LastPommerFan

Somehow we drifted into offended. I don't think "offense" is the issue we need to worry about. It's about people feeling belittled. Feeling lost. We can all work together. 99.9999% of the people on this planet are working really hard toward 2 things: providing for their family and giving their children a slightly better shot at being able to do the same. That work is really hard, it's all we can worry about. We need something to tie the rest together. For some, that's tribal/community/political affiliation, to others, it's evidence based science, still to others, it's faith. All of those options are ok if they make your life a little smoother. It becomes a problem when we start belittling each other based on our community, or our academics, or our faith. It makes the world, and already tough (not evil, but certainly not easy) world harder. It might just be a little bit harder, but it's harder unnecessarily. I'm not saying we can't try and convert folks, show them that our system will make their lives even easier, better. But belittling people does unneeded harm.

Young Earth Creationist

Re-quoting this to bring it back around. It's not about "offensive" or even "right" or "wrong". It's about 7 Billion humans trying to make sense of the world in there own way, and everyone being a little bit more respectful of that. It's not about the memes. Its the philosophical trend toward some sort of enlightened oneness.

I was literally about to say, "sounds like we've"

Read any political news story about Paris last month.

Is this gentleman generally a conservative?

Mrs. Whiskey has that one on the bedside table. It's a thick one. We'll talk in june.

Is he claiming a hypocrisy of rhetoric, or a hypocrisy of policy? Is is hypocritical to say the same thing at different volumes? I grant the variations in impassioned speech. I reject the argument of mutual hypocrisy.

Have you read Mill's "On Liberty" yet?

The positions aren't inverse. His argument doesn't work. Liberals: White Shooter - Policy Response (Reduce access and volume of guns) Brown Shooter - Policy Response (Reduce access and volume of guns) Conservatives: Brown Shooter - Policy Response (Restrict Movement of Brown People, Attack ME) White Shooter - Half-Hearted Judeo-Christian Platitudes, no policy action

But the liberal, especially the Democratic, response to this has been calling for further gun legislation. They respond x1 to y1, and x1 to y2. They are consistent. His contention makes an assumption (that democrats wouldn't respond to a shooting by a muslim terrorist with connections to the Middle East with a call for further gun control) is false. The argument for dual hypocrisy in this case is heavily reliant on that false premise. His argument does not hold water.

Liberals still want to talk about the gun problem. So the contention in the first paragraph fails. Thus derailing the entire argument. nice werdz though.

Wait. The neighbors called? So If I see my neighbor's wife slip while they're carrying the christmas tree in from the car and bruise her shoulder, all I have to do is call in a suspected disturbance to the cops and you'll have absolutely no choice but to arrest him?

I was not referring to the sneers and dinosaur jesu and the pasta god. I'm referring to the intellectual atheism that declares faith a burden and danger to the world, that it holds the world back and ought to be eliminated. The cartoon characters are just a pop version of the Richard Dawkinses.

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/02/chapel-hill-shooting-white-male-atheist-murders-three-muslim-students http://nypost.com/2015/10/01/oregon-gunman-singled-out-christians-during-rampage/ that's 2 this year.

What say you folks about passing legislation to prevent people on the terrorism no-fly list form buying weapons?

Trust me, it changes how you react the next time, especially if you were super cooperative...

Have you ever been arrested without committing anything even resembling a crime?

I disagree, God and Religion are consistently ridiculed by a sizable and loud segment of the population and pop culture. I find that in discussions about religion I find my self splitting my time arguing with orthodox conservatives and militant atheists. I feel my moderate position is far more respected by the Orthodox Hardliners.

Freeman- I'm wondering if an inevitable diaspora of islamic reactionaries would result from such an occupation in the ME. Would the war expand to places we can not effectively go (Pakistan, Indonesia, Iran, etc.) for an extended occupation? The sparsely populated ME would be a military breeze compared to some of these places. This is the best post I've read on this topic in any forum for the past several weeks.

CNN reporting that Syed had recent contact with people under investigation for terrorism, potentially radicalized.

The part where D4rk decided to get you riled up. :)

Point goes to We've, on both sides.

DPH regulates marijuana in CA.'

A center for folks with developmental disabilities. I'm gonna be sick.