01-10-2019, 12:13 PM
(01-09-2019, 10:01 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:(01-09-2019, 05:59 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:(01-09-2019, 04:24 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:(01-09-2019, 12:39 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: blue governments are well-managed; reds are not.
CA is solvent right now, probably because property tax revenues are so high; at least I think so, given the sky high property values. Unbelievable. Most Bay Area houses cost over a million and apartment rents are $2-3000 per month. Unemployment is low in prosperous areas, but poverty is high among poor and immigrant populations in poor central valley (generally Republican) areas, and there's homelessness because of the high housing costs everywhere.
We have strict gun laws, but the 2nd amendment still applies, so criminals and would-be criminals who aren't criminals yet can still get guns and kill people, like a teen football player yesterday in the Bay Area and several others today. Cops still get shot too, and cops still shoot people. It's still America. Real Americans support gun control and gun bans because real Americans don't want to see a bar fight become a shooting of a little girl like what happened in Texas this week. Real Americans are more concerned about so many people being shot dead for no reason, instead of whether they can shoot a deer or not instead of going to the grocery store.
Dude, a real American wouldn't have to cater to illegal aliens and pleasing naive immigrant populations and foreign interests the way blues are being forced to do out of necessity today. How many years have you been a clueless blue minded person? Me, it's been about 35 years since I've been close to being one, so to speak. I mean, the old forum was kind of like it was during middle school. The only thing different was the bullies were the bullied people back in the day. As it turned out, they weren't any better than the bullies where back in the day.
"No True Scotsman" fallacy.
No true Scotsman or appeal to purity is an informal fallacy in which one attempts to protect a universal generalization from counterexamples by changing the definition in an ad hoc fashion to exclude the counterexample.[1][2] Rather than denying the counterexample or rejecting the original claim, this fallacy modifies the subject of the assertion to exclude the specific case or others like it by rhetoric, without reference to any specific objective rule ("no true Scotsman would do such a thing"; i.e., those who perform that action are not part of our group and thus criticism of that action is not criticism of the group).[3]
Philosophy professor Bradley Dowden explains the fallacy as an "ad hoc rescue" of a refuted generalization attempt.[1] The following is a simplified rendition of the fallacy:[4]
Person A: "No Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge."
Person B: "But my uncle Angus is a Scotsman and he puts sugar on his porridge."
Person A: "But no true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge."
The essayist Spengler compared distinguishing between "mature" democracies, which never start wars, and "emerging democracies", which may start them, with the "No true Scotsman" fallacy. Spengler alleges that political scientists have attempted to save the "US academic dogma" that democracies never start wars from counterexamples by declaring any democracy which does indeed start a war to be flawed, thus maintaining that no true democracy starts a war.[4]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
When discussing political beliefs, few things are truly un-American, especially if you simply dislike the political expression.
There are stupid beliefs, such as that Barack Obama was born in Kenya. There are wrong beliefs such as the idea that one can square a circle. Americans are as capable of st7upidity as anyone else.
Moral values are generally not a matter of intellect.
Well, if I were a true Scotsman or a Scotsman of some sort, I suppose I'd be more likely to relate and be more likely to care about trivial issues and personal beliefs related to Scotsman. IS AMERICA A SOCIALIST STATE or HAS AMERICA EVER BEEN A SOCIALIST STATE? I'm sorry dude, I view socialism as being un American and I view those who support the idea of America becoming one as un American too. I don't care about you political expression or your political beliefs. I place no value on either of them.
I am discussing a logical fallacy in which you wallow. At its worst it defines out of the national community people who fall short of some idea because of their religion, political beliefs, cultural values, mental or physical handicaps, or national origin. American nationality is generally defined by formal citizenship, most often by birth but also by naturalization.
OK. If I were to average my preference in music by composer based on an average as a definition of my nationality, then I would probably be Czech. Prague is about in the middle of the populous parts of Europe, and if you average Bach and Mozart you get some place in the Czech Republic. Does that make me Czech? I happen to have liked about every piece of Czech classical music that I have ever heard. Does that make me Czech?
OK -- a true Czech at the least speaks Czech (I don't), as language heavily defines a Czech from just about anyone else. There is little reason for anyone to learn Czech unless to translate Czech literature. The language is of little use outside the Czech Republic , and I can think of European languages (English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, and Polish) far more useful in an international context.
To have an affinity for the music of Stamitz, Smetana, Dvorak, Janacek, and Martinu no more makes one Czech than does having an affinity for Italian opera make one Italian -- or that disliking classical music would make one not a Czech.
As for ideology -- many socialists and even Communists see themselves as Americans. A Commie believes that the truth of some variant of Marxism is universally true throughout the world, and not contradictory to any national entity. Definitive of a nationality? No. There are and have been Socialist states (Commies call their regimes "Socialist", and not "Communist", communism representing the ultimate objective of a super-advanced social order that develops under the rule of a Communist order through economic and technological advances). They consider the advancement of Socialism as the definitive exercise of patriotism.
Does someone lose US Citizenship by becoming a Communist? No more than by joining a KKK or neo-Nazi group.
You are welcome to disparage my political beliefs as much as you wish. Such makes me no less American.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.