Or you have a ghost. But surely you'd have noticed that by now.
And democracy is more just, not in that it is necessarily better at dispensing justice, but in the more cosmic sense that the people get the government they deserve. Not always, or in every way, but more often than in other systems.
I'd rather live in a bad democracy than a good dictatorship. Monarchy is somewhere in the middle!
I should start a blog. I didn't realize when I started my LiveJournal that it doesn't count, and I've written bloggy things there. If I started a blog, I could keep the bloggage there and keep the LJ for more personal musings.
OK, "Dancing in the Dark" is one subversive story. I love it. I want to send it to all the gay teens I know who live in horrible repressive Christofascist communities.
Do insane rantings count as comment spam? No live links there, so maybe not.
Chuck: first, it's just Xopher. The parens are left over from a time when someone was flakking about pseudonymous posters.
I actually grew up in a home that was too inconsistent to be either absolutist or relativist. Certainly I was taught relativist ideals (look at the evidence and form a hypothesis; if the evidence changes, adjust the hypothesis, not the evidence), but they didn't apply to issues of authority, and the one absolute rule was Dad Is Right.
When I said "I'm not at all surprised," I meant that it doesn't surprise me at all that your parents were good parents AND moderate Republicans. Not at all. In that range there are many good, decent people. There are none in the Dobson camp, almost by definition.
I'm glad you found "support the troops" pacifists in the 60s. This is just the first I've heard of such a thing. Of course, I was a child for most of that, so I may have missed it.
Lucy: Fidel Castro comes to mind, though I (of course, being a lefty) question his leftist credentials. I think he's an authoritarian who uses the rhetoric of socialism the way our president uses the rhetoric of democracy. Neither has the slightest interest in furthering the actual cause of socialism or democracy.
But he's an "authoritarian on the left" in terms of labeling. I can't think of another one, though. Certainly there are rank-and-file lefties who are pretty authoritarian. But the phrase 'libertarian socialist' isn't a contradiction in terms unless you capitalize at least the first word.
David Reuben wrote a book called Everything You've Always Wanted To Know About Sex (But Were Afraid To Ask). It was a typical book of the type we now see coming from the theocons, designed to sell many copies by confirming people's prejudices, rather than to actually inform or educate.
He adopted a pseudoscientific tone like that now used by advocates of Intelligent Design, and made ridiculous statements based on nothing but his own personal prejudices: no research done, used, or cited at any point.
Naturally his statements about homosexuality were designed to make it seem as disgusting as possible, but the story doesn't end there. The actual research (remember that, Davie? we call it science) done by Masters & Johnson and available while his book was being written, directly contradicts much of his book's content. I remember Playboy magazine had an article (I'm one of the few people who really did read it for the articles and stories!) in which they put quotes from his book next to quotes on the same topics from M & J, debunking his pronouncements in every case. The article led with a cartoon showing him looking professorial in front of two diagrams: an ass labeled "elbow" and an elbow labeled "ass."
My parents were (and are) liberals, btw. They voted for Humphrey as the lesser of two evils, Bobby Kennedy having been shot.
It doesn't surprise me, Chuck. Real conservatives are not Dobson's target audience. Gaudily deranged people looking to justify their gaudy derangement are. The crazy-right are not "moderately conservative" at all: they're out to demolish everything that makes America great.
People in general are pretty stupid about their beliefs. The dictatorship of absolutism is what causes that. "If you're absolutely certain, chances are you're also absolutely wrong - or will be soon."
While I agree that authoritarian leftists are as bad as authoritarian rightists, authoritarianism in this decade is much, much more a property of the right than of the left. "Support the troops, not the War" was not a sentiment heard in the Vietnam area, more's the pity. And I'm sorry for what you endured then, by the way, not that I was part of the anti-war movement in any way other than wearing a peace medallion and watching it on TV.
Dave, democracy is in operation when the governed consent. One could take the position that the democracy is good when their consent is informed and therefore valuable, and it is bad when it is uninformed, but it's nonetheless democracy.
I personally would say that when most voters get their information from political advertising (either paid or, as in the case of Fox News, unpaid), the distinction between democracy and plutocracy becomes virtually moot.
Gee, my dad has a PhD in psych too. Coincidence? Perhaps!
Remember Dr. David Reuben? He had a fud, too: in nutrition science. Another shithead, by the way.
Patrick, while I agree (and even if I didn't etc.), but FWIW I for one did not read Francis' comment that way. I would summarize it as "Dave, some kids are gentle and polite because they were raised well, like yours, while others are that way because they've been beaten and terrified into submission, and it's actually hard for an outsider to tell."
I suspect that two spankings, even egregiously wrong ones of exactly the type I think those weren't, would not result in the terrorized-child kind of gentle politeness, however.
I was quite amazed when I got to college and first began realizing something was different about the way I was raised. I started asking people how often their parents hit them when they were growing up. I was expecting lower numbers than I was used to, but by "lower numbers" I meant something like "Oh, not more than once a week or so, I guess" not "I was spanked once when I was five - for not thinking for myself about wearing my boots in the snow" -- which is a quote from one of the friends I asked.
Ones and twos. EVER. Not "per week" or "per day." I was stunned.
I started reading this thread, but it's too upsetting to me to continue. (Those of you who know me well know why.) I will say that comments early on by DonBoy, Dave Luckett, and Lucy seemed to be hitting several nails on their respective heads.
Also that I feel that people like Rev. Dobson should be killed. I don't think or believe that, mind you; it would cause more problems than it would solve, and be wrong on many levels. But somewhere deep in my mind is a deeply uncivilized person who would dearly love to torture the man to death.
And call it a "fight."
Well, PSAs can be spammed. It depends on how they're transmitted, doesn't it?
That said, however, maybe I was too hasty...after all this thread is about Pope Rat, and if he and Dubya are the same person that's appropriate news here...
Irrelevant to the thread, though not particularly offensive. Links to the site given at the bottom. Haven't clicked through to find out what kind of site it is. Probably the SAME kind of STUFF that's in THIS comment.
Well, the Good Book says "give not that which is holy unto the dogs." I don't see that as a problem in this case. I'd worry about them choking on a rosary or something though.
Kimberly, Your Overlord encourages you to design your own badges of office. If He approves them, appropriate sumptuary laws will be passed to prevent others from impersonating your office. (If not, of course, you will be summarily executed. But that's just a risk you'll have to take.)
Your Overlord encourages you to develop theology defending your hyphenations as canonical.
fidelio, all creatures which are of utility in exterminating the rats from the Vatican are holy and blesséd of Your Overlord.
Harry, not at all! Your Overlord wishes to appear slim and slender; surrounding Himself with chubby people is one of the divers elements He employs, as anyone who has eaten a meal cooked by His Overlordship will attest!
That is, unless you WANT to be posted to Gaul. If so, something can be arranged. You may have to change your name to Tullius Octopus or something though.
Since it was in fact Kimberly who pointed out the Postean Heresy, she is also proclaimed an Overlord Theologian. Epacris' status as such is NOT rescinded; to do so would compromise the doctrine of Overlordal Infallibility, which your Overlord infallibly assures you is infallible.
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|---|---|
| 2005 | 67 |
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