is interested that the educated would lean liberal. Why might that be?

I'm not aware of the process by which these statistics are gathered as I don't recall education level being one of the fields on the voter registration forms.

Perhaps, it is about taxes. Except that professors pay taxes just like everyone else, in many cases at the higher brackets.

From what I've heard teachers tend to make less than they would had they pursued a career in their field of interest rather than take up teaching.

Additionally, progressive tax schemes don't seem unjust at all: why wouldn't someone who makes more, has more disposable income, and has benefitted from the country more pay more in taxes?

Benefitted more? Aren't most of the government benefits geared towards those who don't make as much? The rich already pay a whole lot more since its based on a percentage of what they make not a fixed amount. To raise this percent even more because they are rich is just penalizing them for being rich which seems ridiculus. They have more and tend to spend more helping the economy bringing both jobs from increased demand and generally from companies they run which generally provide more jobs when they are taxed less. Regardless it shouldn't be just about taxing the rich less but keeping taxes low for everyone. The less money that goes through the bureaucracy of the government the more that actually goes toward helping the economy.
Nov 5 2004, 2:28 pm
In response to Loduwijk
Loduwijk wrote:
What you said there doesn't make much sense, and besides that it doesn't have much to do with what I said. At least, I don't think it does based off of what I can pick out of it.

Your view is that I am religious because I have an opinion of how things came to be. I was trying to illustrate that this is not true. Questioning the nature of things does not indicate religion. Religion tries to answer those questions, but it's not the only means of obtaining answers. You basicly stated that I exist, therefore, I must be religious.

It does not promote slavery, though it does not demote it either. This is not a bad thing though, since the slavery it mentions is quite different than the slavery people think about from a few centuries ago.

Slavery is slavery. There's no "nice" slavery. There's no happy slaves. And what rights? Show the me the passages.

No, it does not promote murder. That is rediculous.

Really? That's not what the bible says. Here, allow me to wax biblical:
<font color=blue>
Mathew 15:3
For God commanded, saying, Honour thy father and mother: and, He that curseth father or mother, let him die the death.
</font>
Sure sounds like Jesus promotes the murder of children to me. Oh, but there's more:
<font color=blue>
Rvelations 2:20 to 2:23
Notwithstanding I have a few things against thee, because thou sufferest that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce my servants to commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed unto idols.

And I gave her space to repent of her fornication; and she repented not.

Behold, I will cast her into a bed, and them that commit adultery with her into great tribulation, except they repent of their deeds.

And I will kill her children with death; and all the churches shall know that I am he which searcheth the reins and hearts: and I will give unto every one of you according to your works.
</font>
Here we hear Jesus through the word of John saying he'll kill all the children of Jezebele. I thought Jesus loved the little children? Why is he so quick to smite them?

The bible promotes murder. I can quote passages that tell us to kill directly, but I would be here all night. Take a few minutes to read your damn bible before claiming to know what it says.

It does speak of some old penalties for crime which are quite stiff, however. Though our government punishes for some things that aren't even wrong at all, which - although not quite as bad - is still comparible to overstrict penalties for crimes.

Murdering children because of the acts of their fathers is comparable to a life setence for commiting murder? They're not even in the same league!

It does not promote child abuse either. Disciplining a child is nessessary in many instances, to spare that when needed is to spoil the child so that it may very well grow up to do much worse than what you would have otherwise done to the child.

Let me quote the passage you misquoted, then we'll see what the bible says about discipline:
<font color=blue>
Proverbs 13:24
He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes.
</font>
Oh, but there's more. Not only should you beat your children, but pay no attention to their cries!
<font color=blue>
Proverbs 19:18
Chasten thy son while there is hope, and let not thy soul spare for his crying.
</font>
But what if you injure them? No worries, what are a few broken bones, or even death, compared to eternal life in Heaven?
<font color=blue>
Proverbs 23:13 tp 23:14
Withhold not correction from the child: for if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die.

Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell.
</font>

I think the bible most certainly promotes child abuse. Death for disobeying your parents? Beatings to teach and cleans sins? Horrific!

It also does not promote incest. The only time it even talks about incest and not putting it in a bad light is when there is no other option, when there are aren't enough people to not be incest.

It could have left that out. Two daughters getting their father drunk to lay with him and bear his children? There were other options. Those three people weren't the only ones alive.

It is not a contradiction. There is a difference between having your own views altered by something and acting on those views and having a speach writer take your words and alter them. One is changing your views and telling it like it is,

No, that's telling it how the bible says it is. It has nothing to do with the real world, and should have nothing to do with runnning our country.

the other is keeping your views but changing what you tell people.

It's not changing what you tell them, but how you tell them. There's a big difference there.

If presidents would just walk up and speak exactly what is on their mind we would understand much better what their thought process is and be better able to judge whether it is good or not. Instead, the speach writers change their thoughts into something that sounds pleasing whether it really is or not.

That's funny. I'd rather listen to a well organized, thought-out and eloquent speach than some guy just jabbering away with no flow or direction.

That is not the same. There is a big difference between Jesus and the preacher down the road.

Yeah, the preacher down the road is alive, and not insane.

but I am not going to listen to someone whose only purpose is to babble at me about how my view is wrong and that I must change it.

You realize that's what you're doing, right?

Even if it were though, the bible specifically says within it that you must test it. It doesn't say anything about blind faith as many people would have you believe these days (those are usually the true religious nutjobs), rather it says within it that you must test it and come to the understanding on your own, whatever the end result of that testing might be.

So, to test Jesus' claims that unruley children must have the sin beaten out of them, I should take two kids, beat one and not the other, then see how they do? Yeah.. right.

I'm not going to go into that whole issue, though I have stated some ideas of mine on it elsewhere in this thread. However, I will also add here that the entire legal acknowledgement of marriage should be abolished.

Silly, it will never happen. Marriage does not belong to christians. It never has.

It is not the government's place to meddle in there, and I am probably not even going to go through with the legal part if I marry. You can use a will to decide who your things go to after you pass, and that is the main point most people bring up with me when they talk about legal marriage.

Then you won't be married. You can't marry someone without a marriage cirtificate. Without it, it's just living together.

~X
Nov 5 2004, 2:33 pm
In response to Jon88
You still haven't named which rights I have lost.

~X
Nov 5 2004, 2:46 pm
In response to Loduwijk
Loduwijk wrote:
Murder (aka abortion) should never be a choice everyone has at their fingertips.

At which point does the embryo gain rights? At what point does it no longer belong to the woman? When is that magical moment when it's not just another part of her own body, but a body of it's own? Murder applies to killing a living being. Abortion does not do this. It removes the tissues from the woman's body long before it's become recognisable as a creature capable of sustaining itself. That's like saying having your tonsils removed is murdering tonsils.

~X
Nov 5 2004, 2:52 pm
In response to Xooxer
Your tonsils will never ever be a living, thinking being by themselves. Needless to say that explains my opinion, so I won't elaborate. I would just like to state I've lost respect for many people over the course of these two major threads.

Doesn't matter to me what you think of it, just know that if you've expressed overly liberal views I most likely now have a certain dislike for you. I detest abortion, and I get extremely annoyed with people who bash either candidate without reason(or make up reasons(or bash their supporters)).


I would also like to mention, for anyone that cares(I know theres a few of you left)I'm moving at the end of this month and my dad doesn't have a computer, so no more internet for me. Talk to you whenever I talk to ya.
Nov 5 2004, 2:58 pm
In response to Theodis
Well, the wealthy benefit from being American, using the American educational system, police, fire departments, etc. By definition, the rich have benefitted more than the rest. Benefits come in many different forms from subsidies that benefit corporations to medical payments to tariffs. Additional taxes do not "penalize" them so much as make sure they pay their fair share. Look at it this way: the richest 10% of Americans hold 90% of the wealth yet the combined top 20% pay only 80% of all income taxes. So actually, they are coming out ahead (Proportionally the bottom 80% is taxed greater than the proportional wealth they hold).

And lowering taxes does not necessarily lead to job growth. That is a flawed assumption of "trickle down" economics (which George Bush Sr. called "voodoo economics"). The 2000 recession reaffirmed this- corporate taxes were lowered, but unemployment remained steady. Despite these tax cuts, the latest economic figures put unemployment percentage slightly up, even with new jobs being added, and the average salary of those jobs lower than the lost jobs they replace. Simply put, tax cuts for business simply translate to slightly higher profits, nothing more.

Tax cuts do not defeat the laws of the free market- supply and demand. Companies do not expand unless there is sufficient demand to warrant expansion, otherwise they would lose money. Tax cuts may spur some demand *if* they put more money in the hands of the average consumer, but most tax cuts don't seem to do that.

I do agree that lowered taxes are ideal, but on the other hand taxes are also necessary for the administration of things like police, defense, and a judicial system. Classical conservatives understood that subsidies and disproportionate tax breaks to industry were actually worse than populist social programs because they 1) injure the governments economic tax base 2) hurt competitiveness through its protectionism and 3) do not encourage meaningful increases in market effeciency or consumer benefits.

Another interesting fact is that most of the wealthy are born, not made. Most wealth in the US is actually inherited, a distinctly un-American concept. This is where estate taxes and the like come in. They are designed to recoup costs from the miserly person not contributing and instead hoarding up resources. Since they are dead, they have no more needs or wants. Additionally, freeing the resources helps to keep the market flowing.

I could bore you with details of how the current Bush administration has implemented an eerily Keynesian (sp?) econmic policy that should make a fiscal conservative cringe. But suffice to say, expanding the federal government by thousands, giving generous subsidies to big business and then starting a war that runs billions of dollars a day is *not* financially responsible and a prime reason why many informed fiscal conservatives have condemned these policies. Consider that spiraling deficits eventually have to be payed off and that government realistically only has two options here- reduce spending and/or increase taxes. Also consider that the baby boomer generation will begin retiring soon, making Social Security claims skyrocket. Worse, as they age, spending patterns indicate that they will spend increasingly less and there is no generation behind them to support the difference. Once again, no government can defeat the laws of supply and demand.

What does this have to do with government taxation? Allow me to refer you to the parable of the grasshopper and the ant. We have had some good times, but instead of collecting reserves, we lower taxes and let a deficit build. Winter could be very hard indeed!
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