lord of flies

Where's the Islamic golden age? Apparently, during the dark ages, we were just as poorly advanced as Egyptians. Also, loving the SCIENTIFIC ADVANCE sidebar, truly an objective measurement.

Poorly trained paramilitaries are hardly the threat you seem to think they are. Besides, if there's a revolution, it will have an appearance of propriety. Your reaction would seem disproportionate and wild to most. A revolution here is not going to occur tomorrow in some kind of socialist putsch. It will be the product of a generation's work, and of months of hard labor before the actual act. In 1904, it would seem as bizarre and insane to think of a socialist Russia as it is today to think of a socialist America.

Speaking of pot kettle black. So, are you ready to speak to your own conclusion on this subject, or will you continue to dodge the question? I answer questions people ask. I have a whole thread about it, though posting there has died down.

Answer the question, please. Don't attempt to dodge it. If not the United States, then who?

Who do you think put these governments in power, exactly?

I thought this forum was better because I did not believe the people I was arguing with were actually social darwinists. I do not understand how anyone, in this day and age, can endorse that sort of brutalistic savagery, much less apply it on a national level, that is, say that nations in a worse position are full of inferior people.

Human life is valuable in and of itself, and the government should try to ensure that you live a long life, but that does not mean you have a "right" to live. If the government chooses to recognize such a right, it is because rights-based ethics are a good way to build a cohesive legal system, and human life is valuable, not because you actually have some fundamental right to live. After all, your life can easily be taken away without your consent, even without government or institutional intrusion. You don't even need another person to help.

This. Communism is the enemy. You've wasted more times in idiotic conversations with me. Watch the video.

You do realize "Marxist criticism" is to class what "feminist criticism" is to sex, right? It doesn't mean the author is a communist or socialist.

So it's an acceptable self-dellusion? Well unless you're one of the initiated, and then well you know, because you've had it proven to you... It's all against reason. There will only be proof of God's existence until some theoretical physicist figures out where the Big Bang came from. Until then, the proof is that the universe exists. "But it's turtles all the way down!"

This is nothing more than a justification for imperialism, and you know it. Darwin identified a natural phenomena. Social darwinists wish to say that this natural phenomena is "good" or "right," when in reality it is not. Should we leave the sick to die on the streets, since they're "weak"?

I merely believe that rights are a collective fiction, created to serve a more perfect social order. As such, no right can be called "fundamental" or "inalienable." Rights are not universal, they are not inborn or created by natural phenomena. They are useful tools to create cohesive legal systems, and have little to nothing to do with actual morality. Many criminals are "mentally ill." Turns out that doesn't matter, because justice is retributive, not rehabilitative. He committed a crime, he was punished for that crime. It is as simple as that. I don't see why you're freaking out about it, it hardly represents some institutional problem on the scale of the United States prison system, and you defended that in a conversation, if I recall correctly.

I like social darwinism, because it allows you to pretty much automatically rule out anything a person says in the future, since they're a barbaric, selfish, myopic piece of human waste. Do you really think that Africans are the only ones responsible for their plight? Did you know US food aid can only come from the USA, so it has to be shipped long distances while simultaneously undercutting local agriculture? That it prevents agricultural development in the third world just to give another handout to American farmers?

God isn't real. Religions are just ideas, reinterpreted by fascists and communists alike. This is incorrect, sorry. There is in fact enough resources to support everybody currently living on this planet, ensuring that they have food, water and shelter. Your yearly wages wouldn't be very good at first (equivalent to a few thousand dollars, IIRC), but at least there wouldn't be any starving Africans.

Find me one election watch group who agrees with you. Go ahead. Maybe if you repeat it enough, it'll become true.

Don't do the crime if you can't do the time. He knew what the consequences were, what did he expect? To just walk free?

Uh, no. Chavez was elected in free and fair elections. Also, he's not a communist (communists reject parliamentarianism completely). The people at Tienanmen Square were also communists.

Pick your response:My God, it's the Opium War all over again. Tell that to the United States. What the **** does that have to do with the government being Communist?

Incorrect. Greed and progress benefit a privileged minority. Tell the impoverished of Africa, Latin America and Asia that greed is good. Tell the people rotting in urban ghettos, in prisons, tell those who have lost fingers or limbs to the unstoppable machine of institutional greed, that their sacrifices were necessary. I would rather have stagnation than to leave the world as unequal a place (or moreso) as I entered it. Democracy and capitalism were, I believe, never truly reconcilable. Did the two fit together when workers were fed into the factories of the robber barons in the United States or the Third Republic? When the SPD surrendered Germany to an imperialist war? When protesters were shot by police officers or national guardsmen? When the people were left to rot in the cold after economic liberalization overseen by short-sighted "liberators," in Russia and China? When the consumer society finally developed to the point that now politicians are literally selling themselves like products?

Taxes? Please, the whole "taxes are theft" thing is unbiblical and untrue. I'd expect better of a self-proclaimed Christian. You have an unfair advantage in this regard, since my bank account currently contains less than that amount in its entirety. As an aside, where in the Bible does it talk about giving to dogs? Nowhere, that's where. Oops! Looks like your charity was pointless because it didn't benefit the poor!

Paying taxes is submission to government authority, period. I didn't really feel like drudging up the quote from 1 Timothy 2:1-2.

Unless your ideal government is a federation of revolutionary communes, all governments can only be sustained through use of force.

Correct, if you read the quotes I provided, you'll find that the actual reason for going to hell is being a selfish rich prick. Oh, I see. The confusion comes from the topic title DEAR I WANT TEH KOTOR 3: Capitalism is un-Christian. btw, mods, change the topic title to DEAR I WANT TEH KOTOR 3: Capitalism is un-Christian. Actually, Christianity often teaches submission to government authority, e.g. the "give to Caesar what is Ceasar's" quote.

Cool story bro. What's your point then? The "free market" does what the "free market" does? My economics class, maybe? In order to have a proper "free market," you need equality of information (everybody knows the same things), equality of access (everyone with money can buy), equality of price (everyone pays the same for the same service, period), etc. This doesn't exist, obviously, so you get all sorts of cool deformations like rich corporations driving smaller ones out of business by purposefully reducing their prices. You're the disingenuous one. You mean, it's a problem of what you think are bad immigration laws. In reality, those laws exist for a wide variety of reasons, many of which are economically-based (e.g. the advantage corporations get from the labor). Oops! Nope! You seem to believe that any natural consequence of the capitalist system cannot be its fault if it's illegal. Oh, so it's not a linear function, thus rendering your point about it being in their best interest to pay more so they don't have to higher more irrelevant nonsense? I would never have guessed. Actually, in a collectivist system I would not be a beneficiary, nor am I motivated by the same wild, irrational greed that you seem to be. If there was an economic system which made the world a worse place but gave me a billion dollars, I wouldn't accept it either. Oops! I'm not going to go to some effort to prove to you that yes, Virginia, if you pay someone less you spend less. It's a basic truth, that's how economics works. Money doesn't appear from nowhere, and it doesn't disappear to nowhere.

Pharisees: "Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not?"Jesus: "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's"