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I lol'd when Paul acknowledged that America was an Empire.
I do not understand the whole migration debate in the US. It is a nation that was built by migrants, so why suddenly no one likes them?
It's kind of funny when you think about it. First and second generation migrants comprised 50% of the US army during WW1 and 2 and now they are considered a magical evil entity.
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On October 20 2011 08:11 ilovelings wrote:
I lol'd when Paul acknowledged that America was an Empire.
That was a pretty hilarious moment for any number of reasons...
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On October 20 2011 07:51 Kiarip wrote:Show nested quote +On October 20 2011 06:55 Penitent wrote:
It's not being religious that ticks people off, unless somebody's a real fundamentalist. It's the legislating of religious issues.
Long time reader, first time poster. The quote above is emblematic of the hippocritical stupidity so often displayed by the political left, and I feel compelled to say something to expose it for what it is. Why should it be reprehensible for a religious person to vote for his preferences but "courageous" for an a-religious person to do the same? No serious conservative (myself included) has ever suggested that we pass laws to compel belief in anything, yet to hear tell from the media and other leftists you'd swear there was a conspiracy to turn America into an Iranian-style theocracy. America is a democracy. This means that we all have the right to vote our consciences when deciding, as a collective whole, how we are to live and what we are to do as a nation, as a state, and as a city. If you like abortion because you don't think the thing inside a pregnant woman's womb is a human being, then vote your conscience. But don't presume to invalidate the opinion of someone who disagrees with you and believes that abortion is wrong because it involves the cold-blooded murder of a child. If you like gay marriage because you think that marriage does little more than confer titles, tax benefits, and specific legal rights, then vote to support it. But don't sneer at others who believe that marriage is a holy institution pre-dating government, and who believe that an institution which has never accepted homosexual unions across all cultures at all times in all of recorded human history should not be tampered with by the equivalent of a civilizational diletante. However, why should you make legislature that limits the rights of a person to do something that doesn't hurt anyone? who cares if 51% believes it's wrong, or 99% of people believe it's wrong. If it doesn't infringe on the constitutional rights of anyone else it should be allowed. And if marriage is indead a holy insitution pre-dating government, then why should we have government sponsorship of marriage? Let's remove all economic benefits from marriage so it REALLY IS a spiritual thing, and then if a church doesn't want to marry to gays because it's against its religious ideals... fine it won't. Show nested quote +
When someone votes for traditional marriage, or pro-life laws, or voluntary prayer in schools, or the teaching of intelligent design as a possible alternative to evolution (which to date STILL has no provable model for the macro-evolutionary change of a species with x number chromosomes into a new species with x+y number of chromosomes), do you rage because you feel like someone is trying to impose his beliefs on you?
Guess what, it feels the EXACT same way for conservatives when you vote for gay marriage, abortion on demand, the exile of faith from all public discourse, or the acceptance of Darwinian evolution as a provable fact.
It doesn't because the existence of gay marriage, doesn't infringe on your human rights. Abortion is more contraversial though. As for not teaching faith, well I think this is a question of whether it would be a class that teaches a student vitally important skill or information or not. I'm against public schools in general, though and private schools to some extent can already teach faith if they want. This issue should be completely separate from the evolutionary issue though. Whether or not to teach evolution in a public school is more of a scientific issue. I think that you can teach it in school just fine, because Evolution as a scientific theory explains a great deal of what we know about species, still not everything, but there hasn't been any natural occurances that directly contradict evolution, although there are some that evolution has not yet fully explained. Show nested quote +
This is the nature of democratic politics. Every single time you vote one way or another on an issue, you are voting to impose your thoughts, your preferences, your views, and your beliefs on other people. This is okay; this is how democracy is supposed to work. Living in a democracy means everyone gets a say. It doesn't mean you always get your way, but it beats the hell out of being ruled by a monarch or a dictator or a politburo or a central committee who decide what to do and don't give a fuck if you and everyone else disagree with them. And if you lose? Go out and convince your fellow citizens that yours is the righteous cause, and next time maybe the votes will swing in your favor.
No. Because luckily we have the constiution which protects our rights from oppressive legislation. Show nested quote +
Don't for a second believe the bullshit notion that your values or beliefs or views are any better or more important than someone else's and should therefore be accorded greater weight or respect, to the point where people who don't think like you do ought to be mocked and ridiculed as "fundamentalists" or "neanderthals" or "mindless sheep". I'm a devout Catholic and a political conservative because I think for myself, I understand my values, and I know who and what I support. I'm no more a mindless peon than an atheist liberal who takes the exact opposite stand on every issue.
But when you're talking about issues of whether or not to take away a person's personal liberty which doesn't actually harm anyone... Should the people have a right to do that even if they're unananymous in their decision?
I just want to chime in here. I agree with your responses, and you touched on this point but didn't explicitly say it - we do not have a democracy, we have a republic.
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On October 20 2011 08:11 ilovelings wrote:
I lol'd when Paul acknowledged that America was an Empire.
I do not understand the whole migration debate in the US. It is a nation that was built by migrants, so why suddenly no one likes them?
It's kind of funny when you think about it. First and second generation migrants comprised 50% of the US army during WW1 and 2 and now they are considered a magical evil entity.
The problem is illegal immigration, not migration. The sovereignty of a nation is in part defined by it's borders, and there are a lot of costs and problems and complications due to the practically open border with Mexico, whether it's the costs of supporting large numbers of people who are coming from poverty, to the near war being waged with the drug cartels on US borders, to the increased crime in border states, to the tension that results from two separate populations living together while adhering to both a different culture and language.
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United States5162 Posts
On October 20 2011 08:11 ilovelings wrote:
I lol'd when Paul acknowledged that America was an Empire.
I do not understand the whole migration debate in the US. It is a nation that was built by migrants, so why suddenly no one likes them?
It's kind of funny when you think about it. First and second generation migrants comprised 50% of the US army during WW1 and 2 and now they are considered a magical evil entity.
US has had a love/hate relationship with immigrants for a while now. Even 100 years ago there was controversy about many different groups of immigrants, including Mexicans. Marijuana was outlawed in part because of prejudice against Mexicans who liked to smoke it.
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On October 20 2011 06:55 Penitent wrote:Show nested quote +
It's not being religious that ticks people off, unless somebody's a real fundamentalist. It's the legislating of religious issues.
Long time reader, first time poster. The quote above is emblematic of the hippocritical stupidity so often displayed by the political left, and I feel compelled to say something to expose it for what it is. Why should it be reprehensible for a religious person to vote for his preferences but "courageous" for an a-religious person to do the same? No serious conservative (myself included) has ever suggested that we pass laws to compel belief in anything, yet to hear tell from the media and other leftists you'd swear there was a conspiracy to turn America into an Iranian-style theocracy. America is a democracy. This means that we all have the right to vote our consciences when deciding, as a collective whole, how we are to live and what we are to do as a nation, as a state, and as a city. If you like abortion because you don't think the thing inside a pregnant woman's womb is a human being, then vote your conscience. But don't presume to invalidate the opinion of someone who disagrees with you and believes that abortion is wrong because it involves the cold-blooded murder of a child. If you like gay marriage because you think that marriage does little more than confer titles, tax benefits, and specific legal rights, then vote to support it. But don't sneer at others who believe that marriage is a holy institution pre-dating government, and who believe that an institution which has never accepted homosexual unions across all cultures at all times in all of recorded human history should not be tampered with by the equivalent of a civilizational diletante. When someone votes for traditional marriage, or pro-life laws, or voluntary prayer in schools, or the teaching of intelligent design as a possible alternative to evolution (which to date STILL has no provable model for the macro-evolutionary change of a species with x number chromosomes into a new species with x+y number of chromosomes), do you rage because you feel like someone is trying to impose his beliefs on you? Guess what, it feels the EXACT same way for conservatives when you vote for gay marriage, abortion on demand, the exile of faith from all public discourse, or the acceptance of Darwinian evolution as a provable fact. This is the nature of democratic politics. Every single time you vote one way or another on an issue, you are voting to impose your thoughts, your preferences, your views, and your beliefs on other people. This is okay; this is how democracy is supposed to work. Living in a democracy means everyone gets a say. It doesn't mean you always get your way, but it beats the hell out of being ruled by a monarch or a dictator or a politburo or a central committee who decide what to do and don't give a fuck if you and everyone else disagree with them. And if you lose? Go out and convince your fellow citizens that yours is the righteous cause, and next time maybe the votes will swing in your favor. Don't for a second believe the bullshit notion that your values or beliefs or views are any better or more important than someone else's and should therefore be accorded greater weight or respect, to the point where people who don't think like you do ought to be mocked and ridiculed as "fundamentalists" or "neanderthals" or "mindless sheep". I'm a devout Catholic and a political conservative because I think for myself, I understand my values, and I know who and what I support. I'm no more a mindless peon than an atheist liberal who takes the exact opposite stand on every issue. With that all said, I'm disappointed in the GOP field of candidates. Of the two most serious contenders, Perry looks like he's got too much baggage to wrap up the nomination, but Romney is little more than a smooth-talking liar. It pains me to think that the GOP is likely to nominate the man who did Obamacare for his state (with disasterous consequences btw) even before Obama did Obamacare for the nation. Conservatives are supposed to trust him to repeal it? Give me a break. And God-forbid Romney be charged with any Supreme Court appointments; Bush '41 was ever a fake conservative and he gave us Souter, so I shudder to think what bench-legislating moron Romney would foist upon the nation.
The pope and thereby the leader of the catholic church on earth has accepted abortion under certain circumstances. In europe there is a whole science behind when a child can be aborted and when it should not. I completely agree that killing a child days before birth is murder. however, killing it within the first month is however just removal of a parasite. Point being: You cannot take a stand just for the sake of the stand. Understand why you have it at least and don't just quote bumper stickers.
Evolution and prayer is not used, in schools in europe at all. Not Intelligent design, though a serious religious/culture/moral is being taught. Neither has Darwins theories got any substantial meat on it other than living things get better developed for the way they live through generations. The Darwinism in the US is mostly propagande to piss off religious people and has nothing to do with Darwin and his very inconsistent science, really. However in science you need a certain understanding of the past and it is hard for most to understand it if intelligent design has to be fit in. Most religious scientists are putting serious interpretation into understanding the bible in a way, where it can fit into science.
Gay marriage probably should not be in church anyway, but why take away the advantages of marriage in a stately manner?
My whole point is: If you are willing to accept that your understanding of the Bibel has to be bend somehow to fit in the same paradigm as science, there is absolutely no problem in having them both. However, if you cannot accept that an interpretation of the Bibel is absolutely needed for it to fit todays society it is a problem with your view.
Putting these kinds of decissions into federal law is wrong on so many levels from my european point of view.
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Canada11398 Posts
On October 20 2011 08:11 ilovelings wrote:
I lol'd when Paul acknowledged that America was an Empire.
I do not understand the whole migration debate in the US. It is a nation that was built by migrants, so why suddenly no one likes them?
It's kind of funny when you think about it. First and second generation migrants comprised 50% of the US army during WW1 and 2 and now they are considered a magical evil entity.
Actually this is very consistent with views on immigrants throughout America's history (and probably Canada's.) Whoever is the latest immigrant, the old immigrants hate on, and then when another ethnic group immigrates, the old scapegoats join in. The British hated the Irish immigrants (Catholic as well), but both turned around hated the Italians and Eastern Europeans, but these also turned around and hated the influx of Japanese and Chinese. It's simply the Mexicans turn.
And by hated I mean scapegoated for many societal problems- Prohibition era, Irish meant Catholic, the two of which meant alcohol was acceptable. So then naturally the perceived moral bankruptcy of the time is blamed on them.
There is the issue of legal vs illegal immigration. However the attitude towards immigrants goes beyond the legality of it I think.
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On October 20 2011 07:51 Kiarip wrote:Show nested quote +On October 20 2011 06:55 Penitent wrote:
It's not being religious that ticks people off, unless somebody's a real fundamentalist. It's the legislating of religious issues.
Long time reader, first time poster. The quote above is emblematic of the hippocritical stupidity so often displayed by the political left, and I feel compelled to say something to expose it for what it is. Why should it be reprehensible for a religious person to vote for his preferences but "courageous" for an a-religious person to do the same? No serious conservative (myself included) has ever suggested that we pass laws to compel belief in anything, yet to hear tell from the media and other leftists you'd swear there was a conspiracy to turn America into an Iranian-style theocracy. America is a democracy. This means that we all have the right to vote our consciences when deciding, as a collective whole, how we are to live and what we are to do as a nation, as a state, and as a city. If you like abortion because you don't think the thing inside a pregnant woman's womb is a human being, then vote your conscience. But don't presume to invalidate the opinion of someone who disagrees with you and believes that abortion is wrong because it involves the cold-blooded murder of a child. If you like gay marriage because you think that marriage does little more than confer titles, tax benefits, and specific legal rights, then vote to support it. But don't sneer at others who believe that marriage is a holy institution pre-dating government, and who believe that an institution which has never accepted homosexual unions across all cultures at all times in all of recorded human history should not be tampered with by the equivalent of a civilizational diletante. However, why should you make legislature that limits the rights of a person to do something that doesn't hurt anyone? who cares if 51% believes it's wrong, or 99% of people believe it's wrong. If it doesn't infringe on the constitutional rights of anyone else it should be allowed. And if marriage is indead a holy insitution pre-dating government, then why should we have government sponsorship of marriage? Let's remove all economic benefits from marriage so it REALLY IS a spiritual thing, and then if a church doesn't want to marry to gays because it's against its religious ideals... fine it won't.
Who are you to say what does or does not "hurt" someone? Maybe you think that gay marriage or abortion or socialized medicine don't "hurt" anyone, but I and millions of others would strongly disagree.
But let's say for the sake of argument that, for example, gay marriage doesn't "hurt" anyone as an objective fact. So what? Gay marriage is not a Constitutional right. This means that if there are enough people who think it a repugnant thing they should and do have the right to vote against it. Here's a parallel example: no one is "hurt" in mixed martial arts because the fighters engage in it of their own free will, but different states are free to permit or deny the practice of the sport in their domains because, like gay marriage, mixed martial arts is not a Constitutional right.
As for ending government recognition of marriage, I can agree with you there. I would rather end the practice of officially recognizing marriage than allow the state to re-define an institution which has stood, largely unchanged, for the better part of all of recorded human history.
Show nested quote +
When someone votes for traditional marriage, or pro-life laws, or voluntary prayer in schools, or the teaching of intelligent design as a possible alternative to evolution (which to date STILL has no provable model for the macro-evolutionary change of a species with x number chromosomes into a new species with x+y number of chromosomes), do you rage because you feel like someone is trying to impose his beliefs on you?
Guess what, it feels the EXACT same way for conservatives when you vote for gay marriage, abortion on demand, the exile of faith from all public discourse, or the acceptance of Darwinian evolution as a provable fact.
It doesn't because the existence of gay marriage, doesn't infringe on your human rights. Abortion is more contraversial though. As for not teaching faith, well I think this is a question of whether it would be a class that teaches a student vitally important skill or information or not. I'm against public schools in general, though and private schools to some extent can already teach faith if they want. This issue should be completely separate from the evolutionary issue though. Whether or not to teach evolution in a public school is more of a scientific issue. I think that you can teach it in school just fine, because Evolution as a scientific theory explains a great deal of what we know about species, still not everything, but there hasn't been any natural occurances that directly contradict evolution, although there are some that evolution has not yet fully explained. Show nested quote +
This is the nature of democratic politics. Every single time you vote one way or another on an issue, you are voting to impose your thoughts, your preferences, your views, and your beliefs on other people. This is okay; this is how democracy is supposed to work. Living in a democracy means everyone gets a say. It doesn't mean you always get your way, but it beats the hell out of being ruled by a monarch or a dictator or a politburo or a central committee who decide what to do and don't give a fuck if you and everyone else disagree with them. And if you lose? Go out and convince your fellow citizens that yours is the righteous cause, and next time maybe the votes will swing in your favor.
No. Because luckily we have the constiution which protects our rights from oppressive legislation.
And which rights might those be? Don't assume that the right to do the things you want to do is automatically in the Constitution; chances are it is not. This is what really rankles lots of Conservatives. People are always claiming they have the Constitutional right to this, that, and the other thing when no fair reading of the Constitution or its history could EVER support any of the rights so claimed.
Show nested quote +
Don't for a second believe the bullshit notion that your values or beliefs or views are any better or more important than someone else's and should therefore be accorded greater weight or respect, to the point where people who don't think like you do ought to be mocked and ridiculed as "fundamentalists" or "neanderthals" or "mindless sheep". I'm a devout Catholic and a political conservative because I think for myself, I understand my values, and I know who and what I support. I'm no more a mindless peon than an atheist liberal who takes the exact opposite stand on every issue.
But when you're talking about issues of whether or not to take away a person's personal liberty which doesn't actually harm anyone... Should the people have a right to do that even if they're unananymous in their decision?
Everyone likes more liberty, not less, but being a part of a democracy means living by the decisions of the community as a whole once those decisions are made. Yes, we have a Constitution, and yes, that Constitution prevents majority rule from taking away specific liberties from the people (e.g., the right to free speech, the right to vote, the right to be free from enslavement). But the Constitution doesn't limit the ability of the body politic, or any subunit thereof, from doing what it wants to do within the boundaries of the Constitution.
Gay marriage, abortion, functionally atheist schools and civic bodies - none of that crap is in, or logically mandated by, the Constitution or its history. That these have come to be accepted as Constitutional rights is the work of activist Supreme Court justices, who have robbed us all of our collective right to decide for ourselves how we should or should not live. I don't know about you, but I would rather lose a straight up vote on every issue dear to my heart than have five men and women in black robes telling everyone that I'm right. America is a democracy, and by God, it ought to stay that way.
Finally, to the person who mentioned that we are a republic and not a democracy, you are only half right and inconsequentially at that. We are indeed a republic, but a democratic republic, and I don't see how the matter of representation in government at all detracts from the idea that this is a democratic country and that citizens have the right to vote their consciences, regardless of how those consciences are formed (religious, a-religious).
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On October 20 2011 08:25 radiatoren wrote:Show nested quote +On October 20 2011 06:55 Penitent wrote:
It's not being religious that ticks people off, unless somebody's a real fundamentalist. It's the legislating of religious issues.
Long time reader, first time poster. The quote above is emblematic of the hippocritical stupidity so often displayed by the political left, and I feel compelled to say something to expose it for what it is. Why should it be reprehensible for a religious person to vote for his preferences but "courageous" for an a-religious person to do the same? No serious conservative (myself included) has ever suggested that we pass laws to compel belief in anything, yet to hear tell from the media and other leftists you'd swear there was a conspiracy to turn America into an Iranian-style theocracy. America is a democracy. This means that we all have the right to vote our consciences when deciding, as a collective whole, how we are to live and what we are to do as a nation, as a state, and as a city. If you like abortion because you don't think the thing inside a pregnant woman's womb is a human being, then vote your conscience. But don't presume to invalidate the opinion of someone who disagrees with you and believes that abortion is wrong because it involves the cold-blooded murder of a child. If you like gay marriage because you think that marriage does little more than confer titles, tax benefits, and specific legal rights, then vote to support it. But don't sneer at others who believe that marriage is a holy institution pre-dating government, and who believe that an institution which has never accepted homosexual unions across all cultures at all times in all of recorded human history should not be tampered with by the equivalent of a civilizational diletante. When someone votes for traditional marriage, or pro-life laws, or voluntary prayer in schools, or the teaching of intelligent design as a possible alternative to evolution (which to date STILL has no provable model for the macro-evolutionary change of a species with x number chromosomes into a new species with x+y number of chromosomes), do you rage because you feel like someone is trying to impose his beliefs on you? Guess what, it feels the EXACT same way for conservatives when you vote for gay marriage, abortion on demand, the exile of faith from all public discourse, or the acceptance of Darwinian evolution as a provable fact. This is the nature of democratic politics. Every single time you vote one way or another on an issue, you are voting to impose your thoughts, your preferences, your views, and your beliefs on other people. This is okay; this is how democracy is supposed to work. Living in a democracy means everyone gets a say. It doesn't mean you always get your way, but it beats the hell out of being ruled by a monarch or a dictator or a politburo or a central committee who decide what to do and don't give a fuck if you and everyone else disagree with them. And if you lose? Go out and convince your fellow citizens that yours is the righteous cause, and next time maybe the votes will swing in your favor. Don't for a second believe the bullshit notion that your values or beliefs or views are any better or more important than someone else's and should therefore be accorded greater weight or respect, to the point where people who don't think like you do ought to be mocked and ridiculed as "fundamentalists" or "neanderthals" or "mindless sheep". I'm a devout Catholic and a political conservative because I think for myself, I understand my values, and I know who and what I support. I'm no more a mindless peon than an atheist liberal who takes the exact opposite stand on every issue. With that all said, I'm disappointed in the GOP field of candidates. Of the two most serious contenders, Perry looks like he's got too much baggage to wrap up the nomination, but Romney is little more than a smooth-talking liar. It pains me to think that the GOP is likely to nominate the man who did Obamacare for his state (with disasterous consequences btw) even before Obama did Obamacare for the nation. Conservatives are supposed to trust him to repeal it? Give me a break. And God-forbid Romney be charged with any Supreme Court appointments; Bush '41 was ever a fake conservative and he gave us Souter, so I shudder to think what bench-legislating moron Romney would foist upon the nation. The pope and thereby the leader of the catholic church on earth has accepted abortion under certain circumstances. In europe there is a whole science behind when a child can be aborted and when it should not. I completely agree that killing a child days before birth is murder. however, killing it within the first month is however just removal of a parasite. Point being: You cannot take a stand just for the sake of the stand. Understand why you have it at least and don't just quote bumper stickers. Evolution and prayer is not used, in schools in europe at all. Not Intelligent design, though a serious religious/culture/moral is being taught. Neither has Darwins theories got any substantial meat on it other than living things get better developed for the way they live through generations. The Darwinism in the US is mostly propagande to piss off religious people and has nothing to do with Darwin and his very inconsistent science, really. However in science you need a certain understanding of the past and it is hard for most to understand it if intelligent design has to be fit in. Most religious scientists are putting serious interpretation into understanding the bible in a way, where it can fit into science. Gay marriage probably should not be in church anyway, but why take away the advantages of marriage in a stately manner? My whole point is: If you are willing to accept that your understanding of the Bibel has to be bend somehow to fit in the same paradigm as science, there is absolutely no problem in having them both. However, if you cannot accept that an interpretation of the Bibel is absolutely needed for it to fit todays society it is a problem with your view. Putting these kinds of decissions into federal law is wrong on so many levels from my european point of view.
I agree with you on much of this, though to be honest I didn't write my original post (or the succeeding ones) to get bogged down in the specifics of one issue or another (we could do that, but it wasn't the point of my original post).
I just wanted to say that atheist liberals have no more of a monopoly on righteousness and truth than religious conservatives and that criticism of one position or another should take the form of "I think your position is bad for reasons x, y, and z" as opposed to "I think your position is bad because you're one of those brainless morons who believes in God".
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On October 20 2011 09:00 Penitent wrote:Show nested quote +On October 20 2011 07:51 Kiarip wrote:On October 20 2011 06:55 Penitent wrote:
It's not being religious that ticks people off, unless somebody's a real fundamentalist. It's the legislating of religious issues.
Long time reader, first time poster. The quote above is emblematic of the hippocritical stupidity so often displayed by the political left, and I feel compelled to say something to expose it for what it is. Why should it be reprehensible for a religious person to vote for his preferences but "courageous" for an a-religious person to do the same? No serious conservative (myself included) has ever suggested that we pass laws to compel belief in anything, yet to hear tell from the media and other leftists you'd swear there was a conspiracy to turn America into an Iranian-style theocracy. America is a democracy. This means that we all have the right to vote our consciences when deciding, as a collective whole, how we are to live and what we are to do as a nation, as a state, and as a city. If you like abortion because you don't think the thing inside a pregnant woman's womb is a human being, then vote your conscience. But don't presume to invalidate the opinion of someone who disagrees with you and believes that abortion is wrong because it involves the cold-blooded murder of a child. If you like gay marriage because you think that marriage does little more than confer titles, tax benefits, and specific legal rights, then vote to support it. But don't sneer at others who believe that marriage is a holy institution pre-dating government, and who believe that an institution which has never accepted homosexual unions across all cultures at all times in all of recorded human history should not be tampered with by the equivalent of a civilizational diletante. However, why should you make legislature that limits the rights of a person to do something that doesn't hurt anyone? who cares if 51% believes it's wrong, or 99% of people believe it's wrong. If it doesn't infringe on the constitutional rights of anyone else it should be allowed. And if marriage is indead a holy insitution pre-dating government, then why should we have government sponsorship of marriage? Let's remove all economic benefits from marriage so it REALLY IS a spiritual thing, and then if a church doesn't want to marry to gays because it's against its religious ideals... fine it won't. Who are you to say what does or does not "hurt" someone? Maybe you think that gay marriage or abortion or socialized medicine don't "hurt" anyone, but I and millions of others would strongly disagree. But let's say for the sake of argument that, for example, gay marriage doesn't "hurt" anyone as an objective fact. So what? Gay marriage is not a Constitutional right. This means that if there are enough people who think it a repugnant thing they should and do have the right to vote against it. Here's a parallel example: no one is "hurt" in mixed martial arts because the fighters engage in it of their own free will, but different states are free to permit or deny the practice of the sport in their domains because, like gay marriage, mixed martial arts is not a Constitutional right. As for ending government recognition of marriage, I can agree with you there. I would rather end the practice of officially recognizing marriage than allow the state to re-define an institution which has stood, largely unchanged, for the better part of all of recorded human history. Show nested quote +
When someone votes for traditional marriage, or pro-life laws, or voluntary prayer in schools, or the teaching of intelligent design as a possible alternative to evolution (which to date STILL has no provable model for the macro-evolutionary change of a species with x number chromosomes into a new species with x+y number of chromosomes), do you rage because you feel like someone is trying to impose his beliefs on you?
Guess what, it feels the EXACT same way for conservatives when you vote for gay marriage, abortion on demand, the exile of faith from all public discourse, or the acceptance of Darwinian evolution as a provable fact.
It doesn't because the existence of gay marriage, doesn't infringe on your human rights. Abortion is more contraversial though. As for not teaching faith, well I think this is a question of whether it would be a class that teaches a student vitally important skill or information or not. I'm against public schools in general, though and private schools to some extent can already teach faith if they want. This issue should be completely separate from the evolutionary issue though. Whether or not to teach evolution in a public school is more of a scientific issue. I think that you can teach it in school just fine, because Evolution as a scientific theory explains a great deal of what we know about species, still not everything, but there hasn't been any natural occurances that directly contradict evolution, although there are some that evolution has not yet fully explained.
This is the nature of democratic politics. Every single time you vote one way or another on an issue, you are voting to impose your thoughts, your preferences, your views, and your beliefs on other people. This is okay; this is how democracy is supposed to work. Living in a democracy means everyone gets a say. It doesn't mean you always get your way, but it beats the hell out of being ruled by a monarch or a dictator or a politburo or a central committee who decide what to do and don't give a fuck if you and everyone else disagree with them. And if you lose? Go out and convince your fellow citizens that yours is the righteous cause, and next time maybe the votes will swing in your favor.
No. Because luckily we have the constiution which protects our rights from oppressive legislation. And which rights might those be? Don't assume that the right to do the things you want to do is automatically in the Constitution; chances are it is not. This is what really rankles lots of Conservatives. People are always claiming they have the Constitutional right to this, that, and the other thing when no fair reading of the Constitution or its history could EVER support any of the rights so claimed. Show nested quote +
Don't for a second believe the bullshit notion that your values or beliefs or views are any better or more important than someone else's and should therefore be accorded greater weight or respect, to the point where people who don't think like you do ought to be mocked and ridiculed as "fundamentalists" or "neanderthals" or "mindless sheep". I'm a devout Catholic and a political conservative because I think for myself, I understand my values, and I know who and what I support. I'm no more a mindless peon than an atheist liberal who takes the exact opposite stand on every issue.
But when you're talking about issues of whether or not to take away a person's personal liberty which doesn't actually harm anyone... Should the people have a right to do that even if they're unananymous in their decision? Everyone likes more liberty, not less, but being a part of a democracy means living by the decisions of the community as a whole once those decisions are made. Yes, we have a Constitution, and yes, that Constitution prevents majority rule from taking away specific liberties from the people (e.g., the right to free speech, the right to vote, the right to be free from enslavement). But the Constitution doesn't limit the ability of the body politic, or any subunit thereof, from doing what it wants to do within the boundaries of the Constitution. Gay marriage, abortion, functionally atheist schools and civic bodies - none of that crap is in, or logically mandated by, the Constitution or its history. That these have come to be accepted as Constitutional rights is the work of activist Supreme Court justices, who have robbed us all of our collective right to decide for ourselves how we should or should not live. I don't know about you, but I would rather lose a straight up vote on every issue dear to my heart than have five men and women in black robes telling everyone that I'm right. America is a democracy, and by God, it ought to stay that way. Finally, to the person who mentioned that we are a republic and not a democracy, you are only half right and inconsequentially at that. We are indeed a republic, but a democratic republic, and I don't see how the matter of representation in government at all detracts from the idea that this is a democratic country and that citizens have the right to vote their consciences, regardless of how those consciences are formed (religious, a-religious).
Marriage itself my not be specifically defined as a constitutional right, but treating people unequally is NOT Constitutional. Big difference.
And you just hit the nail on the head with your analogy. It's the STATE'S decision to make that call, not the federal government, yet you have some Republican frontrunners who proclaim sweeping federal legislation to control things like this. And isn't that antithetical to Republican ideals of limited government involvement? This is why it keeps becoming a contentious issue, even within the party itself. You've got fiscal conservatives/social moderates mixed in with these extremely opinionated far-right whackjobs. And if a Republican candidate doesn't storm through the door proclaiming they're going to put the concept of abortion into a cannon and launch it into the sun, they immediately lose that base.
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The problem is illegal immigration, not migration. The sovereignty of a nation is in part defined by it's borders, and there are a lot of costs and problems and complications due to the practically open border with Mexico, whether it's the costs of supporting large numbers of people who are coming from poverty, to the near war being waged with the drug cartels on US borders, to the increased crime in border states, to the tension that results from two separate populations living together while adhering to both a different culture and language.
Actually this is very consistent with views on immigrants throughout America's history (and probably Canada's.) Whoever is the latest immigrant, the old immigrants hate on, and then when another ethnic group immigrates, the old scapegoats join in. The British hated the Irish immigrants (Catholic as well), but both turned around hated the Italians and Eastern Europeans, but these also turned around and hated the influx of Japanese and Chinese. It's simply the Mexicans turn.
And by hated I mean scapegoated for many societal problems- Prohibition era, Irish meant Catholic, the two of which meant alcohol was acceptable. So then naturally the perceived moral bankruptcy of the time is blamed on them.
There is the issue of legal vs illegal immigration. However the attitude towards immigrants goes beyond the legality of it I think.
The migration problem in the US exists because there is no plan. Countries like Australia & Canada have planned migration policies. Declaring it illegal is not gonna stop Mexicans who want in, and it actually makes them criminals, and negates social integration of the migrants. After considering this, you should add the fact that the US is in the middle of an Economical crisis, that leads to the traditional "blame game" which gets exacerbated by the Mass Media.
As long as there is no plan to integrate the people who want to live and work in the US of A, big problems will arise.
30 years ago, part of my family (my cousins) migrated to Australia. They were sent to the middle of the Australian Outback (by the Australian Goverment) to work the land. Now, they are pretty much Australians as everyone else. That was a quite nice policy : We will give you a job, and you will have to work for it. Now they own a beautiful estate, and some houses in Perth.
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On October 20 2011 09:00 Penitent wrote:Show nested quote +On October 20 2011 07:51 Kiarip wrote:On October 20 2011 06:55 Penitent wrote:
It's not being religious that ticks people off, unless somebody's a real fundamentalist. It's the legislating of religious issues.
Long time reader, first time poster. The quote above is emblematic of the hippocritical stupidity so often displayed by the political left, and I feel compelled to say something to expose it for what it is. Why should it be reprehensible for a religious person to vote for his preferences but "courageous" for an a-religious person to do the same? No serious conservative (myself included) has ever suggested that we pass laws to compel belief in anything, yet to hear tell from the media and other leftists you'd swear there was a conspiracy to turn America into an Iranian-style theocracy. America is a democracy. This means that we all have the right to vote our consciences when deciding, as a collective whole, how we are to live and what we are to do as a nation, as a state, and as a city. If you like abortion because you don't think the thing inside a pregnant woman's womb is a human being, then vote your conscience. But don't presume to invalidate the opinion of someone who disagrees with you and believes that abortion is wrong because it involves the cold-blooded murder of a child. If you like gay marriage because you think that marriage does little more than confer titles, tax benefits, and specific legal rights, then vote to support it. But don't sneer at others who believe that marriage is a holy institution pre-dating government, and who believe that an institution which has never accepted homosexual unions across all cultures at all times in all of recorded human history should not be tampered with by the equivalent of a civilizational diletante. However, why should you make legislature that limits the rights of a person to do something that doesn't hurt anyone? who cares if 51% believes it's wrong, or 99% of people believe it's wrong. If it doesn't infringe on the constitutional rights of anyone else it should be allowed. And if marriage is indead a holy insitution pre-dating government, then why should we have government sponsorship of marriage? Let's remove all economic benefits from marriage so it REALLY IS a spiritual thing, and then if a church doesn't want to marry to gays because it's against its religious ideals... fine it won't. Who are you to say what does or does not "hurt" someone? Maybe you think that gay marriage or abortion or socialized medicine don't "hurt" anyone, but I and millions of others would strongly disagree. But let's say for the sake of argument that, for example, gay marriage doesn't "hurt" anyone as an objective fact. So what? Gay marriage is not a Constitutional right. This means that if there are enough people who think it a repugnant thing they should and do have the right to vote against it. Here's a parallel example: no one is "hurt" in mixed martial arts because the fighters engage in it of their own free will, but different states are free to permit or deny the practice of the sport in their domains because, like gay marriage, mixed martial arts is not a Constitutional right. As for ending government recognition of marriage, I can agree with you there. I would rather end the practice of officially recognizing marriage than allow the state to re-define an institution which has stood, largely unchanged, for the better part of all of recorded human history. Show nested quote +
When someone votes for traditional marriage, or pro-life laws, or voluntary prayer in schools, or the teaching of intelligent design as a possible alternative to evolution (which to date STILL has no provable model for the macro-evolutionary change of a species with x number chromosomes into a new species with x+y number of chromosomes), do you rage because you feel like someone is trying to impose his beliefs on you?
Guess what, it feels the EXACT same way for conservatives when you vote for gay marriage, abortion on demand, the exile of faith from all public discourse, or the acceptance of Darwinian evolution as a provable fact.
It doesn't because the existence of gay marriage, doesn't infringe on your human rights. Abortion is more contraversial though. As for not teaching faith, well I think this is a question of whether it would be a class that teaches a student vitally important skill or information or not. I'm against public schools in general, though and private schools to some extent can already teach faith if they want. This issue should be completely separate from the evolutionary issue though. Whether or not to teach evolution in a public school is more of a scientific issue. I think that you can teach it in school just fine, because Evolution as a scientific theory explains a great deal of what we know about species, still not everything, but there hasn't been any natural occurances that directly contradict evolution, although there are some that evolution has not yet fully explained.
This is the nature of democratic politics. Every single time you vote one way or another on an issue, you are voting to impose your thoughts, your preferences, your views, and your beliefs on other people. This is okay; this is how democracy is supposed to work. Living in a democracy means everyone gets a say. It doesn't mean you always get your way, but it beats the hell out of being ruled by a monarch or a dictator or a politburo or a central committee who decide what to do and don't give a fuck if you and everyone else disagree with them. And if you lose? Go out and convince your fellow citizens that yours is the righteous cause, and next time maybe the votes will swing in your favor.
No. Because luckily we have the constiution which protects our rights from oppressive legislation. And which rights might those be? Don't assume that the right to do the things you want to do is automatically in the Constitution; chances are it is not. This is what really rankles lots of Conservatives. People are always claiming they have the Constitutional right to this, that, and the other thing when no fair reading of the Constitution or its history could EVER support any of the rights so claimed. Show nested quote +
Don't for a second believe the bullshit notion that your values or beliefs or views are any better or more important than someone else's and should therefore be accorded greater weight or respect, to the point where people who don't think like you do ought to be mocked and ridiculed as "fundamentalists" or "neanderthals" or "mindless sheep". I'm a devout Catholic and a political conservative because I think for myself, I understand my values, and I know who and what I support. I'm no more a mindless peon than an atheist liberal who takes the exact opposite stand on every issue.
But when you're talking about issues of whether or not to take away a person's personal liberty which doesn't actually harm anyone... Should the people have a right to do that even if they're unananymous in their decision? Everyone likes more liberty, not less, but being a part of a democracy means living by the decisions of the community as a whole once those decisions are made. Yes, we have a Constitution, and yes, that Constitution prevents majority rule from taking away specific liberties from the people (e.g., the right to free speech, the right to vote, the right to be free from enslavement). But the Constitution doesn't limit the ability of the body politic, or any subunit thereof, from doing what it wants to do within the boundaries of the Constitution. Gay marriage, abortion, functionally atheist schools and civic bodies - none of that crap is in, or logically mandated by, the Constitution or its history. That these have come to be accepted as Constitutional rights is the work of activist Supreme Court justices, who have robbed us all of our collective right to decide for ourselves how we should or should not live. I don't know about you, but I would rather lose a straight up vote on every issue dear to my heart than have five men and women in black robes telling everyone that I'm right. America is a democracy, and by God, it ought to stay that way. Finally, to the person who mentioned that we are a republic and not a democracy, you are only half right and inconsequentially at that. We are indeed a republic, but a democratic republic, and I don't see how the matter of representation in government at all detracts from the idea that this is a democratic country and that citizens have the right to vote their consciences, regardless of how those consciences are formed (religious, a-religious).
Because in the constitution it says that state and religion are to be SEPERATE. Also go ahead vote for what you believe in, there is nothing wrong with that, except when you infringe on others rights. That is why we are a democratic-republic, to ensure that we don't have a tyranny of the majority. If you don't believe that gays should have a spiritual marriage or religious marriage, sure that is your belief and you are entitled to it. But when you infringe on their right to get married by a judge, that is when things get messed up. There are plenty of people back in the 1960's who didn't want blacks and whites (interracial marriages). If that's what the country wanted is that what we should have done for the majority at the expense of the minority.
Also ya gay marriage, abortion, and atheist schools and none of that crap is in the Constitution, but neither are countless other things that we do today. The Constitution was deliberately made vaguely because the original writers cannot protect what issues would happen 100, 200, or 300 years from them, they only provided the framework for this country to be founded upon. If you think we should follow the Constitution to the letter, then these issues are the least of your worries and that is whole different discussion altogether.
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On October 20 2011 09:10 Bibdy wrote:Show nested quote +On October 20 2011 09:00 Penitent wrote:On October 20 2011 07:51 Kiarip wrote:On October 20 2011 06:55 Penitent wrote:
It's not being religious that ticks people off, unless somebody's a real fundamentalist. It's the legislating of religious issues.
Long time reader, first time poster. The quote above is emblematic of the hippocritical stupidity so often displayed by the political left, and I feel compelled to say something to expose it for what it is. Why should it be reprehensible for a religious person to vote for his preferences but "courageous" for an a-religious person to do the same? No serious conservative (myself included) has ever suggested that we pass laws to compel belief in anything, yet to hear tell from the media and other leftists you'd swear there was a conspiracy to turn America into an Iranian-style theocracy. America is a democracy. This means that we all have the right to vote our consciences when deciding, as a collective whole, how we are to live and what we are to do as a nation, as a state, and as a city. If you like abortion because you don't think the thing inside a pregnant woman's womb is a human being, then vote your conscience. But don't presume to invalidate the opinion of someone who disagrees with you and believes that abortion is wrong because it involves the cold-blooded murder of a child. If you like gay marriage because you think that marriage does little more than confer titles, tax benefits, and specific legal rights, then vote to support it. But don't sneer at others who believe that marriage is a holy institution pre-dating government, and who believe that an institution which has never accepted homosexual unions across all cultures at all times in all of recorded human history should not be tampered with by the equivalent of a civilizational diletante. However, why should you make legislature that limits the rights of a person to do something that doesn't hurt anyone? who cares if 51% believes it's wrong, or 99% of people believe it's wrong. If it doesn't infringe on the constitutional rights of anyone else it should be allowed. And if marriage is indead a holy insitution pre-dating government, then why should we have government sponsorship of marriage? Let's remove all economic benefits from marriage so it REALLY IS a spiritual thing, and then if a church doesn't want to marry to gays because it's against its religious ideals... fine it won't. Who are you to say what does or does not "hurt" someone? Maybe you think that gay marriage or abortion or socialized medicine don't "hurt" anyone, but I and millions of others would strongly disagree. But let's say for the sake of argument that, for example, gay marriage doesn't "hurt" anyone as an objective fact. So what? Gay marriage is not a Constitutional right. This means that if there are enough people who think it a repugnant thing they should and do have the right to vote against it. Here's a parallel example: no one is "hurt" in mixed martial arts because the fighters engage in it of their own free will, but different states are free to permit or deny the practice of the sport in their domains because, like gay marriage, mixed martial arts is not a Constitutional right. As for ending government recognition of marriage, I can agree with you there. I would rather end the practice of officially recognizing marriage than allow the state to re-define an institution which has stood, largely unchanged, for the better part of all of recorded human history.
When someone votes for traditional marriage, or pro-life laws, or voluntary prayer in schools, or the teaching of intelligent design as a possible alternative to evolution (which to date STILL has no provable model for the macro-evolutionary change of a species with x number chromosomes into a new species with x+y number of chromosomes), do you rage because you feel like someone is trying to impose his beliefs on you?
Guess what, it feels the EXACT same way for conservatives when you vote for gay marriage, abortion on demand, the exile of faith from all public discourse, or the acceptance of Darwinian evolution as a provable fact.
It doesn't because the existence of gay marriage, doesn't infringe on your human rights. Abortion is more contraversial though. As for not teaching faith, well I think this is a question of whether it would be a class that teaches a student vitally important skill or information or not. I'm against public schools in general, though and private schools to some extent can already teach faith if they want. This issue should be completely separate from the evolutionary issue though. Whether or not to teach evolution in a public school is more of a scientific issue. I think that you can teach it in school just fine, because Evolution as a scientific theory explains a great deal of what we know about species, still not everything, but there hasn't been any natural occurances that directly contradict evolution, although there are some that evolution has not yet fully explained.
This is the nature of democratic politics. Every single time you vote one way or another on an issue, you are voting to impose your thoughts, your preferences, your views, and your beliefs on other people. This is okay; this is how democracy is supposed to work. Living in a democracy means everyone gets a say. It doesn't mean you always get your way, but it beats the hell out of being ruled by a monarch or a dictator or a politburo or a central committee who decide what to do and don't give a fuck if you and everyone else disagree with them. And if you lose? Go out and convince your fellow citizens that yours is the righteous cause, and next time maybe the votes will swing in your favor.
No. Because luckily we have the constiution which protects our rights from oppressive legislation. And which rights might those be? Don't assume that the right to do the things you want to do is automatically in the Constitution; chances are it is not. This is what really rankles lots of Conservatives. People are always claiming they have the Constitutional right to this, that, and the other thing when no fair reading of the Constitution or its history could EVER support any of the rights so claimed.
Don't for a second believe the bullshit notion that your values or beliefs or views are any better or more important than someone else's and should therefore be accorded greater weight or respect, to the point where people who don't think like you do ought to be mocked and ridiculed as "fundamentalists" or "neanderthals" or "mindless sheep". I'm a devout Catholic and a political conservative because I think for myself, I understand my values, and I know who and what I support. I'm no more a mindless peon than an atheist liberal who takes the exact opposite stand on every issue.
But when you're talking about issues of whether or not to take away a person's personal liberty which doesn't actually harm anyone... Should the people have a right to do that even if they're unananymous in their decision? Everyone likes more liberty, not less, but being a part of a democracy means living by the decisions of the community as a whole once those decisions are made. Yes, we have a Constitution, and yes, that Constitution prevents majority rule from taking away specific liberties from the people (e.g., the right to free speech, the right to vote, the right to be free from enslavement). But the Constitution doesn't limit the ability of the body politic, or any subunit thereof, from doing what it wants to do within the boundaries of the Constitution. Gay marriage, abortion, functionally atheist schools and civic bodies - none of that crap is in, or logically mandated by, the Constitution or its history. That these have come to be accepted as Constitutional rights is the work of activist Supreme Court justices, who have robbed us all of our collective right to decide for ourselves how we should or should not live. I don't know about you, but I would rather lose a straight up vote on every issue dear to my heart than have five men and women in black robes telling everyone that I'm right. America is a democracy, and by God, it ought to stay that way. Finally, to the person who mentioned that we are a republic and not a democracy, you are only half right and inconsequentially at that. We are indeed a republic, but a democratic republic, and I don't see how the matter of representation in government at all detracts from the idea that this is a democratic country and that citizens have the right to vote their consciences, regardless of how those consciences are formed (religious, a-religious). Marriage itself my not be specifically defined as a constitutional right, but treating people unequally is NOT Constitutional. Big difference. And you just hit the nail on the head with your analogy. It's the STATE'S decision to make that call, not the federal government, yet you have some Republican frontrunners who proclaim sweeping federal legislation to control things like this. And isn't that antithetical to Republican ideals of limited government involvement? This is why it keeps becoming a contentious issue, even within the party itself. You've got fiscal conservatives/social moderates mixed in with these extremely opinionated far-right whackjobs. And if a Republican candidate doesn't storm through the door proclaiming they're going to put the concept of abortion into a cannon and launch it into the sun, they immediately lose that base.
Almost all courts in the U.S. have found marriage to be a fundamental human right.
On October 20 2011 09:00 Penitent wrote:
Gay marriage, abortion, functionally atheist schools and civic bodies - none of that crap is in, or logically mandated by, the Constitution or its history. That these have come to be accepted as Constitutional rights is the work of activist Supreme Court justices, who have robbed us all of our collective right to decide for ourselves how we should or should not live. I don't know about you, but I would rather lose a straight up vote on every issue dear to my heart than have five men and women in black robes telling everyone that I'm right. America is a democracy, and by God, it ought to stay that way.
How ironic.
Regardless so much of your post just makes me cringe, realizing there are some educated people out that try to impose their own religious beliefs on others. And no matter how much you say you aren't, which I've seen you post, you are.
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Canada11398 Posts
On October 20 2011 09:13 ilovelings wrote:Show nested quote +
The problem is illegal immigration, not migration. The sovereignty of a nation is in part defined by it's borders, and there are a lot of costs and problems and complications due to the practically open border with Mexico, whether it's the costs of supporting large numbers of people who are coming from poverty, to the near war being waged with the drug cartels on US borders, to the increased crime in border states, to the tension that results from two separate populations living together while adhering to both a different culture and language.
Show nested quote +Actually this is very consistent with views on immigrants throughout America's history (and probably Canada's.) Whoever is the latest immigrant, the old immigrants hate on, and then when another ethnic group immigrates, the old scapegoats join in. The British hated the Irish immigrants (Catholic as well), but both turned around hated the Italians and Eastern Europeans, but these also turned around and hated the influx of Japanese and Chinese. It's simply the Mexicans turn.
And by hated I mean scapegoated for many societal problems- Prohibition era, Irish meant Catholic, the two of which meant alcohol was acceptable. So then naturally the perceived moral bankruptcy of the time is blamed on them.
There is the issue of legal vs illegal immigration. However the attitude towards immigrants goes beyond the legality of it I think. The migration problem in the US exists because there is no plan. Countries like Australia & Canada have planned migration policies. Declaring it illegal is not gonna stop Mexicans who want in, and it actually makes them criminals, and negates social integration of the migrants. After considering this, you should add the fact that the US is in the middle of an Economical crisis, that leads to the traditional "blame game" which gets exacerbated by the Mass Media. As long as there is no plan to integrate the people who want to live and work in the US of A, big problems will arise.
Well that's possible. I'm glad that a few Republican candidates are finally acknowledging the magnet of job opportunities because illegals are actually hired. I'm not very familiar with current immigration polices- more the historical reactions in the 20th Century. And at that time even Canada had its share of race riots.
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On October 20 2011 09:00 Penitent wrote:Show nested quote +On October 20 2011 07:51 Kiarip wrote:On October 20 2011 06:55 Penitent wrote:
It's not being religious that ticks people off, unless somebody's a real fundamentalist. It's the legislating of religious issues.
Long time reader, first time poster. The quote above is emblematic of the hippocritical stupidity so often displayed by the political left, and I feel compelled to say something to expose it for what it is. Why should it be reprehensible for a religious person to vote for his preferences but "courageous" for an a-religious person to do the same? No serious conservative (myself included) has ever suggested that we pass laws to compel belief in anything, yet to hear tell from the media and other leftists you'd swear there was a conspiracy to turn America into an Iranian-style theocracy. America is a democracy. This means that we all have the right to vote our consciences when deciding, as a collective whole, how we are to live and what we are to do as a nation, as a state, and as a city. If you like abortion because you don't think the thing inside a pregnant woman's womb is a human being, then vote your conscience. But don't presume to invalidate the opinion of someone who disagrees with you and believes that abortion is wrong because it involves the cold-blooded murder of a child. If you like gay marriage because you think that marriage does little more than confer titles, tax benefits, and specific legal rights, then vote to support it. But don't sneer at others who believe that marriage is a holy institution pre-dating government, and who believe that an institution which has never accepted homosexual unions across all cultures at all times in all of recorded human history should not be tampered with by the equivalent of a civilizational diletante. However, why should you make legislature that limits the rights of a person to do something that doesn't hurt anyone? who cares if 51% believes it's wrong, or 99% of people believe it's wrong. If it doesn't infringe on the constitutional rights of anyone else it should be allowed. And if marriage is indead a holy insitution pre-dating government, then why should we have government sponsorship of marriage? Let's remove all economic benefits from marriage so it REALLY IS a spiritual thing, and then if a church doesn't want to marry to gays because it's against its religious ideals... fine it won't. Who are you to say what does or does not "hurt" someone? Maybe you think that gay marriage or abortion or socialized medicine don't "hurt" anyone, but I and millions of others would strongly disagree.
By hurt I mean it doesn't infringe on any human rights that the consitution defines and mandates the government to protect. Socialized medicine does hurt, because everyone gets taxed for its expenditures.
But let's say for the sake of argument that, for example, gay marriage doesn't "hurt" anyone as an objective fact. So what? Gay marriage is not a Constitutional right. This means that if there are enough people who think it a repugnant thing they should and do have the right to vote against it. Here's a parallel example: no one is "hurt" in mixed martial arts because the fighters engage in it of their own free will, but different states are free to permit or deny the practice of the sport in their domains because, like gay marriage, mixed martial arts is not a Constitutional right.
We have a right to persue happiness without infringing on other people's rights. So if getting married makes someone happy they should be allowed to do it. Of course the only argument against this is that marriage provides all these benefits to the people getting married which are paid for by the state, so you can make a bigotted argument like "oh the gays don't deserve these priveledges."
But actually it's not the government's purpose to provide these priveledges to anyone in the first place, so yeah the gays shouldn't get them but neither should the straight folk.
As for mixed martial arts... We also have freedom of contract. The whole thing about different states permitting and not permitting practice of Martials Arts is also a bit contraversial... But unless there's a specific law against it, the practice of MMA is permitted by freedom of contract.
Both fighters sign a contract regarding the rules of the fight, permitting each other to possibly cause bodily harm to one another in accordance with the rules, and when they both sign it, they both sign it they remove liability from each other regarding hurting each other.
You can say the same thing about work. Someone could give you money to do something, and then you don't do it, so you say... "Oh, it's my consitutional right to do what I want to do, and not do what I don't want to do," but if you signed the contract, infringing it will have consequences.
As for ending government recognition of marriage, I can agree with you there. I would rather end the practice of officially recognizing marriage than allow the state to re-define an institution which has stood, largely unchanged, for the better part of all of recorded human history.
Ok. So we're in agreement. Although maybe you should study your history, because homosexual companionship type relationships have existed between men even back in ancient greece, although admittedly they weren't marriages.
Show nested quote +
When someone votes for traditional marriage, or pro-life laws, or voluntary prayer in schools, or the teaching of intelligent design as a possible alternative to evolution (which to date STILL has no provable model for the macro-evolutionary change of a species with x number chromosomes into a new species with x+y number of chromosomes), do you rage because you feel like someone is trying to impose his beliefs on you?
Guess what, it feels the EXACT same way for conservatives when you vote for gay marriage, abortion on demand, the exile of faith from all public discourse, or the acceptance of Darwinian evolution as a provable fact.
It doesn't because the existence of gay marriage, doesn't infringe on your human rights. Abortion is more contraversial though. As for not teaching faith, well I think this is a question of whether it would be a class that teaches a student vitally important skill or information or not. I'm against public schools in general, though and private schools to some extent can already teach faith if they want. This issue should be completely separate from the evolutionary issue though. Whether or not to teach evolution in a public school is more of a scientific issue. I think that you can teach it in school just fine, because Evolution as a scientific theory explains a great deal of what we know about species, still not everything, but there hasn't been any natural occurances that directly contradict evolution, although there are some that evolution has not yet fully explained.
This is the nature of democratic politics. Every single time you vote one way or another on an issue, you are voting to impose your thoughts, your preferences, your views, and your beliefs on other people. This is okay; this is how democracy is supposed to work. Living in a democracy means everyone gets a say. It doesn't mean you always get your way, but it beats the hell out of being ruled by a monarch or a dictator or a politburo or a central committee who decide what to do and don't give a fuck if you and everyone else disagree with them. And if you lose? Go out and convince your fellow citizens that yours is the righteous cause, and next time maybe the votes will swing in your favor.
No. Because luckily we have the constiution which protects our rights from oppressive legislation. And which rights might those be? Don't assume that the right to do the things you want to do is automatically in the Constitution; chances are it is not. This is what really rankles lots of Conservatives. People are always claiming they have the Constitutional right to this, that, and the other thing when no fair reading of the Constitution or its history could EVER support any of the rights so claimed.
The consitution explicitly states that you have the right to persue your happiness as long as it doesn't directly interfere with others' Constitutional rights.
It also protects right of speech, worship, property rights, etc.
Show nested quote +
Don't for a second believe the bullshit notion that your values or beliefs or views are any better or more important than someone else's and should therefore be accorded greater weight or respect, to the point where people who don't think like you do ought to be mocked and ridiculed as "fundamentalists" or "neanderthals" or "mindless sheep". I'm a devout Catholic and a political conservative because I think for myself, I understand my values, and I know who and what I support. I'm no more a mindless peon than an atheist liberal who takes the exact opposite stand on every issue.
But when you're talking about issues of whether or not to take away a person's personal liberty which doesn't actually harm anyone... Should the people have a right to do that even if they're unananymous in their decision? Everyone likes more liberty, not less, but being a part of a democracy means living by the decisions of the community as a whole once those decisions are made. Yes, we have a Constitution, and yes, that Constitution prevents majority rule from taking away specific liberties from the people (e.g., the right to free speech, the right to vote, the right to be free from enslavement). But the Constitution doesn't limit the ability of the body politic, or any subunit thereof, from doing what it wants to do within the boundaries of the Constitution.
Well of course this is where the argument lies, and the look where the loose interpretation of the constitution has gotten us to?
If you go with the strict interpretation however:
Yes, the government can make laws, but it can not make laws that contradict a person's consitutional right to pursue his happiness. For example if punching random people in the face is how you pursue happiness, a government can make a law against that to deal with the problem of punching people in the face, because it's a method of pursuing happiness that infringes on the rights of others.
But the government can not pass a law against hitting a punching bag in your home, because you're not hurting anyone's rights.
Gay marriage, abortion, functionally atheist schools and civic bodies - none of that crap is in, or logically mandated by, the Constitution or its history. That these have come to be accepted as Constitutional rights is the work of activist Supreme Court justices, who have robbed us all of our collective right to decide for ourselves how we should or should not live. I don't know about you, but I would rather lose a straight up vote on every issue dear to my heart than have five men and women in black robes telling everyone that I'm right. America is a democracy, and by God, it ought to stay that way.
Public schools aren't mandated in the consitution at all. The constitution doens't give a right to an education, although you do have a right to try to pursue education.
But gay marriage is as much a consitutional right as marriage, and atheist schools are as much a consitutional rights as christian schools.
Meaning... none of those things actually infringe on any third party individuals' rights... Of course public schooling is something that the federal government shouldn't have any power over at all, but I guess the states are allowed to institute it, and preach what is allowed to be taught in those schools.
However, private schools should be allowed to teach whatever they want.
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On October 20 2011 09:21 Falling wrote:Show nested quote +On October 20 2011 09:13 ilovelings wrote:
The problem is illegal immigration, not migration. The sovereignty of a nation is in part defined by it's borders, and there are a lot of costs and problems and complications due to the practically open border with Mexico, whether it's the costs of supporting large numbers of people who are coming from poverty, to the near war being waged with the drug cartels on US borders, to the increased crime in border states, to the tension that results from two separate populations living together while adhering to both a different culture and language.
Actually this is very consistent with views on immigrants throughout America's history (and probably Canada's.) Whoever is the latest immigrant, the old immigrants hate on, and then when another ethnic group immigrates, the old scapegoats join in. The British hated the Irish immigrants (Catholic as well), but both turned around hated the Italians and Eastern Europeans, but these also turned around and hated the influx of Japanese and Chinese. It's simply the Mexicans turn.
And by hated I mean scapegoated for many societal problems- Prohibition era, Irish meant Catholic, the two of which meant alcohol was acceptable. So then naturally the perceived moral bankruptcy of the time is blamed on them.
There is the issue of legal vs illegal immigration. However the attitude towards immigrants goes beyond the legality of it I think. The migration problem in the US exists because there is no plan. Countries like Australia & Canada have planned migration policies. Declaring it illegal is not gonna stop Mexicans who want in, and it actually makes them criminals, and negates social integration of the migrants. After considering this, you should add the fact that the US is in the middle of an Economical crisis, that leads to the traditional "blame game" which gets exacerbated by the Mass Media. As long as there is no plan to integrate the people who want to live and work in the US of A, big problems will arise. Well that's possible. I'm glad that a few Republican candidates are finally acknowledging the magnet of job opportunities because illegals are actually hired. I'm not very familiar with current immigration polices- more the historical reactions in the 20th Century. And at that time even Canada had its share of race riots.
I know about migration because I have close relatives in Australia, Italy, and Ukraine. The Canadian goverment offered a visa to him because he is a very talented jeweler who has worked for several embasies (and embasador's wives).
Last time I checked, Canada offers living conditions to qualified migrants so they can get a job/start their own business more efficiently.
The last time my family got toghether was for a marriage in Australia. Ukranians can't handle the Aussie summer.
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On October 20 2011 09:21 FabledIntegral wrote:Show nested quote +On October 20 2011 09:10 Bibdy wrote:On October 20 2011 09:00 Penitent wrote:On October 20 2011 07:51 Kiarip wrote:On October 20 2011 06:55 Penitent wrote:
It's not being religious that ticks people off, unless somebody's a real fundamentalist. It's the legislating of religious issues.
Long time reader, first time poster. The quote above is emblematic of the hippocritical stupidity so often displayed by the political left, and I feel compelled to say something to expose it for what it is. Why should it be reprehensible for a religious person to vote for his preferences but "courageous" for an a-religious person to do the same? No serious conservative (myself included) has ever suggested that we pass laws to compel belief in anything, yet to hear tell from the media and other leftists you'd swear there was a conspiracy to turn America into an Iranian-style theocracy. America is a democracy. This means that we all have the right to vote our consciences when deciding, as a collective whole, how we are to live and what we are to do as a nation, as a state, and as a city. If you like abortion because you don't think the thing inside a pregnant woman's womb is a human being, then vote your conscience. But don't presume to invalidate the opinion of someone who disagrees with you and believes that abortion is wrong because it involves the cold-blooded murder of a child. If you like gay marriage because you think that marriage does little more than confer titles, tax benefits, and specific legal rights, then vote to support it. But don't sneer at others who believe that marriage is a holy institution pre-dating government, and who believe that an institution which has never accepted homosexual unions across all cultures at all times in all of recorded human history should not be tampered with by the equivalent of a civilizational diletante. However, why should you make legislature that limits the rights of a person to do something that doesn't hurt anyone? who cares if 51% believes it's wrong, or 99% of people believe it's wrong. If it doesn't infringe on the constitutional rights of anyone else it should be allowed. And if marriage is indead a holy insitution pre-dating government, then why should we have government sponsorship of marriage? Let's remove all economic benefits from marriage so it REALLY IS a spiritual thing, and then if a church doesn't want to marry to gays because it's against its religious ideals... fine it won't. Who are you to say what does or does not "hurt" someone? Maybe you think that gay marriage or abortion or socialized medicine don't "hurt" anyone, but I and millions of others would strongly disagree. But let's say for the sake of argument that, for example, gay marriage doesn't "hurt" anyone as an objective fact. So what? Gay marriage is not a Constitutional right. This means that if there are enough people who think it a repugnant thing they should and do have the right to vote against it. Here's a parallel example: no one is "hurt" in mixed martial arts because the fighters engage in it of their own free will, but different states are free to permit or deny the practice of the sport in their domains because, like gay marriage, mixed martial arts is not a Constitutional right. As for ending government recognition of marriage, I can agree with you there. I would rather end the practice of officially recognizing marriage than allow the state to re-define an institution which has stood, largely unchanged, for the better part of all of recorded human history.
When someone votes for traditional marriage, or pro-life laws, or voluntary prayer in schools, or the teaching of intelligent design as a possible alternative to evolution (which to date STILL has no provable model for the macro-evolutionary change of a species with x number chromosomes into a new species with x+y number of chromosomes), do you rage because you feel like someone is trying to impose his beliefs on you?
Guess what, it feels the EXACT same way for conservatives when you vote for gay marriage, abortion on demand, the exile of faith from all public discourse, or the acceptance of Darwinian evolution as a provable fact.
It doesn't because the existence of gay marriage, doesn't infringe on your human rights. Abortion is more contraversial though. As for not teaching faith, well I think this is a question of whether it would be a class that teaches a student vitally important skill or information or not. I'm against public schools in general, though and private schools to some extent can already teach faith if they want. This issue should be completely separate from the evolutionary issue though. Whether or not to teach evolution in a public school is more of a scientific issue. I think that you can teach it in school just fine, because Evolution as a scientific theory explains a great deal of what we know about species, still not everything, but there hasn't been any natural occurances that directly contradict evolution, although there are some that evolution has not yet fully explained.
This is the nature of democratic politics. Every single time you vote one way or another on an issue, you are voting to impose your thoughts, your preferences, your views, and your beliefs on other people. This is okay; this is how democracy is supposed to work. Living in a democracy means everyone gets a say. It doesn't mean you always get your way, but it beats the hell out of being ruled by a monarch or a dictator or a politburo or a central committee who decide what to do and don't give a fuck if you and everyone else disagree with them. And if you lose? Go out and convince your fellow citizens that yours is the righteous cause, and next time maybe the votes will swing in your favor.
No. Because luckily we have the constiution which protects our rights from oppressive legislation. And which rights might those be? Don't assume that the right to do the things you want to do is automatically in the Constitution; chances are it is not. This is what really rankles lots of Conservatives. People are always claiming they have the Constitutional right to this, that, and the other thing when no fair reading of the Constitution or its history could EVER support any of the rights so claimed.
Don't for a second believe the bullshit notion that your values or beliefs or views are any better or more important than someone else's and should therefore be accorded greater weight or respect, to the point where people who don't think like you do ought to be mocked and ridiculed as "fundamentalists" or "neanderthals" or "mindless sheep". I'm a devout Catholic and a political conservative because I think for myself, I understand my values, and I know who and what I support. I'm no more a mindless peon than an atheist liberal who takes the exact opposite stand on every issue.
But when you're talking about issues of whether or not to take away a person's personal liberty which doesn't actually harm anyone... Should the people have a right to do that even if they're unananymous in their decision? Everyone likes more liberty, not less, but being a part of a democracy means living by the decisions of the community as a whole once those decisions are made. Yes, we have a Constitution, and yes, that Constitution prevents majority rule from taking away specific liberties from the people (e.g., the right to free speech, the right to vote, the right to be free from enslavement). But the Constitution doesn't limit the ability of the body politic, or any subunit thereof, from doing what it wants to do within the boundaries of the Constitution. Gay marriage, abortion, functionally atheist schools and civic bodies - none of that crap is in, or logically mandated by, the Constitution or its history. That these have come to be accepted as Constitutional rights is the work of activist Supreme Court justices, who have robbed us all of our collective right to decide for ourselves how we should or should not live. I don't know about you, but I would rather lose a straight up vote on every issue dear to my heart than have five men and women in black robes telling everyone that I'm right. America is a democracy, and by God, it ought to stay that way. Finally, to the person who mentioned that we are a republic and not a democracy, you are only half right and inconsequentially at that. We are indeed a republic, but a democratic republic, and I don't see how the matter of representation in government at all detracts from the idea that this is a democratic country and that citizens have the right to vote their consciences, regardless of how those consciences are formed (religious, a-religious). Marriage itself my not be specifically defined as a constitutional right, but treating people unequally is NOT Constitutional. Big difference. And you just hit the nail on the head with your analogy. It's the STATE'S decision to make that call, not the federal government, yet you have some Republican frontrunners who proclaim sweeping federal legislation to control things like this. And isn't that antithetical to Republican ideals of limited government involvement? This is why it keeps becoming a contentious issue, even within the party itself. You've got fiscal conservatives/social moderates mixed in with these extremely opinionated far-right whackjobs. And if a Republican candidate doesn't storm through the door proclaiming they're going to put the concept of abortion into a cannon and launch it into the sun, they immediately lose that base. Almost all courts in the U.S. have found marriage to be a fundamental human right.
I don't think that's exactly true. They just always end up throwing specific cases (such as Loving vs Virginia) out because the opposition always fails to construct a valid, Constitutional argument to deny two people their decision to marry one another. That doesn't specifically make it a Constitutional right, but that does make it protected by Constitutional law in an indirect way.
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On October 20 2011 09:29 Bibdy wrote:Show nested quote +On October 20 2011 09:21 FabledIntegral wrote:On October 20 2011 09:10 Bibdy wrote:On October 20 2011 09:00 Penitent wrote:On October 20 2011 07:51 Kiarip wrote:On October 20 2011 06:55 Penitent wrote:
It's not being religious that ticks people off, unless somebody's a real fundamentalist. It's the legislating of religious issues.
Long time reader, first time poster. The quote above is emblematic of the hippocritical stupidity so often displayed by the political left, and I feel compelled to say something to expose it for what it is. Why should it be reprehensible for a religious person to vote for his preferences but "courageous" for an a-religious person to do the same? No serious conservative (myself included) has ever suggested that we pass laws to compel belief in anything, yet to hear tell from the media and other leftists you'd swear there was a conspiracy to turn America into an Iranian-style theocracy. America is a democracy. This means that we all have the right to vote our consciences when deciding, as a collective whole, how we are to live and what we are to do as a nation, as a state, and as a city. If you like abortion because you don't think the thing inside a pregnant woman's womb is a human being, then vote your conscience. But don't presume to invalidate the opinion of someone who disagrees with you and believes that abortion is wrong because it involves the cold-blooded murder of a child. If you like gay marriage because you think that marriage does little more than confer titles, tax benefits, and specific legal rights, then vote to support it. But don't sneer at others who believe that marriage is a holy institution pre-dating government, and who believe that an institution which has never accepted homosexual unions across all cultures at all times in all of recorded human history should not be tampered with by the equivalent of a civilizational diletante. However, why should you make legislature that limits the rights of a person to do something that doesn't hurt anyone? who cares if 51% believes it's wrong, or 99% of people believe it's wrong. If it doesn't infringe on the constitutional rights of anyone else it should be allowed. And if marriage is indead a holy insitution pre-dating government, then why should we have government sponsorship of marriage? Let's remove all economic benefits from marriage so it REALLY IS a spiritual thing, and then if a church doesn't want to marry to gays because it's against its religious ideals... fine it won't. Who are you to say what does or does not "hurt" someone? Maybe you think that gay marriage or abortion or socialized medicine don't "hurt" anyone, but I and millions of others would strongly disagree. But let's say for the sake of argument that, for example, gay marriage doesn't "hurt" anyone as an objective fact. So what? Gay marriage is not a Constitutional right. This means that if there are enough people who think it a repugnant thing they should and do have the right to vote against it. Here's a parallel example: no one is "hurt" in mixed martial arts because the fighters engage in it of their own free will, but different states are free to permit or deny the practice of the sport in their domains because, like gay marriage, mixed martial arts is not a Constitutional right. As for ending government recognition of marriage, I can agree with you there. I would rather end the practice of officially recognizing marriage than allow the state to re-define an institution which has stood, largely unchanged, for the better part of all of recorded human history.
When someone votes for traditional marriage, or pro-life laws, or voluntary prayer in schools, or the teaching of intelligent design as a possible alternative to evolution (which to date STILL has no provable model for the macro-evolutionary change of a species with x number chromosomes into a new species with x+y number of chromosomes), do you rage because you feel like someone is trying to impose his beliefs on you?
Guess what, it feels the EXACT same way for conservatives when you vote for gay marriage, abortion on demand, the exile of faith from all public discourse, or the acceptance of Darwinian evolution as a provable fact.
It doesn't because the existence of gay marriage, doesn't infringe on your human rights. Abortion is more contraversial though. As for not teaching faith, well I think this is a question of whether it would be a class that teaches a student vitally important skill or information or not. I'm against public schools in general, though and private schools to some extent can already teach faith if they want. This issue should be completely separate from the evolutionary issue though. Whether or not to teach evolution in a public school is more of a scientific issue. I think that you can teach it in school just fine, because Evolution as a scientific theory explains a great deal of what we know about species, still not everything, but there hasn't been any natural occurances that directly contradict evolution, although there are some that evolution has not yet fully explained.
This is the nature of democratic politics. Every single time you vote one way or another on an issue, you are voting to impose your thoughts, your preferences, your views, and your beliefs on other people. This is okay; this is how democracy is supposed to work. Living in a democracy means everyone gets a say. It doesn't mean you always get your way, but it beats the hell out of being ruled by a monarch or a dictator or a politburo or a central committee who decide what to do and don't give a fuck if you and everyone else disagree with them. And if you lose? Go out and convince your fellow citizens that yours is the righteous cause, and next time maybe the votes will swing in your favor.
No. Because luckily we have the constiution which protects our rights from oppressive legislation. And which rights might those be? Don't assume that the right to do the things you want to do is automatically in the Constitution; chances are it is not. This is what really rankles lots of Conservatives. People are always claiming they have the Constitutional right to this, that, and the other thing when no fair reading of the Constitution or its history could EVER support any of the rights so claimed.
Don't for a second believe the bullshit notion that your values or beliefs or views are any better or more important than someone else's and should therefore be accorded greater weight or respect, to the point where people who don't think like you do ought to be mocked and ridiculed as "fundamentalists" or "neanderthals" or "mindless sheep". I'm a devout Catholic and a political conservative because I think for myself, I understand my values, and I know who and what I support. I'm no more a mindless peon than an atheist liberal who takes the exact opposite stand on every issue.
But when you're talking about issues of whether or not to take away a person's personal liberty which doesn't actually harm anyone... Should the people have a right to do that even if they're unananymous in their decision? Everyone likes more liberty, not less, but being a part of a democracy means living by the decisions of the community as a whole once those decisions are made. Yes, we have a Constitution, and yes, that Constitution prevents majority rule from taking away specific liberties from the people (e.g., the right to free speech, the right to vote, the right to be free from enslavement). But the Constitution doesn't limit the ability of the body politic, or any subunit thereof, from doing what it wants to do within the boundaries of the Constitution. Gay marriage, abortion, functionally atheist schools and civic bodies - none of that crap is in, or logically mandated by, the Constitution or its history. That these have come to be accepted as Constitutional rights is the work of activist Supreme Court justices, who have robbed us all of our collective right to decide for ourselves how we should or should not live. I don't know about you, but I would rather lose a straight up vote on every issue dear to my heart than have five men and women in black robes telling everyone that I'm right. America is a democracy, and by God, it ought to stay that way. Finally, to the person who mentioned that we are a republic and not a democracy, you are only half right and inconsequentially at that. We are indeed a republic, but a democratic republic, and I don't see how the matter of representation in government at all detracts from the idea that this is a democratic country and that citizens have the right to vote their consciences, regardless of how those consciences are formed (religious, a-religious). Marriage itself my not be specifically defined as a constitutional right, but treating people unequally is NOT Constitutional. Big difference. And you just hit the nail on the head with your analogy. It's the STATE'S decision to make that call, not the federal government, yet you have some Republican frontrunners who proclaim sweeping federal legislation to control things like this. And isn't that antithetical to Republican ideals of limited government involvement? This is why it keeps becoming a contentious issue, even within the party itself. You've got fiscal conservatives/social moderates mixed in with these extremely opinionated far-right whackjobs. And if a Republican candidate doesn't storm through the door proclaiming they're going to put the concept of abortion into a cannon and launch it into the sun, they immediately lose that base. Almost all courts in the U.S. have found marriage to be a fundamental human right. I don't think that's exactly true. They just always end up throwing specific cases (such as Loving vs Virginia) out because the opposition always fails to construct a valid, Constitutional argument to deny two people their decision to marry one another. That doesn't specifically make it a Constitutional right, but that does make it protected by Constitutional law in an indirect way.
It's 2 people's consitutional right to pursue happiness however, so it's up to the opposition to prove that this infringes on someone else's rights.
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On October 20 2011 09:29 Bibdy wrote:Show nested quote +On October 20 2011 09:21 FabledIntegral wrote:On October 20 2011 09:10 Bibdy wrote:On October 20 2011 09:00 Penitent wrote:On October 20 2011 07:51 Kiarip wrote:On October 20 2011 06:55 Penitent wrote:
It's not being religious that ticks people off, unless somebody's a real fundamentalist. It's the legislating of religious issues.
Long time reader, first time poster. The quote above is emblematic of the hippocritical stupidity so often displayed by the political left, and I feel compelled to say something to expose it for what it is. Why should it be reprehensible for a religious person to vote for his preferences but "courageous" for an a-religious person to do the same? No serious conservative (myself included) has ever suggested that we pass laws to compel belief in anything, yet to hear tell from the media and other leftists you'd swear there was a conspiracy to turn America into an Iranian-style theocracy. America is a democracy. This means that we all have the right to vote our consciences when deciding, as a collective whole, how we are to live and what we are to do as a nation, as a state, and as a city. If you like abortion because you don't think the thing inside a pregnant woman's womb is a human being, then vote your conscience. But don't presume to invalidate the opinion of someone who disagrees with you and believes that abortion is wrong because it involves the cold-blooded murder of a child. If you like gay marriage because you think that marriage does little more than confer titles, tax benefits, and specific legal rights, then vote to support it. But don't sneer at others who believe that marriage is a holy institution pre-dating government, and who believe that an institution which has never accepted homosexual unions across all cultures at all times in all of recorded human history should not be tampered with by the equivalent of a civilizational diletante. However, why should you make legislature that limits the rights of a person to do something that doesn't hurt anyone? who cares if 51% believes it's wrong, or 99% of people believe it's wrong. If it doesn't infringe on the constitutional rights of anyone else it should be allowed. And if marriage is indead a holy insitution pre-dating government, then why should we have government sponsorship of marriage? Let's remove all economic benefits from marriage so it REALLY IS a spiritual thing, and then if a church doesn't want to marry to gays because it's against its religious ideals... fine it won't. Who are you to say what does or does not "hurt" someone? Maybe you think that gay marriage or abortion or socialized medicine don't "hurt" anyone, but I and millions of others would strongly disagree. But let's say for the sake of argument that, for example, gay marriage doesn't "hurt" anyone as an objective fact. So what? Gay marriage is not a Constitutional right. This means that if there are enough people who think it a repugnant thing they should and do have the right to vote against it. Here's a parallel example: no one is "hurt" in mixed martial arts because the fighters engage in it of their own free will, but different states are free to permit or deny the practice of the sport in their domains because, like gay marriage, mixed martial arts is not a Constitutional right. As for ending government recognition of marriage, I can agree with you there. I would rather end the practice of officially recognizing marriage than allow the state to re-define an institution which has stood, largely unchanged, for the better part of all of recorded human history.
When someone votes for traditional marriage, or pro-life laws, or voluntary prayer in schools, or the teaching of intelligent design as a possible alternative to evolution (which to date STILL has no provable model for the macro-evolutionary change of a species with x number chromosomes into a new species with x+y number of chromosomes), do you rage because you feel like someone is trying to impose his beliefs on you?
Guess what, it feels the EXACT same way for conservatives when you vote for gay marriage, abortion on demand, the exile of faith from all public discourse, or the acceptance of Darwinian evolution as a provable fact.
It doesn't because the existence of gay marriage, doesn't infringe on your human rights. Abortion is more contraversial though. As for not teaching faith, well I think this is a question of whether it would be a class that teaches a student vitally important skill or information or not. I'm against public schools in general, though and private schools to some extent can already teach faith if they want. This issue should be completely separate from the evolutionary issue though. Whether or not to teach evolution in a public school is more of a scientific issue. I think that you can teach it in school just fine, because Evolution as a scientific theory explains a great deal of what we know about species, still not everything, but there hasn't been any natural occurances that directly contradict evolution, although there are some that evolution has not yet fully explained.
This is the nature of democratic politics. Every single time you vote one way or another on an issue, you are voting to impose your thoughts, your preferences, your views, and your beliefs on other people. This is okay; this is how democracy is supposed to work. Living in a democracy means everyone gets a say. It doesn't mean you always get your way, but it beats the hell out of being ruled by a monarch or a dictator or a politburo or a central committee who decide what to do and don't give a fuck if you and everyone else disagree with them. And if you lose? Go out and convince your fellow citizens that yours is the righteous cause, and next time maybe the votes will swing in your favor.
No. Because luckily we have the constiution which protects our rights from oppressive legislation. And which rights might those be? Don't assume that the right to do the things you want to do is automatically in the Constitution; chances are it is not. This is what really rankles lots of Conservatives. People are always claiming they have the Constitutional right to this, that, and the other thing when no fair reading of the Constitution or its history could EVER support any of the rights so claimed.
Don't for a second believe the bullshit notion that your values or beliefs or views are any better or more important than someone else's and should therefore be accorded greater weight or respect, to the point where people who don't think like you do ought to be mocked and ridiculed as "fundamentalists" or "neanderthals" or "mindless sheep". I'm a devout Catholic and a political conservative because I think for myself, I understand my values, and I know who and what I support. I'm no more a mindless peon than an atheist liberal who takes the exact opposite stand on every issue.
But when you're talking about issues of whether or not to take away a person's personal liberty which doesn't actually harm anyone... Should the people have a right to do that even if they're unananymous in their decision? Everyone likes more liberty, not less, but being a part of a democracy means living by the decisions of the community as a whole once those decisions are made. Yes, we have a Constitution, and yes, that Constitution prevents majority rule from taking away specific liberties from the people (e.g., the right to free speech, the right to vote, the right to be free from enslavement). But the Constitution doesn't limit the ability of the body politic, or any subunit thereof, from doing what it wants to do within the boundaries of the Constitution. Gay marriage, abortion, functionally atheist schools and civic bodies - none of that crap is in, or logically mandated by, the Constitution or its history. That these have come to be accepted as Constitutional rights is the work of activist Supreme Court justices, who have robbed us all of our collective right to decide for ourselves how we should or should not live. I don't know about you, but I would rather lose a straight up vote on every issue dear to my heart than have five men and women in black robes telling everyone that I'm right. America is a democracy, and by God, it ought to stay that way. Finally, to the person who mentioned that we are a republic and not a democracy, you are only half right and inconsequentially at that. We are indeed a republic, but a democratic republic, and I don't see how the matter of representation in government at all detracts from the idea that this is a democratic country and that citizens have the right to vote their consciences, regardless of how those consciences are formed (religious, a-religious). Marriage itself my not be specifically defined as a constitutional right, but treating people unequally is NOT Constitutional. Big difference. And you just hit the nail on the head with your analogy. It's the STATE'S decision to make that call, not the federal government, yet you have some Republican frontrunners who proclaim sweeping federal legislation to control things like this. And isn't that antithetical to Republican ideals of limited government involvement? This is why it keeps becoming a contentious issue, even within the party itself. You've got fiscal conservatives/social moderates mixed in with these extremely opinionated far-right whackjobs. And if a Republican candidate doesn't storm through the door proclaiming they're going to put the concept of abortion into a cannon and launch it into the sun, they immediately lose that base. Almost all courts in the U.S. have found marriage to be a fundamental human right. I don't think that's exactly true. They just always end up throwing specific cases (such as Loving vs Virginia) out because the opposition always fails to construct a valid, Constitutional argument to deny two people their decision to marry one another. That doesn't specifically make it a Constitutional right, but that does make it protected by Constitutional law in an indirect way.
Well, from Wikipedia
While having power to neither grant nor remove an individual right, the Supreme Court has legally recognized some fundamental rights not specifically enumerated in the Constitution, including:
* the right to interstate travel
* the right to vote
* the right to privacy (which includes within it a set of rights) including;
* a. the right to marriage
* b. the right to procreation
* c. the right to an abortion
* d. the right to private education (Homeschooling one's children)
* e. the right to contraception (the right to use contraceptive devices)
* f. the right of family relations (the right of related persons to live together)
I never said constitutional, but fundamental, which if anything should supercede it, but oh well.
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How does allowing people who love each other to get married infringe someone else's right?
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