The GOP Has Been HIJACKED!

[Odin]

Southern Poverty Law Center: Right-Wing Extremists Hail the Ascension of ‘Emperor Trump’ as GOP Nominee

When you sleep with dogs don't be surprised when you wake up with fleas.

Funny how people who call themselves "cultural libertarians" seem to be always be buddy-buddy with Neo-Nazis, White Supremacists, and other RW authoritarian douchebags. It is almost if the word "libertarian" has become just another meaningless buzzword...

[Eric the Green]

(05-23-2016, 03:22 PM)radind Wrote:

(05-23-2016, 09:05 AM)Kinser79 Wrote: I think the problem here is that in calling all secular people "the secular camp" you are ultimately setting yourself up for failure.  The simple fact is that there isn't this monolithic structure called "the secular camp".  In order to be secular one merely needs to desire everyone to have religious freedom--which is a cultural libertarian perspective anyway.

In order to achieve that religious freedom the state MUST be secular, if the state is not, let us say the First Amendment was tossed out today and Congress made Catholicism the state religion that would go against the freedoms of all Protestants, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Orthodox Christians, Jews of all stripes, Muslims of all stripes and any other person of religions not Catholicism or completely lacking a religion (such as myself).

Conversely let us say that the First Amendment was tossed out today and Congress prohibited all religions...That impinges on the liberty of everyone who chooses to have a religion.

No one who is secular wants to abolish first amendment except the Regressive Left.  They also have problems with people saying whatever they want too.  Are they secular?  I'd argue no.  They wish to impose their ideology on everyone else which is against the core tenant of being secular--namely that in order for everyone to have freedom of religious consciousness the state cannot have a role in religious consciousness.  

They are in fact the opposite of Cultural Libertarianism (it is also called Classical Liberalism--what passes for liberalism these days is really democratic socialism [an oxymoron I know] or some bastardized version of Marxism).  As it is that Classical Liberalism which is the very foundation of the Republic, a Republic they seek to destroy.

They have converted the Democratic Party into a party of authoritarianism and must therefore be destroyed for the good of the Republic.  As such the milquetoast, quasi-conservatism of the GOP Establishment had to be broken and Trump has managed that.  Now it is time to take that cultural war to the voting booth because I am starting to believe that once he is elected they will try to destroy the country, much like the South tried to destroy the country following Lincoln's election.

 
I don't see any option since the 'secular group' is now the majority( most Democrats plus some Republicans), and acting  no differently from another religion.
We still need separation of church and state, but the state has been taken over by a 'religion'. The 'secular group' can and will deny this, but the operational effect is the same.
If the majority still favored true religious freedom, I would be less concerned. In my opinion , there are ~ 10% with a Biblical worldview. I don't think that all of  the remaining 90% are in the 'secular camp', but I do think that there is a working majority in the 'secular camp'.

More like 40% in the Biblical worldview camp; mostly evangelicals but also active Catholics. Others include more liberal protestant Christians or inactive Christians. Secularists as you define it is more like the 10% you claim for Biblical believers; maybe less. But the Enlightenment and Darwinian types of "secularists" have influence beyond their numbers, because the modern default scientific worldview among educated people is basically their "creation." So they do influence the views of the 60% that are not the extreme Bible believers.

Some opinion polls today also show high levels of support for what I would call more new age or middle-ground views, such as a combination of evolution and creation or something in between; etc.

I confess it continues to baffle me that you consider today's "secularists" to be "against religious liberty." Permission for abortion disagrees with the views of many strict Christians, but that is not stifling religious liberty. Prohibitions on discrimination based on religion (such as refusing to serve gay people) is also not "against religious liberty," despite the slogans of deceivers like Ted Cruz.

[radind]

(05-23-2016, 11:02 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(05-23-2016, 03:22 PM)radind Wrote:

(05-23-2016, 09:05 AM)Kinser79 Wrote: I think the problem here is that in calling all secular people "the secular camp" you are ultimately setting yourself up for failure.  The simple fact is that there isn't this monolithic structure called "the secular camp".  In order to be secular one merely needs to desire everyone to have religious freedom--which is a cultural libertarian perspective anyway.

In order to achieve that religious freedom the state MUST be secular, if the state is not, let us say the First Amendment was tossed out today and Congress made Catholicism the state religion that would go against the freedoms of all Protestants, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Orthodox Christians, Jews of all stripes, Muslims of all stripes and any other person of religions not Catholicism or completely lacking a religion (such as myself).

Conversely let us say that the First Amendment was tossed out today and Congress prohibited all religions...That impinges on the liberty of everyone who chooses to have a religion.

No one who is secular wants to abolish first amendment except the Regressive Left.  They also have problems with people saying whatever they want too.  Are they secular?  I'd argue no.  They wish to impose their ideology on everyone else which is against the core tenant of being secular--namely that in order for everyone to have freedom of religious consciousness the state cannot have a role in religious consciousness.  

They are in fact the opposite of Cultural Libertarianism (it is also called Classical Liberalism--what passes for liberalism these days is really democratic socialism [an oxymoron I know] or some bastardized version of Marxism).  As it is that Classical Liberalism which is the very foundation of the Republic, a Republic they seek to destroy.

They have converted the Democratic Party into a party of authoritarianism and must therefore be destroyed for the good of the Republic.  As such the milquetoast, quasi-conservatism of the GOP Establishment had to be broken and Trump has managed that.  Now it is time to take that cultural war to the voting booth because I am starting to believe that once he is elected they will try to destroy the country, much like the South tried to destroy the country following Lincoln's election.

 
I don't see any option since the 'secular group' is now the majority( most Democrats plus some Republicans), and acting  no differently from another religion.
We still need separation of church and state, but the state has been taken over by a 'religion'. The 'secular group' can and will deny this, but the operational effect is the same.
If the majority still favored true religious freedom, I would be less concerned. In my opinion , there are ~ 10% with a Biblical worldview. I don't think that all of  the remaining 90% are in the 'secular camp', but I do think that there is a working majority in the 'secular camp'.

More like 40% in the Biblical worldview camp; mostly evangelicals but also active Catholics. Others include more liberal protestant Christians or inactive Christians. Secularists as you define it is more like the 10% you claim for Biblical believers; maybe less. But the Enlightenment and Darwinian types of "secularists" have influence beyond their numbers, because the modern default scientific worldview among educated people is basically their "creation." So they do influence the views of the 60% that are not the extreme Bible believers.

Some opinion polls today also show high levels of support for what I would call more new age or middle-ground views, such as a combination of evolution and creation or something in between; etc.

I confess it continues to baffle me that you consider today's "secularists" to be "against religious liberty." Permission for abortion disagrees with the views of many strict Christians, but that is not stifling religious liberty. Prohibitions on discrimination based on religion (such as refusing to serve gay people) is also not "against religious liberty," despite the slogans of deceivers like Ted Cruz.

I have not seen any polls on how the secular group breaks down. My assessment is based on the operational effects that appears to be a working majority. The 10% with a Biblical worldview is based on the barna.org polls. ( I would have guessed this to be ~ 20%).

This very long article addresses some of the issues that have been bothering me.
 

Quote:http://www.firstthings.com/article/2015/...ristianity

HOW THE PUBLIC SIGNIFICANCE OF CHRISTIANITY IS CHANGING

… "All notions of justice presuppose ontology and anthropology, and so a revolution in fundamental anthropology will invariably transform the meaning and content of justice and bring about its own morality. We are beginning to feel the force of this transformation in civil society and the political order. Court decisions invalidating traditional marriage law fall from the sky like rain. The regulatory state and ubiquitous new global media throw their ever increasing weight behind the new understanding of marriage and its implicit anthropology, which treats our bodies as raw material to be used as we see fit. Today a rigorous new public morality inverts and supplants the residuum of our Christian moral inheritance.”…

… "This compels us to reconsider the civic project of American Christianity that has for the most part guided our participation in the liberal public order for at least a century. Encompassing the Social Gospel movement of the early twentieth century and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops at the beginning of the twenty-first, this project has transcended the historical and theological division between Catholics and Protestants. This has been particularly the case as Protestant adherence to divisive confessional commitments has declined and Evangelicals, filling the void left by the decline of mainline Protestantism, have found common ground with Catholics on moral and social issues in the aftermath of Roe v. Wade. Though popular imagination identifies this project in its latter stages with political conservatism, it also transcends the division between the Christian left and the Christian right, which ­partly explains why their opposing arguments so often appear as mirror images of one another.”…

… "The line between negative rights and positive entitlements is thus inherently blurry. If I am to have a right to free speech, for example, then I must be empowered to speak and be heard, which means using the power of the state to give me the resources I need and to suppress anything that might disempower me.”…

… "For example, virtually absent from our lament over the threats to religious freedom in the juridical sense is any mention of that deeper freedom opened up by the transcendent horizon of Christ’s resurrection, though this was a frequent theme of Pope Benedict’s papacy. If we cannot see beyond the juridical meaning of religious freedom to the freedom that the truth itself gives, how then can we expect to exercise this more fundamental freedom when our juridical freedom is denied? Too often we are content to accept the absolutism of liberal order, which consists in its capacity to establish itself as the ultimate horizon, to remake everything within that horizon in its own image, and to establish itself as the highest good and the condition of possibility for the pursuit of all other goods—including religious freedom.”…

… "For in its enforcement of the sexual revolution, the state is effectively codifying ontological and anthropological presuppositions. In redefining marriage and the family, the state not only embarks on an unprecedented expansion of its powers into realms heretofore considered prior to or outside its reach, and not only does it usurp functions and prerogatives once performed by intermediary associations within civil society, it also exercises these powers by tacitly redefining what the human being is and committing the nation to a decidedly post-Christian (and ultimately post-human) anthropology and philosophy of nature.”…

… “  Yet something greater than liberal freedom is at stake. There seems to be a prevailing sense that this moment is something of a kairos for American Christianity, a moment of deep change in the public significance of Christianity and a moment of decision in the life of the Church.”…

… “This is the freedom that the truth itself gives and that the Church in our society will increasingly be called to exercise as the revolution overseen by liberal absolutism proceeds along its present course: the freedom to suffer for the truth of the Gospel.”…

[Kinser79]

(05-23-2016, 09:20 PM)Odin Wrote: Southern Poverty Law Center: Right-Wing Extremists Hail the Ascension of ‘Emperor Trump’ as GOP Nominee

When you sleep with dogs don't be surprised when you wake up with fleas.

Funny how people who call themselves "cultural libertarians" seem to be always be buddy-buddy with Neo-Nazis, White Supremacists, and other RW authoritarian douchebags. It is almost if the word "libertarian" has become just another meaningless buzzword...

You do realize that the Southern Poverty Law Center is nothing more than a collection of liberal douchebags who claim anyone not to the left of LBJ is some sort of Nazi right?

Furthermore, a man has no more control over those who agree or disagree with him than he can control the weather. But since you want to talk about laying with dogs and rising with fleas it seems Clinton has her own racist outfits considering the love she has for BLM which is a known Black Supremacist outfit.

[Kinser79]

(05-23-2016, 06:03 PM)radind Wrote:

(05-23-2016, 03:37 PM)Kinser79 Wrote: Honestly I think you're looking at the wrong issues.  Religious liberty is wrapped up with every other liberty and the fight will ultimately come down to one between the cultural authoritarians (the Regressive Left and other stateists) which are actually a minority they are just very very loud, and cultural libertarians.

A great deal of it will come out during the Election and even after particularly during Daddy's first term but the authoritarians will lose, like they always do, because the American people have a particular affinity for liberty and the generation in mid-life is shifting from the crusading Boomers to practical Xers.

My sense is that the cultural authoritarians are now in the majority.  If your view is correct, there would be reason for hope in the future.
An  interesting article on tolerance.

My view is correct. It is also why the journalistic elites, the Party Establishment elites, and beltway strategists can't fathom why or how Trump is winning primaries against slick politicians in the primaries and pulling ahead of a slick politician in more general polls, particularly in swing states.

[radind]

(05-24-2016, 12:29 AM)Kinser79 Wrote:

(05-23-2016, 06:03 PM)radind Wrote:

(05-23-2016, 03:37 PM)Kinser79 Wrote: Honestly I think you're looking at the wrong issues.  Religious liberty is wrapped up with every other liberty and the fight will ultimately come down to one between the cultural authoritarians (the Regressive Left and other stateists) which are actually a minority they are just very very loud, and cultural libertarians.

A great deal of it will come out during the Election and even after particularly during Daddy's first term but the authoritarians will lose, like they always do, because the American people have a particular affinity for liberty and the generation in mid-life is shifting from the crusading Boomers to practical Xers.

My sense is that the cultural authoritarians are now in the majority.  If your view is correct, there would be reason for hope in the future.
An  interesting article on tolerance.

My view is correct.  It is also why the journalistic elites, the Party Establishment elites, and beltway strategists can't fathom why or how Trump is winning primaries against slick politicians in the primaries and pulling ahead of a slick politician in more general polls, particularly in swing states.

I am still not convinced and will wait for more developments. Trump surprised me too, but he has a long way to go to win in Nov.

The ’secular group’ has a majority and appears ready to deny religious liberty to Christians. There is no real separation of church and state because the ’secular group’  now owns the state.  In my opinion, the Christian minority will have no rights as this unfolds.

Quote:http://www.michaelcsherrard.com/blog/201...ally-about
… " Our society is collectively acting on the assumption that God does not exist and naturalism is true. They are fighting to form a society that reflects this belief. This is again why the fighting is so intense. It is a radical shift in our society.”…

[Cynic Hero '86]

Clinton and the establishment want to impose world government. The "flower children" of the 60's deluded themselves by believing that peace is the natural state in the human condition. They have refused and still refuse to acknowledge that the current peace is an anomalous situation and that war has traditionally been the state of things throughout most of world history. The boomers refuse to acknowledge that their holding the lid has brought the hostility of large chunks of the world against the US. Trump advocates a different policy: he will fight for AMERICAN interest, he will not fight for globalist interests, he will not fight for "world peace" interests. As trump has said "wouldn't it be great if we got along with Russia for a change".

[Odin]

Masculine insecurities are driving Trump’s train of lies — according to science

Quote:Despite evidence that Donald Trump is a serial liar, the man continues to lie about his previous lies. While the origin of the oft-repeated joke is disputed (and perhaps funniest when told by the late, great Richard Pryor), Donald Trump treats America as if it were the wife who has just caught her husband in bed with another woman, “Who you going to believe? Me or your lying eyes?”

Media pundits have expressed  concern that despite incontrovertible evidence that Trump lies, and he knows that he’s lying, the Trump cultists will vote for him. Trump has bragged that he could murder someone and his poll numbers would not take a hit. The Donald seems to be made of the same material as Ronald Reagan–teflon–the non-stick coating that repels any kind of dirty scandal from harming a politician’s poll numbers.

Trump’s lies are so blatant and so self-aggrandizing, it’s difficult not to pathologize the man.  Especially when he has admitted to using the alias “Barron” when doing business.

Quote:All politicians fudge the truth, exaggerating their successes and minimizing their failures. Trump, however, takes it to a different level. He’s a contemporary version of Baron Von Munchausen, an 18th century literary character whose wildly exaggerated military exploits—riding on a cannonball, voyaging to the moon—made him a comic-heroic favorite for generations.

While psychiatrists recognize Munchausen Syndrome as a disorder, it is associated with the faking of medical symptoms of disease in order to garner sympathy. Trump claims to be a vigorous, virile man who suffers no physical weakness to disqualify him from being president. But he is still a serial liar. Why? Why would Donald Trump lie?

Sports fans were surprised to learn that Kevin Durant is not 6’9″, as his official stats say. He’s actually 6’11”. He says he lied because he wanted to be thought of as a “small forward” rather than a “power forward.” But, Durant says, he tells women that he is 7’0″, because some women express a preference for tall men. Durant’s lie to women may be more revealing of the personality flaw behind Trump’s lies.

A study released in 2015 revealed something about braggart men who lie, a confirmation of something that many women have intuited. Men lie when they feel that their masculinity has been questioned or they fear that they do not measure up to other men. It turns out that the joke about men driving expensive sports cars to compensate for other shortcomings is true.

In the study, men were asked to take part in a “grip test” to determine what the average man’s grip measure was. After squeezing the fake sensor, each man was given a fictional reading, some of which indicated that the man had a stronger grip than the average man and some that told him he was weaker. After being given this information about their strength relative to other men–and with some being told that their grip was weaker than that of an average woman–the men were then asked a series of questions.

Time after time, the men who had just been told that they were “less than” some fictional measure of masculinity proceeded to exaggerate the number of sexual partners they had had, to make themselves taller, to heighten their athletic accomplishments, to talk about how aggressive they are, and to denigrate activities that they perceived to be “feminine.”

The study highlights the pressure that men feel to conform to gender stereotypes and measures applied in defining “masculinity.” Even someone like Chris Kyle, the real-life hero of American Sniper, lied about the number of medals and commendations he had received during his military service. While it’s not clear what drove Kyle’s need to exaggerate, something about the way Kyle felt about himself as a man may have been at the root of it.

In the case of Donald Trump, who seems to react most angrily to taunts about being the short-fingered vulgarian, Donald Trump the man is afraid that he’s just not man enough to measure up to other men. Spy magazine exploited Trump’s weakness for years, and they did so by diminishing Trump. They made fun of the size of his fingers, a taunt that was picked up during the 2016 campaign, and which led to the moment when Trump declared during a presidential debate that he had a big dick.

No one is denying that women don’t lie. But the studies of female lying indicates that women do it to protect someone’s feelings, or to protect themselves. At its root, gender differentiation is rooted in notions of power. In our culture, masculine is privileged over feminine. For women, who despite cultural progress are still extremely vulnerable to male violence, lying is offered as protection against harm. Or women lie to protect the feelings of someone they love. Of course, women lie for other reasons, but women are also conditioned from an early age not to think that they are better than they are. Ask a smart woman about her experiences in school, for example, and you will frequently hear tales of being told not to show up boys by being smarter than they are. Still, women do lie in order to get things they want.

While men lie for some of the same reasons that women do (“no, that dress does not make you look fat,”) and don’t want to hurt folks they love with the truth, they also lie as a means of making themselves bigger than they are–or as they perceive themselves to be. It’s about power and who has it. Being a biological man or a woman often has nothing to do with gender.

While many assign masculinity to men and femininity to women, we frequently label those who we see as “less powerful” as feminine: think of how the epithet “pussy” is applied to anyone who is seen as not measuring up to a standard of masculinity. Any sign of weakness is seen as some feminine flaw within a man. And men who are terrified that they themselves do not measure up to this mythical standard of masculinity are often the biggest bullies toward other men they perceive to be weak. It has become a truism that the biggest “anti-gay” pastors turn out to enjoy sex with other men. During the Clinton impeachment brouhaha, the same men who expressed outrage about the president’s adulterous relationship because adultery should disqualify a man from holding public office, were exposed themselves as being adulterers or child molesters. Fear of being exposed as a fraud often drives the persecution of others, and being outed as a “girly-man” drives a lot of lying.

Donald Trump’s fear of being labeled a pussy drives his “brutal, demagogic make-believe”. Trump will sue anyone who disputes  his claims to be worth $10 billion (or whatever today’s figure is), he claims business success despite his bankruptcies, and claims to have opposed previous actions by the Obama administration that Trump actually supported at the time. He has actually used made-up proxy men to stand in for him, so that Trump could lie about himself while pretending to be someone else.

The other hallmark of the insecure male is the constant denigration of women. Men who are secure in their manhood do not feel a need to diminish a woman’s accomplishments or to bully her with disparagement of her physical self. And, as the recent study showed, men who feel a diminished masculinity inflate the number of “conquests” of women. Trump claims that he could have “nailed” Diana, the Princess of Wales. He spends a lot of time talking about his sexual prowess, the hugeness of his businesses, the height of the wall he’s going to build on the Mexican border, and just how great he’s going to be as president. He also mocks women who don’t meet his definition of fuckable. And his anger at Megyn Kelly led to him claiming that her menstrual cycle invalidated any questions that she asked of him.

Trump is a blusterer. Pop the wall of hot air that surrounds him and it turns out, “there’s no there there.” A visit to Trump’s website features declarations about what a Trump presidency would do, with no concrete steps to accomplish these promises. Or, in the case of some of his positions (such as those regarding China), Trump would abrogate treaties and arrogate power.

Donald Trump acts like the cock of the walk, strutting about, claiming access to all that he sees. But Trump’s insecurity about his masculinity is as obvious as the elaborate comb-over on the top of his head. It’s time for Trump’s followers to start recognizing that Trump’s rooster cockscomb is really the sign of a coxcomb–a conceited, foolish jester who makes real leaders laugh.

[Cynic Hero '86]

(05-27-2016, 11:45 AM)X_4AD_84 Wrote:

(05-26-2016, 04:28 PM)Cynic Hero Wrote: Clinton and the establishment want to impose world government. The "flower children" of the 60's deluded themselves by believing that peace is the natural state in the human condition. They have refused and still refuse to acknowledge that the current peace is an anomalous situation and that war has traditionally been the state of things throughout most of world history. The boomers refuse to acknowledge that their holding the lid has brought the hostility of large chunks of the world against the US. Trump advocates a different policy: he will fight for AMERICAN interest, he will not fight for globalist interests, he will not fight for "world peace" interests. As trump has said "wouldn't it be great if we got along with Russia for a change".

That's not quite right. The Western Liberal version of globalism is a globalism normed on Modern Anglo-Saxon / Nordic points of view, legal constructs and ethics. Why is that? It might have something to do with the demonstrated correct philosophical underpinnings of this branch of civilization. Civilization matters. Some Civilizations are superior to others. This is not some statement of genetic or ethnic bigotry. I'm referring to notional aspects and core morals. Even Continental Europeans are weaker in many ways. The further one goes east, the worst it is. Meanwhile, I have high hopes for Africa and South America. They clearly are striving to norm on the Anglo-Norman model to the extent they can. They are in the early stages but if they don't get derailed good things can happen.

I disagree, The US and Europe should embrace the western values that tended to be dominant in the over two millennia between the death of Pericles and the defeat of napoleon. Regarding British history the period between roughly the conversion of the Saxons and Cromwell is the period America should take inspiration From. The problem of the current elites in the west in general is that they have become over-civilized.

[Odin]

(05-27-2016, 11:52 AM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: Irony - baldness can be a result of many things but normally it is a sign of high testosterone. I've never understood guys who try to hide their baldness. Some cultures consider being bald an honor. Trump and other baldness deniers are just complete weirdos in my book (disclosure ... I'm quite lacking in the "top fur" department ... but hide none of my shining head end!).

Given that it is conditioned by testosterone I have a hypothesis that male-pattern baldness was originally a secondary sex characteristic of adult male australopithecines. A significant element of human evolution has been Neoteny, the retention of more juvenile features into adulthood, and this disrupted the normal timing of the development of the baldness.

[Kinser79]

I'm not convinced that Trump is bald. Typically you'd expect that someone with his style and flair (yes his make up person really should be fired but I digress) would get a hairpiece that looks like hair. Rather I think like Rand Paul he has hair that looks like a cheap hairpiece. I've seen some bad toupees in my day but none that bad. So it is likely his actual hair.

That said, baldness is not a disqualification for the Presidency, especially not when his opponent has much graver problems.

[Kinser79]

(05-27-2016, 10:36 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: Yes it's his actual hair - in the most elaborate comb over I've ever seen. Look at how the light shines through it and you can see the shape of a bald head in there.

Bald, not bald makes no difference to me. Seriously I voted for a man who looks like he combed his hair by sticking his head out of the window of his campaign bus during the primary.

Quote:Baldness is not a disqualification but hiding it is in my book.

Hum...you'd have some seriously messed up priorities if that is your main beef with him dude.

HRC hides all sorts of things, like how she seems to have a problem with 'misplacing' state secrets.

Low Energy Jeb! hides his testicles somewhere and can't seem to find them.

Lyin' Ted Cruz hides his true citizenship. Psst, he's Canadian.

Little Marco tries to hide his adderal addiction. That little Cuban midget is hopped up on something.

Ben Carson, god bless him, has the opposite problem someone hid his coffee.

Given those options...I'll take hiding baldness.

[Odin]

"Daddy" thinks the drought in California isn't real.

[pbrower2a]

"Daddy" needs to grow up about scientific reality.

Anything less than acceptance of scientific reality is grossly immature. California still has a savage drought, and letting loose some water for some quick agricultural production leaves little room for any relapse into drought. One nearly-OK winter rainy season does not end a five-year drought.

Even more significantly, Californians may need to adapt to their state becoming much drier as rainfall patterns shift northward. Agriculture is the biggest user of water. Water in the Sacramento Delta? One needs to drain irrigated soils, lest those soils become salty and unproductive.

"Daddy" could be to the environment what Dubya was to the financial industry. That could be even worse. We got a sesquiannum of economic collapse from Dubya's insane, destructive economics. Environmental disasters can have much-greater durability.

...I think I know where much of the growing of nuts and grapes will appear if California goes semi-desert. In 2012, the "Year Without a Winter", parts of southern Michigan began to look much like the Central valley of California, even to the extent that the grass went yellowish-brown in the summer. That just doesn't happen in Michigan. Just imagine the Detroit getting a climate more like that of Sacramento.

[Kinser79]

Or just maybe these drought conditions aren't really a drought at all and rather are a return to more normal and historical rain and snowfall patterns after a particularly wet century. Of course the so-called left's proposal to address this issue is to make droughts worse by coupling it with famines by denying water to farmers.

Given the choice between 3 inch fish and vegetables for the human population that will riot without food, the 3 inch fish have to lose.

[Odin]

(05-28-2016, 11:52 AM)Kinser79 Wrote: Or just maybe these drought conditions aren't really a drought at all and rather are a return to more normal and historical rain and snowfall patterns after a particularly wet century.  Of course the so-called left's proposal to address this issue is to make droughts worse by coupling it with famines by denying water to farmers.

Given the choice between 3 inch fish and vegetables for the human population that will riot without food, the 3 inch fish have to lose.

Fortunately not everyone shares your narrow-minded disregard for other species.

[Kinser79]

(05-28-2016, 05:37 PM)Odin Wrote:

(05-28-2016, 11:52 AM)Kinser79 Wrote: Or just maybe these drought conditions aren't really a drought at all and rather are a return to more normal and historical rain and snowfall patterns after a particularly wet century.  Of course the so-called left's proposal to address this issue is to make droughts worse by coupling it with famines by denying water to farmers.

Given the choice between 3 inch fish and vegetables for the human population that will riot without food, the 3 inch fish have to lose.

Fortunately not everyone shares your narrow-minded disregard for other species.

So then you favor malnutrition and rioting then. Or is that you expect to be able to exploit farmers in the so-called third world to obtain food. Either are in direct opposition to the needs of the vast majority of humans.

[Eric the Green]

(05-23-2016, 11:47 PM)radind Wrote: I have not seen any polls on how the secular group breaks down. My assessment is based on the operational effects that appears to be a working majority. The 10% with a Biblical worldview is based on the barna.org polls. ( I would have guessed this to be ~ 20%).

I have seen many polls on this, but am not sure I want to research them now. I'm sure you know that Evangelicals are a larger proportion of the population than 10%.

Quote:This very long article addresses some of the issues that have been bothering me.
 

This article presents quite a puzzling argument.

I guess, not being from Alabama and the "red state" culture, but from "hip" California, and born near Berkeley, I find it hard to fathom this way of thinking. It is so pervasive in the red states (far more than 10%), that it seems we may be headed for a break-up if the issues like this are pressed too hard. I think the religious right is going to need to let go of its obsession with the traditional family. From my experience, and my point of view, I find no value in it at all. So I am open to alternatives. That doesn't mean I want to impose my views on others who value the institution.

Quote:http://www.firstthings.com/article/2015/...ristianity

HOW THE PUBLIC SIGNIFICANCE OF CHRISTIANITY IS CHANGING

… "All notions of justice presuppose ontology and anthropology, and so a revolution in fundamental anthropology will invariably transform the meaning and content of justice and bring about its own morality. We are beginning to feel the force of this transformation in civil society and the political order. Court decisions invalidating traditional marriage law fall from the sky like rain. The regulatory state and ubiquitous new global media throw their ever increasing weight behind the new understanding of marriage and its implicit anthropology, which treats our bodies as raw material to be used as we see fit. Today a rigorous new public morality inverts and supplants the residuum of our Christian moral inheritance.”…

That is quite a leap. I would liken it to a leap to the Moon from both feet on the ground. A new understanding of marriage means treating our bodies as raw materials to use as we see fit? I don't get this. The important thing in human relations is to treat others as we wish to be treated, and to recognize each human (and each living) being as sacred and of value. It is capitalism, materialism and our use of scientific technology that most-often violate this moral precept; not to mention war, discrimination, oppression of human rights, etc.; NOT feminism, gay liberation, liberation from traditional oppressive family authority, etc. If I were you, I would question this kind of authoritarian traditionalism. What is the virtue you see in it?

Quote:… "The line between negative rights and positive entitlements is thus inherently blurry. If I am to have a right to free speech, for example, then I must be empowered to speak and be heard, which means using the power of the state to give me the resources I need and to suppress anything that might disempower me.”…

I don't see how this follows, or that insisting on free speech implies the state giving someone "resources." What sort of "resources"?

Quote:… "For example, virtually absent from our lament over the threats to religious freedom in the juridical sense is any mention of that deeper freedom opened up by the transcendent horizon of Christ’s resurrection, though this was a frequent theme of Pope Benedict’s papacy. If we cannot see beyond the juridical meaning of religious freedom to the freedom that the truth itself gives, how then can we expect to exercise this more fundamental freedom when our juridical freedom is denied? Too often we are content to accept the absolutism of liberal order, which consists in its capacity to establish itself as the ultimate horizon, to remake everything within that horizon in its own image, and to establish itself as the highest good and the condition of possibility for the pursuit of all other goods—including religious freedom.”…

I understand the freedom opened up by Jesus' resurrection very well. I doubt most evangelicals and even most Christians understand it at all. But this is a new age. It is time we moved to a more accurate interpretation of this, free from the obvious need the Church has had to impose its authority with its traditional interpretation (and which I think you subject yourself to, whether you admit this or not).

Quite simply, Jesus demonstrated that a human being could transcend death, if (s)he fully understands that (s) he is an expression and incarnation of God. Jesus presented us with a possibility called ascension which someday more of us can realize. More on our level, he demonstrated the survival of the human soul after death. Jesus asked his followers to believe that if he could do it, they could do it too. That is the obvious meaning of the resurrection. People who don't embrace it, are just lacking in what Jesus called "faith." Ye of little faith, believe on me, and you too will do all that I have done, and more, said Jesus in the John gospel.

The resurrection is no disproof of the liberal social order. It has little to do with it. But liberalism is just the natural application of the Christ's message: to treat others as we wish to be treated, as the scripture says. If you want freedom, then extend freedom to others. It's quite simple, and to complicate it with such elaborate evasion as this article does, is dishonest nonsense.

Quote:… "For in its enforcement of the sexual revolution, the state is effectively codifying ontological and anthropological presuppositions. In redefining marriage and the family, the state not only embarks on an unprecedented expansion of its powers into realms heretofore considered prior to or outside its reach, and not only does it usurp functions and prerogatives once performed by intermediary associations within civil society, it also exercises these powers by tacitly redefining what the human being is and committing the nation to a decidedly post-Christian (and ultimately post-human) anthropology and philosophy of nature.”…

… “  Yet something greater than liberal freedom is at stake. There seems to be a prevailing sense that this moment is something of a kairos for American Christianity, a moment of deep change in the public significance of Christianity and a moment of decision in the life of the Church.”…

… “This is the freedom that the truth itself gives and that the Church in our society will increasingly be called to exercise as the revolution overseen by liberal absolutism proceeds along its present course: the freedom to suffer for the truth of the Gospel.”…

The truth of the gospel is being upheld by the liberal side. And as such, it will continue. The liberal state is not assuming new powers by allowing gays to get married. It is simply upholding the constitution. Some religious believers may assume that the Bible, or at least their limited and outdated interpretation of it, takes precedence over the Constitution. But judges are sworn so help them God to uphold the latter, not the former. So how can any Christian expect otherwise?

Allowing gays to get married does not redefine anthropology or ontology. The definition of male and female does not biologically change by allowing this. Gay relationships have always existed; there is nothing at all new about it anyway. What is new is recognizing reality. Over the past 250 years or so, the Revolutions of our time have moved Humanity in the direction of recognizing reality instead of arbitrary authority as the authority for our lives, and I expect this Revolution to continue.

So, what's the problem with this?

My theory is that gay relationships, just as black-white relationships did (and still do for some), go against the grain of what we are used to and consider "normal." The article is just a long-winded justification for the author's fear of what is novel and unusual to him. Christians just need to get used to this liberation; that's all it amounts to.

[Eric the Green]

(05-27-2016, 11:45 AM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: That's not quite right.

You win the prize for understatement of the year.

[Odin]

(05-28-2016, 06:16 PM)Kinser79 Wrote: So then you favor malnutrition and rioting then.  Or is that you expect to be able to exploit farmers in the so-called third world to obtain food.  Either are in direct opposition to the needs of the vast majority of humans.

Most famines nowadays are political problems, not food supply problems. We can grow more than enough food for everyone and still protect the environment.