[Nuclear1]

I wouldn't say so.  I don't understand where you're drawing these conclusions.  Could you give me something to understand?

http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=2621

I just browsed it but will start reading it now. But it looks like it agrees with what I think starting in the 2nd paragragh that starts with the words "little wonder".

Terrorists must absolutely love these people.  They give them exactly what they want!

Exactly.  The military's doing just fine without the government depriving the American people of the freedoms the military is supposed to be defending.

[Turambar]

It is widely believed to be a lifestyle choice though. Is that possible at all or misinformation?

It is caused by a variety of factors, such as genetic predisposition, hormone-affected genetic expression during development in the womb, and other biological factors.  The choice is whether to hide it and blend with the rest of society (misery), or to go with it and enjoy life.

Exactly.  The military's doing just fine without the government depriving the American people of the freedoms the military is supposed to be defending.

The military should barely be involved in dealing with terrorism.  It should be a job for small commando groups, local militaries, and intelligence agencies.  All that major military intervention does is destabilize things, damage infrastructure, kill civilians, and breed more terrorists.

[General Battuta]

Alrighty here we go.  Nice and short.

Social Conservatism = The promotion of moral lifestyles and behaviors because these are what makes Men decent and civilized.

I absolutely agree. We should promote a world where as many people as possible are free from fear, want, ignorance, and suffering. We should promote a public morality that encourages service, acceptance, and brotherhood while discouraging crime and killing. And we should enable everyone to share in the basic and inalienable liberties of mankind.

That's what you want too, right?

Oh. Wait. You want to constrain civil liberties, expand government control, and classify some citizens as deserving of only restricted rights?

Jeez. That doesn't sound like what you said at all. In fact, it sounds like nobody can agree on what 'moral lifestyles and behaviors' are. It sounds like you want to impose your own view on everyone else.

You're little better than a totalitarian.

The degradation of these is why there is so much chaos in the world today.

There is less chaos today in the world than at any point in the past.

I am sorry that you are so afraid, though.

Alrighty here we go.  Nice and short.

Social Conservatism = The promotion of moral lifestyles and behaviors because these are what makes Men decent and civilized.

Let me just hit this up one more time, using my thesaurus to point out an absurdity.

"We should promote decent lifestyles and behaviors, because these are what make Men decent and civilized."

Or, perhaps

"We should promote decent and civilized lifestyles and behaviors, because these are what make Men moral."

**** it, let's go all the way!

"We should promote decent and civilized lifestyles and behaviors, because these are what make Men decent and civilized."

It's a circle, kids.

[Kosh]

Do you mean bullying physically? I recall my Japanese past girlfriend, who is a teacher, telling me that violent acts towards teachers from the kids is becoming a problem. Is this connected?

Bullying by children to other children is what I was referring to, and it has been a problem for a long time and nothing was ever done about it, and it usually continues well into adulthood, and like I said who gets blamed? The person who was on the recieving end, for not "conforming". Do you really want to live in that kind of society? Its no wonder they have by far the highest suicide rates in the OECD countries.

[High Max]

It's one reason why it is good to practice discipline and learn a lot. People are less likely to be picked on if they try, stand up for themselves, and improve themselves. If they increase their health and intelligence, they can minimize being bullied.

My past girl said that people respect those who are smarter. Of course that seems on the contrary in the west, though people who are smart here probably get bullied because people are jealous of their intellect and feel inferior knowing that those people are smarter and they envy that perhaps, so they bully them to feel above them. But Kyoko was probably talking about her society when saying that smarter people get more respect. But if a person is being slothy and not making an effort to improve themselves, do they not deserve to be picked on? I have a habit of respecting those who try harder as well and have more self respect. Half of it is in the hands of the individual to minimize being picked on. The other half is unavoidable, sadly.

[Kosh]

But Kyoko was probably talking about her society when saying that smarter people get more respect.

The nail that stands up gets hammered.

It's one reason why it is good to practice discipline and learn a lot. People are less likely to be picked on if they try, stand up for themselves, and improve themselves. If they increase their health and intelligence, they can minimize being bullied.

In reality they aren't picked on for any of those reasons, and they can be some of the smartest people there. They get picked on because they aren't exactly the same. More later.

EDIT: Ok, back from lab. Anyway, the problem is being different in Japan is extremely bad, and that is what leads to bullying, it depends on nothing else. Check this video, although it goes into many other topics section 7 discusses this issue more specifically

You're thinking in western terms, which is being independent and making yourself better will lead to less bullying, but in conformist societies that is not the case.

[Liberator]

Oh. Wait. You want to constrain civil liberties, expand government control, and classify some citizens as deserving of only restricted rights?

Exactly what planet have you been on since I started posting here...

[General Battuta]

Oh. Wait. You want to constrain civil liberties, expand government control, and classify some citizens as deserving of only restricted rights?

Exactly what planet have you been on since I started posting here...

The planet where you selectively respond to posts, ignoring most of the points made because you're unable to respond to them?

Or maybe the planet where social conservatives oppose gay marriage?

[iamzack]

Oh. Wait. You want to constrain civil liberties, expand government control, and classify some citizens as deserving of only restricted rights?

Exactly what planet have you been on since I started posting here...

What planet have you been on since you were born? Social conservatives have ALWAYS historically been about all that stuff.

[General Battuta]

Right. The problem with social conservatism is that in the past 100 years we've seen social conservatives arguing that:

1) Women voting would promote immorality and destroy America.
2) Equal rights for Blacks would promote immorality and destroy America.
3) Interracial marriages would promote immorality and destroy America.
4) Immigrants would promote immorality and destroy America.
5) Equal rights for women would promote immorality and destroy America.
6) Public acceptance of homosexuality would promote immorality and destroy America.

I'll be happy to go out there and hunt down more examples, if you like.

[Janos]

Liberator, seeing as you didn't answer Turambar's question "who defines the morals" and I am rather interested in the answer as well - since you seem to promote a lifestyle based in morality - I'd like to raise the point again. What are these moral and decent lifestyles, who defines what they are and what to they include, and more importantly, oppose?

I would be rather interested in concrete examples!

Thank you in advance.

[Liberator]

Who defines the morals?

Hmm, well the vast majority of them haven't changed since the beginning of man.

The remainder are added as needed.  But the basics don't change or grow out of date.

[The E]

And who is the arbitrator of which morals get added, or which ones get cut? I note that you didn't answer the question about who decides which morals are "good", and which ones need to be stamped out with government help?

Also, why should something as malleable as morals be enshrined in something as rigid and static as a system of laws?

[iamzack]

The basics change all the time, dude. Morals are a product of civilization, not the other way around.

[General Battuta]

Who defines the morals?

Hmm, well the vast majority of them haven't changed since the beginning of man.

The remainder are added as needed.  But the basics don't change or grow out of date.

Could you name a few?

Your list, of course, won't include 'open homosexuality', since that's been frequently accepted as moral and even necessary. Nor will it include 'patriarchal power system', since that's certainly changed a lot since the beginning of man. Nor will it include anything Judaeo-Christian, since that's all relatively recent.

And, funny, wait. There's a lot of stuff that doesn't make your list.

EQUAL RIGHTS FOR WOMEN. Wasn't there originally.

INALIENABLE HUMAN RIGHTS FOR EVERYONE. Most people were slaves or subject to a king - basically subhuman.

FREEDOM FROM FEAR, BUTTRAPE, MURDER. Those are relatively recent rights. Up until recently, if you had the sword, you made the laws. You could terrorize, rape, or murder anyone in your power.

RIGHT TO A JURY TRIAL. Holy **** that one's new.

FUNDAMENTAL EQUALITY OF ALL RACES. Just came along.

So we shouldn't be promoting any of those, right? Because those weren't around since the beginning of man.

Wait, wait, what rights were around since the beginning of man?

THE RIGHT TO KILL WHATEVER WAS NECESSARY TO SURVIVE: hmm, that right seems to have...vanished.

And what about our veneration for fertility goddesses? We spent most of recorded history focusing our culture on little stone idols of big-breasted women. How can we just throw away the past that made us great, Liberator? In my country, we remember the gods our ancestors worshipped!

Funny, you don't seem to have any rights left on your list. I find it hilarious how you look to the past as a 'better place', when in our recent past we (as a country!) have committed genocide, randomly invaded our neighbors, tossed people in internment camps, committed ourselves to never interfering outside our own borders, gone to civil war for the right to keep black people enslaved, and generally acted as corrupt, confused, and ambiguous as anyone else.

By the way, if you continue to respond selectively to single sentences drawn from people's posts (in the hilarious tradition of both left and right wing pundits), I imagine things will go badly for you. Just sayin': if you can't acknowledge the points other people are making, then you just look like you're throwing up your hands and conceding.

[High Max]

Funny, you don't seem to have any rights left on your list. I find it hilarious how you look to the past as a 'better place', when in our recent past we (as a country!) have committed genocide, randomly invaded our neighbors, tossed people in internment camps, committed ourselves to never interfering outside our own borders, gone to civil war for the right to keep black people enslaved, and generally acted as corrupt, confused, and ambiguous as anyone else.

I have a question and I'm sorry if this is off topic, but I've thought about asking this before:

You have much concern for the well being of others and you can be very polite and nice, but doesn't that contradict you belief that our consciousness is an illusion, humans are accidents and nothing special, and that we are nothing but souless bodies with no true free will and that our feelings are just chemicals? If you believe that our consciouness is just an illusion and all else that I stated, then concern for others and all these human ideals don't matter because it would also be an illusional construct and perception of humans and good and bad don't exist. But your concern and kindness seems to contradict a purely materialist and physical point of view.

I'm not taking sides here. I'm just saying.

Maybe I will pm you sometime and we can have interesting conversations. I like intelligent conversations and they interest me. It will also prevent me from going off topic.

[The E]

If nothing we do matters in the greater scheme of things, then the smallest act of kindness is the is the greatest thing in the world.

[General Battuta]

Funny, you don't seem to have any rights left on your list. I find it hilarious how you look to the past as a 'better place', when in our recent past we (as a country!) have committed genocide, randomly invaded our neighbors, tossed people in internment camps, committed ourselves to never interfering outside our own borders, gone to civil war for the right to keep black people enslaved, and generally acted as corrupt, confused, and ambiguous as anyone else.

I have a question and I'm sorry if this is off topic, but I've thought about asking this before:

You have much concern for the well being of others and you can be very polite and nice, but doesn't that contradict you belief that our consciousness is an illusion, humans are accidents and nothing special, and that we are nothing but souless bodies with no true free will and that our feelings are just chemicals?

Au contraire. Once you realize that our minds are purely physical structures, that consciousness is a process (not an illusion, but not something dualistic either), that 'free will' means 'we process stimuli into reactions based on a set of rules peculiar to each person but shaped by genetics and environnment', that we vanish when we die, and that all our social standards - including morality - are constructs of evolution and consensus designed to help better societies -

- only then do you understand that everything is up to us. We don't need God or pixies to tell us how to act. We take charge ourselves. If someone's hurting someone else, we need to figure out how to stop them.

It's cognitive adulthood. The acceptance of responsibility. God isn't going to take care of the business of building a good world and good people, so we damn well better do it. I'd rather have a moral system that we built, experimented with, and proved to work than playing by an old book with a lot of rules about how we should stone adulteresses and prepare our meat this way rather than that.

Honestly, why would you think that understanding something diminishes it? You're afraid that once we know feelings are chemicals, then feelings will go away? Is a rainbow any less pretty because we know it's light diffracted through water?

[mxlm]

Hmm, well the vast majority of them haven't changed since the beginning of man

Straw poll: who thinks the American sense of morality has changed drastically over the past century?

You have much concern for the well being of others and you can be very polite and nice, but doesn't that contradict you belief that our consciousness is an illusion, humans are accidents and nothing special, and that we are nothing but souless bodies with no true free will and that our feelings are just chemicals? If you believe that our consciouness is just an illusion and all else that I stated, then concern for others and all these human ideals don't matter because it would also be an illusional construct and perception of humans and good and bad don't exist. But your concern and kindness seems to contradict a purely materialist and physical point of view.

No. It does not. At a guess, and understand I'm not being insulting here, you haven't realized that there are stages past #4 (although I presume the 'law' you're concerned with is 'god's law'). There are.

[Scotty]

Can I vote for the "not drastically, but still changed" category?

If they hadn't changed at all, Women still wouldn't be able to vote, blacks would still be segregated and oppressed, and all sorts of other fun stuff because it wasn't "immoral" by the standards of the day to do stuff like that.

....

I had something that didn't quite not matter to say, but now I can't remember.