Iowa allows same-sex marriages!


That Iowa. The state south of us: rural farm country, relatively conservative (well, maybe more moderate than conservative), and yet their supreme court has surprisingly made a strong and progressive decision. The Iowa Supreme Court has struck down laws prohibiting gay marriage as unconstitutional.

Polk County District Judge Robert Hanson found that the law violated the Iowa Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection, and hurt gay and lesbian couples “in numerous tangible and intangible” ways

“Civil marriage in Iowa is the only gateway to an extensive legal structure that protects a married couple’s relationship and family in and outside the state,” Hanson ruled in Des Moines.

“Iowa reserves an unparalleled array of rights, obligations and benefits to married couples and their families, privileging married couples as a financial and legal unit and stigmatizing same-sex couples.”

Wow. I am impressed with our neighboring state. Can we get this kind of sensible support for equality in place here in Minnesota, too? How about nation-wide?

Comments

  1. says

    The speed of decay depends on many things. it depends on the environment, weather, bacterial growth, whether the animal is buried under a flood of salt water, whether it is lying in the sun and the radiation hits it full force, etc. Radiation has alot to do with the radiocarbon dating. Read up on and what better place than Answers In Genesis.

    That’s not even wrong. It’s past wrong.

    you have no fucking clue what you are talking about.

  2. says

    The one of the Bible. Haven’t youever heard of “No other Gods before me”.

    I guess we atheists are right in God’s books then. ;)

  3. Steve_C says

    Derender the defender of fairy tales. Wow. You’re really boring. The morally superior thing is really tired. I don’t know of too many “kids” that read this blog and if they do, they have GREAT parents. If they’re mature enough to read it they can handle the spicy language.

    I doubt anyone here “speaks” like they post because quite frankly we don’t have to talk to absurd ignorant godbots on a daily basis.

    Do you have a point, other that clenching your pearls and pretending you know a fucking thing?

    Didn’t think so.

    Do fuck off.

  4. derender says

    Nerd of Redhead:

    NEVER!

    ——————–

    Oh Carlie:

    Educate me. it seems as though i don’t know. Can you answer question since I don’t know?

    ————————

    Why go after the leadership when future generations would grow up to be just like the leaders? That seems to be a liberal philosophy as well. Indoctrinate the children so that they will adapt to “progressive” ideas.

  5. says

    I wonder if derender likes the idea of burning in hell. Especially seeing he broke two commandments today: he bore false witness by lying about science, and because he did that on the Sabbath, he didn’t keep the day holy. You’re going to hell derender. Hope you enjoy the eternal fire!

  6. Janine, Insulting Sinner says

    Shit for brains, bad words do nothing to the environment. You have not touched a nerve, you are merely evading the questions being asked. And do you ask your friends at Freepland to stop swearing.

    I shall now refer to you as Janine, The four letter word person who destroys children.

    With that, you are spreading an lie and a slander. I have never destroyed a child. But what do I expect from a moron who claims that his morals comes from an arbitrary source.

  7. BMS says

    Klokwork –

    So, if the governor does manage to veto what would come next? Is this open to appeal?

    I think you’re conflating two different states – Vermont and Iowa.

    As for the Iowa sitiation – no, no appeal.

    The State has the option to petition for a rehearing, which it has announced AFAIK it will not do.

    The case was brought on state law grounds. There is no federal question at issue.

    The case terminates here at the Iowa supreme court.

  8. says

    derender thinks that decaying carcasses and radioactive decay rates are the same thing

    derender, you may be the dumbest troll today and we had mabus Mr. Nobody earlier so that is saying a lot.

  9. The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge says

    That the decay rate of radioisotopes did not vary enough in the past to make a 6000-year-old earth look 4,500,000,000 years old is hardly unprovable: if it did, the earth would still be molten through and through and probably mostly evaporated. Derender is completely innumerate as well as illiterate and willfully ignorant.

  10. derender says

    Steve C, you arrogant little cuss. i told you not right now but maybe later and you just ignored it. Don;t tell me to do it if you don’t mean to do it also. Besides if I were going to do that I would do it on, not off.

  11. BMS says

    What about the gays? Will someone please think of the gays.

    I do. Every time I kiss my wife I think about us.

  12. Wowbagger, OM says

    Where did you get a concoction like this? If you are referring to the pagans, He wiped them out becuase they were idol worshippers.

    Derender’s not just a poor thinker, writer, comprehender and debater, he’s a poor Christian – he doesn’t even know his bible.

    Where did I get it from? How about Leviticus 27:6:
    And if it be from a month old even unto five years old, then thy estimation shall be of the male five shekels of silver, and for the female thy estimation shall be three shekels of silver.

    also Numbers 3:15-16
    Number the children of Levi after the house of their fathers, by their families: every male from a month old and upward shalt thou number them. And Moses numbered them according to the word of the LORD.

    Looks like it’s back to bible school for you, loser.

  13. says

    You’d think that now that we are in the year 2009 and we have a global communications network, that believers would have clued in to the fact that arguing from scientific ignorance is never going to win over those who are scientifically literate. Keep your arguments to theology and history because arguing from science when you know nothing on the matter is just going to show up how ignorant you truly are…

    And if you have to argue on matters science, actually understand the science from a scientist’s perspective as opposed to a religious apologetic perspective. Remember that when trying to convert someone, you need to understand the mindset of the person you are converting. So arguing based on your own mindset will not work unless they happen to be intune with you – i.e. the only people you will convince by arguing science from a biblical perspective are those who are scientifically ingorant and already biblically-inclined.

  14. Janine, Insulting Sinner says

    Oh Carlie:

    Educate me. it seems as though i don’t know. Can you answer question since I don’t know?

    If you were truly interested in learning, you would not be mocking people would do know. This is not a secret and hidden knowledge. You can find out if you truly gave a flying fuck about the answer.

    But you have made it clear that you are not here to learn. You are here to badger because you are upset that a state will not outlaw GLBT marriages.

    Whiny baby needs a big big gun in order to feel like an adult.

  15. Klokwurk says

    BMS:

    I think you’re conflating two different states – Vermont and Iowa.

    Oops, why yes I am! …apologies. I obviously need to read my Google news headlines more closely. Well, good work Iowa!

  16. derender says

    Janine, The four letter word person who destroys children:

    Wow, that nerve was short indeed.

    Are you going to four letter word me again? Watch it, you might contribute to global warming with all that carbon spewing. (Considering global warming even exists at all).

  17. aratina cage says

    He always gives a warning and a second chance before doing so committing infanticide. -derender

    Such a lovely creature, this god of yours. Derender, you poor baby. Your god is a fucking psychopathic murderer of infants, but at least he tells the helpless infants before he slaughters them.

  18. derender says

    aratina cage

    You don;t get it. You probably never will, so why expalain it?

  19. BMS says

    Hey, derender:

    Fuck you, you maggot-ridden piece of horse shit.

    Go back to Freeperville where you belong, ass.

  20. strange gods before me says

    derender thinks that decaying carcasses and radioactive decay rates are the same thing

    That was hilarious.

    Derender, when you go to hell, I’ll be teaching a class on geology there. I’ll save a seat for you.

  21. says

    tell us more about science derender.

    So far it’s provided some pretty serious laughs at the BigDumbChimp household.

    Mrs. BigDumbChimp got a hoot out of the radiometric dating thing.

    Real funny stuff there.

  22. Jadehawk says

    The speed of decay depends on many things. it depends on the environment, weather, bacterial growth, whether the animal is buried under a flood of salt water, whether it is lying in the sun and the radiation hits it full force, etc.

    this is awesome. this is the most massive category-fail EVER.

    radioactive decay is not the same as organic decay. they are different things. they are different categories of things*. fuck, they’re two completely different SCIENCES!

    *I’m plagiarizing Josh, cuz that line was Teh Awesome

  23. Janine, Insulting Sinner says

    So let me get this straight, by calling a stupid asshole a fucking moron, I am contributing to global warming (Which the fucking asshole denied was happening anyways.) and killing children. And that is a bad thing.

    But the big sky daddy can murder all of the babies he wants because of slavery, something those babies had nothing to do with, and it is justified.

    Fucking moral monster.

  24. says

    Derender – remember just what techniques we use to age the earth.

    Carbon dating is for organic material – works only for materials between 200 and 50,000 years old. The half-life of C14 is ~5,500 years, so using the formula for exponential decay (I’m going from high school memory here so this formula may be off) Ae-kt. Think of it this way: in 5,500 years, half the C14 atoms will have decayed. So in 5,500 more years, half those remaining atoms will have decayed. 5,500 more years, half those remaining atoms will have decayed.

    • 5,500 years = 1/2 remaining
    • 11,000 years = 1/4 remaining
    • 16,500 years = 1/8 remaining
    • 22,000 years = 1/16 remaining
    • 27,500 years = 1/32 remaining
    • 33,000 years = 1/64 remaining
    • 38,500 years = 1/128 remaining
    • 44,000 years = 1/256 remaining
    • 49,500 years = 1/512 remaining
    • 55,000 years = 1/1024 remaining
    • 60,500 years = 1/2048 remaining
    • 66,000 years = 1/4096 remaining

    And so on. So you can see that after about 50,000 years the amount of C14 left would be virtually undetectable and that’s why we can’t use it on organic material that is any older.

    But for ageing the earth, we don’t use radiocarbon dating, there are dozens of other substances that decay and all at different rates too. So when we test a rock, we can do the test in different labratories to see if it gets the same result, then we can test it against other dating techniques on different scales and see whether they line up. We can also test rock on lower layers to see whether it’s older than rock on layers above.

    By doing all that we have worked out that the age of the earth is approximately 4.55 billion years old. Yet we can date the sun through a different method – by the amount of hydrogen it has fused into helium, and guess what? It comes out at ~4.6 billion years. Just as we would expect. And when we look out into the skies, we can use the constant that is the speed of light to see just how far away objects are. And we have seen galaxies that are over 13 billion light years away. That means the light has taken over 13 billion years to reach us, meaning that the universe is at least 13 billion years old!!!

  25. Josh says

    This one has no patience. He’s not worth our time. We’ll learn nothing from him.

  26. BMS says

    My one teeny, teeny tiny little comfort in this dreary life of mine is that when I go to hell ALL of my friends will be there!

    We’ve already decided we’re going to have a BBQ (what better place, right?). Y’all bring whatever dishes you like, but see the sign-up sheet so that we don’t have too many duplicates.

  27. derender says

    You people definitely have fetish for bad words.

    Freeperville? Where is that? Is it anywhere near San FranSICKO? Maybe Gob Dot will tell me.

    ——————–

    JANINE: I am NOT lying about you. You willfully said that you use these words. You willfully saiud that you do believe in your imaginery crap called evolution, and you willfully told be you belive that abortion is okay. YES! That is destroying any child that this left wing stuff rubs off on. There, it is not a lie, but a fact. Just look at how San FranSICKO turned out after the left-wingers invaded.

    Well, at least you didn’t foulmouth me again. Maybe you should use Listerine.

  28. Nerd of Redhead, OM says

    derender, still showing us why you are a godbot. You have an IQ heading for the single digits. But then you believe in imaginary things, like god and the bible. We can’t expect anything better from willful stupidity.

  29. derender says

    Kel: You said it works for organiza material between 500 and 50,000 years old. That’s nice. The earth is only 6,000 years old, so nothing can be older than that. WrONG ANSWER.

  30. says

    That’s nice. The earth is only 6,000 years old, so nothing can be older than that. WrONG ANSWER.

    And tell us why that is so.

    Please, and use some of your mad sciency skills to explain it if possible.

  31. Janine, Insulting Sinner says

    JANINE: I am NOT lying about you. You willfully said that you use these words. You willfully saiud that you do believe in your imaginery crap called evolution, and you willfully told be you belive that abortion is okay. YES! That is destroying any child that this left wing stuff rubs off on. There, it is not a lie, but a fact. Just look at how San FranSICKO turned out after the left-wingers invaded.

    Well, at least you didn’t foulmouth me again. Maybe you should use Listerine.

    Well people, is there anything that this sad sack of shit state here is true?

    Derender, you are the most foul and dishonest smear of shit to be found. Take your gun, lube the barrel and fuck your self in the ass. But first make sure your safety is on. I do not want you to shot yourself.

  32. derender says

    Okay, BMS watch it. Or should I call you PMS? I can’t help if you have a fetish with your own skin texture – rectum reamer face. You touchy little pervert. You call me a name that was unnecessary – goober gargler.

  33. Nerd of Redhead, OM says

    The earth is only 6,000 years old, so nothing can be older than that. WrONG ANSWER.

    Wrong gain, you are only off by six orders of magnitude. Not bad for a half-wit who doesn’t understand evidence. Your bible is fiction. It lies. Get used to it.

  34. says

    Okay, BMS watch it. Or should I call you PMS? I can’t help if you have a fetish with your own skin texture – rectum reamer face. You touchy little pervert. You call me a name that was unnecessary – goober gargler.

    This one definitely puts ketchup on his hot dog.

    What an idiot

  35. Jadehawk says

    oh wow. Internet Vapors and bigotry make for an interesting and rather hypocritical mix

  36. The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge says

    Don’t like bad language, asswipe? How’s about dealing with my pointing out the energy effects of isotopes decaying 750,000 times faster than today, like you think they did? Or Wowbagger’s quote from Leviticus that shows you don’t even know what your fucking Bible says on any subject. Give cogent answers to either one of those and I won’t tell you what a motherfucking asshole you are, in front of the imaginary kids and one (possible) lady.

  37. BMS says

    I’ve now read about 3/4 of the way through the Iowa decision.

    Very thorough explication of how the justices arrived at their decision. Lots of citation to persuasive decisions from other jurisdictions (including CA’s In re Marriage Cases) which elevates us for our ongoing and our future work.

    They also explain why they found no need to go through a strict scrutiny analysis:

    Because we conclude Iowa’s same-sex marriage statute cannot withstand intermediate scrutiny, we need not decide whether classifications based on sexual orientation are subject to a higher level of scrutiny.

    That is a good thing.

    I’m so happy.

  38. derender says

    Wowbagger:

    You revert to a book that you claim is not even real and you have the arrogant audacity to call me a loser? I would rather be a loser than a … whatever you call youself … Gob Dot.

  39. Janine, Insulting Sinner says

    No, you shit stain on the panties of life. BMS was highly accurate with the name. What’s the matter? Did she strike a nerve?

  40. Steve_C says

    Derender you ignorant troll. You’re the child abuser. You lie to children and tell them the earth is 6,000 years old. Get over the cussin’. There isn’t a fucking thing wrong with it among adults.

    Prove the earth is 6,000 years old. Go ahead and try.

    You’re pathetic. Until you show some evidence that the earth is younger than even 100,000 years you should be ignored.

  41. says

    Wowbagger:

    You revert to a book that you claim is not even real and you have the arrogant audacity to call me a loser? I would rather be a loser than a … whatever you call youself … Gob Dot.

    He’s not wrong though and you are.

    You can keep dodging but you’re still wrong.

    Wrong wrong wrong.

    Tell us more science stuff. I could use a few more laughs

  42. says

    You said it works for organiza material between 500 and 50,000 years old. That’s nice. The earth is only 6,000 years old, so nothing can be older than that. WrONG ANSWER.

    Are you a poe?

    A few other ways we can show the earth is older than 6,000 years:

    • Dendochronology – Each year a tree grows a new layer. As such, by counting the rings of a tree you can count it’s age. Because conditions vary from year to year, the rings are different sizes. So one can see the same pattern of growth in the inner layers of one tree and the same pattern of growth in the outer layers of another tree and deduce that it was from the same conditions on earth. So using this technique we can go back over 10,000 years
    • Ice core dating – each year there is a frost cycle where snow that has fallen melts, then freezes to form a new ice layer. These layers of ice accumulate, and as such one can count the layers of ice to gauge how old it is at a particular layer. We can do this back about 740,000 years in places, there are parts where the ice is just that thick.
    • Mutations in organisms – each time we have an offspring, they are an imperfect copy of the genetic code. As such, over time these variations accumulate over the generations. If you keep two different populations isolated, then variation inherited in one population will be different to variation inherited in another. By knowing the average rate of mutation, one can see when two different organisms last shared a common ancestor. We have done this for humanity, and we last shared a common ancestor ~140,000 years ago. We last shared one with a chimpanzee ~7,000,000 years ago, and so on back through the fossil record.
    • Coral dating – Coral in addition to having annual rings has daily rings, and these are directly proportional to the length of day and length of year. Since the earth is very slowly slowing in rotation, it means that in the past days were shorter and the year had more days. So fossil coral should reflect this – and it does. The age of a rock as determined by the coral in it is the same as the age of the rock as determined by radiometric dating

    The universe and planet is older than 6,000 years, every piece of science points to that fact. Besides, it says nowhere in the bible that the world is 6,000 years old – it’s nothing but an interpretation based on adding up ages of men in the bible. Yet we have precise means to test the age of the earth and age of the universe, are you suggesting that our dating techniques are off by a factor of almost a million? That’s like saying the distance between New York and San Fransisco is 10 yards!!!

  43. BMS says

    touchy little pervert

    How dare you insult me like that! O! My pearls!

    I’m not little at all! I’m actually quite tall.

    Shit for brains.

  44. Nerd of Redhead, OM says

    You revert to a book that you claim is not even real and you have the arrogant audacity to call me a loser? I would rather be a loser than a … whatever you call youself … Gob Dot.

    You are a loser. You just haven’t realized it yet due to your minuscule mental powers. By the time you leave will be very familiar with being a loser. You already have a head start. Godbots are that way.

  45. Janine, Insulting Sinner says

    Wowbagger:

    You revert to a book that you claim is not even real and you have the arrogant audacity to call me a loser?

    And the numbnuts misses the point yet again. Listen, you stupid shit stain on the panties of life. You claim to hold the bible to be paramount over all other knowledge. Yet, as Wowbagger pointed out, you do not know the contents of the book you claim to be so important.

    You that, fuck face, you get a boot to the head.

  46. derender says

    Okay all of you perverted foul mouthed nutjobs. Can you people not make a point without your curse word fetish being in overdrive? Is that possible? Are you capable of of such a simple thing? Do I need to hunt you down and wash your mouth with soap?

    Too bad nuts cannot make a point without using harsh words. it is impossible.

    How about this one:

    Sourpus?

    All of you gargle goobers with litesalt and meth. It;s the only explaination for your vile tongues and cheap shots. Googer garglers. Rectal reamers. Blowhole burners.

    Janine is by far the worst I have ever seen. She should be award foulmouth freeloader of the century. How does that feel?

    If you can’t make apoint without your ill wished vocabulary, then get prepared for battle – goober garglers.

  47. tresmal says

    FWIW derender has been showing off his ignorance at Greg Ladens Blog, where he advances the hypothesis that the Iowa State Supreme Court judges are all Clinton appointees.

  48. strange gods before me says

    Holy Shit.

    Hey Walton.

    That murder in Pittsburgh I linked to earlier?

    Serendipity, my friend.

    Published: April 5, 2009 at 8:26 PM

    The 22-year-old man charged with killing three Pittsburgh police officers was frequent visitor to far-right Web sites, his Internet activities reveal.

    Richard Poplawski posted his profile and photographs of his tattoos on the white supremacist Web site Stormfront, which serves as a clearinghouse for neo-Nazi and anti-Semitic groups, using the site to display an eagle tattoo spread across his chest, the Pittsburgh Post Gazette reported Sunday.

    “I was considering gettin’ life runes on the outside of my calfs,” he wrote on Stormfront, referring to a common symbol among white supremacists, especially followers of The National Alliance, a neo-Nazi group linked to a a collection of violent organizations, the newspaper said.

    Poplawski also believed in conspiracy theories espousing beliefs that a secret cabal running the United States was bent on eradicating freedom of speech and gun rights at the behest of Jews, a friend told the newspaper.

    Didn’t see that one coming a mile away.

  49. Nerd of Redhead, OM says

    derender, if you don’t like how we talk, you can always go away. But then, a defective like yourself is incapable of showing mature actions by actually backing off a situation they find distasteful. Choose wisely cricket. *Chirr*

  50. Janine, Insulting Sinner says

    The shit stain on the panties of life cannot come up with a defense for his stupidity and resorts to crying about swear words.

    Baby needs to clutch his big bad ass gun in order to feel like an adult.

  51. BMS says

    Can you people not make a point without your curse word fetish being in overdrive? Is that possible?

    Yes, Pigfucker, we can.

  52. says

    derender, I could have called you a clueless fucktard, but I didn’t. Instead I stuck to the science of things. Why is it that you are getting indignant over those who are insulting you instead of taking the high-ground and actually engage in those who are arguing with you? If you want to ignore the profane among us, go ahead. But don’t think that their profanity means that you have won an argument by getting offended over such words. There are substantial arguments here directly countering your position; those are what you need to answer if you want to make headway with us.

  53. Steve_C says

    Haha. Derender you fucking fool. We curse because it bugs you! That you make a big deal of it is hysterical. What? You’re better behaved because you don’t say cocksucker? or pig fucker? Me thinks you doth protest too much. Are you screwing golf buddies on the 10th hole in the woods? Jesus doesn’t give a fuck what words you use. He told me so in a dream where he was riding a pink unicorn with a naked virgin Mary. No really. I swear.

  54. Janine, Insulting Sinner says

    Yeah BMS, but GLBT marriages, swearing, evilution and allof the other mean thing librals like made the shit stain on the panties of life very upset.

  55. BMS says

    And I’m just having fun poking it with a stick.

    Alas, though, I am bored with this diversion – for the moment. I need sustenance and for that must prep and cook.

    So adieu to all, and to Goatfucker, too.

  56. BMS says

    Sorry, my #562 was in response to Kel’s post #559.

    Innit too bad that my mom officiated at our lesbo wedding? Too bad for Steerfucker that is.

    Gotta run now! ;)

  57. Janine, Insulting Sinner says

    But Kel, it is so much easier to whine about bad words. And when you get down to it, assface has no room to talk after calling me a destroyer of children. That is much worse than swearing.

  58. says

    assface has no room to talk after calling me a destroyer of children. That is much worse than swearing.

    Indeed. Calling someone a rapist, or child molester, or baby-killer, or anything else for that matter would be far worse than calling someone a fucktard. Calling someone immoral, or telling someone they are destroying society – by comparison hurling profanities seems juvenile.

  59. Carlie says

    Educate me. it seems as though i don’t know. Can you answer question since I don’t know?

    I’ll tell you exactly what I tell all my students – go do your homework, prove to me that you did it, and then I’ll be happy to help out. However, I’m not putting any effort into providing information without being sure you’re going to use it.

    Derender, derender. We can cuss all we want, but good lord, do you pray to God with that nasty mouth of yours? I don’t think he’d be very proud of your behavior here today. You’d better look at your WWJD bumper sticker awhile and think about why you should be ashamed of yourself, young man.

  60. BMS says

    (Sorry, one more and then I’m away.)

    On Andrew Sullivan at The Daily Dish just now, a snippet from Why Do We Swear by John Grohol, Pys. D:

    Virtually all people swear, and people swear pretty consistently throughout their lifetime — from the moment they can speak to the day they die. Swearing is almost a universal constant in most people’s lives. Research, according to [Timothy Jay], has shown we swear on average from 0.3% to 0.7% of the time — a tiny but significant percentage of our overall speech (frequently-used personal pronouns occur at approximately 1.0% rate in speech). Swearing is more common than you might think. But personality research suggests that people who swear more, not surprisingly, score higher on traits such as extraversion, dominance, hostility and Type A personalities. Swearing is not just for the uneducated or people of a lower socioeconomic class — it knows no social boundaries in its expression.

  61. The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge says

    What is it with these morons and their language fetish? Although I agree with Kel, above, I have to take issue with his use of the word “profanity” to describe our language on this thread. I’ve seen very little if any profanity, AFAICT, it’s all been vulgarity of one sort or another, and religiotards shouldn’t give a shit about that.

    I once saw that mindless douchebag Billy Graham on Carson (or was it Cavett?) and this very subject came up. He admitted he didn’t know where the prohibitions against sexually and scatologically based “bad” language came from, but he freely admitted that there was no biblical basis for it, that only “taking the lord’s name in vain” was prohibited.

    (Yeah, I know, his interpretation of taking the lord’s name in “vain” to mean simply mentioning his name is totally ignorant and stupid; it’s supposed to mean giving opinions as coming from god that are merely your own, like certain people on this very thread have been known to do, and as ignorant fundie blowhards do every hour of every day.)

  62. Wowbagger, OM says

    You revert to a book that you claim is not even real and you have the arrogant audacity to call me a loser?

    Care to cite the post where I said the bible ‘is not real’? Can you manage that much, you barely-literate pile of smegma?

    Of course bibles are real – I’ve seen several. That most of what’s in it never happened, of course, is another issue – but you’re far too stupid to comprehend the difference. The point is you think it’s real and claim to live by it. So, by condemning abortion you’re either saying your god is wrong or that the bible is wrong.

    Which is it?

    Either way, you’re still a loser. But you’re a good example of how low the bar is set for the intellectual demands of Christianity.

  63. 'Tis Himself says

    My one teeny, teeny tiny little comfort in this dreary life of mine is that when I go to hell ALL of my friends will be there!

    Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company. -Mark Twain

  64. Josh says

    Careful, Wowbagger. Intellectual has more than one syllable. It’s probably beyond him.

  65. 'Tis Himself says

    Is dickbreath still around? Has he figured out that the reason people are throwing profanity around is because it bugs the fuck out of him? Or is he too stupid to realize it?

  66. Janine, Insulting Sinner says

    The assclown seems to think that if a person swears, he has somehow touched a nerve. It is one of his self deluding tricks to make it seem that his stupidity has worth.

  67. Josh says

    Derender, answer the questions in #419, #423, and #426. Until then, shut the hell up.

    Come on. You’ve been avoiding these questions all day. Answer them. What are you afraid of?

  68. derender says

    Rev. BigDumbChimp:

    The Grand Canyon was formed as a result of the flood and probabaly took a number of years to complete, but the majority of it was formed suddenly and catastrophically.

    ——————

    I know where you people are headed with the whole gun nuts thing and neo-nazi orgs, and such I am not a Jew hater. if anything I am on the Jews side – the ones who are for real – the orthodox Jews. I hate to see the persecuted the way that they have been. The land os Israel is rightfully their and the supreme allied ragheads of HAMAS won;t move to the other 95 percent Islamic territory in the region. They have to steal it from the Jews. What pshychos. It’s the Islamic terrorists you should be worried about, not me. Yes I own guns and target practice and read “far-right” websites. Yes I am a Sarah Palin fan, a Ted Nugent fan, and a Ronald Reagan fan, and GW Bush fan. So there.

    I would never intentionally kill someone for no apparent reason like these sick people have done the last few days.

    However, the Second Amendment does give citizens a right to defend themselves from a police state if it ever comes to that. The FEMA camps do scare me though and the fact that HAMAS gave $20,000 plus to the Obama campaign is scary too.

    Don’t worry about me, worry about the far left.

    ————————————

    Steve_C:

    The idea of a 6,000 year old earth refers o the geneology of family traced from today until jesus’ birth, then from Jesus back to Abraham, and then from Abraham until Adam. Add it up.

    ———————–

    Carlie:

    You have students? I hope it’s not a science class, becuase I know that they have definitely been indoctrinated. You need to read One Party Classroom by David Horowitz.

    ————————–

    BMS:

    Is your mom a pastor? (Woemn pastors are not common in my denomination – God called men to preach)

    If not, then the whole thing is fake.

    It’s not done by virtue of the person who created it to start with.

    ——————

    Steve_C:

    I don;t play golf. And i tell you creationist stuff to bug you. By the way what was it you were doing with that unicorn’s horn that made you rear end so sore?

    ——————-

    BMS :

    Go take a bath pervert.
    Perferbaly in the sewer where you reside. You super duper dookie scooper!

  69. Menyambal says

    Derender, honey, you are really making your religion look bad. Your behavior driving people away from God, and He will send YOU to Hell for that.

    That’s in the Bible, so you had better believe it. But you aren’t familiar with the particular verse, are you? That figures.

    I’m not an atheist because I have read less of the Bible than you have. I am an atheist because I have read all of the Bible.

  70. says

    The Grand Canyon was formed as a result of the flood and probabaly took a number of years to complete, but the majority of it was formed suddenly and catastrophically.

    Show your work.

  71. derender says

    Josh, stay out of until you can answer MY question. if you can. What are you going to do if I don”t “shut the # up”? Are you going to foulmouth me again? That would be nice. This time, put some real manly effort into it. And don’t include yourself this time. Last time you got confused and was looking in a mirror when you attempted to insult me. remember, that one lady may still be reading … Be careful, it can backfire.

  72. strange gods before me says

    The FEMA camps do scare me though and the fact that HAMAS gave $20,000 plus to the Obama campaign is scary too.

    Walton. These are your people.

  73. Josh says

    The Grand Canyon was formed as a result of the flood and probabaly took a number of years to complete, but the majority of it was formed suddenly and catastrophically.

    Hahahahaha. Show me some evidence for this. How did the rocks of the canyon lithify? What was the mechanism that allowed them to lithify fast enough for the Colorado River to cut the canyon? Any ideas?

    How about this–how does your flood model explain mudrocks in seconds of rock that have sediments laid on top of them?
    Hmmmm?

  74. plum grenville says

    gargle goobers with litesalt and meth… Googer garglers. Rectal reamers. Blowhole burners… foulmouth freeloader of the century

    Yes, deranged, er derender, that’s much nicer than swear words.

    If you can’t make apoint without your ill wished vocabulary, then get prepared for battle – goober garglers.

    Remember, dermwit, it’s the meek who are going to inherit the earth. I think you may find yourself the the bad place with us.

  75. Josh says

    Josh, stay out of until you can answer MY question.

    What question was that exactly?

  76. Nerd of Redhead, OM says

    Derender the deluded. Still telling lies about your imaginary god and fictional bible. Big time. Now, what does you bible say about bearing false witness (lying). You are a huge sinner. Repent and renounce your imaginary god. Become rational.

  77. Janine, Insulting Sinner says

    No, you simpering shit stain on the panties of life, you answer to Josh. You have no right to demand that anyone keeps out of a conversion. You want to know why you are wrong about radiometric dating and the flud, talk to the geologist.

    And also, you fuck faced pigfucker, you have no reason to talk to Carlie that way. But it is telling that you recommend that she read a book by a professional liar.

    And one more thing, you cretinous gun sucking creep, the only thing here that comes from the sewage is your sacred stupidity.

    Just blow it out of you ass.

  78. derender says

    Menyambal:

    So I am supposed to take this garbage from the extreme nuts? I’m glad you read your Bible. I have too. Maybe I do make my religion look bad. Thanks for pointing it out.But I refuse to be annoyed by far left bullies who defy reality in exchnage for satanic lies. Fine believe what you will and I’ll believe what I will too. The only reason that I keep on replying to these goofballs is that they keep coming back with worse and worse insults and relatively little knowledge of what they are talking about. I am sure they call all do algebra and calculys until theyr hair falls out, but what’s the point in making stuff up that started with a man who proposed an idea . Evolution is an idea, it’s not provable. The other thing is that Darwin himself was a slave owner, yet his followers name him as something as a saint. What’s that all about?

    When these people leave me alone, then I’ll leave the sight.

    If that’s possible to administer.

    Most people’s skulls are 2 inches thick to the outside. Theirs must be 4 inches thick to the inside.

  79. says

    derender, from all observation points, the unverse has to be over 13 billion years old and the earth over 4 billion. The laws of physics dictate that. If you are defending a position that the world is substantially less than 4.55 billion years old, you need to demonstrate that the laws of physics that govern nuclear reactions are wrong – and wrong by a factor of almost a million. If you want to say the universe is much less than ~13.72 billion years, then you need to show that the speed of light is not constant. You will need to either show how light can speed up, or that e=mc² is wrong.

    Either way, you have a strong body of evidence against any attempt to disprove – or you can concede that God is a liar…

  80. Janine, Insulting Sinner says

    Speaking of gargles, can someone please make for me a Pangalactic Gargle Blaster?

  81. Josh says

    Speaking of gargles, can someone please make for me a Pangalactic Gargle Blaster?

    One slice of lemon or two?

  82. Sven DiMilo says

    Harsh Words
    a Poem by derender

    Sourpus?
    All of you gargle goobers
    With litesalt and meth.
    It;s the only explaination for your vile
    Tongues and cheap
    Shots.
    Googer garglers.
    Rectal reamers.
    Blowhole burners.

  83. Nerd of Redhead, OM says

    Derender, still bearing false witness, but then you are too ignorant to stop doing so. Until you show some scientific evidence for your inane allegations, you have nothing but bombast. The only way to refute science is with more science. Which you are not conversant with. Religion and science divorce a couple of centuries ago, so religion has nothing to say to science, nor can it refute science. But science makes your inane and delusional religion look silly, because it ignores evidence. And by repeating your religion, you look silly, foolish, and stupid. Keep it up. We need good laughs around here, and you are very comic.

  84. says

    Fine believe what you will and I’ll believe what I will too. The only reason that I keep on replying to these goofballs is that they keep coming back with worse and worse insults and relatively little knowledge of what they are talking about. I am sure they call all do algebra and calculys until theyr hair falls out, but what’s the point in making stuff up that started with a man who proposed an idea . Evolution is an idea, it’s not provable. The other thing is that Darwin himself was a slave owner, yet his followers name him as something as a saint. What’s that all about?

    Are you for real, seriously?

    Firstly, read up on the Dunning-Kruger effect, and think about you telling a geologist of over 3 decades [Josh] that he is ignorant on science. secondly, nothing in science is provable. Ideas can only be falsified, and thus the measure of a scientific theory is it’s ability to make falsifiable predictions and pass. Evolution has done this for the last 150 years – it’s regarded as one of the strongest theories in science, we know more about how evolution works than gravity. Thirdly, Darwin is not a saint, he’s a scientist. Evolution doesn’t live or die on his word, what matters is the science behind it. Darwin got many things about evolution wrong, and those have been corrected as experimenting was done.

    When you don’t know what you are talking about, can you please have the courtesy to take on board that others might? Here’s a challenge for you: can you give a concise definition of what evolution is and how it works?

  85. derender says

    Janine, Insulting Sinner :

    Let Josh deal with me

    Let carlie deal with me

    What geologist would you recommend? A evolution based one or creation based one?

    I suppose that all of Obama’s book are pure sacred truth?

    Horowitz knew more when he was 2 than all you put togther will ever learn in all of eternity. A professional liar? Maybe you are referring to Al Gore or some other enviro nut. Maybe even yourself. Foulmouth.

    Yes I have rights to ask anything I want. And I will do just that where you like it or not.

    You keep talng about me answering questions. i did several times and no one accepted the answer that I gave. TOUGH! Get over it. The only answer I get to my questions is a bunch of foulmouthed egglaying sarcasm and left wing septic scum. Keep the foulness coming, but don;t get your nerves touched too much. Better watch that blood pressure Dracula.

  86. Janine, Insulting Sinner says

    The other thing is that Darwin himself was a slave owner, yet his followers name him as something as a saint.

    You are a goddamned ignorant pig fucking liar.

    That is the reason why we mock you.

    You come to people with much greater actual knowledge and experience and tell them they are bullies and liar.

    Nothing you have say about science bares any resemblance to reality. And claiming that only libral believe in evolution denies the existence of all the conservatives who also know that evolution is true.

    You are one pathetic little dumb fuck. Nuzzle close your gun. It is the only thing that makes you a big bad man.

  87. Carlie says

    Derender, do you take penicillin, or newer antibiotics?
    Do you get a flu shot every year, or was once enough?

    Evolution: You’re soaking in it.

  88. says

    The only reason that I keep on replying to these goofballs is that they keep coming back with worse and worse insults and relatively little knowledge of what they are talking about.

    derender you have demonstrated you you have no idea what you are talking about.

    Tell us about radiometric decay again please

  89. says

    come on derender, let’s talk on this only on scientific grounds. Can you explain the following topics:

    • Big Bang cosmology
    • Special relativity
    • Quantum physics, especially nuclear physics
    • the theory of evolution
    • plate tectonics

    – Only give a paragraph or so for each, but please show you have an understanding of the science that you are arguing. Do you understand what these theories mean and what evidence there is to support them?

  90. Janine, Insulting Sinner says

    I suppose that all of Obama’s book are pure sacred truth?

    The pigfucker assumes that I am a fan of Barack Obama.

    Just one more bad assumption for a stupid asshole filled with them. And guess, I hate Al Gore, I have for over a quarter of a century. But not for the reason you do, you fetid pile of shit.

  91. Nerd of Redhead, OM says

    Derender, as usual you get it wrong. You have to expound on and defend creationism. We get to refute you. After all, we have about a million or so scientific papers that back up evolution directly or indirectly, so it is establish science. You want to change our minds, start citing the peer reviewed primary scientific literature to back up your childish notions.

  92. derender says

    Kel :

    You have been repsectful with most of your posts and I appreciate that. For your respect and courtesy I can honestly say that I cannot answer your question about the speed of light being constant. There are some ideas about it in the world of young earth creationsim that are still being worked out. It has proved to be a stubmling block to the movement. The main idea now is that everything was made in the universe at the exact same time. That’s all I can tell you. You will have to consult creationism people for anything further. I hope that answered it for you becuase i honestly have nothing else about light travel when it deal with creationism.

    Creationism basically deals with te age of the earth from a historical and geneological point of view rather than froma universe point of view.

  93. Jadehawk says

    The other thing is that Darwin himself was a slave owner, yet his followers name him as something as a saint.

    this is not only factually incorrect, it is also completely irrelevant. evolution is true regardless of whether its discoverer was the biggest asshole on the planet or a fluffy bunny.

  94. Sven DiMilo says

    You will have to consult creationism people for anything further.

    Yeah. No, thanks.

  95. Nerd of Redhead, OM says

    Derender, still lying and bullshitting. But then, you have nothing else. Show us the evidence by citing the scientific literature. Otherwise, you are just a self deluded fool.

  96. says

    derrender just can’t get his mind around atheism – that there are no saints or holy books. It’s projection, his sacred cow is being insulted so he’s hurling out insults at what he perceives are the sacred cows of atheism. It’s amazing how little insight this person has into the mindset of others, it’s so sad that many theists can’t ever see the world any other way but their own. It may be that their way of thinking is true, but they will never ever convince anyone of that unless they are able to understand what problems others see in their worldview.

    derender – have you taken the Outsider Test For Faith?

  97. Bobber says

    Derender said:

    When these people leave me alone, then I’ll leave the sight.

    So, am I to understand that you habitually barge into strangers’ homes, ranting drunkenly (for so your text reads) about slave-owning Darwin and far-left loons worshipping Obama, and when they tell you to get out of their house, you continue to harangue them until they leave you alone?

    Again, I am reminded of how many people can function – even if it is a titanic struggle – with some serious mental issues.

  98. Josh says

    Derender, this is a question perhaps you’d be interested in answering: what is your opinion on the flood? Why did God erase all evidence of it? What do you think his plan was in doing that? The event was written about in the Bible. So why did he erase all evidence and create a rock record that indicates it never happened? What was his point?

  99. derender says

    Carlie:

    I don;t take flu shots becuase some of them are made using huma fetal cells lines. I refuse to take them. So are number of other medications made by Merck. Gardasil is a joke and has done more harm than good. Read Kevin Roeten’s articles sometime about Gardasil and other medications.

    ——————-

    Janine:

    Darwin owned slaves. Your savior was a black hater. Get over it already! Haven’t you ever read anything by him? Read Darwin’s Plantation sometime. Just becuase you don;t like it doesn’t mean that it is not true. Just who is your all inspiring writer of pure truth? Maybe I’ll give it a look sometime.

    Again, you vile pest. What’ with calling me all of those viscious names. is that all you do? can;t you think of anything better to do than call people vulgar profan names? Yeah i did it too, but only becuase of some of the vulgar filthy foulmouths on here. Go scrape your tounge with gasoline and a match. I only responed to you the way I did becuase you keep on with the mess. try being nice, it may return the favor someday.

  100. Janine, Insulting Sinner says

    says

    Darwin owned slaves. Your savior was a black hater. Get over it already! Haven’t you ever read anything by him? Read Darwin’s Plantation sometime.

    Pointing to a book by known liar ken ham as evidence.

    You really are an idiot.

    Once again you aren’t even wrong. You’re past being wrong.

    You are a stupid man.

  101. says

    Darwin owned slaves. Your savior was a black hater. Get over it already! Haven’t you ever read anything by him?

    *facepalm* – Darwin is not a saviour. He was a scientist! He came up with a scientific theory that excplained the diversity of life on earth; that’s what Darwin did. He explained something, just as Galileo did, just as Newton did, just as Mendel did, just as Einstein did, just as millions of others have done. Scientists give us an understanding of how the universe works, they are not saints and their works are not infallible. Science comes down to evidence, so if you have evidence that any scientific theory is wrong – show it. After all, science works on falsification.

  102. Patricia, OM says

    Oh, great, I miss the whole thing. Now Janine gets called Dracula.

    So we get the slave bit. Cute. Derender (cooking down pig fat?) slavery is a christian thang, or don’t you read the bible?

  103. derender says

    Josh said: this is a question perhaps you’d be interested in answering: what is your opinion on the flood? Why did God erase all evidence of it? What do you think his plan was in doing that? The event was written about in the Bible. So why did he erase all evidence and create a rock record that indicates it never happened? What was his point?

    ——————–

    Why would He want it erased? The point of the flood was that all people on earth was so sinful and had fogotten about God and refused to turn back to Him that He destroyed the entire earth with a flood, but saved one righteous man and his family along with a number of animals. The ark could have housed up to 50,000 animals plus food, water, etc. We can remember this story to keep us the striaght and narrow would be the point of it. The rock record alomng with billions of fossils is evidence for the flood. we see evidence of animals whci were buried alive rapidly all the time. We have seen dinosaurs fighting. Do you think those two dinosaurs just had a heart attack and died suddenly and fossilized in a fight scene. Why would a sudden burial not explain this?

  104. plum grenville says

    The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge | April 5, 2009 9:42 PM

    I once saw that mindless douchebag Billy Graham on Carson (or was it Cavett?) and this very subject came up. He admitted he didn’t know where the prohibitions against sexually and scatologically based “bad” language came from, but he freely admitted that there was no biblical basis for it, that only “taking the lord’s name in vain” was prohibited.

    Good point, Rev.! It ought to bug the shitstain even more if we take the lord’s name in vain.

    Jesus FUCKING christ ON A MEATBALL, derbulb! You are terminally stupid, a sure candidate for a Darwin Award. You’re more moronic than one of your god’s toenail clippings. Bloody hell! Go fuck holy mary and baby jesus in the ass. Or a porcupine. Your choice.

    And use the goddamn spellchecker. It’s a safe bet you never studied “calculys” (or Logic for First Grade).

    How’s that for a goddamn good start?

  105. Nerd of Redhead, OM says

    Derender, whether Darwin owned slaves or not is irrelevant. You have fallacious thinking going on. You think if you put some mud on Darwin, you put mud on evolution. It doesn’t work that way because scientists don’t worship Darwin. We admire Darwin as a great scientist, but that is as far as it goes. He made many mistakes in this theory, which are freely acknowledge because scientists are honest in their professional dealings, simply because certain information would not be available for many years, like genes and DNA. The theory of evolution has had 150 years of improvement since Darwin’s book, and it gets stronger every year. Why? New evidence is added, and the theory is modified as needed to fit the new information. When was the last time the bible was updated? Definitely much longer ago than the last issue of a scientific journal. And when was the last time a religious leader didn’t lie? (Never, they always lie.)

  106. Janine, Insulting Sinner says

    I called you names because you whined about it the entire time you have been here. But guess what, was bad words in nothing compared to the sheer contempt you have displayed here. Go back to Freepland and share you tales about how you showed those arrogant librals whats what. And play with you fantasies about what you will do to us once you are able to arrest all of us. As long as you are just an annoying powerless dipshit stewing in the frustrations of your own hatreds, I can live in peace.

    You are a deluded liar and I am finished with this.

  107. says

    Are you actually going to argue the science derender, or just make red harring arguments against perceived authority figures? Evolution is accepted because it’s the only theory that has been able to explain all of life as we know it, and survived 150 years of intense scrutiny and millions of possible potential falsification. It has nothing to do with Darwin, it has everything to do with the evidence.

  108. derender says

    Janine, Insulting Sinner :

    If Robb ever comes back, I’m going to steal his can of raid and squirt you filthy tonhgue with it – pest. Stop being a pest. foulmouthed numbskull. It’s eveident you forgot to go scrape your tongue like I specifically asked. Pest. The more you dish out, the more it’s coming back to you. Be nice, and I’ll do the same. Be a pest and I’ll be one too.

  109. Janine, Insulting Sinner says

    Patricia, it was even better than that. The shit stain on the panties of life called me a destroyer of children.

  110. Nerd of Redhead, OM says

    . Stop being a pest.

    Yes, shut up and go away, but you are too stupid to do so. So you will receive appropriate vitriol until you do so. Still no evidence for your god. You are really dumb, believing in imaginary things.

  111. says

    Be nice, and I’ll do the same.

    Why are you ignoring those who are actually attempting to discuss your arguments in favour of complaining about vulgarity and trying to insult perceived authorities like Darwin, Obama and Gore? Why can’t you take the moral high-ground and ignore those for the sake of people who are trying to discuss with you?

  112. derender says

    Kel, I do not discount that evolution has been studied for over 15o years now. Not do I discard the idea that it is the prevalent theory to explain biology on the planet. I am not say that I do not believe that. The point that I am making is that some schools teach it as absolute undefiled total 100% proven fact rather than a theory that is still being tested and still being learned about to this day.

  113. aratina says

    The land os Israel is rightfully their and the supreme allied ragheads of HAMAS won;t move to the other 95 percent Islamic territory in the region. -derender

    You wouldn’t DARE say that to a Muslim, would you?

    So why did he erase all evidence and create a rock record that indicates it never happened? What was his point? -derender

    Dude, you’re forgetting to show your respect to God by not capitalizing pronouns that reference Him.

  114. Menyambal says

    Derender, love, you can’t keep poking at people just because they won’t leave you alone. If you want to be left alone, leave this blog. Folks here are never going to tell you that you are right. They are defending their territory and their understanding of the universe. And you aren’t offering good arguments, sorry to say.

    Here’s an example: You say that the Grand Canyon was formed by run-off from the Flood. There are several problems with that. First, flood water would have gone AROUND that particular plateau area. Second, the river in the canyon winds and twists in entrenched meanders–a real flood would have gone howling straight through, as is seen at the English Channel and the Channeled Scablands below Glacial Lake Missoula. Third, the canyon walls have some quite high vertical sections that could not have formed in soft flood deposits, as creationists claim must have happened. Those facts are easily seen and confirmed, and anyone who says otherwise is mistaken, lying or selling something, or is trusting someone who is mistaken, lying or selling something.

    You challenge folks to explain how a dinosaur could evolve into a chicken. That’s very simple: Each generation looked a little bit less like a dinosaur, and a little more like a chicken. You look a little bit different than your dad, right? Well, when differences like that accumulate over time, as conditions sometimes require, it’s called evolution. It’s just like breeding dogs, and we know it happened because we can see relationships among all animals just like we can see relationships among breeds of dogs. We also see fossil evidence of evolution–anyone who says that there is no fossil evidence is mistaken, lying or selling something, or is trusting someone who is mistaken, lying or selling something.

    These folks have walked the Canyon, and have worked in labs. They aren’t going to be persuaded by anything you can offer.

    You poking at them isn’t hurting them in any way. They might get bored with you and stop poking back, but they probably won’t–they are good with words, and they know how to write some tight insults. The only one who can shut down this silliness is you, derender. Stop wasting your time, here.

    And have a good night.

  115. strange gods before me says

    *facepalm* – Darwin is not a saviour.

    *facepalm* – This is not even an appropriate reply. Darwin was not a slave-owner. Sure there are other reasons why he wasn’t perfect, but Derender is just lying.

    Derender, you are going to hell for lying. We’ll have a slideshow of your lies for entertainment the first evening. BYOB.

  116. says

    Evolution is an idea, it’s not provable.

    From Jerry Coyne – Why Evolution Is True:

    Every day, hundreds of observations and experiments pour into the hopper of scientific literature. Many of them don’t have much to do with evolution – they’re observations about details of physiology, biochemistry, development, and so on – but many of them do. And every fact that has something to do with evolution confirms its truth. Every fossil that we find, every DNA molecule that we sequence, every organ system that we dissect, supports the idea that species evolved from common ancestors. Despite innumerable possible observations that could prove evolution untrue, we don’t have a single one. We don’t find mammals in precambrian rocks, humans in the same layers as dinosaurs, or any other fossils out of evolutionary order. DNA sequencing supports the evolutionary relationships of species originally deduced from the fossil record. And, as natural selection predicts, we find so species with adaptations that benefit only a different species. We do find dead genes and vestigial organs, incomprehensible under the idea of special creation. Despite a million chances to be wrong, evolution always comes up right. That is as close as we can get to scientific truth

  117. says

    We have seen dinosaurs fighting. Do you think those two dinosaurs just had a heart attack and died suddenly and fossilized in a fight scene. Why would a sudden burial not explain this?

    good grief it just gets worse. Sudden burial sure but not the flood. If they got hit by a flood they would have been swept away. The material surrounding the fossil is from a wind borne sand dune that more than likely is what caused their death. no flood. No evidence for a flood. Nothing at all.

    Plus the two fossils are not complete. There is no actual proof that they are “fighting”. It just sounds good to idiots like yourself.

    oh and it was around 80 million years ago, not 6k.

  118. Jadehawk says

    derender, you don’t get to “specifically ask” us to do anything. also, get it through your skull that the character of Darwin is irrelevant, because evolutions is not a revelation. it’s true regardless of whether Darwin was a good or a bad person.

    seriously, take your ignorant degenerate self somewhere else, you’re embarrassing our other trolls.

  119. says

    Kel, I do not discount that evolution has been studied for over 15o years now. Not do I discard the idea that it is the prevalent theory to explain biology on the planet. I am not say that I do not believe that. The point that I am making is that some schools teach it as absolute undefiled total 100% proven fact rather than a theory that is still being tested and still being learned about to this day.

    Drink!

  120. says

    Kel, I do not discount that evolution has been studied for over 15o years now. Not do I discard the idea that it is the prevalent theory to explain biology on the planet. I am not say that I do not believe that. The point that I am making is that some schools teach it as absolute undefiled total 100% proven fact rather than a theory that is still being tested and still being learned about to this day.

    *facepalm* – do you even know how science works? Nothing in science is taught as 100% proven fact, all science is tentative knowledge, dependant on the time and place. Do you understand the difference between fact and theory in science? Facts are the evidence, and a theory is a well supported explanation of the evidence. Theories hold far more weight that facts because facts alone explain only themselves. When a hypothesis can predict what facts will emerge and explain the current facts, it becomes a theory. Theories are still subject to revision and they always will be because that’s what science is.

  121. strange gods before me says

    The point that I am making is that some schools teach it as absolute undefiled total 100% proven fact rather than a theory that is still being tested and still being learned about to this day.

    No, they don’t.

    Liar.

  122. derender says

    Janine is back – Dracula returns! How was the night air? It will be sunrise in few hours. Better not stray too far off. Like I said before, stop with pig fetish stuff and i’ll be nice. until then, forget it. I will continue with Kel tomorrow with a nice civilized discussion. He is about the only one on here that makes sense anyway. I can talk to Kel with respect and dignity, but you are just nuts. Threats? Like I could really spray you with raid? That would be a perfectly good waste of raid.

  123. Patricia, OM says

    Fuck you derender, you scaborus shit festered christian.

    Ass, you risk your mortal soul by mixing with the vile non believers. Run away and pray, shit for brains.

  124. says

    derender not a single thing you have offered as your understanding of science or the world has been shown to be factual.

    You need to re-asses where you are getting your information from.

    I would start by stop using AIG or Ken Ham for anything.

  125. strange gods before me says

    still being tested and still being learned about to this day.

    It is still being tested and learned about. As every school teaches.

    Now, tell us, what tests has evolution failed?

    Because if it’s never failed a test in 150 years, you have to admit that’s a pretty good track record.

  126. Nerd of Redhead, OM says

    The point that I am making is that some schools teach it as absolute undefiled total 100% proven fact rather than a theory that is still being tested and still being learned about to this day.

    Now derenger, cite the peer reviewed primary scientific literature to show that there is a competing scientific theory. There is none. So evolution is the only scientific theory. Creationism is religion, so say SCOTUS. So says science. ID is creationism, that is religion. Religion has no place being taught in science class. So, you have a problem if you think religion should be taught in a science class, you are fucked in the head.

  127. derender says

    strange gods before me :

    Yes they do

    liar.

    Ever heard of High school Biology. The whole book is preaching Darwinism without question. Students are turned away when they question the book.

  128. strange gods before me says

    I can talk to Kel with respect and dignity

    Kel, what the hell?

    I can loan you some cuss words if you’re running low.

  129. Aquaria says

    Wow. Only one woman here? Now, that’s funny. Funny too is our latest chew-toy’s name. Derender. Sounds like “the end of…” What? One could only hope it’s that brackish mire called his gene pool.

  130. Wowbagger, OM says

    Is derender, the useless little impotent cumstain, still here displaying his profound ignorance? What a pathetic turdsmear he is.

    Anyone else think the dungeon door is opening?

  131. strange gods before me says

    Ever heard of High school Biology. The whole book is preaching Darwinism without question. Students are turned away when they question the book.

    I took high school biology.

    There is no question about evolution. It is correct. That is not the same as saying that it’s not “a theory that is still being tested and still being learned about to this day.”

    You’re not just a liar, you’re too stupid to understand this conversation.

    Did Christianity make you stupid, or were you born that way?

  132. says

    Sure didn’t mean to step in this thread, all full of puke from an idiot shooting blanks with something looking almost like a penis, only smaller, the sort of wankstain not worth a middle finger when an extended pinkie will get the message across. Derender, voted most likely to blind himself trying to cook fireworks on his stove on his way to a teabagging party.

  133. Nerd of Redhead, OM says

    Ever heard of High school Biology. The whole book is preaching Darwinism without question. Students are turned away when they question the book.

    Ever hear of science class? Only science should be taught there. By the way Darwinism is not used by science. We call modern evolutionary theory “Modern Synthesis”, if no just plain evolution. So another lie by the godbot, who is full of bearing fall witness. Again. Religion, that is creationism, can be taught in schools. We don’t care. Just no in science classes, because is isn’t science. Comparative religion, philosophy, or mythology are the proper courses for creationism.

  134. Steve_C says

    Young earth creationists are insane. 6000 years? Are you fucking kidding? Your car wouldn’t run without FOSSIL fuels! Explain OIL dumbass.

  135. derender says

    Patricia:

    Who are you? Dracula’s personal bodyguard?

    I better put some garlic up before i get bitten.

    Care for some garlic?

  136. says

    You have been repsectful with most of your posts and I appreciate that. For your respect and courtesy I can honestly say that I cannot answer your question about the speed of light being constant. There are some ideas about it in the world of young earth creationsim that are still being worked out. It has proved to be a stubmling block to the movement. The main idea now is that everything was made in the universe at the exact same time. That’s all I can tell you.

    This is the difference between science and non-science. Science is never about struggling to fit a worldview to fit the facts, it current explanations cannot explain the facts then that explanation is thrown out in favour of an explanation that can explain the facts… And even if there’s no current idea that can explain the facts, an explanation that can’t explain them is still discarded. You should never have the conclusion before you look for the evidence, rather you should base any conclusion on the evidence.

    Back 400 years ago, it was first theorised that life was a constant speed. It took until centuries later for the ability to measure it. Light was thought to travel through a substance called aether, but that was disproven in the 1880s. From there, Einstein had the ability to derive special relativity – that the speed of light is fundamental to the nature of the universe and that matter IS energy. Thus e=mc² has become the fundamental equation of reality.

    Back then, they had no idea how old the universe was. It wasn’t that long ago that there were galaxies that were found to be outside our own, and in the 1920s it was discovered that the galaxies were moving away from us – the further the galaxy, the further away it was. From here, combined with our knowledge of the fundamental forces, the idea of the big bang first came about. In the 1960s, a prediction of the big bang – cosmic background radiation, was discovered and thus the hypothesis of big bang cosmology was given validity by making a confirmed falsifiable prediction.

    Even today, more study of the universe is changing what we know about it. We have black holes, string theory, the holographic universe, multiverse theories, ideas such as dark matter and dark energy – and while many of these are probably wrong, these are the tentative conclusions drawn in order to explain what’s there and predict what we should find. Drawing conclusions before the evidence? That’s what religion does, not science.

  137. Sven DiMilo says

    Garlic?
    Right so here we are again with the troll-stomping thing. But what occurs to me is the Dawkins quote about anybody who claims to reject biological evolution is either stupid, ignorant, insane, or wicked…it’s pretty clear which category this guy derender exemplifies, no? So why waste time with somebody like that? I’m looking for a thread where the smart, educated, sanely realist and good people are hanging out.

  138. strange gods before me says

    What’s up with the vampire references?

    Are those supposed to be jokes?

    Does he think he’s funny?

  139. Tulse says

    What geologist would you recommend? A evolution based one or creation based one?

    A reality-based one.

  140. Sven DiMilo says

    Well, it turns out everybody’s over here.
    So, Opening Day or what? Any baseball fans?

  141. derender says

    Kel:

    I do believe that some aspects that Darwin studied is indeed fact. For example, when Darwin studied the beaks of finches, he noticed that some were entirely differnt, but wer of the same bird.

    I can hadle that. I realize that naimals as well as viruses and bacteria can change over time to adapt to their environment. That is one apsect of evolution I do beleive. it’s the whole molecules to man thing that seems far fetched. You have to understand that mixing evolution with religion is a diffucult task simply becuase the two contradict each other. Anyway, I’ll continue tomorrow night. I have to go to work in the morning.

  142. says

    So why waste time with somebody like that? I’m looking for a thread where the smart, educated, sanely realist and good people are hanging out.

    If we were on zombie patrol, and, in response to our challenge, heard any random sample of the shite that derender is spewing, we’d have shot his head clean off, and then would have been only marginally surprised to discover that it was entirely bereft of brains. Unfortunately, picking off zombie lies and trolls seems to be what brings smart, educated, sanely realist and good people together here, thanks to our gracious host.

  143. says

    I can talk to Kel with respect and dignity, but you are just nuts.

    Hate to say it, but being courteous is not the same thing as being respectful. When you push a completely misunderstood version of science and refuse to budge from that position, that is not being respectful or acting with dignity.

    Ever heard of High school Biology. The whole book is preaching Darwinism without question. Students are turned away when they question the book.

    *facepalm* by calling it darwinism, you are showing your profound ignorance on the subject. This is exactly what I mean, you have no understanding of science and are showing no respect here to people who do. Instead you are just pushing the same creationist rhetoric that has been disproven time and time again.

    Evolution is taught because it’s the only theory that has evidential support and has the power to explain the diversity of life. It’s not sacred, all scientific knowledge is tentative. Quite simply there is no alternative that has come about to challenge evolution by natural selection, so you can whine all you want about how it’s the only one taught – but it’s the only one taught for the same reason that heliocentric orbit is taught or that the theory of gravity is taught. In fact we know more about evolution than gravity, we have never observed the proposed graviton that fits in the standard model of physics.

    Evolution is the only one taught because it’s the only theory that has scientific validity – if you wish to see another theory taught alongside evolution, first come up with a competing theory. And remember that theory in science does not mean guess, it’s a well supported hypothesis that can explain a variety of facts.

  144. Jadehawk says

    it’s the whole molecules to man thing that seems far fetched.

    your argument from personal incredulity is worthless. just because you can’t wrap your head around something, doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen

  145. Wowbagger, OM says

    Does he think he’s funny?

    Considering that he seems to think he’s intelligent, well-informed, open-minded and intellectually honest when he (demonstrably) isn’t, I wouldn’t be surprised if he also thought he was funny.

    I guess he hasn’t worked out we’re laughing at him.

  146. Patricia, OM says

    Look out Kel, de-rearender has a crush on you. *wink*

    So Janine is a destroyer of children? OK, me too. Over 400 in my life time. Oh, and just to be perfectly plain, I do not regret destroying any one of them. Got that derender?

    Creationism basically deals with te age of the earth from a historical and geneological point of view rather than froma universe point of view.

    So derender is a mormon with a Raid and tongue fetish?

    Inquiring foulmouthed vulgar child destroying minds want to know.

  147. Sven DiMilo says

    go Braves

    Best record in baseball…for now…

    The Mets bought relief this winter…watch out.

  148. BMS says

    I guess he hasn’t worked out we’re laughing at him.

    Well, his attempts to insult me were pure comedy gold.

  149. says

    You have to understand that mixing evolution with religion is a diffucult task simply becuase the two contradict each other.

    Why yes, yes they do!

    Anyway, I’ll continue tomorrow night. I have to go to work in the morning.

    Any boil sucker has to get up pretty early in the morning these days, to keep the only job they’re qualified for.

  150. Janine, Insulting Sinner says

    Sadly, I am a fan of the Chicago Cubs. Go ahead and make fun of me, I deserve it.

  151. Menyambal says

    The business about Darwin being a racist comes from a few misunderstandings. He used the word “races” in a way that was clearly meant to encompass everything from breeds to species, and he used the word “favored” with “races” only in terms of survival value. He once referred to living conditions in Africa and said that conditions there would improve to be more like Europe, but folks assume that he meant that Africans were at fault and would be eliminated–he meant that the higher apes would probably be accidentally eliminated, providing an even greater contrast between civilized humans and the remaining monkeys.

    Darwin himself was a very good man, but his goodness or badness has nothing to do with evolution. He described natural selection, which is the mechanism that drives evolution, but he did not invent evolution. He just explained what makes evolution happen.

  152. BMS says

    So, Opening Day or what? Any baseball fans?

    .

    go Braves

    Too bad Maddox retired. Last season with, and for, the Padres was just abysmal. Some of the games were just amazing. Couldn’t do anything right.

  153. says

    Sadly, I am a fan of the Chicago Cubs. Go ahead and make fun of me, I deserve it.

    At the risk of boring the non-sports fans here, the Cubs are actually pretty good or rather should be this year.

  154. plum grenville says

    Aaaaw! Dertface has gone to bed? I wanted to refute his Darwin-owned-slaves fantasy. And ask him if he left school before covering citation practices. I thought Darwin’s Plantation must be an obscure work of the Sainted Master with which I was not familiar.

    Darwin’s entire family were abolitionists. Had been for several generations at least.

    Slavery was abolished in England in 1772, in the Mansfield Decision, and in British colonies in 1834. Darwin was born in 1809. FAIL.

  155. Sven DiMilo says

    I do believe that some aspects that Darwin studied is indeed fact. For example, when Darwin studied the beaks of finches, he noticed that some were entirely differnt, but wer of the same bird. I can hadle that. I realize that naimals as well as viruses and bacteria can change over time to adapt to their environment. That is one apsect of evolution I do beleive. it’s the whole molecules to man thing that seems far fetched.

    Quoted…just because.

  156. Janine, Insulting Sinner says

    In the Central, the Cubs will have no competition. The Brewers will have offense but no pitching, Sheets and the fat guy are gone. The Cardinals, Astros, Reds and Pirates? Bleh! Yes, they are one of the best teams in the NL, perhaps the best. But they have won nothing. Also, the 2006 Cardinals, arguably one of the worst World Series winner ever, shows that talent does not always win out.

    But you have to remember Chimpy, the last time the Cubs won anything, none of my grandparents were around. They are all gone. Until that hated team that I route for wins, I deserve abuse for my loyalty.

  157. Patricia, OM says

    Shit! I thought I was getting that HTML stuff pretty good for a hillbilly.

    Derender you’re going to need much more than garlic to defend yourself against me, you namby pamby, sissy assed wannabe christian. Your gawd is a pale coward compared to MOCCUS the god of bacon and pork chops*.

    Lay off Janine & snort some Raid, you’ll feel better.

    *Moccus, Romano-Celtic local swine god.

  158. says

    it’s the whole molecules to man thing that seems far fetched.

    Far fetched in what way?

    Reasons we know we evolved:

    • Fused chromosome – Humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes, while all other great apes have 24 pairs. That means for common ancestry to be true, we should see a fused chromosome in our genome that corresponds to two chromosomes in the chimpanzee genome or that we should see a split chromosome in all other great apes. Now the latter is really unlikely, so the former must be true if common ancestry was true… and when sequencing the chimpanzee genome we found it. Human chromosome #2 directly relates to two chimpanzee chromosomes. We even have the fused markers in our DNA – two centromeres and telemeres fused in the middle of the chromosome.
    • ERV markers – there are certain types of viruses that insert it’s DNA into the genetic code of animals. If this infects the reproductive cells, this will be passed down as a genetic marker. So if humans and chimpanzees shared a common ancestor, we should see many of these markers in exactly the same position in both genomes. And we’ve found this too, of one type of ERV, the ERV-K, we found 17 markers in exactly the same position on the human and chimpanzee genome. Remember that the genetic code is 3 billion characters long, so for that to happen by chance is impossible.
    • Pseudogenes – Genes can be activated or inactivated with the switch of a single marker in the genetic code. As such, genes that no longer serve a use are inactivated rather than deleted. So we should see in our genome markers that are inactivated in both us and chimpanzees that are not in other creatures. The ability to create vitamin C for example fits this criteria. We don’t need to waste energy synthesising vitamin C since we can get it from our diet, so turning that gene off will not only not be disadvantageous, but even advantageous as it costs to synthesise the vitamin.
    • Genetic drift – to further elaborate on pseudogenes, since the gene is turned off, any mutation on the gene will not matter. So over time, mutations will accumulate and at a fairly constant, so common ancestry can be traced by seeing what copies of the gene are closer genetically. By this, our copy of the inactive gene should be closer to chimpanzees than to gorillas – and that is indeed the case.
    • Fossil record – We have found plenty of skulls that show a clear progression to modern man. Our last ancestor with chimpanzees was about 7 million years ago, and we have found skulls that would satisfy a common ancestor for both. Then there are the australopithecines that are around from 4 million years ago to about 2 million years ago, again showing more human-like traits. They were already upright creatures by that stage. The brain gradually got bigger and around 2 million years ago that’s when we get to the homo line of fossils. One fossil – homo habilis cannot be decided whether it really fits into the homo or the australopithecine category, it’s just that good as an intermediate species. Finally we see early homo sapiens and our recent cousins – the neanderthals that only diverged from us around 500,000 years ago

    That’ll do for a start. If you aren’t convinced, there’s plenty of other evidence that shows common ancestry – like shared genes, embryology, morphology, anatomy, biogeographical distribution of life, etc. Though there are two books you should be reading: Neil Shubin – Your Inner Fish, and Jerry Coyne – Why Evolution Is True.

  159. says

    If you aren’t convinced, there’s plenty of other evidence that shows common ancestry

    Appeals to the intellect are here, I’m afraid, generous to a fault, Kel; as you well know, you can’t reason someone out of any position that reason had nothing to do with in the first place.

  160. Patricia, OM says

    Dammit, I’m missing the best of the fun and holding up my end of being gruesome because I have to help build more chicken coops. Daaaaaang!

  161. Sven DiMilo says

    I have hated the Cubs with a white-hot burning hate since that evening in 1969 when a benchwarmer named Jimmy Qualls singled with 1 out in the ninth to break up Tom Seaver’s perfect game. That crappy little single is seared into my amygdala forever.

  162. BMS says

    Okay. What’s with the Discovery Channel?

    Right now its runnig a multi-part series entitled, “Who Was Jesus?”

    That’s bad enough, right, on the Discovery Channel?

    The very first voiceover says:

    “This is the true story of Jesus Christ.”

    Yeah. Right.

  163. says

    You have to understand that mixing evolution with religion is a diffucult task simply becuase the two contradict each other.

    Maybe you should read Finding Darwin’s God and Only A Theory by Dr Ken Miller. Now I’m with you on this, I personally find religion and science very hard to reconcile. It’s one of the reasons why I’m an atheist, but there are many theists who do reconcile the ideas. I wouldn’t doubt Ken Miller’s sincerity as a biologist or as a Christian for a second, nor would I do the same for Robert T Bakker or Francis Collins. Nor would I doubt the commitment to science and religion displayed by the Arch Bishop of Canterbury or the George Coyne, the chief vatican astronomer. Point is, while difficult, the views can be reconciled.

    But in all honesty, this is the year 2009, we have sent people to the moon, travelled beyond pluto and sitting on your desk is a machine that can do more mathematical calculations than the human race combined. We’ve eradicated smallpox, put electricity into every home, have the ability to fly across the world in a matter of hours, split the atom, and created a global communications network. Science works, and you would be a fool to ignore it for any reason at all – and that includes God. Science does not say God doesn’t exist, but it does show how the universe works. Creationism is killed by science, God is not.

  164. says

    I wouldn’t doubt Ken Miller’s sincerity as a biologist or as a Christian for a second, nor would I do the same for Robert T Bakker or Francis Collins.

    And I can’t help but wonder what they could have accomplished if they hadn’t hobbled themselves with religion. If you haven’t read Francis Collins, or worse, heard him on the radio gabbling about taking three frozen waterfalls as a message from gob about “the trinity,” then you don’t know what it’s like to be embarrassed on behalf of somebody who then claims to speak for science.

    Creationism is killed by science, God is not.

    God has never been so coherent or consistent a concept as creationism has been–something that’s never been alive can hardly be said to have been killed, no matter how many times a stake has been driven into the empty coffin a body would be buried in, had it ever existed in the first place.

  165. Jadehawk says

    Well, his attempts to insult me were pure comedy gold.

    if you think that’s funny, you should have seen his attempts at flirting earlier. a caveman with a club would have been a true Don Juan compared to that.

  166. Patricia, OM says

    Kel, most excellent points.

    The next question for the christian is: what part of the bible is relevant today?

    Stoning lesbians, stoning sassy children, stoning the checkers at Wal-Mart? Stoning gay men, stoning anyone wearing a cotton shirt, rayon skirt and leather sandals? Stoning someone eating shrimp salad for lunch? They have no clue.

  167. says

    Appeals to the intellect are here, I’m afraid, generous to a fault, Kel; as you well know, you can’t reason someone out of any position that reason had nothing to do with in the first place.

    The very least you can do is try, if they haven’t examined the evidence then it seems that it’s pertinent to demonstrate the validity of an idea before mocking them for rejecting it. It may simply be that (s)he has never been exposed to the evidence, it may be that the evidence has not been explained properly, or that (s)he was too stubborn to listen the first time (we’ve all been there on that one).

    Whatever the reason, it’s always good to show that there are good reasons that scientists accept a theory even if they won’t walk away believing it. If nothing else, it will demonstrate that there are facts out there to support the theory – something that is definitely lacking in the understanding of evolution to the layman. Human knowledge should be available for everyone, even if they choose to ignore it.

  168. Sven DiMilo says

    Uh-oh, driving off the Wodehousians with sports talk. Who’s next? Let’s see…say, I’m listening right now to the latest archival release from the Grateful Dead, Carousel Ballroom SF 2/14/68–mind-searing amazingness.

  169. Menyambal says

    Patricia, you’ve been doing great. Are you a real hillbilly? I’m in the Missouri Ozarks, myself. In Christian County, for Gawds’ sake.

    I just went off and read about _Darwin’s_Plantation_. That is one twisted book. Ham argues that Darwin increased racism and slavery, totally ignoring the fact that just a couple of years after _Origin_ came out, the USA had a massive internal war to wipe out slavery–if one wants to make silly correlations. No wonder poor derender totally misunderstood, although how he got to Darwin owning slaves is possible only through reading only the title. Do you suppose ol’ Ken Ham deliberately chooses his titles on that basis?

    And why is it that trying to deal with people like derender and Ken Ham makes me wish that there was a god? It reminds me of the first time that I got into an old Russian helicopter, sitting there feeling it thrash up to speed, and knowing that I hadn’t a hope in hell, or even a “Hail Mary”. I survived the flight, and a few more, but I sometimes despair of surviving in a world with people like derender in it.

    Thanks, all, for some hope.

  170. Aquaria says

    Ugh. Sports. Well, basketball is okay. It at least moves a lot, except for the last 3:00 of regulation. If you’re at a game, it’s the perfect time to go to the bathroom or hit up the concession stand. No lines!

  171. BMS says

    Ooooo, Jadehawk, I missed his “flirting”!

    Another thread? Or this one and I put it out of my mind?

  172. says

    The very least you can do is try, if they haven’t examined the evidence then it seems that it’s pertinent to demonstrate the validity of an idea before mocking them for rejecting it.

    When a scumbag troll shows up here frothing at the mouth and, in the name of Jay-Zuz, using our status as atheists as an opportunity to slag off everybody, the calm rational response of rattling off the facts about the twin-nested hierarchy, even though I understand the impulse and applaud the perspicacity, just starts to look like a disposable character in the B-move, fumbling for the right religious icon even as the monster shuffles closer and closer. It will not have the intended effect, other than to make the rest of us proud of you for having the wherewithal to calmbly share some basic facts-o-life with the shuffling zombie.

  173. says

    Nothing is going to be gained by reacting back. All it’ll do is confirm in their mind that atheists are a pack of immoral fools. Going around punching people is going to mean others punch back, but if you are only looking at the behaviour of others, then it’s going to feel like you are the one who is being abused.

    I agree, it may not have the intended effect. But what else can we do? Most people have been miseducated on the matter, and that is only expounded by the many who exploit that ignorance for the sake of profit or pushing their own agenda. People more than ever only expose themselves to views they want to hear, it’s important to show that at times this can lead people down a very wrong path.

  174. Patricia, OM says

    Menyambal – Yep, hillbilly. My grandmother was from Old Misery. The rest from Kentucky and Tennessee. The farms my folks and brothers live on now were paid for with shine money.

    Gawd it makes me feel old to say that.

  175. BMS says

    Nothing is going to be gained by reacting back.

    Maybe not that you can perceive.

  176. says

    The next question for the christian is: what part of the bible is relevant today?

    Obviously there has to be something still, otherwise it wouldn’t proliferate. As I see it, the message of relevance is the same as comes from other religions – a connection with reality around us. It’s not that the bible offers us anyhting special in a way to understand nature, it doesn’t offer us any special moral guidance, it doesn’t give us a sense of history. But it attempts to do all those, and it wraps it up in necessities like the human need for community. And as such the bible stays relevant because it is satisfying to the individual through attempting to be a complete guide to reality.

  177. says

    Nothing is going to be gained by reacting back.

    Maybe not that you can perceive.

    Agreed, I don’t see the value in starting a flame war for the sake of it. It’s worth at least trying to explain things before writing someone off. Maybe that’s my naivety speaking.

  178. Patricia, OM says

    Kel I don’t want to misunderstand you.

    I think you are for punching back … is it the lateness of the hour, or the amount of wine?… Inquiring minds want to know. :D

  179. says

    By the time some asshole freeper shows up here hating the Mexicans and bragging about how they make their own bullets, it isn’t exactly everybody’s cue to leaflet-bomb the intruder with remedial science and try new experiments in framing, espousing NOMA as if it were a good thing. Religion is what it took to get the idiot to such a state of depravity in the first place. Appeals to religion-accommodating scientists, who got to be scientists while still being strung out on religion, aren’t going to be any more effective than trying to teach him the eight-fold path, or phenomenology.

  180. says

    Kel I don’t want to misunderstand you.

    I think you are for punching back …

    I’m for trying to diffuse the attack before punching back.

    espousing NOMA as if it were a good thing

    I agree with you Ken, but I still feel it’s worth at least trying to at least expose them to the evidence for the science. And remember what I said: Now I’m with you on this, I personally find religion and science very hard to reconcile. It’s one of the reasons why I’m an atheist, but there are many theists who do reconcile the ideas. – nothing of that statement is incorrect in my view. Just showing options, and not pretending that my personal view on the matter of them being incompatible is the only way of seeing the world…

    Appeals to religion-accommodating scientists, who got to be scientists while still being strung out on religion, aren’t going to be any more effective than trying to teach him the eight-fold path, or phenomenology.

    To be honest, I couldn’t give a shit if they remain Christian or not. It’s that they understand how science works – that’s the real goal in my view. Not even to believe in what science says, but at least understand how it works. It’s a great tradegy that almost all of those who argue against evolution have no idea of what evolution really is.

  181. Menyambal says

    Patricia: ‘Shine, huh? I once got a tour of a “distillery” that was extracting plant oils up in the hills of Indonesia. My guide told the old man that I was from a moonshining family, which was utter crud, but it got me in. Once in, though, I realized that I could have run the place–pot still, cooling coils and all. Maybe it is in my blood.

  182. says

    Ken, would I say that I think the ideas are incompatible if I was trying that Matt Nisbet coddling bullshit? All I can do is be open and honest about the options. I make no secret of the fact that I’m an atheist, that I don’t think the bible is a book of any value in this modern world, and that I feel that NOMA is a weak way of looking at both science and religion. God to me has always been a god of the gaps – born out of human ignorance and propagated in the absence of a suitable challenger, and that in 2009 we have enough understanding of the universe in order to declare the God hypothesis dead. Merely pointing out that there are differing opinions on this issue and pointing someone to look at Ken Miller (is anyone on here really going to complain that a creationist is reading Miller?) is not being accomodationalist. It’s being honest.

  183. Patricia, OM says

    Whoa, no Kel. That is not what I mean.

    What part of the bible is relevant today? I say, not much.

  184. says

    It’s that they understand how science works – that’s the real goal in my view.

    Whatever gets them through the night, I agree, I’ve got no beef with wherever anybody happens to believe, if they’ve got the slightest shred of human tolerance and are willing to reciprocate. I spent years thinking I could accommodate science and woo with each other. But most of these guys go beyond fideism and either assign credit for their science skills to their religion, or try to claim they hold their religious beliefs for scientific reasons. While heddle will defend Collins, even heddle claims the reason he’s a believer is not out of any rational cause, but because he was singled out for a kick-in-the-head miraculous intervention from his god. Apart from the narcissism approaching Zaphod-Beeblebrox proportions, he at least isn’t usually trying to claim that it’s scientific to think as he does.

  185. says

    Sorry, Kel, to accuse you of hanging with Padfoot, Mooney, Nisbet and Prongs, was beyond the pale, and I apologize. Most of the shots that we take at trolls aren’t really intended to be read and understood by the trolls, but by the people who are at any and all stages on their journey: the lurkers, or at least readers who may profit from seeing various strategies in action to note for when they find themselves in similar encounters in real life.

  186. says

    What part of the bible is relevant today? I say, not much.

    I’d go one step further and say that beyond a narrative for Christian culture nothing at all. It fails as a moral guide, it fails as a historical guide, it utterly fails as an explanation for reality, and there’s just so much horrible things in there the best we can ever expect is for someone to interpret the bible to conform with the current moral zeitgeist. It’s an archaic and draconian text, with enough contradictory passages that any theist can twist it to justify their own ends. I honestly don’t know how anyone can find any value in that mythology at all.

    Just curious Patrica, as a former Christian, what do you think of the Outsider Test For Faith?

  187. Patricia, OM says

    Menyambal – Yep, my family used to run shine, but now we just have crocks of hooch. *grin* I predict (!) that hooch is going to be worth something again.

  188. Patricia, OM says

    Kel, The Outsider test for faith is a bunch of sissy, non-believing wannabe christians. They aren’t worth their weight in gopher wood.

  189. Jadehawk says

    Ooooo, Jadehawk, I missed his “flirting”!
    Another thread? Or this one and I put it out of my mind?

    this thread, somewhere in the late #300’s.

  190. Josh says

    We have to do this on two fronts, now? Seriously?

    We have seen dinosaurs fighting. Do you think those two dinosaurs just had a heart attack and died suddenly and fossilized in a fight scene. Why would a sudden burial not explain this?

    No one is disputing that these two individuals were buried quickly. There are disagreements about exactly what happened, but no one is disputing quick burial for these two dinosaur skeletons.

    http://www.mnhn.ul.pt/geologia/gaia/9.pdf

    Why is it that you creationists are so convinced that everything in geology is a slow, gradual process? What–you don’t think we see the tsunamis happen and the volcanoes erupt?

    The rapid burial isn’t a problem for us. However, the problem for you is how several months of receding flood waters can deposit thick sequences of river sediments and semi-arid desert sand:

    http://www.jstor.org/pss/3515294

    gsa.confex.com/gsa/2008AM/finalprogram/abstract_147501.htm

    http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.1206/0003-0082(2005)498%5B0001:NSSDEA%5D2.0.CO%3B2

    http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VHG-4V47CMB-
    2&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221
    &_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=59f62de1a008705e97396e9b82ac9d97

  191. MAJeff, OM says

    Jesus fucking christ. Ignore the troll. It’s not as though the little fuckwit is capable of learning.

  192. Carlie says

    It would be nice if we could have a couple of 101 threads: Evolution 101, Geology 101, and the like. That way when ignoramuses like derender show up, they can simply be directed to those threads with “Sorry, the grown-ups are trying to have a conversation here. Go to this thread (link). When you’re done you can come back, but if you try to bring up anything already covered there you will be ignored.”

  193. clinteas says

    It would be nice if we could have a couple of 101 threads: Evolution 101, Geology 101, and the like

    Excellent idea.Like the “sticky” posts on forums,so not everything has to be rehashed constantly.I’d be all for that.

  194. Stephen Wells says

    Historical trivia item re. Darwin and slavery: while a student in Edinburgh, Charles Darwin paid for taxidermy lessons from a freed slave by the name of John Edmonston, who lived in the city and made his living as an instructor in that art.

    I have no idea where the latest idiot got his “Darwin owned slaves” line from. It would be odd, given that he was an abolitionist and strongly condemned the horrible cruelty that he witnessed among South American slave-owners. From the journal of the Beagle voyage:

    “On the 19th of August we finally left the shores of Brazil.
    I thank God, I shall never again visit a slave-country. To
    this day, if I hear a distant scream, it recalls with painful
    vividness my feelings, when passing a house near Pernambuco,
    I heard the most pitiable moans, and could not but
    suspect that some poor slave was being tortured, yet knew
    that I was as powerless as a child even to remonstrate. I
    suspected that these moans were from a tortured slave, for I
    was told that this was the case in another instance. Near
    Rio de Janeiro I lived opposite to an old lady, who kept
    screws to crush the fingers of her female slaves. I have
    stayed in a house where a young household mulatto, daily
    and hourly, was reviled, beaten, and persecuted enough to
    break the spirit of the lowest animal. I have seen a little
    boy, six or seven years old, struck thrice with a horse-whip
    (before I could interfere) on his naked head, for having
    handed me a glass of water not quite clean; I saw his
    father tremble at a mere glance from his master’s eye.
    These latter cruelties were witnessed by me in a Spanish
    colony, in which it has always been said, that slaves are
    better treated than by the Portuguese, English, or other
    European nations. I have seen at Rio de Janeiro a powerful
    negro afraid to ward off a blow directed, as he thought, at his
    face. I was present when a kind-hearted man was on the
    point of separating forever the men, women, and little
    children of a large number of families who had long lived
    together. I will not even allude to the many heart-sickening
    atrocities which I authentically heard of; — nor would I have
    mentioned the above revolting details, had I not met with
    several people, so blinded by the constitutional gaiety of the
    negro as to speak of slavery as a tolerable evil. Such people
    have generally visited at the houses of the upper classes, where
    the domestic slaves are usually well treated, and they have
    not, like myself, lived amongst the lower classes. Such
    inquirers will ask slaves about their condition; they forget
    that the slave must indeed be dull, who does not calculate
    on the chance of his answer reaching his master’s ears.

    It is argued that self-interest will prevent excessive cruelty;
    as if self-interest protected our domestic animals, which
    are far less likely than degraded slaves, to stir up the rage
    of their savage masters. It is an argument long since protested
    against with noble feeling, and strikingly exemplified,
    by the ever-illustrious Humboldt. It is often attempted to
    palliate slavery by comparing the state of slaves with our
    poorer countrymen: if the misery of our poor be caused
    not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is
    our sin; but how this bears on slavery, I cannot see; as well
    might the use of the thumb-screw be defended in one
    land, by showing that men in another land suffered from
    some dreadful disease. Those who look tenderly at the slave
    owner, and with a cold heart at the slave, never seem to put
    themselves into the position of the latter; what a cheerless
    prospect, with not even a hope of change! picture to yourself
    the chance, ever hanging over you, of your wife and
    your little children — those objects which nature urges even
    the slave to call his own — being torn from you and sold
    like beasts to the first bidder! And these deeds are done
    and palliated by men, who profess to love their neighbours
    as themselves, who believe in God, and pray that his Will be
    done on earth! It makes one’s blood boil, yet heart tremble,
    to think that we Englishmen and our American descendants,
    with their boastful cry of liberty, have been and are so
    guilty: but it is a consolation to reflect, that we at least
    have made a greater sacrifice, than ever made by any nation,
    to expiate our sin.”

  195. Stephen Wells says

    Evolution 101 could consist largely of links to talkorigins.

    For geology 101 we could maybe condense Josh’s post 713 into something like:

    “In the fossil record we see evidence of some things happening very quickly and other happening very slowly. Things happening very quickly are compatible with either a young or an old earth. Things happening very slowly are only compatible with an old earth. Therefore the earth is old.”

  196. cinteas says

    Things happening very quickly are compatible with either a young or an old earth. Things happening very slowly are only compatible with an old earth. Therefore the earth is old.”

    Or just:

    “Timescales matter” !

  197. says

    Geology – if you have a problem with radiometric dating, then why do you believe in the atomic bomb?

  198. Kseniya says

    Rob spewed:

    I refuse to adhere to your left wing propoganda. These links are pro-gay marriage and you know it. Why don’t you give some links that are not politically motivated? The APA is a joke now as well becuase they have been threatened by far left terrorists to keep their mouth shut on issues of homosexuality being pshychological. It’s sad when the far left pressure physchologists to change thier professional viewpoints to make a political statement. So much for freedom and free speech. Will these far left pests ever use a fair method of debate rather than threats of lawsuits by criminal organizations ike the ACLU?

    LOLOLOLOLOLOL! LOLOLOLOLOLOL! LOLOLOLOLOL!

    Brainwash alert!

    You poor creature. Everything you say is a lie. You feeble-minded, paranoid, ignorant fool.

    By the way, the APA dropped homosexuality from the DSM almost 40 years ago. They were way ahead of the social curve on the issue of sexual orientation and the psychological aspects thereof, not because “left-wing terrorists” threatened them (what a paranoid construct that is! seek help immediately) but because they examined a vast array of facts, and made an informed conclusion – unlike, say, YOU, who refuse to examine facts or make rational conclusions at all. You’ve swallowed the hateful mind-worm of your political forebearers, and do nothing but vomit up its filthy, squirming, photophobic progeny. You know nothing of freedom of thought, for you exercise none.

  199. says

    For extra credit, try to see yourself in them. Your and their politics have a common root in casual human selfishness, fear and distrust.

    Are you comparing the intellectual tradition of Friedman, Hayek, Mises, Nozick and Rothbard – some of the most influential economists and philosophers in human history – to the rantings of third-rate trolls like Rob and derender?

    I’m not a genius myself, and at times I don’t doubt that I talk utter crap. In my defence, when I realise that I’ve done so, I usually retract it. But the ideology to which I subscribe is one which has attracted many of the greatest intellectuals, and my role models, through the ages.

    Yes, there is lowbrow conservatism of the type espoused by Rush Limbaugh, and there are plenty of idiots and bigots on the “political right” (whatever that broad blanket term really means). I have little in common with them, however. I am pro-immigration; liberal on social issues; and in favour of a secular state.

    I just happen to support the free market and small government. I know I don’t always do so very coherently or articulately; but the fact that I myself am inadequate in expressing these ideas doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with the ideas themselves.

  200. Menyambal says

    “Far left terrorists”?!? What? Who? Where can I sign up? What will we do? Do I get a weapon? What kind of weapon would a far left terrorist use to threaten the APA, anyhow? The complete works of Charles Darwin? What? What?

  201. says

    Simon, are you typing with one hand?

    If so, I really don’t want to know what he’s using the other one for…

  202. Menyambal says

    Walton says:

    Friedman, Hayek, Mises, Nozick and Rothbard – some of the most influential economists and philosophers in human history … many of the greatest intellectuals, and my role models, through the ages.

    See, there’s part of what folks are trying to get across about you having things in common with the lower right. You have picked out a troupe of people to follow, and you puff them up as being marvelous. You are a follower, not a free-thinker.

    I know that you are going to think that I am an idiot when I say this, but I’ve never heard of ANY of those people other than Friedman, who I assume is Milton. And I’ve read a lot. I’m thinking that they aren’t all that influential in the world.

    But they may have been a big influence on you, Walton, which is where you and the lower elements of the right wing match up. You may not be a fan of Rush Limbaugh, but you are a fan. You follow. You find a guru, and associate yourself with him and his work, not your own.

    Charles Darwin, God love him, was a good man and a great scientist, but I do not follow him, no matter what people on the Christian right think. I like Barack Obama, and have hope for him, but I do not worship the man, no matter what Bush worshippers think.

    Your influences may be better people, but rattling off a list of influences is a right rightist trick.

  203. Josh says

    Evolution 101 could consist largely of links to talkorigins.

    If my two years or whatever of reading this blog have taught me anything, it’s that they won’t follow them.

  204. Carlie says

    No, can’t be a link to talkorigins. That’s just information. I was envisioning threads where they’d be cordoned off, where they could as a question (ONCE), and have everyone go at it. Much more lively than talkorigins. Plus, since it would be in-house, they couldn’t complain of people kicking them out and telling them to go elsewhere.

  205. siMon says

    walton #726
    If so, I really don’t want to know what he’s using the other one for…

    if i am not wrong you are the one who refused to use drugs, are you a homosexual or bisexual ?

  206. KI says

    simon-de-vile, attacking Walton is as low as you can go. Really, man you need self-administered .45 caliber lead therapy.

  207. says

    if i am not wrong you are the one who refused to use drugs, are you a homosexual or bisexual ?

    None of your business.

    But I apologise for my insinuation earlier, It was an attempt at humour.

  208. Josh says

    In the fossil record we see evidence of some things happening very quickly and other happening very slowly. Things happening very quickly are compatible with either a young or an old earth. Things happening very slowly are only compatible with an old earth. Therefore the earth is old.

    In general, I don’t see how, if I do that, this is anything more than me making an unsubstantiated counter-assertion in response to an unsubstantiated assertion. And I don’t see how that helps, because it’s essentially a string of “No, you’re wrong” statements being sent back and forth. But if that’s what’s preferred, then fine.

  209. Carlie says

    But if that’s what’s preferred, then fine.

    No, no no. Blanket statements get one nowhere. Detail is fabulous; it’s just hard on everyone having to rehash it every time someone new pops up. If the detail could be enshrined in a specific place to point newbies, and stay live for additional fighting discussion, all the easier.

  210. strange gods before me says

    Are you comparing the intellectual tradition of Friedman, Hayek, Mises, Nozick and Rothbard – some of the most influential economists and philosophers in human history – to the rantings of third-rate trolls like Rob and derender?

    Yes, inasmuch as they use high-falutin language to obscure the fact that they are nothing more than apes hoarding food and baring their teeth in defiance.

    And Rothbard was a dummy.

    But the ideology to which I subscribe is one which has attracted many of the greatest intellectuals, and my role models, through the ages.

    Uh, wow. Argument from authority. Good job, Walton.

    I am aware of all libertarian traditions. Have you studied any of the better leftist thinkers?

  211. strange gods before me says

    I just happen to support the free market and small government. I know I don’t always do so very coherently or articulately; but the fact that I myself am inadequate in expressing these ideas doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with the ideas themselves.

    Yeah, and the fact that theists are ever inadequate in making their case doesn’t mean that their gods don’t exist.

    However, if their gods do not exist, then we can expect that they will never present convincing evidence for gods.

    And if conserva-libertarianism is intellectually bankrupt, then we can expect that its advocates will have to rely on oversimplification and obscurantism to win converts.

    Your inadequate argumentation is consistent with this hypothesis.

  212. says

    I am aware of all libertarian traditions. Have you studied any of the better leftist thinkers?

    I’m very superficially familiar with the ideas of Marx and of Noam Chomsky, though I haven’t read many of the works of either and wouldn’t be qualified to discuss them in any depth. As to any other leftist philosopher, I don’t have a clue.

    The most credible leftist writing today is, of course, Paul Krugman. As I’m not an economist of any sort, I couldn’t even begin to critically analyse his work within his area of expertise (and it would be supremely arrogant for me to try to do so). But I’ve read many of his newspaper editorials and columns (written for laymen); and it is fairly clear that his left-of-centre political stance is not merely a product of his economic research, but is also, to a very great degree, a consequence of his values. As a self-proclaimed “progressive”, many of his political ideals are clearly informed by a belief (express or implicit) that it is part of the role of the state to save people from themselves and from their own poor decisions. I profoundly disagree with that; and despite his economic brilliance, I cannot accept his ideas about public policy where his normative goals are so substantially different to mine.

  213. Carlie says

    it is part of the role of the state to save people from themselves and from their own poor decisions.

    There’s the rub, Walton. That’s one bright shining place where libertarians interpret things in an entirely different universe than progressives. People don’t need saving from themselves and their decisions; they need their circumstances mediated to bring them to the same base level of competition as others, to make everything more fair.
    Tell me, Walton: take a kid whose parents were never home because they were working 2 shifts each to make ends meet, who went to a failing underfunded school and never quite had enough to eat to pay attention in class rather than think about how hungry he was, who had no peer influences that were any good, who gets watched with suspicion and often roughed up just because of his appearance everywhere he goes, and tell me why his current station in life is the result of his own bad decisions rather than the cumulative effect of all of his formative experiences beyond his control.

  214. says

    who went to a failing underfunded school

    Libertarians have an answer to that – school vouchers.

    and never quite had enough to eat to pay attention in class rather than think about how hungry he was

    How many people in modern Western society are suffering from undernourishment? IIRC, a larger problem among the poor is overnourishment/obesity caused by the abundance of cheap high-fat processed foods.

    who had no peer influences that were any good

    That’s sad, but what can the State do about it? If anything, enabling the kid to go to a good school – via providing a system of school vouchers, so that private education won’t be just for the rich – will help with that.

  215. SC, OM says

    Yes, there is lowbrow conservatism of the type espoused by Rush Limbaugh,

    You don’t really wnat to go there again, do you, Walton? You should pay attention to what Menyambal is telling you @ #727.

  216. Carlie says

    How many people in modern Western society are suffering from undernourishment?

    According to the USDA, 36.2 million in the United States. But that’s no big deal; just be careful not to trip over them on the way to your assumptions.

    IIRC, a larger problem among the poor is overnourishment/obesity caused by the abundance of cheap high-fat processed foods.

    You recall incorrectly. Nutrition and calories are two entirely different things. You cannot say that someone who eats too many calories is “overnourished”, and again, there are far more who don’t even have enough calories. Besides, this is once again a systemic issue. The entire system of food production in the US is set up with the side effect that poor people cannot afford nutritious food, and are left with only being able to buy empty, processed starches. If you had a family of 5 to feed all week and only $10 to do it with, which would you buy: four tomatoes, two heads of lettuce, and a bottle of salad dressing, or 14 boxes of mac and cheese?

  217. Josh says

    But that’s no big deal; just be careful not to trip over them on the way to your assumptions.

    Oh, snap.

  218. SC, OM says

    How many people in modern Western society are suffering from undernourishment?

    You’re an ignorant twit. If you ever come to the US, why don’t you volunteer at a food bank?

    IIRC, a larger problem among the poor is overnourishment/obesity

    This is not “overnourishment.” People are suffering from micronutrient malnutrition and the conditions that causes due to a lack of good food. This diet is causing disease. People aren’t “overnourished” or “well fed.”

    caused by the abundance of cheap high-fat processed foods.

    All that’s available/affordable to many people, thanks to corporate industrial agriculture: Killing People and the Planet Since the 1950s.

  219. says

    According to the USDA, 36.2 million in the United States. But that’s no big deal; just be careful not to trip over them on the way to your assumptions.

    I’m a little sceptical. What definition of “undernourished” are they using? Is it a definition that a starving family in Ethiopia would recognise? Can you provide a link to the statistics?

    We see this kind of nonsense when leftists assert that “X number of people in the US/UK are living in poverty”, using an index of so-called “relative” poverty; they calculate what constitutes “poverty” by reference to the average earnings and standard of living in the country. So what they are really measuring is not absolute destitution, but merely inequality. If a large part of a community suddenly gets richer while the rest remains the same, the relative poverty levels will increase, despite the fact that no one has actually become poorer in absolute terms. While I don’t know what kind of measurement is used for your statistics on undernourishment, I’d very much like to find out.

    The entire system of food production in the US is set up with the side effect that poor people cannot afford nutritious food, and are left with only being able to buy empty, processed starches.

    How much of this is caused by the iniquitous federal system of agricultural subsidies? Agricultural protectionism is, in my view, one of the worst and most large-scale abuses committed by Western governments today, and is something to which libertarians are passionately opposed.

  220. Sven DiMilo says

    Did you know that there is more to life, and more even to political philosophy, than just economics?
    It’s true!

  221. says

    Carlie – on reflection, I was unnecessarily rude and abrasive to you in my post at #744. I apologise (especially as I acknowledge that I could be totally wrong about the statistics; I’ll reserve judgment until I’ve seen the data).

  222. Stephen Wells says

    Carlie wins. Walton, you need to be better informed before your opinions have value to others.

  223. says

    … but the fact that I myself am inadequate in expressing these ideas doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with the ideas themselves.

    Okaaay, but how can you support, indeed advocate for, ideas that, by your own admission, you can’t even articulate?

  224. says

    If you had a family of 5 to feed all week and only $10 to do it with, which would you buy: four tomatoes, two heads of lettuce, and a bottle of salad dressing, or 14 boxes of mac and cheese?

    The bigger question is: why would anyone be so irresponsible as to have so many children, when they can’t afford to spend more than $10 a week on food? Should someone like that be raising children in the first place?

  225. says

    Carlie wins. Walton, you need to be better informed before your opinions have value to others.

    What am I not “informed” about, pray tell? I have addressed Carlie’s points. I am waiting for her to show me the statistics she cited regarding undernourishment in the US population, so that I can find out what definition of “undernourishment” is being used. This makes a substantial difference to the strength of her argument.

  226. Ray Ladbury says

    Walton, malnutrition is not a subjective condition. It means one is not getting enough of some particular nutrient. In many urban, poor neighborhoods, the local “store” will not even carry fresh produce. Canned and frozen vegetables as well as many other nutritious foods are not available because the owner makes more profit from prepared foods. In some families, the school lunch and breakfast programs provide the only food the kids get all day. Thus, you have the paradoxical problem of people becoming obese on high-fat, high-carbohydrate food and still not getting adequate protein. This is real. I’ve seen the same symptoms of malnutrition here in the US that I saw in Africa.

    There are also increasing problems in rural areas

  227. Carlie says

    Walton,you’re right, I should have provided a link.
    Here is the main USDA page with all their reports on food security in the US.

    You are also right in wondering exactly what the definition used is, but it’s really tiring when the first response to contrary data is “I don’t believe your data.” That’s the easy way out, to not believe that anything is true. Wouldn’t the USDA have some impetus to be somewhere around accurate, given that they’re the main government food agency and it kind of looks bad form them to say that a lot of the population has food problems? “Sorry, we suck” doesn’t usually get one reappointed to one’s job. If anything, I would guess that it’s underreported.

  228. Bobber says

    Walton, you are speaking again like a young person who has very little practical experience trying to live independently in the modern world. I don’t mean to be condescending in saying that, and I apologize for the tone; but I can’t help but believe it to be accurate.

    I cannot speak to the situation of the poor in European nations, countries where there is likely to be more of a safety net for their citizens than we have in the States.

    Millions of people in the U.S. suffer from malnourishment; as has been pointed out above, corporately manufactured processed foods cost far less, in the bulk necessary to provide a subsistence level of calories, than more healthy alternatives. These processed foods are loaded with starches that, coupled with our more sedentary life styles, lead to all manner of harmful conditions. Unfortuately, because many of the same people who cannot afford to eat in a healthy manner are also among the millions who cannot afford healthcare in our privatized system, they are condemned either to a premature death due to entirely avoidable causes, or to overburdening the only real source of public health care in this country – the already bursting-to-the-seams emergency rooms. Hospitals are being forced to close because of the money they are losing treating people in their emergency rooms, which of course exacerbates the situation.

    There’s a whole lot wrong here: the continuing concentration of the means of food production and delivery in fewer and fewer corporate hands, meaning fewer local markets and less locally-grown (and generally healthier) produce; the continued insistence on viewing health care as a commodity rather than as a basic human right; and don’t even get me started on the mismanagement and misplaced priorities of our public school system, which maintains the status quo but whose problems can in NO WAY be solved by the use of vouchers.

    That’s sad, but what can the State do about it?

    The State – that is, an entity that is comprised of, and carries out the actual wishes of, the citizenry, rather than of a powerful oligarchy bent on protecting their own privileged positions at the expense of the many – can do much, but only if the excessive power of the few can be curtailed.

  229. Sven DiMilo says

    Should someone like that be raising children in the first place?

    -Walton

    I am not that kind of Libertarian, really; I don’t hate poor people.

    -R.A. Wilson

  230. says

    using an index of so-called “relative” poverty; they calculate what constitutes “poverty” by reference to the average earnings and standard of living in the country.

    Which is the only sensible or meaningful metric: the fact that one can subsist in Malawi on $2 per day is of absolutely no relevance to someone living in Oxford. The definition of poverty must be related to the local cost of living in order to be meaningful. Similarly, the local standard of living must be taken into account unless you consider that living in a local authority slum makes a person “rich” because it’s not a shanty town.

    Your putting the “relative” in “relative poverty” in scare-quotes suggests that you believe the wingnut canard that “relative poverty” in the West is defined by “having a 46″ plasma-screen TV rather than a 52″ plasma-screen TV”.

  231. SC, OM says

    We see this kind of nonsense when leftists assert that “X number of people in the US/UK are living in poverty”, using an index of so-called “relative” poverty; they calculate what constitutes “poverty” by reference to the average earnings and standard of living in the country. So what they are really measuring is not absolute destitution, but merely inequality.

    You don’t know what you’re talking about. Poverty figures are determined by an income threshold below which people cannot fulfill basic human needs (food, shelter,…) such that they can live healthy lives. Figures cited for the number of people and families living in poverty don’t even take into account that the average family living in poverty in struggling on half that threshold income. Your distinction is ideological tripe. Poverty is poverty. The line between not having a home and not being able to nourish your family or get medical care and absolute (life-threatening) poverty is not at all clear, and to imply that these people are not “really” poor – “Oh, they’re just being compared to people living in mansions – they’re doing fine!” – is ignorant and outrageous. And using poor people in Africa to try to dismiss or minimize the reality of poverty in the West while you promote policies that plunge the people in Africa further into poverty is really obscene. You don’t know anything or care anything about poor people anywhere. Stop being an ignorant ideologue.

  232. Carlie says

    The bigger question is: why would anyone be so irresponsible as to have so many children, when they can’t afford to spend more than $10 a week on food? Should someone like that be raising children in the first place?

    Maybe because they couldn’t afford to buy birth control pills in the first place, and condoms don’t always work, and they lives in a state ruled by anti-abortionist wingnuts who have managed set up enough restrictions so as to make it almost impossible to get an abortion in a safe, timely, and affordable manner anywhere within 200 miles of her?

  233. Carlie says

    Heh. Word substitution fail. I had put “her” as my example person with many kids, then changed it to “them” to indicate that it’s not solely the burden or issue of the woman involved, but forgot to change all the associated verbs. And didn’t fix it everywhere, for that matter. Sorry for my bads English.

  234. Jadehawk says

    why would anyone be so irresponsible as to have so many children,

    oh yes, because the U.S. has excellent sex-ed, birth-control grows on trees, and homo economicus is real.

  235. Endor says

    “The bigger question is: why would anyone be so irresponsible as to have so many children, when they can’t afford to spend more than $10 a week on food? Should someone like that be raising children in the first place?”

    So, if this were the family of a former GM factory worker who’s just lost their job after it was sent to a foreign country, this person is irresponsible?

    Are you saying that no one should have kids unless they are wealthy?

  236. SC, OM says

    The bigger question is: why would anyone be so irresponsible as to have so many children, when they can’t afford to spend more than $10 a week on food? Should someone like that be raising children in the first place?

    Hear that anyone who lost your job or had your spouse die or leave you or has to care for sick relatives or buy your own medications on a minimum wage?

    You’re a monster, Walton.

  237. Endor says

    EDIT: Are you saying that no one should have kids unless they are wealthy AND have can foretell the future and can absolutely positively guaranty that no hardships will ever befall them?

    Monster is correct. Callous, clueless, heartless monster.

  238. Bobber says

    If you had a family of 5 to feed all week and only $10 to do it with, which would you buy: four tomatoes, two heads of lettuce, and a bottle of salad dressing, or 14 boxes of mac and cheese?

    The bigger question is: why would anyone be so irresponsible as to have so many children, when they can’t afford to spend more than $10 a week on food? Should someone like that be raising children in the first place?

    My sister moved to North Carolina. She found a job; her daughter found a job; her son had a harder time finding one and remained unemployed for some time. She bought a condo with my parents’ assistance, but between her job and her daughter’s, she could afford the mortgage. She married a man who was employed at the time. Then there were layoffs, and she lost her job. Her husband, who had never been properly diagnosed in the piss-poor medical system down here, was finally diagnosed with a mental illness, and that, coupled with an injury sustained at work, caused him to lose his job. For a variety of reasons, most of them rooted in his youth, he has been denied financial assistance. Both he and my sister lost their health care benefits. Her daughter, even though she is employed, did not have health care benefits for three months. Her daughter’s boyfriend was kicked out of his home by his mother, and moved in with my sister – it was either that, or be homeless.

    So let’s count: sister, husband, son, daughter, daughter’s boyfriend – that’s five people, one of whom was employed, all of them without health care, and now suddenly unable to pay bills or mortgage. At the same time the price of gasoline soared, the price of food followed suit; they didn’t have heat the entire winter, ’cause if they paid that, they would have lost their condo. They cut out every single frill they could, and they subsisted on what they could get from the local food bank and what they could get in bulk for cheap dollars (canned pasta and mac and cheese, mostly). Husband ran off a few times, as a result of his mental illness, which they couldn’t afford to have treated. Son finally found a job overnight at Wal-Mart, which is, of course, part time (because nearly all of the jobs there are) and minimum wage, despite being more than 30 hours per week, with – again, of course – no healthcare benefits. Sister finally wound work as a census taker, a temporary job, but it’s still money coming in. She couldn’t take a job as a group home worker – she is physically unable to restrain violent clients.

    So,

    The bigger question is: why would anyone be so irresponsible as to have so many children, when they can’t afford to spend more than $10 a week on food? Should someone like that be raising children in the first place?

    Not everyone starts out only being able to afford $10 a week for food; sometimes people are thrust into that situation, for no reasons they can control. Or else, would you have poor people divorce, kick their own children out of their homes, and not offer food and shelter, such as it is, to friends?

    My sister’s case is in no way unique. Millions of people will share similar tales with you – but you will not usually hear them economists, who deal with the numbers of poverty, and not the faces. If you have not done so, I strongly urge you to do some human services work. I guarantee you that you will find a different perspective in how you view the poor and marginalized.

  239. CatBallou says

    Walton, why do you imagine that people plan to find themselves in those circumstances??
    Regarding the “Big Macs or veggies” decision, it’s indisputable that there are very few grocery stores in poorer neighborhoods, at least in the U.S. People have to rely on convenience stores for much of their food, where any fresh items are grossly overpriced.

  240. Jadehawk says

    not just wealthy, endor: guaranteed wealthy for the rest of their lives.

    if you can’t guarantee that you’ll never lose your job, miscalculate on the stock-market, get an illness that isn’t covered by your insurance etc., you really shouldn’t breed.

    libertarianism FTL

  241. catgirl says

    Rob is a perfect example of why it’s called homophobia.

    In a gay “marriage”, who decides which person is the husband and which one is the wife?

    Which one plays the female role and which one plays the male role?

    Which one weras the pants and which one wears the dress?

    Which one mows the lawn and which one cooks dinner?

    Which one is the stay at home mom?

    People like Rob love to use justifications for strict gender roles. They insist that they need be misogynist, because marriage and society just can’t work any other way. They fear gay marriage, because it removes their justification for treating their wives badly. If two people can have a marriage that isn’t dictated by gender roles and the world doesn’t explode, then that means fundies like Rob are wrong when they justify the necessity of strict gender roles. It’s also terrifying to them that they can imagine themselves in a gay marriage where they would be treated as badly as they treat their own wives, and they know it’s bad. Rob acts like it’s just so terrible that a man (even in a heterosexual relationship) might have to cook or actually take care of his own kids!

    Here’s a very simple answer to all of Rob’s questions. The person who is best at or likes doing various things is the one who should do them. If a husband is better than his wife at cooking, then he should cook. If a wife likes to mow the lawn, then she should do it. It’s actually very simple. If both partners actually respect each other, love their kids, and are willing to contribute fairly to their own household, then all the necessary work will get done, regardless of anatomy.

  242. says

    Unfortuately, because many of the same people who cannot afford to eat in a healthy manner are also among the millions who cannot afford healthcare in our privatized system

    Surely Medicaid and SCHIP cover many (though I’m aware, not all) of those who genuinely cannot afford healthcare? I’m in favour of controlled expansion of the scope of those programmes, since I am conscious of the fact that there are some people who don’t qualify for either but still can’t afford care (e.g. because they have a congenital disease and are uninsurable). Contrary to what you may believe, I’m not lacking in compassion; those who are poor or chronically ill should receive state subsidies to enable them to afford treatment.

    But at the same time, those people who could afford health insurance, but, for whatever reason, choose not to, should not get treated at the expense of the state. Healthcare is not a “basic human right”; it’s something which costs money, and that money has to come from somewhere. If a middle-class family chooses not to spend their money on health insurance, why should they be treated at the expense of their more prudent neighbours?

    Hospitals are being forced to close because of the money they are losing treating people in their emergency rooms, which of course exacerbates the situation.

    Indeed; the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, while well-intentioned, was rather poorly thought out.

    Your putting the “relative” in “relative poverty” in scare-quotes suggests that you believe the wingnut canard that “relative poverty” in the West is defined by “having a 46″ plasma-screen TV rather than a 52″ plasma-screen TV”.

    No; but “relative poverty” in the West does not mean that a person is literally starving to death and begging for scraps in order to survive. And you have not answered the main point I was making: if, due to economic growth, most of the population in a country gets richer, while its poorer population remains at the same level, its relative poverty index will increase, despite the fact that no one is actually poorer (in absolute terms) than they previously were.

    And using poor people in Africa to try to dismiss or minimize the reality of poverty in the West while you promote policies that plunge the people in Africa further into poverty is really obscene.

    The “policies that plunge the people in Africa further into poverty” are Western protectionist tariffs and farm subsidies which prevent Third World producers from competing on an equal footing in the global market. All of which I oppose.

    Yes, I realise it’s unfair that the IMF and the World Bank forced poor countries to liberalise their markets, while the US and EU continue protecting home-grown industry and farming from foreign competition. But the answer to this unfairness is not to halt the process of liberalisation, but rather to extend it to the West. One thing of which you cannot accuse me is being insufficiently vocal in my opposition to Western trade protectionism.

  243. Carlie says

    I wouldn’t call Walton a monster, just very sheltered. I come from a pretty privileged middle-middle class background, and I know when I was younger I never thought about the problems other people might be going through, or how they came to be in that position. That kind of understanding really does have to be developed by seeing examples of how it happens, and learning about how circumstances can intertwine to disastrous results. For me, it started in college when I finally met people outside of my little socioeconomic circle, and it grew from there. Walton does think before he stops and listens, but he has been listening to the responses to his statements, which is a good thing. (Not that he has to agree with those responses, but just consider them.)

  244. Endor says

    “They fear gay marriage, because it removes their justification for treating their wives badly.”

    BINGO. He’s worries people will see the benefits of rejecting and abandoning bullshit gender roles. And, even more so, he’s worried he doesn’t measure up. If the hypothetical Mrs. Rob sees an egalitarian gay/lesbian couple, she might leave him for a woman!

    ;)

  245. says

    Bobber and Endor: OK, I apologise; my comment (about poor families with many children being irresponsible) was poorly thought out. I retract it. It does not, however, detract from the validity of some of the other points I’m making.

  246. Endor says

    “I wouldn’t call Walton a monster, just very sheltered.”

    unexamined privilege makes monsters. Being a monster doesn’t require premeditation exclusively. Being so callously ignorant and arrogant does just fine.

    Which is a long way of saying, he may not mean to be a monster, but he is.

  247. derender says

    Just exactly what is a troll? Maybe only VAMIPRES AND WEREWOLVES can kill trolls.

    Patricia, you’re even worse than Janine. Yuck

  248. says

    Millions of people will share similar tales with you – but you will not usually hear them economists, who deal with the numbers of poverty, and not the faces. If you have not done so, I strongly urge you to do some human services work. I guarantee you that you will find a different perspective in how you view the poor and marginalized.

    But surely acquiring that kind of emotional reaction, based on experience of individual cases, detracts from one’s ability to make a cool, detached, rational consideration of the economic big picture? Should one allow empathy and personal feelings to cloud one’s judgment in matters of public policy?

  249. Endor says

    “Healthcare is not a “basic human right”; it’s something which costs money, and that money has to come from somewhere. ”

    See what I mean? This is positively chilling. It’s clearly spoken by someone who’s never had to suffer without healthcare, whos never had to sit by helpless while a loved one suffers and there’s no way to help them.

  250. Jadehawk says

    Surely Medicaid and SCHIP cover many (though I’m aware, not all) of those who genuinely cannot afford healthcare?

    as someone without health-insurance for the last 6 years, living with someone who hasn’t had health-insurance for the last 27 years (occasional trips to a foster home aside), I’d like to inform you that you’re so wrong it isn’t even funny.

  251. Ray Ladbury says

    Walton says: “The “policies that plunge the people in Africa further into poverty” are Western protectionist tariffs and farm subsidies which prevent Third World producers from competing on an equal footing in the global market.”

    Ever think that maybe there could be other contributing factors–like 4 centuries of being ravaged by slavery, colonialism and neocolonialism. Like maybe being left with zero infrastructure–hell, having even the phone lines torn out by the colonizers when the Zaire (now DRC) voted for independence.

    Good God, Walton. Have you ever been to Africa? Have you ever been anywhere? Yes, unfair tariffs contribute to poverty, but Africa has a helluva long way to go before the boats are seaworthy enough to be lifted by a rising tide.

  252. Carlie says

    No; but “relative poverty” in the West does not mean that a person is literally starving to death

    Yet if they are too malnourished, sick, hungry, and tired to be able to hold down a job, you will hold them personally responsible for it.

    Surely Medicaid and SCHIP cover many (though I’m aware, not all) of those who genuinely cannot afford healthcare?

    Not all in the least. It’s also only emergency care, so if one is diabetic, it will help when you need a leg cut off or go into a blood sugar induced coma, but not before. And then, of course, you can’t work.

    But at the same time, those people who could afford health insurance, but, for whatever reason, choose not to, should not get treated at the expense of the state.

    Who are these mythical people? Please provide some data of your own showing how many people can afford health care yet don’t buy it. Don’t forget to factor in the fact that any pre-existing conditions will double to quadruple the cost of health care on an individual basis.

  253. Stu says

    And you have not answered the main point I was making: if, due to economic growth, most of the population in a country gets richer, while its poorer population remains at the same level, its relative poverty index will increase, despite the fact that no one is actually poorer (in absolute terms) than they previously were.

    Knock it off Walton. The federal poverty level is determined by the cost of goods essential for survival, adjusted for inflation.

  254. derender says

    endore:

    Your may leave for a far right creationist who is addicted to Fox News and Ann coulter. Thta’s probably why you are so sour.

  255. Endor says

    “But surely acquiring that kind of emotional reaction, based on experience of individual cases, detracts from one’s ability to make a cool, detached, rational consideration of the economic big picture? Should one allow empathy and personal feelings to cloud one’s judgment in matters of public policy?”

    Do you intend to come off like a sociopath?

  256. Nerd of Redhead, OM says

    Derender, you can always stay away. After all, you aren’t an atheist, so you can’t claim this blog is your cup of tea. So, continue to show us how a dumb godbotting reactionary with delusions of adequacy, and no idea of evidence, sounds.

  257. Carlie says

    Oh, and don’t forget that there are also people who could afford health insurance, but still can’t get it because every insurance company turns them down as a high risk due to their existing health. This is because the American healthcare industry is that beautiful privately owned free market you so love, and they are allowed to build their customer base any way they choose. In a shared-risk situation, this is profoundly stupid.

  258. Josh says

    No; but “relative poverty” in the West does not mean that a person is literally starving to death and begging for scraps in order to survive.

    Not in mass quantities, no. But you’re deluded if you don’t think that there aren’t people living on the edge of starvation in the US. Or, if not on the edge itself, are close enough to look at it and would be on the edge if there weren’t assistance available.

    And you have not answered the main point I was making: if, due to economic growth, most of the population in a country gets richer, while its poorer population remains at the same level, its relative poverty index will increase, despite the fact that no one is actually poorer (in absolute terms) than they previously were.

    Can you show me when this has happened where the cost of living hasn’t also increased?

    And what families are you thinking of that choose not to purchase health care? What are you talking about?

  259. Carlie says

    And getting back to the topic of the post, this is one of the reasons why same-sex marriage is so important: health care is stupidly difficult to get in this country, one of the end-runs around it is being married to someone who’s managed to snag a good policy, and that end-run is given to heteros but denied to homosexuals.

  260. Jadehawk says

    oh carlie, there definitely are those fuckers who, despite making $100000 a year, don’t feel the need for health insurance. generally single white males in their mid twenties to mid thirties, but I know one example of a father of 4 who can’t be bothered to pay insurance.

    those people however are a reason FOR universal health care not some idiotic argument against it. I see no reason why those fuckers shouldn’t pay their fair share, especially since they use ER’s and free clinics in emergencies as much as poor people.

  261. Josh says

    but I know one example of a father of 4 who can’t be bothered to pay insurance.

    Seriously? What the fuck is up with that?

  262. Bobber says

    But surely acquiring that kind of emotional reaction, based on experience of individual cases, detracts from one’s ability to make a cool, detached, rational consideration of the economic big picture? Should one allow empathy and personal feelings to cloud one’s judgment in matters of public policy?

    There is a decided difference between an emotional reaction that leads a mob to pick up pitchforks and harry the cruel, autocratic baron out of town (however justified that may be) and an emotional reaction that leads us to have compassion for people who suffer for no sin other than having been born, or thrust into, poverty. OF COURSE we should allow empathy to help us determine the most humane and equitable course of action; I would argue that it is the economists who bring the clouds that obscure the real issues at hand.

    ALL cases are “individual cases”. While public policy cannot be enacted to meet every individual’s needs, it CAN be enacted to allow the point-of-care givers the flexibility (and ability) to address those individual needs. Unfortunately, in the States there is a muddled bureaucracy that requires streamlining, an unwillingness to provide proper funding for necessary programs, and a general disagreement over what programs actually are necessary. This confusion stems from the inappropriate mixing of politics and economics where empathy is what is needed, instead.

    In short (don’t you wish I had said this at the beginning? I talk too much), what we need is more empathy, not less.

    But even more to the point, what is needed is to let the people who are most in need have a voice at the table where the allocation of resources is made. In truth (and this should warm the cockles of your libertarian heart), what is needed is a devolution of decision making to the many. I have serious doubts that any real reform can take place while power remains in the hands of people whose interests are so vested in maintaining their privileges and those of their class.

    But I digress…

    … as usual.

  263. SC, OM says

    No; but “relative poverty” in the West does not mean that a person is literally starving to death and begging for scraps in order to survive. And you have not answered the main point I was making: if, due to economic growth, most of the population in a country gets richer [most of the US is not getting richer in real terms], while its poorer population remains at the same level, its relative poverty index will increase, despite the fact that no one is actually poorer (in absolute terms) than they previously were.

    I’ve explained to you that the poverty threshold is calculated according to the minimum income an individual or family needs for the basics of living, and explained that the average family in poverty struggles on about half this amount. The number of people relying on food banks (“begging for scraps,” as you put it) is large and growing even in the wealthier parts of the US. People are hungry and malnourished; they are sick; they are homeless. They are dying from a number of factors related to this condition.

    The “policies that plunge the people in Africa further into poverty” are Western protectionist tariffs and farm subsidies which prevent Third World producers from competing on an equal footing in the global market. All of which I oppose.

    What an idiot ideological lemming you are.

    Yes, I realise it’s unfair that the IMF and the World Bank forced poor countries to liberalise their markets,…[and cut and privatize public goods and services, and steal land that people need to provide for themselves, and promote industries that pollute their land and water,…]

    Oh, of course! The World Bank/IMF forced policies that have caused suffering and death on an immense scale in poor countries should absolutely be extended! The only answer to disastrous policies like the expansion of global food markets, the destruction of local food economies and commons, and chemical/fossil-fuels-based agriculture is…well, more of all of it! If we’re going to commit planetary suicide we may as well do it in a great nitrogenous blaze!

    Anyway, I see this is going along the typical Walton path. I’m out of here.

  264. says

    if, due to economic growth, most of the population in a country gets richer, while its poorer population remains at the same level, its relative poverty index will increase, despite the fact that no one is actually poorer (in absolute terms) than they previously were.

    I don’t think you’ve thought that out.

    If most of the population of a country gets richer, the cost of living will rise proportionately. The poor may have the same amount of money (in absolute terms), but they can’t buy as much with it, so while they are not financially poorer in a gross, simplistic and, frankly, stupid and naive sense, they are a hell of a lot worse off: they are “actually poorer”.

    The problem here is that you’re implicitly attempting to define poverty in purely monetary terms. There’s a very good reason why sociologists don’t do that and, instead, define poverty primarily according to basic food, clothing, housing, and medical care requirements, then, when required to express this secondarily in monetary terms, calculate the poverty line based on the cost of those requisites in the local economy. What part of this is hard to understand?

  265. Jadehawk says

    Seriously? What the fuck is up with that?

    he’s a terminal idiot. what can i say.

  266. MAJeff, OM says

    And getting back to the topic of the post, this is one of the reasons why same-sex marriage is so important: health care is stupidly difficult to get in this country, one of the end-runs around it is being married to someone who’s managed to snag a good policy, and that end-run is given to heteros but denied to homosexuals.

    Part of this also continues to point out the problem of our insane system of financing health care delivery. For poor same-sex couples, even having one spouse employed at a place like, say, Wal-Mart might still leave a family policy out of reach. Removing the gender restrictions on marriage eligibility is a good start, but it doesn’t address many of the problems that are part of the distribution of social welfare benefits almost exclusively through (or in ways modeled upon) the marital family.

  267. Jadehawk says

    ah yes, MAJeff’s post reminds me of another problem in the U.S.: the ridiculous ways in which certain things are coupled here:

    health-care delivery to a particular job funding of schools to local real estate, etc.

    it’s almost as if this shit was designed to make life difficult for the non-wealthy

  268. SC, OM says

    *hugs Emmet*

    OK, now I’m out of here. I mean it this time. I’m really, really going to stop procrastinating and go. Hittin’ that little X in the corner as soon as I’ve submitted my comment. Won’t even read what’s been posted since and exposing myself to SIWOTI triggers. I’m gone, I tell ya. Leaving now. Right now.

  269. MAJeff, OM says

    Won’t even read what’s been posted since and exposing myself to SIWOTI triggers. I’m gone, I tell ya. Leaving now. Right now.

    Oh, pour some gin and get over it….

  270. Sven DiMilo says

    SC, I know how it is. Just when I think I’m out, they drag me back in. [/pacino]

  271. says

    Emmett @793: I meant richer in real terms, adjusted for inflation. I wasn’t speaking in purely monetary terms.

    If (to take a grossly exaggerated hypothetical) the prosperity of a country improved to the point that the average family could afford to buy six cars, a family who could only afford one car would be considered poor, in relative terms. (I’m not claiming that this is the reality of relative poverty; it’s a theoretical example.)

    Bobber:

    But even more to the point, what is needed is to let the people who are most in need have a voice at the table where the allocation of resources is made. In truth (and this should warm the cockles of your libertarian heart), what is needed is a devolution of decision making to the many. I have serious doubts that any real reform can take place while power remains in the hands of people whose interests are so vested in maintaining their privileges and those of their class.

    You’re assuming something fundamental here, without addressing it. You are presupposing that, where a person creates wealth, that said wealth (or a portion thereof) belongs to the community, and that the community has a right to make a collective decision about how that wealth should be used. In my opinion, it does not. If X establishes a successful business, and, after paying his employees and creditors, makes a large profit, it is X that has created that wealth. The wealth does not belong to the community, and it is not for the community to decide how it should be allocated. The wealth belongs to X, since he is the one who created it through his investment of labour and capital.

    I would agree that there is a real problem with the fact that, in most countries, those who control wealth also have a disproportionate amount of influence over the workings of government. My proposed solution to this would be to have a government so powerless, and with its activities so prescribed and limited, that it simply wouldn’t matter who controlled it.

    Contrary to popular belief, libertarianism is not about giving wealthy people and large corporations whatever they want. Indeed, the interests of the largest corporations are always antithetical to those of the free market, since their incentive is to create monopolies.

    But this does not mean that all wealth created is the property of the community, and that the community has a right to decide democratically how it should be allocated. If I expend my skill and labour creating wealth, that wealth is mine. My neighbour has no right to have a say in how I choose to spend it.

    On humanitarian grounds, it is necessary to have some public subsidies for the very poor; but this should be the minimal amount necessary to keep them alive. We

  272. LE says

    Surely Medicaid and SCHIP cover many (though I’m aware, not all) of those who genuinely cannot afford healthcare?

    Walton, this is painfully naive. Very few American adults qualify for Medicaid unless they are nearly disabled. Both programs are State (as opposed to state) controlled which means that coverage varies according to where you live, both programs are underfunded, SCHIP doesn’t apply to adults at all, and the application process is deliberately time consuming and intrusive, to the point that a lot of people who should qualify are excluded. Please explain to me how an adult, with no job yet still doesn’t qualify for Medicaid, who is barely putting together the income to cover rent/mortgage, is supposed to come up with an additional $500 to $1500 per month to buy private insurance? Keep in mind that at those rates, a private insurance policy would most likely not cover drugs and would likely have a multi-thousand dollar per year deductible on most coverage, which would make it effectively useless for regular preventive care. That is assuming one doesn’t have a “preexisting condition” (which can be anything from diabetes to a history of migranes) which would make the cost exponentially higher, if not disqualify the person completely.

    No; but “relative poverty” in the West does not mean that a person is literally starving to death and begging for scraps in order to survive.

    Others have pointed out why there’s nothing wrong with “Relative poverty” statistics, much better than I can, so I’ll leave it to them. But I want to point out that you’re talking apples and oranges here – any poverty statistics you hear coming out of the United States won’t use the definitions of “Relative Poverty” you’re used to in the UK and Europe. Generally we use the federal poverty standard, which is an outdated metric put together in the 60s which doesn’t take into account realistic housing, transportation or healthcare expenses – it assumes that food accounts for about 1/3 of household expenses and it’s calculation of necessary living expenses is then based entirely on food prices. I don’t know about you, but even when I was a grad student (and actually fell below the federal poverty line for a while) food only accounted for maybe a 1/4 of my expenses – housing accounted for more than half. Most sociologists will tell you that, far from inflating the poverty numbers, the federal standard severely underestimates real poverty.

    I happen to agree with you to some small extent on farm subsidies, but (and I am not an economist) I think that is probably a miniscule part of what causes real poverty in western countries – and is completely tangential to an argument about the role of the state in leveling the playing field for it’s citizens.

  273. SC, OM says

    Damn you people! Damn you all to hell!

    Oh, pour some gin and get over it….

    Gin? Gin? Gin

    SC, I know how it is.

    I can stop commenting any time I want. Any. Time.

  274. says

    Sorry, forgot to finish the above comment before posting it.

    Please provide some data of your own showing how many people can afford health care yet don’t buy it.

    Well, Wikipedia claims (though the relevant citation is a broken link, and I have no idea whether these figures are up to date) that around one-fifth of the uninsured are able to afford coverage, and that another quarter are eligible for public coverage but haven’t applied for it. I will do some research and find out whether these facts are accurate; I don’t vouch for them in any way.

    Oh, and don’t forget that there are also people who could afford health insurance, but still can’t get it because every insurance company turns them down as a high risk due to their existing health.

    I’ve acknowledged this problem multiple times in my comments here, and I am of the opinion that those who are uninsurable due to pre-existing congenital conditions, et al., should receive state subsidies.

  275. SC, OM says

    Actually, Walton’s comments on this thread are the argument equivalent of gin. It’s like being at a party where they run out of everything but gin. Time to go home and go to sleep.

    Too bad the rest of you are like rum… :)

  276. strange gods before me says

    I wouldn’t call Walton a monster, just very sheltered. I come from a pretty privileged middle-middle class background, and I know when I was younger I never thought about the problems other people might be going through, or how they came to be in that position.

    I take your point, and being sheltered can have that effect, but Walton really is a monster. Watch him bobbing and weaving to avoid allowing that I should steal a loaf of bread rather than die, even if those are my only two options. This is a thought experiment that removes all ambiguity and mitigating factors, asking only whether the poor should die or take extralegal measures to live. He can sense that I’m going to call him a monster if he comes out and says “just die,” but he won’t allow the alternative. So he’s defaulting to “go ahead and die.” And as ever, he’s a coward and afraid to be criticized for just coming out and saying it.

  277. Stu says

    My proposed solution to this would be to have a government so powerless, and with its activities so prescribed and limited, that it simply wouldn’t matter who controlled it.

    And then what, Walton? The rich will take care of everyone else? Butterflies and candy will spontaneously start falling from the sky?

  278. Endor says

    “On humanitarian grounds, it is necessary to have some public subsidies for the very poor; but this should be the minimal amount necessary to keep them alive.”

    Oh how charitable of you. They can have help, but only the bare minimum. What a fucking gem of humanity you are.

    A monster and a sociopath.

  279. Jadehawk says

    If (to take a grossly exaggerated hypothetical) the prosperity of a country improved to the point that the average family could afford to buy six cars, a family who could only afford one car would be considered poor, in relative terms.

    very well, let’s roll with this example:
    now, keep in mind that the fact that the average fammily now has 6 cars means that there’s absolutely no need for non privately-owned-car based transportation, since if one car fails, they can pick one of the many others. so no need for any public transport, no need for insurances to provide a replacement car in case of an accident, no more “my car broke down, i’ll be late for work” excuses accepted at work etc.
    also, gas will be far more expensive*, things will be far more spread out, houses will be built primarily with ginormous garages in mind, thus making the houses available on the market too expensive for the poor person; parking in cities will become more expensive, due to lack of space and thus high demand for parking structures;

    with those changes alone, the family with a single car will suddenly depend on their one vehicle for virtually all of life’s necessities, which will be tougher and more expensive to maintain and use than before, thus actually lowering the standard of living for the one-car-family, despite them not being any poorer in monetary terms.

    *I’m not even going to go into the details of how increased demand for gas makes virtually all aspects of life more expensive.

  280. strange gods before me says

    Walton, let’s test your general familiarity with famous contributors to leftism. Without peeking at google, take a guess at who wrote this:

    We have seen above, that the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy. The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible. … These measures will, of course, be different in different countries. Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable. … A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.

    And this:

    The proportion of the expense of house-rent to the whole expense of living, is different in the different degrees of fortune. … The necessaries of life occasion the great expense of the poor. They find it difficult to get food, and the greater part of their little revenue is spent in getting it. The luxuries and vanities of life occasion the principal expense of the rich; and a magnificent house embellishes and sets off to the best advantage all the other luxuries and vanities which they possess. A tax upon house-rents, therefore, would in general fall heaviest upon the rich; and in this sort of inequality there would not, perhaps, be any thing very unreasonable It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.

    Answer key:
    http://preview.tinyurl.com/5jse2

    http://preview.tinyurl.com/dwomz

  281. Bobber says

    You’re assuming something fundamental here, without addressing it. You are presupposing that, where a person creates wealth, that said wealth (or a portion thereof) belongs to the community, and that the community has a right to make a collective decision about how that wealth should be used. In my opinion, it does not. If X establishes a successful business, and, after paying his employees and creditors, makes a large profit, it is X that has created that wealth. The wealth does not belong to the community, and it is not for the community to decide how it should be allocated. The wealth belongs to X, since he is the one who created it through his investment of labour and capital.

    We have been down this road before. Yes, we do have a fundamentally different idea of the relationship of the individual to society. Forgive my presumption, but I would characterize your view as: each individual is a free and autonomous agent, acting in his/her own self-interest regardless of the effect those actions have upon others (except within very permissive strictures) – free-rolling marbles on a flat plain, say. Whereas I view the individual as connected to every other individual in his/her society by invisible webs – those same marbles, but tethered to every other marble by multitudinous threads.

    Your “successful businessman” may have the economic acumen and fortitude to create that business, but (especially in the case of manufacturing) what good is the idea, without the funding, land, resources, and above all, LABOR to make that idea a reality? Your idea works well on the level of the individual crafstperson, but when it comes to corporations, you are multiplying levels of dependence, responsibility, and INDEBTEDNESS – not just to financial creditors, but to the workers who transform a dream into a tangible product, to their families, and to the environment in which they live. Because without these things, that “successful businessman” would be just a raving lunatic with a dream and nothing else. And as long as money remains the currency of exchange and the way in which we measure power, then it is money that need be used to pay back those debts – to acknowledge that without those various threads of interdependence, none of the businessman’s success would be possible.

  282. Jadehawk says

    I’ve acknowledged this problem multiple times in my comments here, and I am of the opinion that those who are uninsurable due to pre-existing congenital conditions, et al., should receive state subsidies.

    ha! you do realize that everything up to and including a yeast infection can be counted as a “pre-existing condition” if the insurer feels like it?

    you’re seriously making no sense. either that, or you’re now advocating universal state-funded healthcare. i’m not quite sure.

  283. speedwell says

    OK, folks, you know I’m a libertarian. Walton, you need a good hard smack and a dunk in cold water. How can anyone who claims to have read Hayek and von Mises be ignorant of the causes of poverty? How can anyone who claims to be a libertarian use the same mouth to claim that poor people must necessarily be irresponsible and undeserving?

  284. speedwell says

    In my opinion, it does not. If X establishes a successful business, and, after paying his employees and creditors, makes a large profit, it is X that has created that wealth. The wealth does not belong to the community, and it is not for the community to decide how it should be allocated. The wealth belongs to X, since he is the one who created it through his investment of labour and capital.

    The business owner is not the voice of collective labor just because he has paid for it. If the laborer hasn’t been compensated according to his own valuation of his labor; if the mind-worker hasn’t been compensated according to his own valuation of his intellectual capital, then either the business owner or the worker is engaging in fraud to the extent that he is paying more than the value of the work. That’s what a free exchange means. Think.

  285. Watchman says

    Kseniya wrote:

    You’ve swallowed the hateful mind-worm of your political forebearers, and do nothing but vomit up its filthy, squirming, photophobic progeny.

    How satisfyingly lurid — and you’ve addressed it to the right person. Two points.

  286. speedwell says

    Ouch, I need to go eat sugar; my hands are shaking and I’m sweating, but even worse, I sound like a dumbass. For “the extent that he is paying more than the value of the work” please read something more like “to the extent that he is paying LESS than the true value of what he is buying.” Still sounds stupid, but a little less so. Back in a bit with blood sugar levels repaired. :)

  287. Jadehawk says

    *pokes speedwell with a stick* are you sure you’re a libertarian? That up there sounded like straight out of the ParEcon handbook

    [/friendly tease]

  288. strange gods before me says

    The bigger question is: why would anyone be so irresponsible as to have so many children, when they can’t afford to spend more than $10 a week on food? Should someone like that be raising children in the first place?

    You are a fucking fascist.

    This is proof that you worship the rich and hate the poor. You believe that if someone cannot afford an abortion — or cannot afford to travel out of Northern Ireland for an abortion — then they are a bad person and should have their children taken away. If they experience a loss of their job or a drop in income, they are a bad person and should have their children taken away. And these things don’t happen to the rich because the rich are good, worthy people.

    And since the poor are bad people, they should not be given assistance to help them raise their children. No, they cannot be trusted with it. Instead, the state should take take their children away from them, because bad poor people must not be allowed to be raise children.

    You can “apologize” for it all you want, but if you didn’t hate the poor then the idea never would have occurred to you in the first place.

  289. speedwell says

    Libertarians, on the whole, are insensitive to context, whether the context of individual people in a community, or the context of individual actions within an environment of other actions. People needn’t be grouped together as a collective, and they needn’t be particularized into hapless autonomy. They may merely be understood as individual actors in a context. You don’t even need to pretend there is such a thing as free will. If we truly had real free will, we wouldn’t have the sorts of dependencies and predictabilities that make contractual exchanges possible.

    I was fortunate enough to once have a philosophy teacher who understood how to apply contextual thinking to libertarianism. It helped me to get much of the paternalistic muck out of the machinery and to stop thinking of other people as the means to my egotistical individual ends.

    Libertarians who go about whining that they can’t have freedom because they’re so held down by the government… truly pitiful. You must have freedom in spite of oppression. You can’t wait around for the invisible hand to sweep clean the Augean marketplace and set things right in your lifetime. You need to stand up and do things one individual at a time, starting with yourself.

  290. speedwell says

    are you sure you’re a libertarian?

    Hell, no, I’m not sure.

    I’m Ayn Rand’s several-times-removed blood cousin, but fuck John Galt. Objectivists and libertarians are followers. I try to think for myself. I stand for the individual. But reality is reality, and I don’t mind looking ignorant if you at least grant me the chance to learn. I might not learn exactly what you think you’re teaching, though. :)

  291. speedwell says

    Christ, let’s all stop talking about libertarianism. Aren’t my hovering-around-60-blood-sugar rants silly enough for you? :)

    Iowa is a victory for self-determinism, not more, and not less. A bunch of individuals who insisted on respect for their sexuality, who were whole, healthy individuals in tune with reality, won the day. And it doesn’t matter which sex they want to marry–the fact that they now have the right to choose is the important thing.

    That’s why we sidetracked into libertarianism, folks. Because of liberty.

  292. says

    If (to take a grossly exaggerated hypothetical) the prosperity of a country improved to the point that the average family could afford to buy six cars, a family who could only afford one car would be considered poor, in relative terms. (I’m not claiming that this is the reality of relative poverty; it’s a theoretical example.)

    No, it’s a stupid caricature that is not substantially different from my “46” vs 52″ plasma-screen TV” parody of the right-wing ideologue position.

    The family who could only afford one car would only be considered poor if it were the case that more than one car was necessary in order to meet basic standards of nutrition, clothing, housing, etc. You’re stubbornly trying to redefine relative poverty into a straw-man caricature that serves your glibertarian ideology, rather than accepting the eminently sensible actual definition, which has been explained to you several times (in some cases by people whose specialisation is in this area and actually know what the fuck they’re talking about), as the amount of money calculated to be necessary, on average, to meet basic food, clothing, housing and other needs in the local economy. Now, you could legitimately argue that you don’t agree with the assessment of certain things as “needs” — a detailed argument based on local conditions and a particular set of assessments — but you can’t just dismiss the concept of relative poverty based on a straw-man without being exactly like a YEC who laughs at evolution because it “says that fish turn into horses”. Inventing a ludicrous caricature of a term, based on profound and willful ignorance, and then proceeding to ridicule your invention just makes you look like a complete idiot. You can do better.

  293. Jadehawk says

    Emmet (and others), keep in mind that the poverty line in much of Europe is 60% of the median income. so one can slip below the poverty line there without actually slipping below earning what’s absolutely necessary. however, this model is not used in the U.S., and Walton’s Strawman of this relative poverty also doesn’t take into account that people don’t just get wealthier in a vacuum, not affecting their environment and those who haven’t gotten wealthier.

  294. says

    Actually, Walton’s comments on this thread are the argument equivalent of gin.

    I’ll take that as a compliment, as I’m rather partial to a gin and tonic. (Especially with ice and a slice of lime.)

    How can anyone who claims to be a libertarian use the same mouth to claim that poor people must necessarily be irresponsible and undeserving?

    I don’t think I said that, and if I did, it wasn’t what I meant to say. That certainly isn’t what I think.

    I am not especially knowledgeable or clever, and from time to time I misunderstand things I’ve read, or I express myself badly, or I just go off on a tangent and talk utter bollocks (without meaning to). The latter is more or less what has happened today. But I generally use this site as a sounding-board; when a thought passes through my head, I post it here, and I can be sure that someone will call me out on it. If I find said thought impossible to defend, then it was probably complete nonsense to begin with.

    Maybe I’m an idiot. But I’m not a monster or a fascist, or any of the other things I’ve been labelled on this thread.

  295. says

    Emmet (and others), keep in mind that the poverty line in much of Europe is 60% of the median income. so one can slip below the poverty line there without actually slipping below earning what’s absolutely necessary.

    Yes, that’s the kind of relative poverty to which I was referring. To be clear, I have no problem with the US federal poverty statistics (which are, as Emmet correctly points out, based on an assessment of the cost of living).

  296. says

    Emmet (and others), keep in mind that the poverty line in much of Europe is 60% of the median income. so one can slip below the poverty line there without actually slipping below earning what’s absolutely necessary.

    I’m sure that’s been calculated, based on the correlation between cost-of-living and median income, to be a reasonable estimate. For every person who slips below the poverty line without actually slipping below earning what’s absolutely necessary, there is probably one who is technically above the poverty line, but isn’t earning what’s absolutely necessary. Of necessity, the poverty line is an average and there will be people in both tails, not just one.

  297. strange gods before me says

    Maybe I’m an idiot. But I’m not a monster or a fascist, or any of the other things I’ve been labelled on this thread.

    I’m sorry, Walton, but the evidence indicates otherwise.

    Have you decided on bread or death for me yet?

    I want to ask you something about Medicaid and S-CHIP but it sort of depends on an explicit answer to that question.

  298. Menyambal says

    My wife just got home from her job at a Missouri elementary school. I asked about poverty. She said the school sends backpacks of food home with about twelve kids every weekend. Some of those kids have to hide the food from their parents to keep them from eating it all up.

  299. Cotku says

    I may be ignorant here, but Walton to me sounds like he has read a lot of theory, but not seen much of it in actual practice.

    I claimed libertarianism for a short while after doing a little reading, and having grown up in a middle class American home, and only seeing abuses of the system, rather than the good that can come from it. Living on your own at 18, working part time (because full time jobs were near impossible to come by), not having enough money to feed yourself a proper meal, and seeing people who were simply choosing to live off the government have a better standard of living can make you ill to your stomach. (By the way, I was considered to make about $500 a year too much to get government assistance)

    The way I’ve figured it, (please correct me if I’m wrong, I’m new here), the systems we have in place to help people in bad situations are inherently good, but in my opinion need reworking. I would love to see the EBT system operate more like WIC, where a family is told to purchase nutritional items for their family (in a way that can be tailored of course) on a weight or volume basis, not based on a pure dollar amount. Hopefully this would allow more children in poverty to receive full meals, instead of the nutritionally empty foods that are available for cheap in supermarkets.

    I’m also not a fan of the cash that can be pulled out on EBT (at least in my state, I’m from Georgia) and then used for whatever the person wishes. I worked in a gas station for too long, and usually saw it spent on cigarettes or alcohol. Couldn’t the program just be expanded to help with items such as clothing and other non-food needs?

    Please give me mercy, I’m trying to learn and expand my horizons from the jaded child I was.

  300. Jadehawk says

    Yes, that’s the kind of relative poverty to which I was referring. To be clear, I have no problem with the US federal poverty statistics (which are, as Emmet correctly points out, based on an assessment of the cost of living).

    and if you had continued reading (or maybe if I had expressed myself clearer; or if you had read my comment before that) you’d have noticed that even considering THAT, you’re still creating a strawman, since people don’t get wealthier in a vacuum. in your example the rise in gas and parking costs alone would make the one-car-family effectively poorer.

  301. Watchman says

    Walton to me sounds like he has read a lot of theory, but not seen much of it in actual practice.

    That is correct.

  302. says

    Your “successful businessman” may have the economic acumen and fortitude to create that business, but (especially in the case of manufacturing) what good is the idea, without the funding, land, resources, and above all, LABOR to make that idea a reality? Your idea works well on the level of the individual crafstperson, but when it comes to corporations, you are multiplying levels of dependence, responsibility, and INDEBTEDNESS – not just to financial creditors, but to the workers who transform a dream into a tangible product, to their families, and to the environment in which they live. Because without these things, that “successful businessman” would be just a raving lunatic with a dream and nothing else. And as long as money remains the currency of exchange and the way in which we measure power, then it is money that need be used to pay back those debts – to acknowledge that without those various threads of interdependence, none of the businessman’s success would be possible.

    I agree that people are interdependent. But that interdependence is created through contracts and trade links; it does not require state coercion in order to function. A manufacturer depends on thousands of people around the world in order to produce and sell his products; suppliers, shippers, labourers, retailers, etc. But these people are not forced to assist him. Rather, they enter into contracts for their mutual benefit. They perform their obligations to him under their contracts, and he pays them what they are owed under those contracts. Where, in this picture, is there any justification for confiscating wealth from the manufacturer and distributing it to others?

  303. Britomart says

    Walton check out the term ‘Enlightened self interest’

    Money spent on public health means you are less likely to get a disease from your water supply or from the untreated TB of some one you pass on the street.

    Money spent on public education means your factory workers are better educated and better able to do their jobs. not only that, their neighbors are better educated and able to do better jobs so they will have more money to buy your products.

    Money spent on transportation resources (air, rail, roads) means your materiel will get to you faster so you can make your products more effiently and your products will get to market in one peice without being shattered by potholes or train wrecks on bad tracks.

    Enlightened self interest.

    Follow the implications and dont be so greedy.

    Thank you kindly

  304. says

    Money spent on public education means your factory workers are better educated and better able to do their jobs. not only that, their neighbors are better educated and able to do better jobs so they will have more money to buy your products.

    Not to mention less poverty and therefore less crime and probably less health care costs.

  305. CosmicTeapot says

    Wanders in, whistling innocently!

    Looks round to see what all the fuss is about!

    AAAAAAARRRGH, another libertarian hijacking!!!

    Abandon thread, abandon thread!

    Whoooosh…..

    ___<;,><_@_@@_@@@_@@@@@_____________

  306. says

    Britomart @#835: I never said I was against all taxation. Public money spent on public goods, like those you mention, is necessary, because these things by their nature cannot be provided adequately by the free market.

    What I was arguing against is the notion that, because a person has (for whatever reason) succeeded and created wealth, he owes that wealth or a portion thereof to “the community” and it should therefore be distributed to his more needy neighbours. (This proposition is usually described by its proponents as “social justice”, which is, of course, an oxymoron, as justice is individual and society is by definition collective.)

    Yes, if a person wishes to continue enjoying the benefits of national defence, law and order, public health and disease control, transport infrastructure, etc., then he must pay for those things. But he does not owe a duty to support his less successful neighbour.

  307. aratina says

    Awesome ending, Cosmic Teapot! Let me just throw out the life preserver: 17 more days till Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, and Transgendered People can marry a person of the same-sex in Iowa! Hooray!

  308. Nerd of Redhead, OM says

    But he does not owe a duty to support his less successful neighbour.

    Support, no, help out in time of need, yes. This is why most of us here consider libertarianism to be morally bankrupt. It is something you need to think about.

    Here’s a hint. Put yourself on the receiving end of what you don’t like. For example, you could loose your job for a number of reasons, and it can take a long time, even a couple of years, to find suitable employment. Would you like some assistance or not during that time?

  309. LE says

    Walton, your hypothetical manufacturer didn’t spring fully formed from the head of Adam Smith. He is the product of a society. He went to schools that, even if they weren’t publicly funded, benefited from the existence of publicly funded schools, and publicly funded research. He has a workforce that has benefited from those schools as well. He operates in a society with the rule of law so he doesn’t need to spend all his profits on bribes or worry about the next warlord over destroying what he’s built (unless you are talking about businesses in Somalia?). He lives in an area with adequate public services so he doesn’t need to worry about himself or his workforce being wiped out by cholera or some such. His workers are productive because they live in a society where, if he pays them enough, they can easily obtain adequate food, shelter, transportation to work, etc. He can distribute whatever it is he manufactures on the publicly provided roads. And unless he is the sole and personal owner of his business (a rare thing these days) he benefits from government protections that allow him form a corporation and limit his personal liability for the actions of his business – his personal assets and home can’t be seized to pay his business’ debts – so he’s benefiting from the legal fiction of the corporation.

    He also benefits if the society that he lives in provides something of a social safety net so that those with less resources are less likely to become completely destitute and take desperate measures, like turning to crime or to drugs or neglecting their children (Or all three – there’s criminal neglect and abuse of course. But it’s my impression that the majority of neglect of children is the more mild forms that result from parents who are too overworked and tired trying to provide the basics of food and shelter to actually spend time with their children). Your hypothetical businessman’s quality of life is improved because his neighborhood is not littered with beggars. Better still, if society can provide them with sufficient resources to get back on their feet, those who are on the edge might become a net benefit to society again (or at least not a net drain), which is also to his benefit.

    There are a thousand other tangible and intangible benefits that your business owner gets from the society he operates in. Is every one of those benefits codified in a contract? No, because those contracts are with other individuals who have their own debts to society, not with the society at large. He is indebted to society and society is justified, within limits, in asking for additional tangible support from someone who has benefited more than most, and continues to do so.

    In my mind he is obligated to give back in intangible ways as well. That’s not something we can legislate (at least not in the US because our Constitution, quite rightly, forbids it), but we have a phrase for those who don’t : selfish assholes.

    Something further to think about: He is also, by operating a business and controlling a larger portion of resources than most people, using more of society’s tangible and intangible benefits than the average wage-slave is. Shouldn’t those who use a thing pay more than those who don’t?

    (And, because I haven’t said it previously – GO IOWA! Woo-Hoo!)

  310. Endor says

    “Would you like some assistance or not during that time?”

    I’m willing to bet that Walton is going to give a similar response as faux-lifers give, i.e. “The only moral abortion is MY abortion”. The only proper form of public assistance is what benefits Walton.

    Or, he’ll play the faux piety game and say “no”, though its a big fat lie.

  311. Britomart says

    Walton is anyone suggesting that you stand on a street corner and hand out $20 bills ?

    What exactly is it that you object to and on what grounds ?

    I dare you to eat healthy on food stamps. Particularly if you have any sort of health problem like celiac or diabetes.

    And have you given any thought as to WHY your neighbor is less successful? What can you do to help them be more successful?

    What I find amazing is most of the people with the greedy attitude I see here are professed devout Xians. I run into them all the time on the Undernet. Last time I read the bible it was Jesus saying give all you have to the poor. How come they don’t follow that suggestion and instead are stomping about the countryside poking into peoples bedroom habits ???

  312. strange gods before me says

    What I find amazing is most of the people with the greedy attitude I see here are professed devout Xians. I run into them all the time on the Undernet. Last time I read the bible it was Jesus saying give all you have to the poor. How come they don’t follow that suggestion and instead are stomping about the countryside poking into peoples bedroom habits ???

    They aren’t Christian because it seemed to them like a reasonable belief system with decent ethics.

    They’re Christian because it confers power and social status upon them. Wherever any religion flourishes, it establishes something like a caste system. Devoting oneself to the cult brings prestige and authority.

    Good Christians are Good Christians because it gives them license to control others.

  313. strange gods before me says

    If X establishes a successful business, and, after paying his employees and creditors, makes a large profit, it is X that has created that wealth.

    Actually no. The employees created that wealth. They’re the ones who did the work.

    If an employee is under contract that pays her 10c per widget, and the employer takes those widgets from her and sells them for 15c, then her work was actually worth 15c, not 10c, and the employer has stolen 5c from her. The only reason she agreed to the contract was because she was coerced: under capitalism — a rigged game — a worker’s options are work for this employer who will rob you, or work for that employer who will rob you, or starve to death.

    Now, there are at least two options that restore some amount of fairness.

    1 There’s syndicalism or other forms of revolutionary socialism where the workers own the means of production. Those workers’ companies large enough to need management elect their management from among themselves. No more thieving, unaccountable bosses.

    2 There’s mixed economies, social democracies, where employees are permitted to steal their workers’ wealth but the employers are then taxed for a portion of that stolen profit. The broader community, made up of more workers than bosses, then votes on how to distribute those taxes to their mutual benefit.

    You now wish to protest, “but there are other ways, right-wing libertarian ways!” No there aren’t. Look around you. Every nation on earth is either of type 1 or type 2, because workers do not permit anything less. Ever wonder why you can say “there’s never been a libertarian state tried”? Historically whenever a mixed economy veers too far toward pure capitalism, the workers’ discontent becomes violent and you end up with the pendulum swinging much further back in the other direction.

    Your options are basically these, give us social democracy or we will give you revolutionary socialism.

    LE’s wise comment above explains part of the moral basis for the mixed economy. Adam Smith knew this stuff, which is why he was in favor of some progressive taxation. (I presume you clicked on my answer key above, hope that wasn’t a spoiler.) You’d be wise to try to deal with this reality rather than dreaming of revolution for your bosses’ paradise.

  314. strange gods before me says

    Now Walton,

    Will you please answer “stolen bread or death” for me? Either here or back in the New Zealand thread? I went through your analogies with abortion and kidneys, and explained why they weren’t equivalent. I jumped through your hoops. You left me holding a flaming hoop and it’s going to burn my hand.

    You can’t make things any worse for yourself. You’ve already intimated that your answer is “go ahead and die” and I can use that against you without your explicit nod. See I’ve already done it, in this thread.

    But I do have serious questions about policy and they do depend on your answer.

  315. speedwell says

    But he does not owe a duty to support his less successful neighbour.

    Sure he does. He owes a duty to his own self-interest. There is an optimum balance between giving and not giving. If you don’t give enough to the less fortunate or to causes that help them effectively, then you fail to support and improve the society you live in. If you give too much, then you lower your own standard of living unacceptably. (My fiance’s sister was once married to a rabidly Christian fellow who gave anything they owned away if he felt like someone else needed it. When he gave away the baby’s crib, that we bought for them, to someone “less fortunate,” leaving his own without one, that was the end of that marriage.)

    When I was in college, I shared an apartment with three other girls. Each of us had our own rooms. One of my roommates was having a hard time keeping up with her classes, and the cleanliness of her room suffered. Was I obligated to help her keep it clean? No, of course not. Well, not, that is, unless I wanted trash and bugs to overflow into my part of the house. I wasn’t going to be her cleaning lady, but I chose to do the minimum necessary to help maintain my own standard of cleanliness.

  316. strange gods before me says

    Above, my number 2 should have said

    “2 There’s mixed economies, social democracies, where employers are permitted to steal their workers’ wealth but the employers are then taxed for a portion of that stolen profit.”

    Hopefully that was obvious, as it didn’t make sense otherwise.

  317. strange gods before me says

    Sure he does. He owes a duty to his own self-interest. There is an optimum balance between giving and not giving. If you don’t give enough to the less fortunate or to causes that help them effectively, then you fail to support and improve the society you live in.

    Walton’s answer is going to be that the rest of society should not be able to compel him, through taxes (even though voluntary charitable giving is tax deductible), to fulfill that duty.

  318. speedwell says

    rest of society should not be able to compel him, through taxes

    And he’d be correct. Doing your duty is different from being compelled to do it. The first is the act of a free, responsible member of society, and the second is the forced obedience of someone who does not own their own person or products.

  319. LE says

    And to bring it back to the start of the thread: The Vermont Legislature just voted to overturn the Governor’s veto and became the first State to allow same sex-marriage through action from the Legislature!

    Go Vermont!

    PZ already has another thread going …

  320. strange gods before me says

    And he’d be correct.

    But of course you’re wrong.

    If he doesn’t do his share of the duty, then his share is left over and creates a larger burden upon everyone else. He does not have the right to make the rest of us pick up his fair share. We have the right to compel him to play fairly.

    Doing your duty is different from being compelled to do it. The first is the act of a free, responsible member of society, and the second is the forced obedience of someone who does not own their own person or products.

    It’s funny how you libertarians use words that are in the English language, but you don’t seem to realize that you’re not speaking in a manner that is coherent to other people.

    Paying one’s taxes is not the same as owning nothing.

    I know that to libertarians, it seems self-evident that taxes equal slavery and speed limits equal fascism, but the rest of us just hear the corner ravings of a crank.

  321. Walton says

    If an employee is under contract that pays her 10c per widget, and the employer takes those widgets from her and sells them for 15c, then her work was actually worth 15c, not 10c, and the employer has stolen 5c from her. The only reason she agreed to the contract was because she was coerced: under capitalism — a rigged game — a worker’s options are work for this employer who will rob you, or work for that employer who will rob you, or starve to death.

    You forgot one other option: set up your own business and sell your goods yourself.

    The employers are not a set-apart hereditary caste. They are simply ordinary people. Many entrepreneurs, in fact, come from working-class backgrounds.

    Of course, it is very true that some types of business are well-nigh impossible to establish without large amounts starting capital; which is why we need a healthy financial system and wide availability of credit, so that those people who do not have access to large financial resources still have a fair chance to start their own businesses and survive in the free market. We also need an effective educational system (including school vouchers, so that prestigious private schools won’t just be for the rich) so that people from all backgrounds can acquire the skills they need to advance themselves.

    If a person has the skills to produce a product worth 10c, he or she has a choice. She can set up on her own, running her own business; that way she keeps all the profit from her work, but she also runs the risk of failure and bankruptcy. Or she can enter into a contract to work for someone else – meaning that she doesn’t bear the risks of running her own business, but that she cannot keep all the profit from what she produces.

    I am not claiming that all capitalist nations have great social mobility. Many do not. As I said, there are several prerequisites: political stability, wide availability of investment and credit (which, incidentally, is one of the first things to suffer in an economy laden with high taxes and over-regulation), well maintained infrastructure, and a decent education system. But this is not a reason to claim that anyone who employs workers is stealing the fruits of their labour.

    Every nation on earth is either of type 1 or type 2, because workers do not permit anything less.

    The fact that the less successful wish to steal from the more successful – and that they try to use the power of the State to do so – does not make it right that they should do so.

    I know that to libertarians, it seems self-evident that taxes equal slavery and speed limits equal fascism, but the rest of us just hear the corner ravings of a crank.

    I have never claimed that speed limits equal fascism. Fascism is a specific political ideology, and it’s an abuse of the term to apply it indiscriminately to whatever one dislikes. And speed limits are justifiable, since they prevent citizens from harming one another through careless driving.

  322. Walton says

    If an employee is under contract that pays her 10c per widget, and the employer takes those widgets from her and sells them for 15c, then her work was actually worth 15c, not 10c, and the employer has stolen 5c from her. The only reason she agreed to the contract was because she was coerced: under capitalism — a rigged game — a worker’s options are work for this employer who will rob you, or work for that employer who will rob you, or starve to death.

    You forgot one other option: set up your own business and sell your goods yourself.

    The employers are not a set-apart hereditary caste. They are simply ordinary people. Many entrepreneurs, in fact, come from working-class backgrounds.

    Of course, it is very true that some types of business are well-nigh impossible to establish without large amounts starting capital; which is why we need a healthy financial system and wide availability of credit, so that those people who do not have access to large financial resources still have a fair chance to start their own businesses and survive in the free market. We also need an effective educational system (including school vouchers, so that prestigious private schools won’t just be for the rich) so that people from all backgrounds can acquire the skills they need to advance themselves.

    If a person has the skills to produce a product worth 10c, he or she has a choice. She can set up on her own, running her own business; that way she keeps all the profit from her work, but she also runs the risk of failure and bankruptcy. Or she can enter into a contract to work for someone else – meaning that she doesn’t bear the risks of running her own business, but that she cannot keep all the profit from what she produces.

    I am not claiming that all capitalist nations have great social mobility. Many do not. As I said, there are several prerequisites: political stability, wide availability of investment and credit (which, incidentally, is one of the first things to suffer in an economy laden with high taxes and over-regulation), well maintained infrastructure, and a decent education system. But this is not a reason to claim that anyone who employs workers is stealing the fruits of their labour.

    Every nation on earth is either of type 1 or type 2, because workers do not permit anything less.

    The fact that the less successful wish to steal from the more successful – and that they try to use the power of the State to do so – does not make it right that they should do so.

    I know that to libertarians, it seems self-evident that taxes equal slavery and speed limits equal fascism, but the rest of us just hear the corner ravings of a crank.

    I have never claimed that speed limits equal fascism. Fascism is a specific political ideology, and it’s an abuse of the term to apply it indiscriminately to whatever one dislikes. And speed limits are justifiable, since they prevent citizens from harming one another through careless driving.

  323. Bobber says

    The fact that the less successful wish to steal from the more successful – and that they try to use the power of the State to do so – does not make it right that they should do so.

    How is it stealing to retake what is yours by right? The individual is subject to the rules established by the society to which he or she belongs. Interdependence requires cooperation and the sharing of resources. And true success is measured not on the status of an individual, but by the overall well-being of the society.

    If a person has the skills to produce a product worth 10c, he or she has a choice. She can set up on her own, running her own business; that way she keeps all the profit from her work, but she also runs the risk of failure and bankruptcy. Or she can enter into a contract to work for someone else – meaning that she doesn’t bear the risks of running her own business, but that she cannot keep all the profit from what she produces.

    Until you change the rules of credit to allow everyone who wishes to start a business to have absolute access to as much cash as they need, without having to meet preconditions and the scrutiny of lenders, the playing field is rigged against the person who has no money, or no connections that allow him or her to sidestep the usual rules. Also, starting a business can be a highly time-intensive activity with little chance of renumeration, especially in the first years – another blow against the person who has no ready access to cash, since many people have families and mortgages and car payments and health insurance to pay for; there simply isn’t the time, let alone the money, to create a business. As always, the choices a person can make are unduly – and I submit to you, unfairly – influenced by the overemphasis placed in our capitalist society on wealth. I can guarantee you that I have met more than one young person who has the creativity and the desire to become a successful business person, but whose “choices” for advancement in that direction are eliminated by the socio-economic situation into which they, through no fault of their own, exist.

  324. Walton says

    Will you please answer “stolen bread or death” for me? Either here or back in the New Zealand thread?

    No, I won’t, because I think it’s too simplistic and stark a dichotomy. You’re trying very hard to force me into a corner, using a hypothetical thought-experiment that, by your own admission, is not realistic.

  325. Britomart says

    Walton, did you miss my questions in post 843?

    Two other points:

    1) the ability to fabricate something that can sell for $250 or what ever in no way confers the ability to run a company fabricating same, nor sell the products of that company. Your response that everyone should just go out and make their own enterprises is unrealistic on several levels.

    2) If anyone is a thief in your scenario it is the employer who is not paying back the worker for the work done nor contributing to the society that made it possible for the enterprise to function. The infrastructure, the education, the security, the health of the workers, there is a HUGE list that the society has contributed to this enterprise and they deserve to be reimbursed.

  326. strange gods before me says

    No, I won’t, because I think it’s too simplistic and stark a dichotomy. You’re trying very hard to force me into a corner, using a hypothetical thought-experiment that, by your own admission, is not realistic.

    Thanks for that. Yes I am trying to force you into a corner. The particulars of this situation are unusual. However, they relate to situations people do experience.

    Unless you deny that there are people starving to death anywhere on Earth, the question is a legitimate one. The corner is a real one. There are people who have to make choices between death and crime.

    You can admit that there are people somewhere who are on the verge of death by starvation, and who would gain another week of life by stealing some food. You know for a fact it’s happening in Africa.

    So “it can’t actually happen” would be an acceptable answer if it couldn’t actually happen. But it does. It does and it always has. It’s even in Proverbs 6:30, because people do have to deal with these kinds of questions, because they do happen.

  327. strange gods before me says

    You forgot one other option: set up your own business and sell your goods yourself.

    I didn’t forget it, I omitted it, because it’s not an alternative. It just makes you into the thief.

    Unless every single person on Earth is a lone entrepreneur, and there are no employees, then the bosses are stealing the workers’ labor.

    And I think you will admit that there is no conceivable socio-economic system which sustains everyone as an entrepreneur and allows an industrial society. It’s conceivable at ancient agricultural levels. Is that where you want to live?

    But this is not a reason to claim that anyone who employs workers is stealing the fruits of their labour.

    You didn’t demonstrate this at all. Didn’t even try. The employer who pays 10c to his employee and sells for 15c is stealing 5c. That someone had to take out a loan and blah blah blah doesn’t change this.

    The fact that the less successful wish to steal from the more successful – and that they try to use the power of the State to do so – does not make it right that they should do so.

    No, that they can do it doesn’t necessarily make it right. And I didn’t claim that it did. Please, Walton, please try to think and remember what I’m actually saying.

    What I said in that sentence is that it’s a fact and it’s inevitable. If you’re right that it’s never right to tax the rich, then you’re right, and you’re still irrelevant. Right-wing libertarian capitalist states don’t happen, because we are not willing to be outright robbed by employers without getting them to turn some of that profit back around to us. You don’t have to like it. You can rail against it for the rest of your life. But you’d better fucking get used to it. You can never win because there will always be more workers than bosses.

    Why we’re right is quite another matter. I would never claim that might makes right. You and I can talk about why the left is right. I’m happy to talk about it. Give me bread or death first. I jumped your damned hoops, even though I thought they were stupid.

    I have never claimed that speed limits equal fascism. Fascism is a specific political ideology, and it’s an abuse of the term to apply it indiscriminately to whatever one dislikes. And speed limits are justifiable, since they prevent citizens from harming one another through careless driving.

    Oh but whoops, speed limits mean you’re “being compelled to do [your duty,]” the “forced obedience of someone who does not own their own person or products.”

  328. strange gods before me says

    You can admit that there are people somewhere who are on the verge of death by starvation, and who would gain another week of life by stealing some food. You know for a fact it’s happening in Africa.

    So unless your libertarian bullshit has an answer for this person, this person who you know for a fact is starving somewhere right now as we speak, it isn’t a political philosophy for the real world and it isn’t even a useful ethical guideline for an individual to adopt personally.

    If you don’t answer then you’re admitting you’re not serious about politics or even personal ethics.

    There are people who have to decide between petty crime and death. It’s the norm in many parts of the world. What should they do to live day to day, or should they die?

  329. strange gods before me says

    http://www.metro.co.uk/news/world/article.html?Millions_will_starve_to_death_in_crisis&in_article_id=600967&in_page_id=64

    Up to 2.7million youngsters are acutely malnourished – nine times more likely to die – in Africa, while up to 4.7million are suffering in South Asia. The figures were released by Save the Children ahead of the G20 Summit this week.

    ‘The world economy is in crisis and it is children that are bearing the brunt,’ said actress Gwyneth Paltrow, who is the charity’s global ambassador.

    ‘As the recession bites, families in the developing world will have to struggle even harder to survive.’

    Four-year-old Abdi, from Kenya, is among the many victims.

    He is fighting malaria and weighs just 12kg (26lb).

    ‘We are so worried for the future,’ said his father Ada Mohammed.

    ‘He was in bed for a whole week when we couldn’t feed him.’

    See, it’s a real question.

    If Ada Mohammed can feed his starving son Abdi by stealing a meal, even just one or two meals a week, should he do it?

    If libertarianism doesn’t have an answer, one way or the other, then libertarianism is not a serious attempt to address the real world.

  330. Kseniya says

    PZ: Please change title of thread to “Iowa rules somehow sparks yet another thousand-comment circular thread on Libertarianism.” Thank you.

    By the way, the “reimbursement” argument is off-target. If that’s all we have to counter Walton, then he wins. Bobber has it right in his first paragraph up there in #855. This “forced redistribution of wealth” argument is, and always will be, a red-herring-shaped mask for discompassion and greed. Any institution financed by the state, which acts as an agent of the people, is going to be financed by monies taken from people who may or may not agree with how those monies are going to be used.

    Money has been forcibly taken from me to pay for abstinence-only sex education in Idaho and for ill-advised military actions in Iraq. Am I within my rights to either withhold it before the fact, or demand it back after the fact?

    I would rather have had that money go towards financing the care of children who lack proper nutrition and medical care, despite their gross irresponsibility for not having created wealth sufficient to meet their own needs. To whom do I complain?

  331. strange gods before me says

    Money has been forcibly taken from me to pay for abstinence-only sex education in Idaho and for ill-advised military actions in Iraq. Am I within my rights to either withhold it before the fact, or demand it back after the fact?

    I’m no more happy about that than you are. We are within our rights to change the government and replace our representatives with those more agreeable to us.

    But if people do not have to pay taxes, then they will not. And then they get the socially-distributed benefits, of having a fire department for instance, without paying for those benefits. And the responsible members of society then have to pick up the tab for the libertarian freeloaders.

    I would rather have had that money go towards financing the care of children who lack proper nutrition and medical care, despite their gross irresponsibility for not having created wealth sufficient to meet their own needs. To whom do I complain?

    You do have the option of giving money directly to tax-deductible charities that do those things, which will lower your taxable income.

    Reading your comment again, I may have misunderstood you and you’re deliberately implying the answers I’m giving? Sorry if I’m being redundant.

  332. Kseniya says

    No apology necessary. While I may not have been implying exactly the answers you offered, I do admit that my questions were rhetorical.

  333. Watchman says

    This thread may be dead, but I thought it might be worth posting this for posterity.

    New York Times, April 9, 2009
    Op-Ed Contributor
    Iowa’s Family Values
    By STEVEN W. THRASHER

    IF it weren’t for Iowa, my family may never have existed, and this gay, biracial New Yorker might never have been born.

    In 1958, when my mother, who was white, and father, who was black, wanted to get married in Nebraska, it was illegal for them to wed. So they decided to go next door to Iowa, a state that was progressive enough to allow interracial marriage. My mom’s brother tried to have the Nebraska state police bar her from leaving the state so she couldn’t marry my dad, which was only the latest legal indignity she had endured. She had been arrested on my parents’ first date, accused of prostitution. (The conventional thought of the time being: Why else would a white woman be seen with a black man?)

    On their wedding day, somehow, my parents made it out of Nebraska without getting arrested again, and were wed in Council Bluffs, Iowa, on March 1, 1958. This was five years before Nebraska would strike down its laws against interracial marriage, and almost a decade before the Supreme Court would outlaw miscegenation laws throughout the country in Loving v. Virginia.

    When the good state of Iowa conferred the dignity of civic recognition on my parents’ relationship — a relationship some members of their own families thought was deviant and immoral, that the civil authorities of Nebraska had tried to destroy, and that even some of my mom’s college-educated friends believed would produce children striped like zebras — our family began. And by the time my father died, their interracial marriage was seen just as a marriage, and an admirable 45-year one at that.

    That I almost cried last week upon reading that the Iowa Supreme Court overturned the state law banning same-sex marriage will therefore come as no surprise. I’m still struck by one thought: over the years, I’ve met so many gay émigrés who felt it was unsafe to be gay in so-called flyover country and fled for the East and West coasts. But as a gay man, I can’t marry in “liberal” New York, where I’m a resident, or in “liberal” California, where I was born, and very soon I will have that right in “conservative” Iowa.

    Of course, the desire to define relational rights and responsibilities with a partner, to have access to the protection that this kind of commitment affords, is rather conservative. But it’s a conservative dream that should be offered to all Americans. Though it takes great courage for gays to marry in a handful of states now, one hopes that someday, throughout the nation, gay marriages, like my parents’ union, will just be seen as marriages.

    It’s safe to say that neither the dramas of our family, nor its triumphs, could have been possible without the simultaneously radical and conservative occasion of my parents’ civil marriage in Iowa. And so when the time comes, I hope to be married at the City Hall in Council Bluffs, in the state that not only supports my civil rights now, but which supported my parents’ so many years ago.

    Steven W. Thrasher is a writer and media producer.

  334. says

    I didn’t forget it, I omitted it, because it’s not an alternative. It just makes you into the thief.

    Unless every single person on Earth is a lone entrepreneur, and there are no employees, then the bosses are stealing the workers’ labor.

    That’s a profoundly ideological and blinkered statement. An employment relationship is a contractual relationship. People are not enslaved by their employers; they enter into mutually beneficial contracts.

    Many people do not want to be entrepreneurs. I certainly don’t. Accordingly, when I go out to work, I will probably spend most or all of my working life employed under a contract with another person or corporation – into which contract I will have chosen to enter.

    Yes, in a society where there is only one major employer and few other alternatives (such as in the old mining or shipbuilding towns), your analysis has some substance. But it has absolutely no bearing at all on the vast majority of modern Western society. Are you seriously claiming that every single person who is in a contractual employment relationship with another is being enslaved and robbed by that other? Even a professional employee earning a six-figure salary with many collateral benefits?

    Money has been forcibly taken from me to pay for abstinence-only sex education in Idaho and for ill-advised military actions in Iraq. Am I within my rights to either withhold it before the fact, or demand it back after the fact?

    The trouble, of course, is that national defence is a public good; it’s non-rivalrous and non-excludable. So if we allowed people to opt out of funding the military, there would be no incentive for anyone to fund it, since those who opted out would still receive the same level of protection as those who chose to contribute.

    But I think the problem – with ill-advised military actions – could be ameliorated at least somewhat, in the US, by taking away the president’s constitutional power to deploy troops overseas without a formal Congressional declaration of war.

  335. Watchman says

    But I think the problem – with ill-advised military actions – could be ameliorated at least somewhat, in the US, by taking away the president’s constitutional power to deploy troops overseas without a formal Congressional declaration of war.

    Walton, I think you’re on to something.