Sure, there is no need to speak in terms of civil war. Unless you're one of these guntoting, armed to the teeth nutjobs who think it would be a good idea. You know, the kind of people who buy an *assault rifle* for self defense.
However, no matter how well trained your riot police is, their less than lethal tactics are only useful up to a certain amount of people, they can become rather useless if the crowds get too big to contain or simply too violent themselves. That's when it gets interesting, that is when protest can turn into riots.
When the cops face huge, somewhat peacful crowds, they might enter Tiananmen Square. At what point would american cops or military personnel start thinking that it's unwise or inhuman to start firing into the crowd? Before the first shot? After the second magazine? On day three?
It's not the 1960s anymore but the sixties are not forgotten. Not by those who faced police officers willing to fire into the crowd. You know, black people. The kind of people whose parents and grandparents are still alive to tell them about their fight against oppression. This is still alive in the american concious, it shaped your country and it won't go away soon. Just ask Barak about his birth certificate.
Civil unrest is part of your recent history, the seed is there. Even under a President Stalin all you'd need go from isolated, contained riots to complete and irreversible shitstorm is a Martyr, a Neda Agha Soltan or a Treyvon Martin. No matter what ethnicity (although african american would be nice), that would present a tipping point.
Your police can bring out the tanks on Times Square if they want but if half of NY shows up, these guys inside the tanks might want to get out ASAP.
The Erich Honecker regime of the German Democratic Republic was basically brought down by somewhat peaceful demonstrations of people shouting "I'm mad as hell and I won't take it anymore" in east german accents.
The StaSi, the Ministry of State Security, who was efficient enough to make *every* citizen a potential informant in the eyes of their opposition, ran from the protesters like little girls. They used to imprison and torture people who spoke up.
The east german border used to be the most secure in the entire world. It was protected by minefields and guards who shot and killed anyone who tried to cross it. Before David Hasselhoff even had a chance to put on his illuminated leather jacket the government caved and just fucking opened it. People just strolled through Checkpoint Charlie and bought Bananas as if it was Christmas.
This was the beginning of the end for the Soviet Union. You know, the guys who lost over 20 Million people in WW2 and still kicked the Nazis in the nuts.
Nobody brought a gun. All the east germans had was shitty cars and lots of anger. They tore down not just a dictatorship, they tore down the iron curtain.
And they didn't even have a Nelson Mandela. Or Lech Walesa.
I still stand by my point: strength in numbers, not caliber.

More about this ultimate snow fort: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Iceworm

"Project Iceworm was the code name for a top secret US Army program during the Cold War to build a network of mobile nuclear missile launch sites under the Greenland ice sheet. The ultimate objective of placing medium-range missiles under the ice - close enough to Moscow to strike targets within the Soviet Union - was kept secret from the Danish government. To study the feasibility of working under the ice, a highly publicized "cover" project, known as "Camp Century" was launched in 1960. However, unsteady ice conditions within the ice sheet caused the project to be cancelled in 1966."

God is clearly not a static foundation on which humanity bases their morals. Any cursory examination of Christian history shows that interpretations of what a Godly foundation for a life advicates have varied wildly at least from era to era, if not person to person.

There has not only overriding agreement of right and wrong between Christians throughout the ages, but also between cultures regardless of religion. Every culture has basically the same laws; don't lie, don't cheat, don't kill, don't steal etc. This is pointing to the fact that God didn't just tell us what is moral and immoral in the bible, He wrote it on our hearts. However, you are right in that actions speak louder than words. If you want to look at Christian history, it's very plain that calling yourself a Christian doesn't make you a moral person. Jesus said you will know a tree by its fruits, and a lot of Christian fruit in history has been rotten. There has also been quite a bit of good fruit as well. However, you can't pin down whether God gave a moral law to the actions of sinful human beings when the bible actually predicts the massive apostasy and moral inconsistency that you are describing. Take a look at Matthew 24, for instance.

Is there a foundation for static morality without a God to give it to you? Of course there isn't. And again I'll ask where or when we were guaranteed any such thing.

Well, it seems you agree with Ravi after all. This is exactly his point, and mine. There is no foundation for morality (or meaning, etc) without God and therefore atheism is incoherent. Atheism leads to nihilism which is inconsistent with your own experience.

But lets say that we do deserve such certainty, it still begs the question of why this foundation for morality of yours seems to have a curiously diverse array of outcomes in terms of moral norms over the millennia.

It has a diverse array of outcomes because human nature is corrupt and we can only imperfectly follow Gods laws. It also has nothing to do with what we deserve, but what is true.

Oh wait, I forgot. Your take on this whole thing is actually the only correct one, because of a personal relevation from God - of course. I guess we can now ignore all those other people who felt they had the same thing, because they just weren't lucky enough to benefit from the secure foundation of morality you have found.

It's not my take, it's what Jesus taught us:

John 14:6

Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

So your argument is with Jesus and not with me. You ask Him whether this is true or not.

And yes, spending 20 minutes detailing how Hitler and Stalin may have used certain limited aspects of atheistic thought processes to reach conclusions that are clearly not necessary outcomes of such premises, not by a long shot, and then using that to discredit an entire world view - is indeed Reducto ad Hitlerum in every possible sense of the term.

As TheGenk said, that's weak man.

Hitler is debatable but Stalins regime was atheistic at its core and that isn't debatable. Atheism wasn't peripheral to it, it was the foundation. Stalin brutally imposed atheism on the populace, and killed millions of Christians who refused to deny Christ. Don't take my word for it:

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

The history of Christianity in the Soviet Union was not limited to repression and secularization. Soviet policy toward religion was based on the ideology of Marxism-Leninism, which made atheism the official doctrine of the Soviet Union. Marxism-Leninism has consistently advocated the control, suppression, and the elimination of religion.[1]

The state was committed to the destruction of religion,[2][3] and destroyed churches, mosques and temples, ridiculed, harassed and executed religious leaders, flooded the schools and media with atheistic propaganda, and generally promoted 'scientific atheism' as the truth that society should accept.[4][5]

Religious beliefs and practices persisted among the majority of the population,[4] in the domestic and private spheres but also in the scattered public spaces allowed by a state that recognised its failure to eradicate religion and the political dangers of an unrelenting culture war.[2][6]

>> ^PostalBlowfish:

Old hag ought to know what a Communist is, you lived through the Cold War and apparently learned nothing. Perhaps we need a new phrase, we have Low Information Voter, maybe we need "No Information Voter" or "Bullshit Mountain Voter."


That's not surprising since they Soviet Union wasn't Communist in the traditional sense at all.

Come now Yogi.

The Soviet Union is no more, so you need to update your brainless throw away statements.

Secondly, when it was around, guys like Putin weren't wringing their hands wishing they had a law like this so their hands would be freed up to stop those irritating journalists. In the soviet union they'd simply arrest or kill you for trying to be a journalist unless you were state approved.

For the record, I think it is fair to point out that there is a difference between suing a few sources who divulged secrets and deliberately targeting and killing journalists in the streets. I don't think it's unfair to point out that there IS a distinction between the two scenarios.

>> ^Yogi:

>> ^bmacs27:
To be fair, I don't believe a single case he mentioned involved a reporter. It was only the leakers, in every instance knowingly divulging sensitive information, who were prosecuted. Also, it didn't always stick, and it isn't as if he forced the hand of the courts, or outright killed the journalists. I hardly think the comparison of Obama to Al Assad is fair. Get real.

Prosecuted under the Espionage act which would be a welcomed act in places like the Soviet Union. You may not think it's fair...but it's because you're ignorant.

>> ^bmacs27:

To be fair, I don't believe a single case he mentioned involved a reporter. It was only the leakers, in every instance knowingly divulging sensitive information, who were prosecuted. Also, it didn't always stick, and it isn't as if he forced the hand of the courts, or outright killed the journalists. I hardly think the comparison of Obama to Al Assad is fair. Get real.


Prosecuted under the Espionage act which would be a welcomed act in places like the Soviet Union. You may not think it's fair...but it's because you're ignorant.

I think what's he's implying is that our economy was structured by and for the Cold War such that, when the Soviet Union collapsed, so too did our economy.>> ^Yogi:

Now I'm anti American Empire as much as any hippy, but this guy suggested we're the "so-called victors" of the Cold War. Yeah sorry but we won that shit...you can argue a lot of things about the Soviets being much MUCH weaker than we were anyways but we still won.
Now as an Empire I think it's almost inevitable to go down the Soviet path. I mean baring a mass exodus of the major cities (Mayan Empire) mostly Empires go down the path of ridiculous patriotism and corruption while they die horribly.
This is why I wanted to elect someone like Newt Gingric or Donald Trump...to hasten the process so we can start the rebuilding sooner rather than prolong our death throws for decades.

Asking citizens for their papers is against everything I was raised to believe our country stood for. Perhaps the rightwing is fine with the US becoming the Soviet Union, but I'm not.

It's really not that hard to stop illegal immigration...crack down on those companies that employ them. If no one hires them, they'll stop coming. Of course, that would require putting some requirements on businesses...which we all know will never be an option for the wingnuts. Better to just demonize those with darker skin, regardless of the facts.

I'm still surprised there isn't a "Russia" channel or something similar that covers the flood of videos we have been seeing from the former soviet union countries. Just sayin.

I like both Chris and Sam, but after reading the passage I think Sam was irresponsible in his writing - though I see it as more glib than malicious. I'm happy to discuss it with anyone who disagrees, but the way I interpret the passage is...

"If Muslim Jihadists - who fear not death and want nothing more than to nuke us for religious reasons - ever came to power in a state that possessed nuclear weapons, our only option would be to nuke them first. It would be horrible, absurd, unthinkable and would result in millions of deaths and would likely lead to retaliation.... BUT IT WOULD BE THE FAULT OF RELIGION."

I think the problem is three-fold, a) that he mounts an argument that justifies preemptive global nuclear war, b) that, sadly, he paints our conflict as one of religion and not one of foreign policy and c) that he sees Muslims as crazy people who would sacrifice the lives of their children in exchange for dead Americans and heavenly virgins. This is indefensible.

Let me respectfully remind my good sift libs that Middle Eastern rage against the US has to do with foreign policy, not religion. It's blowback. It was Bush that said they hate us for our freedom, and Chomsky (on the left) and Ron Paul (on the right) that said they want us to stop bombing them, building bases in their countries and installing puppet dictators. Are we really going to side with the Bush doctrine instead of having to concede something to a person of faith?

Again, I like both these guys and would rather they didn't fight, but Hedges makes a fair point. We atheists aren't used to being criticized from the left and it puts us in a weird position. I don't think Sam is a hater, I think he just wrote an irresponsible couple of paragraphs in haste.

Anyway, the full passage is below. Judge for yourself. Tell me where I'm wrong.

SAM HARRIS: "It should be of particular concern to us that the beliefs of Muslims pose a special problem for nuclear deterrence. There is little possibility of our having a cold war with an Islamist regime armed with long-range nuclear weapons. A cold war requires that the parties be mutually deterred by the threat of death. Notions of martyrdom and jihad run roughshod over the logic that allowed the United States and the Soviet Union to pass half a century perched, more or less stably, on the brink of Armageddon. What will we do if an Islamist regime, which grows dewy-eyed at the mere mention of paradise, ever acquires long-range nuclear weaponry? If history is any guide, we will not be sure about where the offending warheads are or what their state of readiness is, and so we will be unable to rely on targeted, conventional weapons to destroy them. In such a situation, the only thing likely to ensure our survival may be a nuclear first strike of our own. Needless to say, this would be an unthinkable crime—as it would kill tens of millions of innocent civilians in a single day—but it may be the only course of action available to us, given what Islamists believe. How would such an unconscionable act of self-defense be perceived by the rest of the Muslim world? It would likely be seen as the first incursion of a genocidal crusade. The horrible irony here is that seeing could make it so: this very perception could plunge us into a state of hot war with any Muslim state that had the capacity to pose a nuclear threat of its own. All of this is perfectly insane, of course: I have just described a plausible scenario in which much of the world’s population could be annihilated on account of religious ideas that belong on the same shelf with Batman, the philosopher’s stone, and unicorns. That it would be a horrible absurdity for so many of us to die for the sake of myth does not mean, however, that it could not happen. Indeed, given the immunity to all reasonable intrusions that faith enjoys in our discourse, a catastrophe of this sort seems increasingly likely. We must come to terms with the possibility that men who are every bit as zealous to die as the nineteen hijackers may one day get their hands on long-range nuclear weaponry. The Muslim world in particular must anticipate this possibility and find some way to prevent it. Given the steady proliferation of technology, it is safe to say that time is not on our side."

>> ^A10anis:

>> ^EMPIRE:
I only needed to hear him compare the EU with Soviet Union to stop watching the video. I'm sure, as it's his usual, the future is bleak, we're all going to die, and everything will end in WW3, etc.
Pat Condell is annoying.

So, you don't listen to any opinion past the point where you don't agree? It appears to follow, then, that you only listen to those with an opinion to which you concur. That's not particularly enlightened or open-minded thinking! You remind me of the religious who, confronted with things THEY do not wish to hear, stick their fingers in their ears and go; "Blah, Blah, Blah." Try listening to the video in full, then make an educated assessment of it.


oh, so when someone starts making a point, by saying something completely imbecile you think they may still have a point? You must waste a lot of time in your life.

>> ^EMPIRE:

I only needed to hear him compare the EU with Soviet Union to stop watching the video. I'm sure, as it's his usual, the future is bleak, we're all going to die, and everything will end in WW3, etc.
Pat Condell is annoying.

So, you don't listen to any opinion past the point where you don't agree? It appears to follow, then, that you only listen to those with an opinion to which you concur. That's not particularly enlightened or open-minded thinking! You remind me of the religious who, confronted with things THEY do not wish to hear, stick their fingers in their ears and go; "Blah, Blah, Blah." Try listening to the video in full, then make an educated assessment of it.

>> ^EMPIRE:

I only needed to hear him compare the EU with Soviet Union to stop watching the video. I'm sure, as it's his usual, the future is bleak, we're all going to die, and everything will end in WW3, etc.
Pat Condell is annoying.


I definitely enjoyed his videos more when he was a comedian first and a political activist second.

But, hey, at least it's not another Skyrim bug video.

I only needed to hear him compare the EU with Soviet Union to stop watching the video. I'm sure, as it's his usual, the future is bleak, we're all going to die, and everything will end in WW3, etc.

Pat Condell is annoying.