GeorgiaDon

The people who condone any means necesary to stop terrorism are the real pussies. I'd rather be a little less secure from terrorism than sacrifice the values that made America great. If you're so terrified of the big bad terrorists, you don't have the stomach to TCB, wuss. Wow Really? Your posts have over and over stood AGAINST what made America great and now you want to wrap yourself up in the constitution?I'm pretty sure that Dan has sacrificed a hell of a lot more than you ever have in the defense of this country. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

The source of the Giant Sucking Sound...it all make since now.You suck through your asshole? I bet your boyfriend loves that! Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

I agree that just comparing numbers is useless, apart from misleading claims to be "better" or "worse". Certainly the comparison Billy made is of no value, as it ignores all the reasons for the differences and so offers no opportunity to learn anything of value. However, if someone wants to ask the question "could we be doing better" it helps to be able to make some comparisons. Each society is a different experiment (some more independent than others), which means we don't always have to do the experiment ourselves to get an idea of the outcome. For example, someone who favors the death penalty because they believe it is a deterrent to would-be murderers might (if they were inclined towards logic) predict that abolishing the death penalty would remove the deterrent, leading to an increase in murders. Many countries have, in fact, abolished the death penalty, without increasing the murder rate. The experiment has been done for us, if we care to look at the numbers. I think that in many ways the US justice system compares very favorably with many other countries. Principles such as "innocent until proven guilty", immunity from self-incrimination, the right to legal representation, etc are vast improvements on over how justice is administered in some other places, even if we have a way to go implementing those principles sometimes. [I do recognize that some of those principles were not invented in the US, some derive from British Common Law and are shared by the UK and all its former colonies.] But just comparing numbers is useless (unless someone is talking about a bar bet over what country has the most whatever); the numbers have to have some value judgement attached (is it a good thing or a bad thing that we have more people in jail?), followed by an evaluation of the reasons and considerations of alternatives. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

interesting statement there...IMHO - it indicates a serious distrust in people being capable on their own to choose what they think they need and want. And the assumption that the betterment of mankind demands pure self sacrifice on the part of individuals, even forced on them if necessary. and more.... so mankind as a group can only be better when individuals are poor and miserable - got it seems to be a lesson that mass religious groups tried for centuries, now cloaked in terms of something else more palatable?Another way to think of it, though, is to acknowledge that the marketplace is not motivated by the "betterment of mankind", it is an actuarial calculation motivated by profit. All that is necessary is that the market price (what somebody somewhere is willing to pay) is less than the cost of production, leaving room for a net profit. Whether or not that also works out for the "betterment of mankind" is somewhat serendipitous. Generally it will, of course, because profitable businesses generally produce products or services that people want, and people usually want things that offer them some benefit. In such cases the marketplace can favor efficiency and timely response to consumer's needs, much better than government "central planning" can. However, the marketplace can also produce goods or services that cater to a small number of clients to the detriment of a large number of other people; an example would be arms sales to terrorist organizations or dictators. I'm fairly sure North Korea would be able to find people interested in buying a nuclear weapon, and I'm also sure supplying those people with such a weapon would not serve the "betterment of mankind". The "marketplace" has no capability to make judgements about "good" or "bad", it is only able to judge "demand" and "profitability". Sometimes however judgements about "good" or "bad" need to be made. If a business produces pollution that harms people or destroys livelihoods in the area around the factories, yet still enjoys a profitable market because the clients who purchase their products live far away and are not impacted by the pollution, the marketplace provides no means to correct the harm. As another example, demand for rhinoceros horn and elephant ivory has pushed those animals to the brink of extinction. The marketplace cannot make value judgements about whether or not those species should be saved from extinction. Therefor, we also need a mechanism to evaluate "good" and "bad" according to society's interests; laws and regulations limiting the marketplace are that mechanism. I really didn't see anything in Quade's statement that implied anything of what you saw there. If you read "is motivated by" in place of "functions for" I think you'll see what I mean. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

I don't kill people when I make a mistake. If my training is bad, it doesn't result in me killing people. Cops are public servants. The public is not the servants of the cops. If our servants are not serving us as well as they could be, why do we (as their employers) not have any right to suggest how the service could be better? Especially when poor service=dead public. I'll remind you of the old adage: Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The police do, of necessity, sometimes have to make life or death decisions. That's a lot of power. If their decisions, or the tactics that put them in the position of having to make those decisions, are beyond question, then you are giving them absolute power. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Translation: police are gods and we are unworthy to ever question anything they do. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Try reading it again, Ron. Sure on one level it's about "responsible men", but the main complaint about why they are not "men" is that they have allowed women to emerge from their God-ordained subservient role. There is some good commentary (IMO) about speaking up when your "brothers" cheat on their wives and such, but that commentary would stand (and be stronger I think) if it were not coupled to all the crap about "feminists". Similarly the complaint about pastors is that they are being PC by not pushing men to keep their women in line enough. Gano probably does write for both men and women, and I am sure there are some women who are content to be silent and take a subservient role. Probably not many, though. My wife's former boss is a pastor in a fundamentalist church, and he had to go all the way to Romania to find a woman who was sufficiently subservient for him; no American woman he met was willing to play that role. Most Christian churches (including the Catholic, though I know you don't consider that Christian) consider the proper role of women to be subservient to men, as do the various Islamic faiths, and both trace the belief to the books of the Old Testament and their Judaic roots. Fine, if people wish to believe that and choose to live that way themselves that is their right. But, if they believe that allowing women freedom to speak, and to choose their career, and even control their own bodies, is what is causing the "downfall of America" they are simply delusional. By the way, about marriage and the "one body" thing: how about the body be divided right half/left half, and not head/uterus. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Whatever, Ron. You post a piece that claims that the problems of society can be traced to men allowing women to make their own choices, and (horror of horrors) speak their minds, take positions of leadership in society, and even teach! I can only hope such ideas are on their last legs, and will eventually pass. I am mildly amused to note that, when put to it, you admit even you do not live according the precepts Mr. Gano promulgates. You old feminist metrosexual! Either that, or you've been trolling again, as is your wont. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

One of these days, Alice! Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

What is there to listen to or discuss, if women are supposed to be silent? You sound just like a "feminist metrosexual". Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

this All of this, absolutely! [rant]This I have a harder time with. The author strikes me as a narcissist who wraps himself in the cloak of his religion in order to denigrate the capabilities, ambitions, and accomplishments of anyone who doesn't happen to have a pair of testicles. Perhaps I am overly sensitive to this malignant world view because I happen to live in the "buckle" of the "bible belt" and encounter it too often. I see not the ramblings of an honest nit-wit, but the ravings of a person who would impose their religion on all Americans (the "founding fathers/King James Bible crapola) but also use that to put themselves and their intellectually inbred kin in charge. We seem to agree that we should call people out when they are behaving badly, and not just sweep it under the rug. Fine. In the forum (speaker's corner), on DZ.com, at the dropzone, and in our everyday lives we are surrounded by women of accomplishment: rocket scientists, active and former military, any manner of occupation. To have someone come here and tell these women that they have no business taking leadership roles, teaching, serving their country, or any other "manly" occupation, and further to blame the "decline of the country" on them, is a disgrace. Someone deserves to be taken to the woodshed.[/rant] Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Do you define "feminist metrosexual" as anyone who believe women are capable of making their own choices in life? If I entrust my children to a teacher who happens to be female, does that make me a "feminist metrosexual"? If I get sick, and it so happens that the leading specialist in that diseases is female, am I a "feminist metrosexual" if I choose to see that doctor and not a less competent but male doctor? If I am speeding and get pulled over by a police officer who turns out to be female, if I fail to inform her that she has no authority over me because she is female, does that make me a "feminist metrosexual"? If I have a property line dispute with my neighbor, and we agree to have the property line surveyed to resolve the dispute, does that make me a "feminist metrosexual"? If I instead smash him over the head with my axe, and then try to do the same to the female police officer who comes to arrest me, does that make me a "real man"? It's all so confusing... Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Here are just a few of the numerous rantings about "feminists": "It is going to be very tough fighting the 150+ years of hard core feminist brainwashing..." "So we either man up and stand up or cower back down and lose our children and grandchildren to the feminist ways of the world. The war on men is the primary reason for the demise of our nation. This is a fact." "That is the first thing that we need to wake up to, for most of us we have been consuming poison not knowing what it even was." "Men are waking up and they are starting to realize that for all their lives they have been consuming the feminized poison that has been promoted all these years." Of course, all this outrage that women have had the audacity to stand and and demand respect, and control over their own lives, is "legitimized" by reference to religion: 1 Timothy 2:12 But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. I could go back a couple of generations and easily find the same drivel arguing that blacks should know their place, and asians, and Indians. Ultimately it's all about narcissistic white men who can only dream about the past, when their XY chromosome pair and lack of pigmentation gave them an automatic place at the head of the table. What a nice self-serving attitude: "I'm in charge because God gave me spermatozoa-producing organs instead of egg-producing organs". How convenient for Mr. Gano. Real men are not afraid to learn something from women. Real men do not need to control women's lives. Real men look to other people to see what they can do, what they have to offer. They do not seek to control others, or stick them in some box, based on their gender or race. Perhaps within your lifetime, a woman will be elected President. The sky will not fall, and the sun will continue to rise in the East and set in the West as it has always done. SWNHTF (shit will not hit the fan). I hope when that day comes your head does not explode. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Look it up. Well I guess he might be OK with the ones that are completely submissive, do exactly what he tells them to do, and never try to tell him anything. I believe the people who flew planes into the WTC had similar beliefs, and for the same reason. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

He (Ray Guano) seems to have a lot in common with Islamic radicals as far was treating women goes. I suppose some might regard that as "a pretty good vision". Not sure about your guy (America's Rabbi) as I have not listened to him. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

I think you left out the part about giving a fat lip to women who offer an opinion on anything, or are slow to produce a sammich. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

I wonder what it is that Ray Guano and his testicular, women-hating buddies do when they take each other into the woods. "...what goes on in the woods also stays in the woods." Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Another revealing "detail" is that apparently two of the prisoners who were subjected to "advanced interrogation" turned out to be our guys, informants who were passing real intelligence on to us before they were taken prisoner. The zeal to torture was apparently so high that it didn't actually matter if the prisoner was actually a "bad actor", it was sufficient that they had a towel on their head. Of course this also says terrible things about the disconnect between the CIA and the contractors they engaged to do the actual dirty work, so Cheney et al could wash their hands of the affair and pretend it had nothing to do with them. Every time I see Cheney on the news, I'm reminded of the Emperor from Star Wars. I doubt there is anything, up to and including nuclear annihilation, that he would not find some way to justify in his shriveled "heart". Don edited to fix link _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

I suspect that for many people who support the use of torture, the issue of "actionable intelligence" is largely beside the point. The real point, is, I think, power and revenge. They want "our enemies" to suffer, the worse the better. These are, by and large, the same people who support the death penalty despite evidence that innocent people have been sentenced to death and even executed, and who regail us with comments about inmates being ass-fucked to death in prison. For some, torture is not a means to an end, it is an end in itself. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Oh -- you mean one of those white men discriminated against because of affirmative action? Wendy P. I think he's referring to Christians "ticked off" at the war on Christmas Xmas. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

[doorbell ring] Kid: Hi Mrs Smith. Can Jimmy come play baseball? Mrs Smith: Now don't be cruel like that. You know Jimmy doesn't have arms or legs. Kid: That's OK, we need him for home plate. _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

I thought it was Bob. Or Bouy. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

What do you call a dead baby with no arms and legs on the ground by your door? Mat. _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

As someone who also came here "from somewhere else", I personally will say that there is vastly more that I like about the US, and Americans as individuals, than there are things I find wanting. That is not to say, though, that everything is perfect here, and I don't think many Americans would claim that. Every country is a different social experiment, so sometimes people who have lived elsewhere have experience with specific things that they felt were done better somewhere else. Frequently I have found that Americans (like people everywhere) often just accept the conditions they have grown up with as the only way to do things, and so cannot even imagine the opportunities presented by taking a different approach. As an example, I have seen (secondhand) that the US style of delivering health insurance often ties people down in jobs they dislike, because (due to a pre-existing condition, either theirs or their child's) they cannot leave the insurance plan they have through their employment. Because they have never experienced it, most Americans cannot fathom the freedom that comes with being able to change jobs, or leave their job to start their own business, without exposing your family to the risk of being unable to get decent heath insurance. Recalling the 30 years I lived in Canada, and thinking of all my family that still lives there, I cannot think of a single person who was unable to get affordable health insurance, and I cannot think of a single person who was bankrupted by medical expenses. I know of many Americans I have met since moving here who have had either or both happen to them. Of course, there are also those who do feel that it is "unpatriotic" to even suggest that there is any aspect of US society that is not the epitome of perfection, incapable of any improvement. If we listed to such people we would still be stuck in the 1700s. People who have advocated change have often drawn inspiration from other countries and cultures, and (believe it of not) all Americans are better off for it. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

Sleep deprivation for 180 hours (more than a week!) while being kept nearly naked in a freezing cold room with your hands tied together and chained to the ceiling is not torture? Waterboarding people to the point where they have to be resuscitated by medical personnel is not torture? Freezing people until they die of hypothermia is not torture? Next, I suppose you will tell John McCain that the North Vietnamese kept him in a Club Med all those years. I guess it's all relative though, to someone who believes eternal torment in never-ending fire is a "just punishment" for, well, anything. Don _____________________________________ Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996) “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)