Bipartisan Senate group proposes ‘no fly, no buy’ gun measure

[Eric the Green]

Well, Floyd R. Turbow, your insults do not in any way form a coherent answer to my points.

[Classic-Xer]

(12-22-2018, 06:47 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Well, Floyd R. Turbow, your insults do not in any way form a coherent answer to my points.

What coherent points are you referring to? You have no coherent points. You have nothing of value to offer or contribute to anyone of values. Me, I wouldn't waste time dickering with blues.

[pbrower2a]

(12-22-2018, 05:34 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: The party of Lincoln in a modern sense is still very much alive on the Republican side as well as most of American culture these days. You don't represent the views of American culture. You represent the views of blue culture. Now, as an American who understand that, all I can say is good luck making it through the upcoming years as more and more people come to realize that the blues ain't all that American at the core and their leadership ain't all that interested in American point of views or American beliefs or American laws and so forth. Like I said, you're a dead man as far I'm concerned and what happens to you and your so called liberal ilk makes no difference to me personally. I've never recognized (Eric the Green) as an American liberal. Tolerance like everything else only extends so far. As far as American tolerance, you aren't even close to being viewed as borderline. So, you)Eric the Green are) pretty much screwed at this point. One more American minded judge is all we need to change things for the better as far as Americans go and make things and make matters even worse for blues who view themselves as the rulers of their own domains, so to speak.

It may be ironic, but FDR practically took over Abraham Lincoln during World War II as an ideal. FDR found Lincoln the ideal expression of America's desire to deliver the slaves of Hitlerland and Tojoland from subjection. FDR used the rhetoric of Lincoln against the Axis power with even  greater vehemence because the Axis powers had no trace of the gentlemanly qualities of the Confederates. After all, the Confederacy had only one vice that Lincoln eventually chose to extinguish: chattel slavery. Slavery in a Nazi concentration camp was far worse than anything that a slave could have endured on a plantation. During the Second World War, German POWs under American custody got Lincoln as an antithesis of Hitler. Both came from modest backgrounds and led their countries through dangerous times.

We "Blues" as a rule admire Abraham Lincoln. To be sure, FDR was not as merciful to Nazis as Lincoln was to the slave-owning planters who lost the American Civil War. Maybe people must show more tolerance of old evils that have long been tolerated out of political necessity than  to those who bring evil to the world as did Hitler and Tojo. The worst that the Confederacy did was Andersonville, and for that its commandant would die with a rope around his neck. By the way -- Abraham Lincoln and Donald Trump are two of the most dissimilar Presidents that we have ever had. I look at the deeds of Donald Trump and ask whether Lincoln would have done the same.

Liberalism includes everything from the classical liberalism of the Enlightenment (free enterprise instead of the feudal rights of an elite to a sure profit predicated upon duties of the masses to the feudal elites in return for the privilege of survival, denial of any divine right of kings, and basic rights as enumerated in the American Bill of Rights and the French  Declarations of the Rights of Man) to social democracy that extends liberalism to the ideal of equal opportunity to its fullest. "Liberalism" excludes anything still feudal (like Saudi Arabia), fascist, or Communist, all fair exclusions from liberalism. Ba'athism under Saddam Hussein or either Assad and the theocratic rule of either Iran or ISIS count as fascist in my set of definitions as does the KKK or Nazism.

Liberalism is not particularly American. I have more in common with a Japanese or Indian liberal than I have in common with an American fascist. Indeed I would sell out the American fascist war criminals to liberal Japanese or liberal Indian occupiers with no hesitation. I'm as anti-crime as I can be, and I cannot imagine worse crimes than war crimes... and I would expect American fascists to become war criminals. If I could say that there is nothing wrong with Saddam Hussein that a well-tied rope and a seven-foot drop couldn't solve, I would say the same of any American who commits such crimes. Liberalism asserts the core values of freedom of thought and expression, fair and competitive elections as the means of constituting government, the right to a fair trial to be judged by an independent judiciary, the abolition of whatever remaining feudal rights and duties, gender equity, ethnic equality, rule of law, and the absence of barbarous punishments. Liberalism is the expression of humanism (all in all, the only viable ideology) .

Decent people do not praise a political system that they believe 'screws' people. We have seen more than enough compromise of the American political heritage just to promote some right-wing agenda. We have seen signs of government by corporate lobbyist, a novel form of dictatorship that has yet to have a fancy Greek name for it. We have seen a President act more like a despot than any prior President has ever acted. Our President does not understand 240 years of the American political heritage and holds much of it in contempt.

It may be ironic that I could call upon a phrase that an awful President used to describe his ideal for America: a "return to normalcy". That was Warren Gamaliel Harding, still regarded as one of the worst Presidents in American history nearly a century later and even the most corrupt until Donald Trump. We can use a President who has the skill set of Ronald Reagan and the temperament of Eisenhower. We had such a President, but he is Barack Obama. If you dislike Obama it is for his beliefs and not for having the characteristics of two Presidents that most conservatives recognize with Eisenhower or Reagan.

There is more to government than taking the shaft to political opponents, which is precisely what Commies, fascists, and theocrats do. If you endorse such, then you are anything but a liberal. We need 'normalcy' again, even if such is not a valid word in the English language.

[Eric the Green]

I admire Alan Watts, who said that all societies require an out-group, or an enemy, or else you don't know who you are. You identify yourself in contrast to the others. But, you must not destroy your enemies, otherwise you destroy yourself too. A society without an enemy might become complacent, not knowing its role or identity. We must respect our political opponents, as brower said.

I define myself in alliance with and in opposition to several other worldviews around today. They are somewhat represented by people who post here. Some may be allies in some sense and opposite in another, or in fact all of them may be.

The Enlightenment has been recognized as an 18th century movement out of which the USA was born. It was correctly seen in the recent second turning, however, as inadequate and superficial. It has been modified and added to, first by an expansion as brower mentioned as "social democracy that extends liberalism to the ideal of equal opportunity to its fullest." Second, by the greenpeace and spiritual revolution of the sixties, The Enlightenment was seen as a disenchantment of the world, robbing it of its deeper dimensions of meaning and reducing it to a shallow rationalism. The New Age alterrnative sees some revival of esoteric traditions from the Renaissance and ancient philosophy and from the Oriental religions, plus aspiration of human potential and new methods of self-transformation. Whereas The Enlightenment eventually reduced the view of humans to automatons miraculously endowed with reason who need to subdue a stupid universe, the New Age sees humans as conscious spiritual beings first, connected to a superconscious cosmic consciousness revealed to many people through revival of the ancient traditions and experience expended through psychedelics. This greenpeace view also includes a new respect for Nature as alive and not stupid, and the necessary foundation of life of which we are a part rather than something to be subdued by technology to serve rational beings miraculously emergent from the stupid mechanical universe. These are the greens.

There are some like me who may have some awareness of the New Age, to some degree. Most who post here today are not in this camp, but remain in the Enlightenment camp, with the social democratic addition which favors welfare and social programs and a government that helps the people. These are considered blues today, or Democrats. Mikebert is representative of this type, and brower and David Horn also but with perhaps a green tinge. Bob is a blue with a red tinge, perhaps. Bill the Piper holds to the Enlightenment view quite literally, and sees the salvation of humanity in the evolution of technology that the Enlightenment has spawned in its mastery by reason of the stupid universe. The blues in general usually accept the Enlightenment view, but some may embrace greenpeace priorities as well. So whereas greens may see themselves as allies with blues on the political level, and opponents of blues on a higher spiritual or philosophical level, they respect the blues as allies.

But blues and grees today are opponents of the reds. There are two types of red. First is the Libertarian view, either within the Republican Party or in the Libertarian Party. These are Enlightenment types, but without the social democracy that was added to it. Self-reliance and the free market are its ideals. Galen is an extreme example of this type.

Then there are the paleo reds, like Classic Xer, and in earlier times here represented for example by JDFP and JPT. They do not entirely accept the Enlightenment view, because they are conservative Christians. But they adopt the classical liberal or libertarian view, and use it to support their paleo view. Their worldview is a throwback to pre-Enlightement views of the creator God and humans as His creation, and Jesus as our Savior. They do not quite accept the view of the Enlightenment physicalists that we are beings of reason who emerged by chance through mechanical forces from a stupid universe. They have a spiritual view in common with the New Age, but limited within the Christian dogma of humans as mere creations of a God as described in the Bible.

The blues may have united as Americans with reds in the past, and seen the Communists as the enemy. They were a group who took the addition to the liberal view as providing social welfare to a totalitarian extreme, imposing it on the people by force. But since they see Communism as defeated and having crumbled of its own weight, now the opposition to them is the Republicans. The Republicans however do not see the Communists as having been defeated, but now see them as the Democrats, who are the blues and are not real Americans. Ironically though, they have now taken on the same color once assigned to the Communists.

So we have these contending worldviews, and so how are they to be viewed? Can we of one worldview know who we are, or even exist, without the others?

I look upon those of other worldviews as in need of awakening, rather than people to be defeated, normally. Others may see me and those of my worldview as superstitious, and thus in need of education and redemption from such things as belief in astrology or from human potential techniques that are too self-centered according to them. New Agers on the other hand may not always be political enough even for me, if they see human salvation in these techniques and spiritual wisdom instead of politics.

I have come to the view, however, that the Republican Party, the reds, has today lost its moral compass and is in need of defeat. The blues and greens would then become the opposing parties, while the reds would fade away as irrelevant and a relic of the past. I have hope, though, that the reds too are just in need of awakening, rather than defeat through war or political battle alone. I see them according to my New Age view, however they may see themselves. I myself may not be able to awaken them; it is for them to awaken, some of them at least, and it is up to the blues and greens to provide all the people with the views that will bring us forward and awaken and enlighten the people. All people in the USA are Americans, and have potential for enlightenment and awakening alike, and can unite again at least enough so that we may work together, once the Republican Party as it exists today has been relegated to the past where it belongs. That's how I see things now.

[Classic-Xer]

(12-23-2018, 01:16 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Then there are the paleo reds, like Classic Xer, and in earlier times here represented for example by JDFP and JPT. They do not entirely accept the Enlightenment view, because they are conservative Christians. But they adopt the classical liberal or libertarian view, and use it to support their paleo view. Their worldview is a throwback to pre-Enlightement views of the creator God and humans as His creation, and Jesus as our Savior. They do not quite accept the view of the Enlightenment physicalists that we are beings of reason who emerged by chance through mechanical forces from a stupid universe. They have a spiritual view in common with the New Age, but limited within the Christian dogma of humans as mere creations of a God as described in the Bible.

I'm not a conservative Christian. I'm a deist who only goes to church to attend weddings and funerals or other religious ceremonies involving family members or close friends. So, I'm not really one of them. I'm a typical American Classical Liberal.

[Eric the Green]

(12-23-2018, 04:25 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(12-23-2018, 01:16 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Then there are the paleo reds, like Classic Xer, and in earlier times here represented for example by JDFP and JPT. They do not entirely accept the Enlightenment view, because they are conservative Christians. But they adopt the classical liberal or libertarian view, and use it to support their paleo view. Their worldview is a throwback to pre-Enlightement views of the creator God and humans as His creation, and Jesus as our Savior. They do not quite accept the view of the Enlightenment physicalists that we are beings of reason who emerged by chance through mechanical forces from a stupid universe. They have a spiritual view in common with the New Age, but limited within the Christian dogma of humans as mere creations of a God as described in the Bible.

I'm not a conservative Christian. I'm a deist who only goes to church to attend weddings and funerals or other religious ceremonies involving family members or close friends. So, I'm not really one of them. I'm a typical American Classical Liberal.

That's not what I remember from what you have said. It doesn't matter whether you go to church or not.

[Eric the Green]

Having experienced an awakening myself, in the peak time of awakenings, I do not consider myself as saying that people need awakening as condescending. I know that I have awakened from views I held in the past, and it was the greatest moment of my life. I can only wish for it to happen for all. I can only wish for freedom and liberation for all people, for no-one is free until all are free in a universe to which I am connected it its entirety.

Although I identify as an American, I am first a citizen of the world, and of the universe. I am influenced and supported by the American and European traditions, exoteric and esoteric, whether of the 18th century enlightenment, 19th century romantic and transcendentalist and 20th century modernist, and 15th and 16th century Renaissance and 17th-18th century Baroque, or of the Medieval and Ancient worlds and the pagan cultures, or of the venerable and wise Asian cultures and religions, and those of southern lands.

I don't consider it "American" to erect walls to keep others out. Americans are all immigrants or close descendants thereof, and some preceded whites here by over ten thousand years. The statue of liberty spells out our creed in which we welcome the oppressed and hungry from other lands. It was never assumed that all criminals are welcome here; we have laws. But despite our history of racism, directed at some immigrants, whether imported by us or whether they came on their own, racism is not part of essential American values, and Americans are not presumed to be white. And also, it is distinctly anti-American to claim that Americans are Christians, or even religious at all. The First Amendment makes clear that our nation has no prescribed religion, and all are free to worship or not in the way they choose.

[Bill the Piper]

(12-24-2018, 12:21 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: I don't consider it "American" to erect walls to keep others out. Americans are all immigrants or close descendants thereof, and some preceded whites here by over ten thousand years. The statue of liberty spells out our creed in which we welcome the oppressed and hungry from other lands. It was never assumed that all criminals are welcome here; we have laws. But despite our history of racism, directed at some immigrants, whether imported by us or whether they came on their own, racism is not part of essential American values, and Americans are not presumed to be white. And also, it is distinctly anti-American to claim that Americans are Christians, or even religious at all. The First Amendment makes clear that our nation has no prescribed religion, and all are free to worship or not in the way they choose.

I completely agree. The most wonderful aspect of the American Revolution is that it created a nation of IDEALS rather than blood and soil. China, Russia and Germany are all built around a tribal identity, which isn't very interesting to others. You don't see Africans wearing T-shirts with the Chinese or German flag. But all over the world many people wear T-shirts with the US flag, because they like the ideals of the American Revolution.

Neoconservatives and Progressives such as yourself differ in the interpretation, but both stand for the ideals of the American Revolutionaries. Trumpists don't. In this sense, Trumpists are most un-American creatures possible.

One could even argue the ideal Trumpist society is Belarus. It's almost 100% white (apart from a few Tatars and some Chechen refugees). It's ruled by an autocratic president. Its central bank is directly responsible to the president. A white version of North Korea, as some guy on Personality Cafe has called it.

Quote:I have come to the view, however, that the Republican Party, the reds, has today lost its moral compass and is in need of defeat. The blues and greens would then become the opposing parties, while the reds would fade away as irrelevant and a relic of the past. I have hope, though, that the reds too are just in need of awakening, rather than defeat through war or political battle alone

In this scenario, I'd imagine the Democrats to move into "liberal globalist" corner maybe like Hillary Clinton or like UK's Lib Dems, while the Greens would stand for socialism with some restrictions on self-expression based on environmentalism and feminism, approaching the policies of Jeremy Corbyn. The rivalry between them could as passionate as today's one between Republicans and Democrats.

[pbrower2a]

(12-24-2018, 12:21 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: Having experienced an awakening myself, in the peak time of awakenings, I do not consider myself as saying that people need awakening as condescending. I know that I have awakened from views I held in the past, and it was the greatest moment of my life. I can only wish for it to happen for all. I can only wish for freedom and liberation for all people, for no-one is free until all are free in a universe to which I am connected it its entirety.

For many the Awakening is a disaster. There can be seriously-flawed awakenings. The Boom Awakening was a wonderful time for a teenager or young adult, but it was a time in which the real children got severely neglected and often exploited when the 'awakening' was sexual or involved drugs that induced parents to fail to pay attention to their children. If the Awakening is cultural (Boomers discovering early music, Mahler and Art Deco), then that is fine. LSD or "Jesus Freak" cults? No.

Quote:Although I identify as an American, I am first a citizen of the world, and of the universe. I am influenced and supported by the American and European traditions, exoteric and esoteric, whether of the 18th century enlightenment, 19th century romantic and transcendentalist and 20th century modernist, and 15th and 16th century Renaissance and 17th-18th century Baroque, or of the Medieval and Ancient worlds and the pagan cultures, or of the venerable and wise Asian cultures and religions, and those of southern lands.

I never could quite get the esoteric stuff, and six years in northern California from my junior year in high school through college graduation (UC Berkeley) shaped me in ways that little else could except for perhaps more time there. Now that I am stranded, perhaps tor the rest or my life in a place where happiness depends upon fitting into peasant traditions of central Europe except for speaking English... I wish that I could have stayed there, and not only for the climate and scenery. The tolerable parts of Michigan are those that most remind me of northern California (the shores of Lakes Michigan and Superior, and of course Ann Arbor). Those people who seem mired in peasant traditions do not listen to Bach or Chopin even if their ancestry suggests that they might.

Quote:I don't consider it "American" to erect walls to keep others out. Americans are all immigrants or close descendants thereof, and some preceded whites here by over ten thousand years. The statue of liberty spells out our creed in which we welcome the oppressed and hungry from other lands. It was never assumed that all criminals are welcome here; we have laws. But despite our history of racism, directed at some immigrants, whether imported by us or whether they came on their own, racism is not part of essential American values, and Americans are not presumed to be white. And also, it is distinctly anti-American to claim that Americans are Christians, or even religious at all. The First Amendment makes clear that our nation has no prescribed religion, and all are free to worship or not in the way they choose.

Many of those are fleeing some of the most dangerous communities not in war zone or places of 'ethnic cleansing' -- places that make Detroit, St. Louis, Memphis, and New Orleans look safe by comparison. As for what is American -- what could be more American than taking refuge here from the Black Hundreds, Nazis, or Communism and deciding that one could practice Judaism? Or for that matter, fleeing some leader who decides that Islam is as that leader defines it only to practice Islam in America as one believes that Islam is something else?

Religious freedom is for us all or it is for none of us except by some freakish coincidence.

By the way:

This is in the background:

[pbrower2a]

It turns out that the simplest way to buy anything -- a credit card -- is the tool of choice for buying firearms and ammo in quantities suitable for mass shootings.





These are credit card receipts involving Omar Mateen, who opened fire upon the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida. 49 dead, 53 wounded. That's a little more than  $37 per killing, or $18 per killing or injury.

Quote: Two days before Omar Mateen killed 49 people and wounded 53 more at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, he went on Google and typed “Credit card unusual spending.”

Mr. Mateen had opened six new credit card accounts — including a Mastercard, an American Express card and three Visa cards — over the previous eight months. Twelve days before the shooting, he began a $26,532 buying spree: a Sig Sauer MCX .223-caliber rifle, a Glock 17 9-millimeter semiautomatic pistol, several large magazines, thousands of rounds of ammunition and a $7,500 ring for his wife that he bought on a jewelry store card. His average spending before that, on his only card, was $1,500 a month.

His web browsing history chronicled his anxiety: “Credit card reports all three bureaus,” “FBI,” and “Why banks stop your purchases.”
He needn’t have worried. None of the banks, credit-card network operators or payment processors alerted law enforcement officials about the purchases he thought were so suspicious.

On another killer:

Quote:A little more than a month before James E. Holmes killed 12 people and injured 70 others at a Century 16 movie theater in Aurora, Colo., in 2012, a psychiatrist was considering having him involuntarily committed. Mr. Holmes quit his job, filed for unemployment benefits and used a new Mastercard issued by USAA to help buy more than $11,000 in weapons and military gear. He bought two tear-gas grenades, a gas mask and filter, a .40-caliber Glock handgun, a 12-gauge shotgun, a .223-caliber AR-15, a 100-round drum magazine, two 40-round magazines, a laser sight, a bulletproof vest, 5,000 rounds of ammunition, two sets of handcuffs and “road stars” meant to slice through car tires.

“This was a civilian making these orders, not the police and not the military,” said Sandy Phillips, whose daughter, Jessica, died in the attack. “Someone should have noticed.”

The banks might want to stop the financing of massacres; I'd want to if I were a banker because those who commit mass killings are more likely to default than pay what they charged for the tools of the grisly deed. That is money alone.

26 states prohibit people from buying lottery tickets with credit cards out of a concern that people who charge their tickets will lose money while becoming compulsive gamblers. 

Quote:John Shrewsberry, chief financial officer of Wells Fargo — which counts the National Rifle Association as a client — has dismissed the notion that banks should regulate the use of its credit cards for gun purchases.

“The best way to make progress on these issues is through the political and legislative process,” he said in April on a conference call with investors.

There may be good reason that no bank executive wants to talk out loud about guns: In October, Senator John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana, introduced a bill, the No Red and Blue Banks Act, which would “prohibit the federal government from giving contracts to banks that discriminate against lawful businesses based solely on social policy considerations.”
The bill was directed at banks that changed their policies regarding guns.

“Our friends at Citigroup and Bank of America apparently aren’t busy enough with their banking business; they have decided that they are going to set policy for the Second Amendment,” Mr. Kennedy wrote on Twitter.

And a policy expert at the American Civil Liberties Union recently expressed concern about how efforts to prevent mass shootings could infringe on individual rights.

“The implication of expecting the government to detect and prevent every mass shooting is believing the government should play an enormously intrusive role in American life,” Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst at the A.C.L.U. Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, wrote in July.

Not all the concerns involve privacy or politics. Some are practical.

George Brauchler, the district attorney who oversaw the investigation of Mr. Holmes after the Aurora shooting, said the deluge of data the police receive already presents challenge.

“To some extent we are looking for a needle in a haystack and that haystack keeps getting bigger and bigger,” he said.

The data could inform old-fashioned police work that might or might not lead to something more, he said.

“Do I wish someone from law enforcement had been able to go to his door and knock on his door and figure out a way to talk their way into it or to freak him out?" he said of Mr. Holmes. “Yeah, absolutely.”

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018...cards.html

[Classic-Xer]

(12-24-2018, 12:21 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: Having experienced an awakening myself, in the peak time of awakenings, I do not consider myself as saying that people need awakening as condescending. I know that I have awakened from views I held in the past, and it was the greatest moment of my life. I can only wish for it to happen for all. I can only wish for freedom and liberation for all people, for no-one is free until all are free in a universe to which I am connected it its entirety.

Although I identify as an American, I am first a citizen of the world, and of the universe. I am influenced and supported by the American and European traditions, exoteric and esoteric, whether of the 18th century enlightenment, 19th century romantic and transcendentalist and 20th century modernist, and 15th and 16th century Renaissance and 17th-18th century Baroque, or of the Medieval and Ancient worlds and the pagan cultures, or of the venerable and wise Asian cultures and religions, and those of southern lands.

I don't consider it "American" to erect walls to keep others out. Americans are all immigrants or close descendants thereof, and some preceded whites here by over ten thousand years. The statue of liberty spells out our creed in which we welcome the oppressed and hungry from other lands. It was never assumed that all criminals are welcome here; we have laws. But despite our history of racism, directed at some immigrants, whether imported by us or whether they came on their own, racism is not part of essential American values, and Americans are not presumed to be white. And also, it is distinctly anti-American to claim that Americans are Christians, or even religious at all. The First Amendment makes clear that our nation has no prescribed religion, and all are free to worship or not in the way they choose.

Does your home have walls? I'm not aware of an American home that doesn't have walls or external doors that lock. How about you, does your home or apartment have walls and an active security system of some sort or a fence or wall of some sort running along the property line and so forth? I could see wear someone who has dual citizenship could take a position like yours and get away with it. However, it would be very difficult for a American citizen to be able to make such a claim and still be viewed as a loyal/trustworthy American by most other Americans. Hey blue, if you are open to loosing/surrendering your rights and Constitutional protections, I'm open to helping separate you from them and leaving you to the mercy of the world and the mercy foreign powers. I don't care if California or a portion of California ends up in a similar position as Cuba.

[pbrower2a]

(12-26-2018, 12:22 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Does your home have walls? I'm not aware of an American home that doesn't have walls or external doors that lock. How about you, does your home or apartment have walls and an active security system of some sort or a fence or wall of some sort running along the property line and so forth? I could see wear someone who has dual citizenship could take a position like yours and get away with it. However, it would be very difficult for a American citizen to be able to make such a claim and still be viewed as a loyal/trustworthy American by most other Americans. Hey blue, if you are open to loosing/surrendering your rights and Constitutional protections, I'm open to helping separate you from them and leaving you to the mercy of the world and the mercy foreign powers. I don't care if California or a portion of California ends up in a similar position as Cuba.

You seem to have a very narrow definition on what it means to be an American. There is no single American culture.

One needs locking doors simply as a defense against burglary.

The only 'right' that any of us Blues seem to be willing to take away is the questionable right to prepare for committing a gun-based massacre.  Surely you did read the post I had about people, often with clean criminal records, being able to get firearms in large numbers at once.

If I am a banker I do not want someone using a credit card that I issue to be used for purchasing weapons for a mass shooting. At the least I want the cardholder to pay for his purchases, which is highly unlikely if he commits a horrific crime with those firearms.

Banks already have been regulated to ensure that credit cards do not become a means of committing fraud or money-laundering or a means of making transactions involving illegal drugs. So why is there no constraint on buying guns in a way suggesting the potential of a mass shooting?

One firearm at a time? That would be adequate for a sport hunter.

In any event, the right to keep and bear arms comes with the militia clause. Criminal use of weapons has never been a 'gun right'.

...No matter how good one's credit rating, one cannot buy a motor vehicle or real estate on a credit card, at least in Michigan.  Such things would be ideal objects in money laundering.

[Classic-Xer]

(12-25-2018, 08:32 AM)Bill the Piper Wrote: I completely agree. The most wonderful aspect of the American Revolution is that it created a nation of IDEALS rather than blood and soil. China, Russia and Germany are all built around a tribal identity, which isn't very interesting to others. You don't see Africans wearing T-shirts with the Chinese or German flag. But all over the world many people wear T-shirts with the US flag, because they like the ideals of the American Revolution.

Neoconservatives and Progressives such as yourself differ in the interpretation, but both stand for the ideals of the American Revolutionaries. Trumpists don't. In this sense, Trumpists are most un-American creatures possible.

One could even argue the ideal Trumpist society is Belarus. It's almost 100% white (apart from a few Tatars and some Chechen refugees). It's ruled by an autocratic president. Its central bank is directly responsible to the president. A white version of North Korea, as some guy on Personality Cafe has called it.

Yes, it created an American nation governed by American principles and ideals, an American flag and American boundaries that have always been viewed as something of value that's worth defending by American citizens. Are you white or some other special color? Do you know any Trump supporters personally or are you as clueless about them as most blue supporters still seem to be these days? Me, I'm a Republican voter who doesn't have a major issue with Trump, his personality, personal antics or his policies. I mean, I heard/seen Democratic supporters whining and crying and blaming me about the issues related to them for years.

[Classic-Xer]

(12-26-2018, 01:06 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(12-26-2018, 12:22 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Does your home have walls? I'm not aware of an American home that doesn't have walls or external doors that lock. How about you, does your home or apartment have walls and an active security system of some sort or a fence or wall of some sort running along the property line and so forth? I could see wear someone who has dual citizenship could take a position like yours and get away with it. However, it would be very difficult for a American citizen to be able to make such a claim and still be viewed as a loyal/trustworthy American by most other Americans. Hey blue, if you are open to loosing/surrendering your rights and Constitutional protections, I'm open to helping separate you from them and leaving you to the mercy of the world and the mercy foreign powers. I don't care if California or a portion of California ends up in a similar position as Cuba.

You seem to have a very narrow definition on what it means to be an American. There is no single American culture.

One needs locking doors simply as a defense against burglary.

The only 'right' that any of us Blues seem to be willing to take away is the questionable right to prepare for committing a gun-based massacre.  Surely you did read the post I had about people, often with clean criminal records, being able to get firearms in large numbers at once.

If I am a banker I do not want someone using a credit card that I issue to be used for purchasing weapons for a mass shooting. At the least I want the cardholder to pay for his purchases, which is highly unlikely if he commits a horrific crime with those firearms.

Banks already have been regulated to ensure that credit cards do not become a means of committing fraud or money-laundering or a means of making transactions involving illegal drugs. So why is there no constraint on buying guns in a way suggesting the potential of a mass shooting?

One firearm at a time? That would be adequate for a sport hunter.

In any event, the right to keep and bear arms comes with the militia clause. Criminal use of weapons has never been a 'gun right'.

...No matter how good one's credit rating, one cannot buy a motor vehicle or real estate on a credit card, at least in Michigan.  Such things would be ideal objects in money laundering.

Dude, my deer rifle could harm you as much if not more than an AR-15.To be safe, you'd be best to move towards the elimination of all legal firearms.  As I've told you before, I don't want a blue in charge of anything that's relevant to me or viewed as important. I think its best if the blues stick with the blues and continue listening to blues and continue following the views of blues and the blue elite should stick to making decisions for clueless blues and pleasing clueless blues like they're pretty much stuck with doing now and the foreseeable future.

I can buy a car or a home with a credit card. It would be silly to do so but its doable. BTW, my view of Americans was broad enough to attract enough American support from American based posters to change a large forum from a greenish blue to American purple within a years time.

[Eric the Green]

(12-26-2018, 12:22 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(12-24-2018, 12:21 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: Having experienced an awakening myself, in the peak time of awakenings, I do not consider myself as saying that people need awakening as condescending. I know that I have awakened from views I held in the past, and it was the greatest moment of my life. I can only wish for it to happen for all. I can only wish for freedom and liberation for all people, for no-one is free until all are free in a universe to which I am connected it its entirety.

Although I identify as an American, I am first a citizen of the world, and of the universe. I am influenced and supported by the American and European traditions, exoteric and esoteric, whether of the 18th century enlightenment, 19th century romantic and transcendentalist and 20th century modernist, and 15th and 16th century Renaissance and 17th-18th century Baroque, or of the Medieval and Ancient worlds and the pagan cultures, or of the venerable and wise Asian cultures and religions, and those of southern lands.

I don't consider it "American" to erect walls to keep others out. Americans are all immigrants or close descendants thereof, and some preceded whites here by over ten thousand years. The statue of liberty spells out our creed in which we welcome the oppressed and hungry from other lands. It was never assumed that all criminals are welcome here; we have laws. But despite our history of racism, directed at some immigrants, whether imported by us or whether they came on their own, racism is not part of essential American values, and Americans are not presumed to be white. And also, it is distinctly anti-American to claim that Americans are Christians, or even religious at all. The First Amendment makes clear that our nation has no prescribed religion, and all are free to worship or not in the way they choose.

Does your home have walls? I'm not aware of an American home that doesn't have walls or external doors that lock. How about you, does your home or apartment have walls and an active security system of some sort or a fence or wall of some sort running along the property line and so forth? I could see where someone who has dual citizenship could take a position like yours and get away with it. However, it would be very difficult for a American citizen to be able to make such a claim and still be viewed as a loyal/trustworthy American by most other Americans. Hey blue, if you are open to losing/surrendering your rights and Constitutional protections, I'm open to helping separate you from them and leaving you to the mercy of the world and the mercy foreign powers. I don't care if California or a portion of California ends up in a similar position as Cuba.

Fences, but no security system. As of now I live in a safe neighborhood, although the cops killed a woman up my street a few miles today. Merry Christmas.

You call me "blue," but remember dude, I am even worse; I am a green! And my points remain lost on you. I pointed out what is American, and what is not, and I am correct, and it is you who are against American values, not me. And by the way most of my ancestral lines are probably American going further back than yours, and I am distantly related to a great American president, the very one whom you consider to identify with, but who would not identify with your party today, so there dude! Just to set the record straight on who is "American", dude. I know you don't care, and that's fine with me, and it's fine with me if California exits the USA, but you keep saying to me you don't care if it does anyway. Being a broken record I guess you consider a noble American trait. Me, I don't think so, so much. Merry Christmas to you, and to you a good night.

[Eric the Green]

(12-25-2018, 10:02 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(12-24-2018, 12:21 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: Having experienced an awakening myself, in the peak time of awakenings, I do not consider myself as saying that people need awakening as condescending. I know that I have awakened from views I held in the past, and it was the greatest moment of my life. I can only wish for it to happen for all. I can only wish for freedom and liberation for all people, for no-one is free until all are free in a universe to which I am connected it its entirety.

For many the Awakening is a disaster. There can be seriously-flawed awakenings. The Boom Awakening was a wonderful time for a teenager or young adult, but it was a time in which the real children got severely neglected and often exploited when the 'awakening' was sexual or involved drugs that induced parents to fail to pay attention to their children. If the Awakening is cultural (Boomers discovering early music, Mahler and Art Deco), then that is fine. LSD or "Jesus Freak" cults? No.  

Quote:Although I identify as an American, I am first a citizen of the world, and of the universe. I am influenced and supported by the American and European traditions, exoteric and esoteric, whether of the 18th century enlightenment, 19th century romantic and transcendentalist and 20th century modernist, and 15th and 16th century Renaissance and 17th-18th century Baroque, or of the Medieval and Ancient worlds and the pagan cultures, or of the venerable and wise Asian cultures and religions, and those of southern lands.

I never could quite get the esoteric stuff, and six years in northern California from my junior year in high school through college graduation (UC Berkeley) shaped me in ways that little else could except for perhaps more time there. Now that I am stranded, perhaps tor the rest or my life in a place where happiness depends upon fitting into peasant traditions of central Europe except for speaking English... I wish that I could have stayed there, and not only for the climate and scenery. The tolerable parts of Michigan are those that most remind me of northern California (the shores of Lakes Michigan and Superior, and of course Ann Arbor). Those people who seem mired in peasant traditions do not listen to Bach or Chopin even if their ancestry suggests that they might.

Quote:I don't consider it "American" to erect walls to keep others out. Americans are all immigrants or close descendants thereof, and some preceded whites here by over ten thousand years. The statue of liberty spells out our creed in which we welcome the oppressed and hungry from other lands. It was never assumed that all criminals are welcome here; we have laws. But despite our history of racism, directed at some immigrants, whether imported by us or whether they came on their own, racism is not part of essential American values, and Americans are not presumed to be white. And also, it is distinctly anti-American to claim that Americans are Christians, or even religious at all. The First Amendment makes clear that our nation has no prescribed religion, and all are free to worship or not in the way they choose.

Many of those are fleeing some of the most dangerous communities not in war zone or places of 'ethnic cleansing' -- places that make Detroit, St. Louis, Memphis, and New Orleans look safe by comparison. As for what is American -- what could be more American than taking refuge here from the Black Hundreds, Nazis, or Communism and deciding that one could practice Judaism? Or for that matter, fleeing some leader who decides that Islam is as that leader defines it only to practice Islam in America as one believes that Islam is something else?

Religious freedom is for us all or it is for none of us except by some freakish coincidence.

By the way:

This is in the background:

What a great work. Classical music has been an essential part of my life from my earliest days in this lifetime. I wrote a transcription of the Hallelujah Chorus for organ.

I of course got the esoteric stuff, and that was due to my awakening. Yes, it was great for our boomer generation, and there were so many of us involved in so many adventures that we didn't pay much attention to the younger children. Most of us put off having them, so it was the Silents who actually neglected them; they were just not much on our radar, generally speaking. I also know from the stories told to me by Silents, that sexual and violent abuse was much greater in the old days than in the Awakening years. 

The nuclear family was to many of us oppressive and irrelevant. Times changed as the 3T dawned and many boomers settled back into conventional ways and became more conservative. My awakening was not based on LSD, but I knew many for whom it was, so I can't knock it for those whose path it was to use as a way to expand consciousness and open doors of perception. 

Well said as usual about religious freedom. Many would extend that to using psychedelics as a sacrament and an opening to religious experience. For others like me it is not the right path though. A spiritual path is an essential part of a fulfilling life, in my opinion. The unexamined life is not worth living, as Socrates said.

[pbrower2a]

(12-26-2018, 02:52 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Dude, my deer rifle could harm you as much if not more than an AR-15.To be safe, you'd be best to move towards the elimination of all legal firearms.  As I've told you before, I don't want a blue in charge of anything that's relevant to me or viewed as important. I think its best if the blues stick with the blues and continue listening to blues and continue following the views of blues and the blue elite should stick to making decisions for clueless blues and pleasing clueless blues like they're pretty much stuck with doing now and the foreseeable future.

I can buy a car or a home with a credit card. It would be silly to do so but its doable. BTW, my view of Americans was broad enough to attract enough American support from American based posters to change a large forum from a greenish blue to American purple within a years time.

I don't commit burglaries or rapes, so I am unlikely to face a deer rifle pointed angrily at me. The people who own those expensive and accurate firearms are usually well-off enough that they would never use them in armed robberies. Those are valuable, highly-marketable firearms that sport hunters cherish. Even without guns as a deterrent, family dogs are good cause to avoid committing crime. Four Dobermans might as well be one tiger if one breaks into a family home that those dogs can transform into a jungle as deadly as the Sundarbans, a mangrove swamp that has man-eating tigers. Those dogs are usually well behaved, but they will kill to protect loved ones.

I have no desire to outlaw all firearms. If I had my way people would be obliged to show why they need a gun before they could get one -- and a hunting license would effectively be a gun license.

Buying a house or a car with a credit card? I do not know the law of your state. In Michigan there are many ways to buy a car, but none by credit card (state law). A house? It is usually done with a cashier's check.

[Classic-Xer]

(12-22-2018, 06:47 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Well, Floyd R. Turbow, your insults do not in any way form a coherent answer to my points.

What points? Why would a more serious hunter/sportsman/outdoors man pay attention to or be offended by the view and the words and beliefs expressed, Floyd R Turbow? I don't know, do you like being used to be made a fool of or be used as example or being made an example of by a so-called red who is supposed to be inferior to all blues based on the views of most blues these days.

[Classic-Xer]

(12-22-2018, 06:47 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Well, Floyd R. Turbow, your insults do not in any way form a coherent answer to my points.

What coherent points? Why would a more serious hunter/sportsman take your foolish view of him to heart and be offended by Floyd R, Turbow? A more serious hunter who understands differences would be laughing at both of you. OK, you're a fool, I'm not, so what do we do about that issue.

[pbrower2a]

(12-23-2018, 01:16 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: I admire Alan Watts, who said that all societies require an out-group, or an enemy, or else you don't know who you are. You identify yourself in contrast to the others. But, you must not destroy your enemies, otherwise you destroy yourself too. A society without an enemy might become complacent, not knowing its role or identity. We must respect our political opponents, as brower said.


I define myself in alliance with and in opposition to several other worldviews around today. They are somewhat represented by people who post here. Some may be allies in some sense and opposite in another, or in fact all of them may be.

Democracy requires an opposition, but the Opposition must respect democracy. Fascists, Marxist-Leninists, and theocrats like ISIS or Iranian Hezbollah, all of which seek the annihilation of democracy and get it once in power, do not form a suitable opposition. The Tea Party has morphed into the Trump cult, and one can question whether it has any respect for democratic norms. Politics that show contempt for rationality are in contempt with the rational processes with which suitable solutions for existing problems can arise.

We need real conservatives, and not fascists like Trump, to serve as a default when liberalism goes awry. An example of liberalism going awry was the idea that oppression creates criminality when other factors (character faults, not all of them economic in cause; being in a criminal culture; parental neglect; familial and institutional abuse; lead exposure) are even more dominant. Blaming poverty (and poverty is a bad situation worthy of amelioration in its own right) is to ignore that people even in the worst slums can be good people. One cannot ascribe 'oppression' to Ted Bundy, John Gacy, Richard "Night Stalker" Ramirez, or Wayne (Atlanta Child Murderer) Williams. The civic organizers such as a young Barack Obama knew enough to ask where the drug traffickers were were wise to ask locals where the drug activity was and how to avoid it.

Attributing criminality to poverty may have given many people cause to seek to end poverty, but it was a weak link. If poverty is heavily connected to ethnicity, then that attribution can as easily induce racist attitudes. We are going to need some economic restructuring to alleviate regional poverty which may be even more difficult to resolve than consequences of racist practices of the past. For much of the Mountain South that could imply a 21st-century equivalent of the TVA. The Hard Right does not offer that.

I define myself in alliance with and in opposition to several other worldviews around today. They are somewhat represented by people who post here. Some may be allies in some sense and opposite in another, or in fact all of them may be.

Quote:The Enlightenment has been recognized as an 18th century movement out of which the USA was born. It was correctly seen in the recent second turning, however, as inadequate and superficial. It has been modified and added to, first by an expansion as brower mentioned as "social democracy that extends liberalism to the ideal of equal opportunity to its fullest." Second, by the greenpeace and spiritual revolution of the sixties, The Enlightenment was seen as a disenchantment of the world, robbing it of its deeper dimensions of meaning and reducing it to a shallow rationalism. The New Age alterrnative sees some revival of esoteric traditions from the Renaissance and ancient philosophy and from the Oriental religions, plus aspiration of human potential and new methods of self-transformation. Whereas The Enlightenment eventually reduced the view of humans to automatons miraculously endowed with reason who need to subdue a stupid universe, the New Age sees humans as conscious spiritual beings first, connected to a superconscious cosmic consciousness revealed to many people through revival of the ancient traditions and experience expended through psychedelics. This greenpeace view also includes a new respect for Nature as alive and not stupid, and the necessary foundation of life of which we are a part rather than something to be subdued by technology to serve rational beings miraculously emergent from the stupid mechanical universe. These are the greens.

The New Age has much cultural baggage, and I must advise you (Eric) that the Millennial Generation does not go along with it. That generation is too rational to accept something that does not process easily. Occam's razor compels us to seek the simplest explanation for natural phenomena and historical patterns. Let's remember that after the callow hedonism of the latest Third Turning,  the rise of the Religious Right, the Tea Party, and the Trump Presidency the cold application of reason will solve much. Morality is all that keeps some of us from using rational power to do horrible things to people, but even religion can go awry when (and I am speaking of the political proclivities of evangelical Christians on the whole) self-righteousness comes with neither empathy nor scruples.

The historical  cycle has an unsettling way of making cultural baggage irrelevant. The Millennial Generation probably sees the environment differently than you do. It does not consist of druids who see consciousness in trees, flowers, and ants. It sees Nature as a refuge from the ugliness of consumerism, urban sprawl, and bureaucratic organization. This said, the Religious Right and the Tea Party are losing people other than core support itself aging. Don't count on people in their sixties today like ourselves having anything more than a fossil relevance thirty years from now.

Quote:There are some like me who may have some awareness of the New Age, to some degree. Most who post here today are not in this camp, but remain in the Enlightenment camp, with the social democratic addition which favors welfare and social programs and a government that helps the people. These are considered blues today, or Democrats. Mikebert is representative of this type, and brower and David Horn also but with perhaps a green tinge. Bob is a blue with a red tinge, perhaps. Bill the Piper holds to the Enlightenment view quite literally, and sees the salvation of humanity in the evolution of technology that the Enlightenment has spawned in its mastery by reason of the stupid universe. The blues in general usually accept the Enlightenment view, but some may embrace greenpeace priorities as well. So whereas greens may see themselves as allies with blues on the political level, and opponents of blues on a higher spiritual or philosophical level, they respect the blues as allies.

But blues and greens today are opponents of the reds. There are two types of red. First is the Libertarian view, either within the Republican Party or in the Libertarian Party. These are Enlightenment types, but without the social democracy that was added to it. Self-reliance and the free market are its ideals. Galen is an extreme example of this type.

Libertarianism will fail because it is utopian. The profit motive and consumerism may be necessary, but they are far from sufficient. I would never disparage the consumer economy even if I hold many of its manifestations in contempt. Consumerism and a market economy are far better than any command system, whether the plantation order or the New Serfdom of Stalinism. Even so, Man is more than his primitives drives, some of which are material indulgence and display (the two usually form a unit), the sex drive, and other expressions of myopic hedonism. Libertarianism seems to reduce Man to homo oeconomicus, a vile and destructive -- and ultimately dehumanizing stereotype.

Quote:Then there are the paleo reds, like Classic Xer, and in earlier times here represented for example by JDFP and JPT. They do not entirely accept the Enlightenment view, because they are conservative Christians. But they adopt the classical liberal or libertarian view, and use it to support their paleo view. Their worldview is a throwback to pre-Enlightenment views of the creator God and humans as His creation, and Jesus as our Savior. They do not quite accept the view of the Enlightenment physicalists that we are beings of reason who emerged by chance through mechanical forces from a stupid universe. They have a spiritual view in common with the New Age, but limited within the Christian dogma of humans as mere creations of a God as described in the Bible.

They are traditionalists, but in a country in which many traditions conflict, an call to one tradition at the expense of others is a call for suppression of others. Besides, some people might find a tradition not the one that they grow up in preferable to the one that they grew up in. When I was introduced to the San Francisco Bay Area at age 16 (junior year in high school) I found the rural Midwestern heritage that I was brought up in  lacking in any coherent tradition. The people that I got along best with were either Jews or Asians. If I had remained in the Bay Area and gotten married there I might have to explain why I did not have a Bar Mitzvah or why I can eat dairy products to my child or children. But that is not the story of my life.

Quote:The blues may have united as Americans with reds in the past, and seen the Communists as the enemy. They were a group who took the addition to the liberal view as providing social welfare to a totalitarian extreme, imposing it on the people by force. But since they see Communism as defeated and having crumbled of its own weight, now the opposition to them is the Republicans. The Republicans however do not see the Communists as having been defeated, but now see them as the Democrats, who are the blues and are not real Americans. Ironically though, they have now taken on the same color once assigned to the Communists.

Before the Commie threat -- the shared danger of a Depression that could have led, with less competent and less principled leadership, to famine and social  breakdown. In the last 4T America did not get out of an economic meltdown as it did out of the 1929-1932 meltdown. The economic ethos of the Gilded Age and its last hurrah in the 1920s proved unworkable. There were people much on what FDR called the 'lunatic fringe' who believed that the only workable economy was one that put profits first and recognized workers as nothing more than expendable tools. Such people wanted the reality of Nazi economics without the absurdities of antisemitism and the ominous militarism. The world that they wanted would have brought back the seventy-hour workweeks and forty-year lifespans for industrial workers that required that children abandon school for toil in factories and mines if they were unlucky enough to be around when their parents wore out or died of industrial accidents. 

It is to great shame that the American Right has adopted the favored color of Commies (Nature abhors a vacuum, I suppose) and worse the unscrupulous self-righteousness, the gun cult, and the Orwellian rhetoric of Commies in the name of a reactionary agenda that would replace the welfare state with an economic jungle. 

Quote:So we have these contending worldviews, and so how are they to be viewed? Can we of one worldview know who we are, or even exist, without the others?

I look upon those of other worldviews as in need of awakening, rather than people to be defeated, normally. Others may see me and those of my worldview as superstitious, and thus in need of education and redemption from such things as belief in astrology or from human potential techniques that are too self-centered according to them. New Agers on the other hand may not always be political enough even for me, if they see human salvation in these techniques and spiritual wisdom instead of politics.

I have come to the view, however, that the Republican Party, the reds, has today lost its moral compass and is in need of defeat. The blues and greens would then become the opposing parties, while the reds would fade away as irrelevant and a relic of the past. I have hope, though, that the reds too are just in need of awakening, rather than defeat through war or political battle alone. I see them according to my New Age view, however they may see themselves. I myself may not be able to awaken them; it is for them to awaken, some of them at least, and it is up to the blues and greens to provide all the people with the views that will bring us forward and awaken and enlighten the people. All people in the USA are Americans, and have potential for enlightenment and awakening alike, and can unite again at least enough so that we may work together, once the Republican Party as it exists today has been relegated to the past where it belongs. That's how I see things now.

We are in a Crisis Era, one in which spiritual awakening is practically impossible. There might be foxhole conversions, but those are hollow and transitory.  Many American soldiers (I refer to Catholics) made vows to God in a tight scrape that if He got them through it they would become priests. Few became priests. They might better serve God as tool-and-die makers who have large Catholic families. (Change stereotypes to fit other religious traditions). Maybe there were too many people experiencing the foxhole conversion.

The time for an Awakening is about twenty years after the end of the Crisis Era, when a fresh set of young adults emerge without memories of the dangerous Crisis era and see themselves with less stake in economic and political orthodoxies that the winning side imposed or protected. It is still possible that the winners of this Crisis Era might impose a conformist, reactionary, repressive, hierarchical, and inequitable order much like that of Spain after its Civil War. In such a case, America will need an Awakening just to eliminate the scorpions in its collective soul and the cobwebs in its collective mind. I hope for better. But our chances to experience an Awakening anew are practically over unless we reach our 80s or 90s.