>> ^RFlagg:

Problem is, they say the reason we were doing better was because we had God in schools, then we took him out of the schools and everything else... everything comes to how god was involved back then and less so now therefore we are paying the punishment of not having god in our lives... never mind how well many of the more atheist countries are doing (they think atheist countries are more like the old USSR)...
>> ^Fairbs:
Something most Republicans can't grasp is our country is better off when the rich are taxed more. 40 years ago, taxes on capital gains were 80%, but now Romney feels he's taxed too much at 15.



The argument isn't really about countries that are more atheist versus countries that aren't. It's that the United States has uniquely been a Christian nation since its founding. We are one nation, under God. Most people don't understand what that means; they think it is archaic when it is really the most important founding principle we have. The rapid decline in civil society has to do with the fact that, for the first time generations of Americans are growing up without the judeo-christian ethic being instilled in them from society, especially from their schools. And what we've seen since 1963 is a dramatic increase in the rate of violent crimes, teen pregnancy, STDs, the divorce rate, broken families, drug use, etc..the list goes on. There are the top 7 problems we had in our schools according to government records in 1940 vs 1990:

1940

1. Talking out of turn
2. Chewing Gum
3. Making noise
4. Running in the Halls
5. Cutting in Line
6. Dress-code violations
7. Littering

1990

1. Drug abuse
2. Alcohol abuse
3. Pregnancy
4. Suicide
5. Rape
6. Robbery
7. Assault

So, the argument is really that, we as a society have collectively turned our back on God, and therefore God has also turned His back on us. The principle is, you reap what you sow, and that's exactly what is going on right now. That's why this nation is facing calamity after calamity, because we have lost our way and we refuse to repent and turn back to our Creator.

Before any quotes, I'll give my own overarching point: Life without a higher purpose may be ultimately meaningless (I'll get more into what sense I mean), and that makes life more difficult than if there were ultimate meaning, but that has no bearing whatsoever on the truth value of the existence of Yahweh. You cannot derive Yahweh's existence (or any deity or pantheon) from your claim that life is easier that way. [Edit: Turns out I never actually get to that conclusion in my comments below, so you might as well address it here, but after you've read the rest.]

The point was never that a meaningless Universe makes life more difficult; you simply decided that was the point. The point the video makes, and which I have also been making, is that you are suffering from cognitive dissonance by having no ultimate justification for your value system, but living as if you do. You admit that under atheism the Universe is meaningless, and so we've been debating on whether you can find any justification for a value system in a meaningless Universe. The explanation you have ultimately given me is that you believe there is a right and wrong, and people do have value, because you feel it. Do you realize this proves what I have been saying all along?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance

Cognitive dissonance is the term used in modern psychology to describe the state of holding two or more conflicting cognitions (e.g., ideas, beliefs, values, emotional reactions) simultaneously.

Your atheism tells you that life without God is meaningless. Your feelings tell you that life is meaningful. These are two conflicting cognitions. Instead of realizing that and re-evaluating your atheism, you say that you don't know why and you don't care. That is the very definition of cognitive dissonance.

But the fact is that somehow, in the context of my own little 80-year microblip in the lifespan of our planet, I do care. I just do. I have nothing more than a pet theory about why I care. I care, and I care a lot. I suppose I'm somewhat curious as to why I care, but it's not of primary importance for me to know. I just do, and it's pleasing to notice that just about everyone else around me does too. The only question for me is how to follow this desire of mine to be good given my circumstances.

The facts are simple: the existence of God explains everything that you feel about wanting to do good, and the love that you have for people and life, and your atheism denies it. Yet you embrace what is contrary to your own experience.

And why should I reject being a slave to chemicals? The chemicals MAKE ME FEEL GOOD, remember? Should I purposefully do things that make me feel bad? Why on Earth would I even consider it? Ridiculous.

So if it makes you feel good its okay to be a slave? You don't mind being enslaved to a mindless irrational process because you get rewarded for it like a rat activating a feeder?

I reject the description that I live my life "as a Christian does", as if Christians invented or have some original claim being good. All humans, regardless of faith or lack thereof, believe in the value of humans (or, any societies that don't value humans go extinct very quickly). We all generally shun murder and violence, foster mutual care, enjoy one another's company, feel protective, have a soft spot for babies and so forth, and have been doing all of this as a species since before Christianity began.

So I would turn it around and say instead that it's Christians who go about their lives living like normal humans, but thinking they're being good because their religion tells them to.

Most people in this world (around 85 - 90 percent) are theists. If we are going to talk about universal belief in this world then it is theism which is normal. That is historically where our morality comes from. Everyone who believes in God has an ultimate justification for right and wrong, but atheists do not. So I will modify this and say that you're living like a theist does but denying it with your atheism.

I can claim that I have a stronger sense of what's right and wrong than the psychopath simply because they are defined as lacking that sense (or, perhaps non-psychopaths are defined as people having that sense). And you're right that I do not claim that my way of determining which actions are appropriate is inherently superior to the psychopath's. As it happens, my way of determining morality puts me among the overwhelming majority, and so it's relatively easy for me to mitigate the negative impacts of people like that by identifying and avoiding them. I don't say that my way should be preferred to the pshychopath's; I just notice that it is, and I'm grateful for that, and for the fact that psychopathy is not a choice.

Actually, psychopaths do know right from wrong, but they don't care.

In any case, what you're saying here contradicts your later claim that my hypothetical about a society approving of child rape is ridiculous, and proves my point. You admit here that you couldn't say that your way of morality is superior to psychopathy, it just so happens that there are more of you than there are of them. You name that as the reason why your way should be preferred. Therefore what you're talking about is a herd morality.

Now think about if the situation were reversed and psychopaths were in the majority. Your version of morality would no longer be preferred, and psychopaths would no longer need to conform to your standards; you would need to conform to theirs. Whatever was normalized in a psychopathic society would be what was called good and whatever the psychopathic society rejected would be called evil. This is proof that everything I said was true. The entire point of my example was to show that if we simply have a herd morality where the majority tells us what is good and evil, then if the majority ever said child rape is good it would be. This is simply a fact. Whether you think it could happen or not is relevent to the point.

You're drowning in a sea of relativism, where a justifies b and b justifies c and c justifies d, and this goes into an infinite regress.

I'm not sure what you're talking about. Can you give an example of a justification to infinite regression that would cause some kind of problem unique to non-thesitic morality?

I'll get to this later.

I don't accept that it's any more natural to worship Yahweh than some other deity or pantheon or idol, and I can't imagine how you could justify such a position without referring to dogma. Ask a Muslim. He'll tell you with the same conviction that Allah is the natural way and show you his own dogma. 100 years ago, a Japanese would have told you it was natural to worship the Emperor, and today he'd say it's natural to worship ancestors. My point is that any worship will satisfy our natural urge to worship, which is why almost all people worship something, and the object of worship you're brought up around is the one you're most likely to be comfortable with worshipping, naturally.

The reason I said this was in reply to your assertion that we developed religion because it answered questions and made us feel comfortable. My point was that we all come pre-programmed with a need for worship, which you apparently agree with. That is what is natural to us. It has nothing to do with whether it is more or less natural to worship Jesus. It is actually more natural for us to rebel against God because of our corrupt nature. It's only through personal revelation that we direct our worship in the right direction.

People don't naturally conclude life is meaningless; they know from their experience that it is very meaningful. They are taught it is meaningless through philosophy and the ennui that comes from modern life. You will never find a population of natural atheists anywhere on the planet.

The problem —and one that I fell into myself— is the conflation of two senses of the word "meaningless". For example, I can say without conflict that the planet and humanity is doomed and so forth, so our actions are ultimately meaningless, AND that interacting with people gives meaning to my life. Now, in the first sense, I mean there's no teleological purpose to my life. In the second sense, I mean certain people and things in my life give fulfillment/bliss.

The sense we agreed upon and have been discussing is that that life without God is meaningless. In this sense, it is still equally meaningless whether human civilization implodes or doesn't implode. Therefore the meaning you derive from your feelings is only an illusion created by chemical reactions in your brain.

Your anecdotal evidence about depression doesn't make you an authority on *the single cause* of depression. Some depressives follow your pattern, and others don't. I don't. When I'm depressed, my feeling isn't hopelessness. In fact, these days, I'm feeling rather hopeless, but I'm not depressed.

You can feel hopeless and not be depressed, but the source of the depression is almost always hopelessness. I'll give you some examples. If you put all of the worlds depressed people in a very large room, and gave each of them a check for 10 million dollars, you will have instantly cured around 80 percent of them. The majority of depression comes being stuck in a bad situation that you don't feel like you can change, situations that cause a lot of stress and unhappiness. A lot of money buys a lot of change. Many of the rest are probably depressed because of health issues, and if you could offer them a cure (hope), they would be cured as well. The remainder are probably depressed because of extreme neurosis. There are other causes of depression but you see my point. Hope is the solution to depression.

It's not my hope. I believe that dead is dead. Much simpler than your belief. Much more likely too. You're implying that I'm following some faulty reasoning about the afterlife. Among the things I don't know are an *infinite number of possibilities* of what could happen in the afterlife, one of which is your bible story. My best guess is nothing. Since nobody's ever come back from the dead to talk about it (Did nobody interview Lazarus? What a great opportunity missed!), nobody knows, so there's no reason to speculate about it ever. Your book says whatever it says, and I don't care because to me it's fairy tales. I'd have to be an idiot to live my life differently because of a book I didn't first believe in. Just like you'd be an idiot to live like a non-believer if you believe so much in Yahweh.

On what basis do you say your belief is more likely?

Someone has come back from the dead to talk about it: Jesus Christ. You don't have to believe the bible; you can ask Him yourself. You say there is no reason to speculate (ever); now that is an interesting statement from someone who believes in open inquiry. What you've said is actually the death of inquiry. And let's be clear about this; you have speculated. You are basing your conclusion on no evidence but merely your atheistic presuppositions about reality. You say no one has come back but one man has, but of course you dismiss the account as fantasy (again because of your atheistic presuppositions).

I would also ask how you think the brain understands the complex moral scenarios we find ourselves in and rewards or doesn't reward accordingly? Doesn't that seem fairly implausible to you?

It's quite plausible. I'm no biologist, but I'm sure there's a branch of evolutionary biology that deals with social feelings. My own pet theory is that these feelings are comparable to the ones that control the behaviour of all communal forms of life, like ants and zebras and red-winged blackbirds. It's evolution, either way, IMO.

Of course anything is possible when you summon your magic genie of evolution. "Time itself performs the miracles for you."

What makes someone a bad person?

In the absolute sense, religious faith, only, can bring that kind of judgement as a meaningful label.

In the relative sense where I would colloquially refer to someone as "a bad person" (my prime minister, Stephen Harper is an example), I mean someone who has shown they are sufficiently disruptive to other people's happiness due to acting too much in their own self-interest that they're best removed from influence and then avoided. But I would only use that term as a shorthand among people who knew that I don't moralize absolutely.

So no one is really bad?

Do you think this could have something to do with the fact that the bible says you should do things you don't want to do, or that you should stop doing things you don't want to stop doing?

An interesting question, but no. I don't believe it because everything I see points all religion being a human invention.

Well, I'm fairly sure you've told me before that you hate the idea of God telling you what to do.

Your hypothetical is an appeal to the ridiculous. It simply is a fact that just about everyone —including child rapists, I'm guessing— believes that child rape is wrong for the simple reason that it severely hurts children. If it increases a person's suffering, then it's wrong. I can think of nothing simpler. Your hypothetical is like one where a passage in the bible prescribed child rape. Would it be OK then? Does the bible that say that rape is wrong? Does it say you cannot marry a child?

I've covered this above, but I will also add that if we had evolved differently, then in your worldview, all of this would be moot. We are only in this particular configuration because of circumstance, and not design. It could just as easily be 1000 different other ways. There could easily be scenarios where we evolved to exploit children instead of nuture them.

In both cases, you didn't address my point. 1) I'm stating that Yahweh's laws are far, far more complex than secular morality. You countered that Yahweh's laws were as simple as Jesus' two rules. I showed that was wrong with my AIDS in Africa example (condoms saving lives). You can address that, or you can agree that Yahweh's laws are more complex that Harris' model of secular morality.

I hope I don't need to point out that the bible says nothing about condoms. Gods morality is really as simple as the two greatest commandments because if you follow those you will follow all the rest:

Romans 13:9-10

The commandments, "Do not commit adultery," "Do not murder," "Do not steal," "Do not covet," and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one rule: "Love your neighbor as yourself."

Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.

When you love your neighbor and love God you are basically doing the whole law right there. There are some particulars that can emerge in different situations just like we have laws for different situations, and so Harris would have to accommodate those as well.

2) I also pointed out that Jesus gave us a moral model that requires the individual to determine for themselves based on fixed criteria what's good and what's not. "… as you would have your neighbour do unto you…" implicitly requires the individual to compare their actions with what they themselves would want someone else to do to them. That means relying on their own understanding. This contradicts your other statements that we shouldn't rely on our own understanding. You see? To follow Jesus' second law, you must rely on your own understanding.

Yes, in this case we would rely on our own understanding, as informed by the biblical worldview. What scripture is saying when it says "lean not on your own understanding" is that we make God the Lord of our reasoning. So, when we think about doing unto others, we would think about it in the context of how Jesus taught us to behave.

[you:]What about all of Pagan societies throughout the ages that sacrificed their children to demons?

You're making my point for me. Paganism is religion. Non-believers would never justify a habit of killing their own children.

Yes they would:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,880,00.html

So your answer is yes? You think that without religion, society may decide torturing babies is good because it decided that killing Jews was good?

[me:]If you think I’m being ridiculous, what do you think is more likely: that a society somewhere will suddenly realize that they feel just fine about torturing babies, or that a society somewhere will get the idea that it’s their god’s will that they torture babies? Human instinct is much more consistent than the will of any gods ever recorded.

Yes, I think an entire society could end up agreeing on something that depraved, just like the ancient Greek society approved of paedophilia. You also act as if I am trying to defend all religion, which I'm not. There are plenty of sick and depraved religions out there, and religions can easily corrupt a culture, like islam has done to the Arab culture.

In any case, there are many examples of non-believing societies doing sick and depraved things to their populations. Millions of Christians were murdered by communists in the 1940's and 50's. I highly recommend you read this book:

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&sqi=2&ved=0CB8QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.gracealoneca.com%2Fsitebuildercontent%2Fsitebu
ilderfiles%2Ftortured_for_christ.pdf&ei=PSNiUIyTCsPqiwLYtYGQCw&usg=AFQjCNG-ro4rM7dfvFCkgIvjnmgdhQnSPA&cad=rja

The fact is, in a meaningless Universe you simply can't prove anything without God. You actually have no basis for logic, rationality, morality, uniformity in nature, but you live as if you do. If I ask you how you know your reasoning is valid, you will reply "by using my reasoning".

You're slipping back into solipsism. We agreed not to go there. I'm not going to answer any of those things.

Now you're just trying to duck the issue, and perhaps you don't understand what solipsism is, because this is not solipsism. Solipsism is the belief that only your mind is sure to exist.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism

What I am talking about is right in line with the video. Without God you don't have any ultimate justification not just for any kind of value, but even for your own reasoning. It is a direct implication of a meaningless existence. This is what I mean about a justifies b justifies c justifies d into infinity. You have nowhere to stake a claim which can justify anything which you experience, or even your own rationality. If you feel you do, please demonstrate why you believe your reasoning is actually valid.

>> ^messenger:

stuff

>> ^kymbos:

@Deano, agree it was the best, but that doesn't say much. And still there's the whole 'wearing glasses - Clark Kent, no glasses - Superman' silliness.
I saw a great idea for Superman written somewhere. Maybe Reddit. I've googled it and can't find it. It's something like Superman is around in the 1940s, but Lex Luthor puts him into stasis until around now. In the meantime, Luthor builds a mighty media conglomerate and slowly convinces humanity that Superman wasn't a hero, but in fact was evil. When Superman re-emerges, the world sees him as a massive terrorist and loathes him. He has to overcome the distorted power of modern media and a malleable, ignorant populace to defeat his enemy.
Something like that. Not my idea, but a great way to modernise the story a little.


That idea sounds a bit weak to me. He'd only need to get a good PR firm and a twitter account and he'd be sorted!

@Deano, agree it was the best, but that doesn't say much. And still there's the whole 'wearing glasses - Clark Kent, no glasses - Superman' silliness.

I saw a great idea for Superman written somewhere. Maybe Reddit. I've googled it and can't find it. It's something like Superman is around in the 1940s, but Lex Luthor puts him into stasis until around now. In the meantime, Luthor builds a mighty media conglomerate and slowly convinces humanity that Superman wasn't a hero, but in fact was evil. When Superman re-emerges, the world sees him as a massive terrorist and loathes him. He has to overcome the distorted power of modern media and a malleable, ignorant populace to defeat his enemy.

Something like that. Not my idea, but a great way to modernise the story a little.

Generally, I try to be a photographer. I've been trying to do it for years, but it's hard to be an artist and the industry has been changing blah blah blah. I went to college for photography. I kinda hate chasing clients, and staff photographer positions are rare these days. I'd love to do photo-essay work like this, but it isn't the 1940's anymore and getting paid work from thriving magazines can be difficult.

Lately, for work, I've been teaching English as a second language. I just got back from spending a year in Quebec City. I am planning to move to China to teach at the end of the summer. I hope I still get to log in to the sift from there.

You can see my current portfolio here: http://mrrichey.500px.com/2012_portfolio/#/0

My old (needs updating) website is here: http://scottrichey.ca/

When I take a picture with my phone it usually ends up here: http://scottricheyphoto.tumblr.com/

I really love making beautiful images. Teaching can be fun too.

Great post idea @BoneRemake.

Peace.

From a cotton farm in Turkey Scratch Arkansas to the very pinnacle of the music world. 71 year old Levon Helm will soon be gone. Thought I'd post this tribute song written by Elton John from his 1971 album "Madman Across the Water".

Story here. http://www.ottawacitizen.com/Entertainment/Music/6474166/story.html

From the above story "Born May 26, 1940, in Turkey Scratch, Arkansas, the son of cotton farmers, he learned to play guitar and drums as a child. By 17 he was appearing in honky tonks in and around nearby Helena and taking in performance by such southern legends as Conway Twitty, Elvis Presley, Bo Diddley, and Ronnie Hawkins.

He joined Hawkins’ rockabilly band The Hawks just before they moved to Canada in the late 1950s.

In the early 1960s, Helm and Hawkins recruited Canadians Robbie Robertson (guitar), Rick Danko (bass) and pianist Richard Manuel and organist Garth Hudson. They left Hawkins and toured as Levon and the Hawks before backing Bob Dylan in the mid-60s. Fans weren’t initially receptive to Dylan’s switch from acoustic folky to electric folk-rocker, and Helm headed back south, working on offshore oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico for a couple of years until bassist Rick Danko asked him to rejoin the group that would become known around the world as, simply, The Band"

Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/health/Levon+Helm+near+death+wife+daughter+with+videos/6474166/story.html#ixzz1sLwHMdvM

Maybe I'm just speaking out of my ass, but I think it's unfair to loop Ganghi in with these other two. As far as I know, Ganghi was not a child molester, although he did experiment with chastity or whatever the hell he called it; he slept with girls in his bed, even his own grandniece. Fucked up that may be, but it is not sexual abuse, and it was for a small portion of his life, until his family basically told him that it was creepy. And it wasn't for decades, it was for a few years in his seventies. And in the 1940's, 70 was old as fuck. Someone could've probably stopped it a lot sooner.

Of course, I could be wrong, I could be blinded by the myth. I don't think so, but it's certainly possible. Either way, the above coupled with the fact that he might have been a little racist just does not equate with torturing people to death, or with consigning a third of the population of Africa for the last twenty years to die from AIDS.

Even if Gandhi was as fucked up as this pic claims, his way of approaching a situation with non-violence was absolutely a positive contribution to humanity. I doubt that we would've had the civil rights reforms here in America when we did without Gandhi's work.

Shit, even MLK was an adulterer. The first mistake is assuming that anyone is perfect. And the second is thinking that anyone's contributions to humanity are worthless because they also had serious problems.

Yeah, I actually figured that but Speedy's an easy target for people with no sense of humour- I'm sure this Mayor fits that category.

In reply to this comment by ulysses1904:
Not sure if you misunderstood me, as I wasn't knocking or "censoring" Speedy Gonzalez. FWIW, the Warner Brothers cartoons from the 1940s and 1950s are the quality standard that I compare all over animations to. And no doubt some of them have blatantly racist or ethnically insulting scenes and characters, which were viewed as acceptable back then.

My comment was that it would fit right in with the mayor's taco remark, to act like being a fan of Speedy Gonzalez would help build bridges to the modern day Latino community in East Haven.

>> ^therealblankman:

>> ^ulysses1904:
Wow....just....wow. I live near New Haven and have read about this quote but this is the first I'm seeing the footage. At least he didn't say "I might have tacos and then watch a Speedy Gonzalez retrospective".

Don't you knock Speedy Gonzales! That dude rocks! He's won at least one more Academy Award than any of us ever will. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speedy_Gonzales
The world of America was bigoted and rife with ethnic stereotypes at the time. Those views were just as wrong then as they are now, but to censor the mouse is the same as pretending that those views never existed. Disney pretends that "Song of the South" was never made, but that's a mistake as well.

Not sure if you misunderstood me, as I wasn't knocking or "censoring" Speedy Gonzalez. FWIW, the Warner Brothers cartoons from the 1940s and 1950s are the quality standard that I compare all over animations to. And no doubt some of them have blatantly racist or ethnically insulting scenes and characters, which were viewed as acceptable back then.

My comment was that it would fit right in with the mayor's taco remark, to act like being a fan of Speedy Gonzalez would help build bridges to the modern day Latino community in East Haven.

>> ^therealblankman:

>> ^ulysses1904:
Wow....just....wow. I live near New Haven and have read about this quote but this is the first I'm seeing the footage. At least he didn't say "I might have tacos and then watch a Speedy Gonzalez retrospective".

Don't you knock Speedy Gonzales! That dude rocks! He's won at least one more Academy Award than any of us ever will. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speedy_Gonzales
The world of America was bigoted and rife with ethnic stereotypes at the time. Those views were just as wrong then as they are now, but to censor the mouse is the same as pretending that those views never existed. Disney pretends that "Song of the South" was never made, but that's a mistake as well.

>> ^dannym3141:

I'll just paste what a youtuber said because it in usual youtube fashion sums up my real opinion which i wouldn't put quite like this;
Wow...amazing that for 2minutes and 14seconds, I didn't absolutely hate the sh t out of Zooey Deschanel. What a beautiful, sultry, 1940's-style voice she has when she isn't delivering annoying acting performances. Impressed, now.


Apparently they've never heard of her musical group, She & Him.

I'll just paste what a youtuber said because it in usual youtube fashion sums up my real opinion which i wouldn't put quite like this;

Wow...amazing that for 2minutes and 14seconds, I didn't absolutely hate the sh*t out of Zooey Deschanel. What a beautiful, sultry, 1940's-style voice she has when she isn't delivering annoying acting performances. Impressed, now.

>> ^Barbar:

Dystopianfuturetoday:
I'm not looking to debate anything here, I'm just curious as to your reasoning for considering Hitchens as an (at least) one time neo-con. What information led you to this opinion? As it seems distinctly opposed to what I've read in his memoirs and other writings.


ill answer for ya @Barber
hitchens was all for the iraq war and went even as far as to say waterboarding was not only NOT torture but necessary.
in his defense he did step down from both those positions.it should also be noted that hitchens actually allowed himself to be waterboarded and immediately (and i do mean immediately) changed his position that waterboarding was most certainly torture.which to me was a tribute to this mans intelligence.a true believer would never change his ideology but the intelligent person,when confronted with incontrovertible evidence,will change.

one final note @Enzoblue
neo-conservatism was anything BUT conservative.the neo-conservative philosophy began in the 1940's by leon strauss from the university of chicago.the basic premise is to use america's military might to secure american interests globally.this small fringe group of intellectuals had very little influence until the late 70's when they co-opted the christian right for their cause.

and so began the conflation of the christian right and american nationalism in the form of the republican party.
oh the delicious irony.

so when you say "old school neoconservative" what you are really referring to is the time the neo-cons had minimal influence (still there though) rumsfeld and cheney being big players during the reagan administration.which of course was made possible by the christian rights entering the political sphere (up till then most churches stayed out of politics).these same players brought in their fellow neo-cons during the bush administration and that administration read like a who's-who of prominent neocons:rumsfeld,cheny,pearl,wolfowitz,amratige,addington,woo.the list is massive.
so it wasnt so much about a change in philosophy but rather this fringe group (catapulted by the naive christian right) as having come into their own in terms of power and influence.

and all i have to say to that merry bunch of fucks is: THANKS DICKHEADS.

Out of all the things in that, the final cinema was by far the best. That look of being an actual brick building, like it'd been there forever... what an awesome idea!

They need to have a small street of buildings that looks like the 1940s or something next year, all just as solid and real looking as that one, that'd just be fantastic. A speakeasy, a barber shop etc.

The Great Dictator 1940

Anyone who uses the phrase "income inequality" automatically gets labelled an idiot, as is anyone who uses the phrase "The Rich Get Richer, the Poor Get Poorer" without actually looking at the numbers.

Income Inequality is a meaningless statistic. What percentage of the pie each quintile of income earners earned is MEANINGLESS without looking at the size of the overall pie. It is quite possible for the rich to earn three times as much, and the poor to earn twice as much, and still have "income inequality" increasing.

While there are some numbskulls that would not want the poor to do better if it meant the rich would do even better still - and I refuse to grant this notion any credence, as it is anti-poor - by and large the metric we should be looking at is median household income.

It is up, across the board (rich and poor alike) quite strongly since the 1940s, even after adjusting for inflation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:United_States_Income_Distribution_1947-2007.svg

As much as we like to pretend that the 40s-60s were the "high point" for the middle class, the reality is that the middle class and the poor are making about twice as much now (inflation adjusted) as they did back then.