>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:

ISSUE ONE: "If you conservatives are so 'Christian' then why don't you do what he taught and help the poor/widows/whatever?"
Where neolibs make their blunder on this subject is in equating "giving money to government programs" with "charity". Christ taught people to personally help the poor & needy. He did not say, "Do it by giving your paycheck to the government."
When a conservative doesn't support a bloated, inefficient, ineffective, government program, it does NOT mean that they are not charitable and generous. However, the typical "godless liberal" (as you put it) thinks that conservatives are literally stealing money from poor people when they say they want to cut these programs. It is the exact opposite. Conservatives want to cut these bad programs so that ALL people everywhere keep more of their money. It is a conservative's firm belief that more people keeping more of their money will result in (A) fewer poor people and (B) more wealth that private citizens can use to help others via voluntary donation.
Conservatives help the poor and needy by volunteering thier own time and talents to help those in need - NOT by offloading that responsibliity into the hollow, empty, soulless 'substitute charity' of a government program. Studies have proven conservative individuals give more money and time to charitable causes compared to liberals. Without fanfare and without desire of reward, they help the needy through personal volunteerism. That is Christian behavior.


Ok, good point. No wait, that's utter bollocks. The conservative agenda has systematically set up the economy over the last 50 years so that poor people are poorer and the middle class is disappearing. And then they bitch and whine when asked to contribute a few extra dollars.


>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:

ISSUE TWO: "If you conservatives are so Christian then why do you want to kill people all the time?"
The mistake neolibs make here is that they think that forgiving someone also means that you do not try to hold them accountable for thier actions. Conservatives don't do that. They try to follow Christ's example of forgiving others (loving them as fellow children of God) while at the same time following Christ's teachings of personal accountablity and accepting responsibility for actions. Just because you love someone as a fellow child of God does not mean that you have to just let them do awful things without trying to hold them responsible. The warped view of forgiveness held by a liberal says conservatives should just never hold anyone responsible for anything or they aren't "Christian". That's complete bull crap.
Does that help?


It helps to show how little attention conservatives pay to their own religion. So Christ was just kidding about "turn the other cheek"? You can hold someone accountable without killing them in cold blood. Yeah, a lot of the people on death row are evil fuckers. But they're confined. Killing them serves no purpose (other than to cost the state a fortune, where's your "small government" now?)

And you're being utterly disingenuous to pretend they're "cheering for justice". That is bullshit and you know it. They are cheering for vengence.

>> ^marbles:

I don't think speeding is necessarily a victimless crime. But prostitution is. Gambling is. What’s your point?


My point is victimhood isn't part of what constitutes a crime. My larger point is you're constantly using "is" when what you mean to say is "should be". A crime is a violation of law. You may believe that there shouldn't be laws against activities that don't have a particularized victim, but that doesn't mean prostitution isn't a crime, it means you think it shouldn't be a crime.

It's the difference between telling someone "I am the richest man in the world," and "I should be the richest man in the world."

>> ^marbles:
We are biologically programed to seek life. A newborn naturally suckles a nipple and instinctively holds his breath under water. These are not learned behaviors. We are entitled to life. Property is an extension of life. It’s the representation of the inherent right to control the fruits of one's own labor. Surely a prehistoric man believed he was entitled to control an uninhabited cave he found, an animal he killed or captured, or anything he built or created.

So anything you feel entitled to, you're entitled to?

Moreover, primitive man had lots of impulses -- rape women that were caught their fancy, steal from people too weak to stop them, kill people they didn't like, etc. Then you get to the more grand delusional impulses, like "I speak for the Sun god, so do as I say or he'll burn you for eternity after you die".

The feeling of entitlement to enclose and deny the use of portions of nature to others likely only came about after agriculture, and even then largely in the form tribal land ownership, not individual ownership.

>> ^marbles:
Ok, I’ll bite. If you deny 100% self-ownership (i.e. the philosophy of liberty as described in this video), then that leaves only 2 other options. Option 1: Universal and equal ownership of everyone else (i.e. Communism) Option 2: Partial Ownership of One Group by Another (e.g. Feudalism) Option 1 is unachievable and unsustainable. Option 2 is a system of rule by one class over another.

It seems to me that there's a lot more than 2 options. Over here in my way of seeing the world, property is just a social convention. I am my body, I don't merely own it.

Ownership is meaningless when there's no one else around. Ownership is meaningless if there's no societal impetus to adhere to the convention of property.

So on the score of "self-ownership", I mostly think your relationship to your body is qualitatively different from the relationship to inanimate objects you might acquire through labor or other economic interactions. Taking my property is stealing, taking my body is kidnapping. Damaging property isn't the same as violent assault on a person. Trespassing is not equivalent to rape.

>> ^NetRunner:
The only thing we're trying to do is get you to broaden your perspective a little. We're being polite about the fact that you seem to think us evil (or perhaps just stupid) for believing what we believe, and we're trying to help you understand a little bit of why we think the way we do, and see that maybe we're not monsters after all...>> ^marbles:
LOL@“We're being polite”
Why are you talking in “we” and not “I”? And if it makes you feel better by putting words in my mouth or thoughts in my head, then fine. But that's not why I dismissed your claim that this is only the “objectivist/libertarian definition of liberty”.
I think the crux of the problem is you like to label everything instead of just accepting it for what it is. Political issues and figures are full of delusions and deceptions. You do yourself a disservice by putting everything into one ideological box or another. I know plenty of “libertarians” that don’t have a problem with the patriot act and plenty of “progressives” that don’t have a problem with the cold-blooded murder of OBL. The political false dichotomy left/right survives because of people like you and, ironically, the guy warning about black and white thinking.


I used the pronoun "we" because I think that paragraph was descriptive of several of the people who engaged with you here, not just me.

I think you misunderstand my meaning when I labeled it as being "the objectivist/libertarian definition of liberty", I'm mostly just pointing out that the definition you're presenting is just one view of the concept, and not the defining conception of liberty. I'm not pigeonholing it and dismissing it, I'm just saying that the proper phrasing here is "This is what liberty is to me", not "This is what liberty is, and anyone who thinks otherwise is wrong".

My view of liberty is no less valid than yours, and if you assert that it is invalid without demonstrating even a rough working knowledge of what I (or even liberals generally) actually believe, then it's you who's pigeonholing and dismissing things, not me.

As far as "the guy warning about black and white thinking", I'm mostly just in favor of thinking. It seems to me that if you go around believing that there are some simple, arbitrary rules that govern all of human morality, and refuse to entertain any skeptical critique of the nature or validity of those rules, then that's not thinking.

>> ^NetRunner:
Violating the speed limit is a crime. There's no victim.I don't think speeding is necessarily a victimless crime. But prostitution is. Gambling is. What’s your point?
>> ^NetRunner:
I'm a human, and I have a mind. I have no earthly idea what you think natural rights are, or why I should care about them.

I have my own reasons for what I believe, and how I approach the concept of rights, and it's clearly different from yours. How can that be possible, if "natural rights" are wired into us?We are biologically programed to seek life. A newborn naturally suckles a nipple and instinctively holds his breath under water. These are not learned behaviors. We are entitled to life. Property is an extension of life. It’s the representation of the inherent right to control the fruits of one's own labor. Surely a prehistoric man believed he was entitled to control an uninhabited cave he found, an animal he killed or captured, or anything he built or created.
>> ^NetRunner:

This is really the crux of the dispute in all your myriad conversations on this video. You seem to think anyone who asks you to think about what you're saying is just trying to trick you somehow.Ok, I’ll bite. If you deny 100% self-ownership (i.e. the philosophy of liberty as described in this video), then that leaves only 2 other options. Option 1: Universal and equal ownership of everyone else (i.e. Communism) Option 2: Partial Ownership of One Group by Another (e.g. Feudalism) Option 1 is unachievable and unsustainable. Option 2 is a system of rule by one class over another.
>> ^NetRunner:
The only thing we're trying to do is get you to broaden your perspective a little. We're being polite about the fact that you seem to think us evil (or perhaps just stupid) for believing what we believe, and we're trying to help you understand a little bit of why we think the way we do, and see that maybe we're not monsters after all...LOL@“We're being polite”

Why are you talking in “we” and not “I”? And if it makes you feel better by putting words in my mouth or thoughts in my head, then fine. But that's not why I dismissed your claim that this is only the “objectivist/libertarian definition of liberty”.
I think the crux of the problem is you like to label everything instead of just accepting it for what it is. Political issues and figures are full of delusions and deceptions. You do yourself a disservice by putting everything into one ideological box or another. I know plenty of “libertarians” that don’t have a problem with the patriot act and plenty of “progressives” that don’t have a problem with the cold-blooded murder of OBL. The political false dichotomy left/right survives because of people like you and, ironically, the guy warning about black and white thinking.

Woke up at 4 am today to the news that atleast 80 young people where shot dead on Utøya. The guy was walking around on an island with 600 kids and young people in tents aged 15-25 in a police uniform. One girl on the radio minutes ago : "I looked out the window and saw a man who was shooting at girls lying on the ground.." Apparantly he used his policeuniform to maximize the killing, frightened kids who where hiding from the gunman, was lured out by the "policeman" and then excecuted in cold blood.

This was one sick fuck.

Ah, the classic case of correlation versus causation.

In the U.S., between 1974 and 2004, 52.2% of all homicides were committed by those who listed their race as black, despite blacks accounting for 12.6% of the population (according to the 2010 census).

This of course will lead most racists to conclude that black people are inherently violent or cold-blooded, etc. Nevermind the socio-economic status of the majority of black Americans (almost a quarter of them live on wages below the poverty line, much higher rates of unemployment, etc.) which is a much more likely to be a reason for the crime statistics. Nevermind the justice system that has a much higher conviction rate for black offenders (probably also tied to the socio-economic status since if you can't afford a private lawyer you're going to get stuck with an over-worked and underpaid public defender).

It seems to me much more likely that these attacks are the result of immigrants who are coming from countries (Iraq, Somalia, and Pakistan seem to be where most of the rapists have come from) where they were likely already successful predators due to a lack of law enforcement and crumbling social structures. Old habits die hard. They move to Oslo and continue their predatory ways.

But could Islam really be the cause of this? Let's look at another statistic:

In Oslo, there are approximately 163,000 Muslims. Let's be generous and assume that only a quarter of these are adult males (40705) and the rest are women and children. Let's also be generous and assume that for every rape reported in Oslo, 10 rapes go unreported due to fear or shame (86 reported rapes x 10 unreported = 860 rapes). Let's further be completely unrealistic and assume each rape is the result of an individual offender (no repeat offenders or serial rapists). So now we have...

860 rapists / 40705 adult male population = 2.1% of the population

I've been hugely generous with these numbers, but I think you can see that this particular statistic does not really implicate Islam as a cause of the rapes. Wouldn't we expect to see a much higher percentage of the male population rampaging through Oslo if Islam was truly the cause of this behavior?

I'm not implying Islamic attitudes towards women don't contribute to the behavior of those who commit these crimes. But it seems hard to believe Islam is somehow responsible for these crimes any more than Christianity is responsible for pedophile priests (though the Catholic Church is certainly responsible for covering the abuses up).

He just murdered that guy in cold blood. The officer charged the guy as he had his back turned, gave him NO time to react, then shot him. What the fuck?

From the article: "A jury would be compelled to find Officer Birk not guilty".

Umm, a jury of psychopaths maybe. I seriously can't believe what I just saw and the subsequent reaction from the police department. Everyone should be absolutely outraged by this.

I don't agree with some of them but, that's what makes this country great

Hey now, don't go lumping me in with all you war mongers down there, I'm a peace loving Canadian.

As to our disagreeing it seems our main disagreement is simply over guessing the crowd's motivation. I think that's a pretty small and ambiguous point, with the Tea Partiers and birthers as numerous as they are maybe you have a better read on your countrymen than I do. In my experience though students like those at Penn State tend more toward cheering for the represented victory than for revenge and bloodlust.

I think part of my outspokenness on the issue is due to the extreme left stance of many of my own countrymen. The deputy leader of our opposition was wanting a full analysis of the incident with Osama to determine if it was 'self-defense' or a cold blooded killing .

Tags for this video have been changed from 'python, springbok, eating, mechanics' to 'Python, deer, David Attenborough, life in cold blood, eating, eating mechanism, cold' - edited by BoneRemake

@NetRunner, of course I agree unions should exist. I agree that all of us, the good and the bad, have a right to do what they will as long as they don't hurt others or steal from them. I do think unions tend to be protectionists, which makes me dubious of them. Don't mistake my regard for unions, or any group for that matter, to mean I'd be in favor of legislating them out of existence.

I feel I have to be extra clear with you.

In terms of politics, this translates into social justice. Not because I have any particular desire to compel people to do things they don't want to, but to at least put forward the notion that it's as wrong to let a homeless man starve as it is to kill someone in cold blood, and that if government can do things to stop the latter, it should also do things to stop the former.

I agree we have a moral duty as humans to take care of one another. I do believe that. But I think it's a choice and something that can and should be achieved through being persuasive not violent. If you let a man starve in captivity (i.e., prison) or kept him against his will from attaining food, then that would be violent. But I don't see that happening very often. And I don't know of any cases where anyone has left a man to starve who asked for help. There are plenty of charities that offer meals at soup kitchens. I'm not sure what brought this up.

>> ^blankfist:

@NetRunner, you have to understand also, I'm completely in favor of people having living wages and benefits. I think too often businesses take advantage of their workers. So we're in agreement. We're just not in agreement how we arrive there.

That is true about almost every argument you and I have.

>> ^blankfist:
Unfortunately with the amount of protectionism currently in place so many industries are forcing entrepreneurs out by making it difficult to compete against those companies already rooted in the industry (strict regulations, licensing, permits, taxes, and so on), and as a result competing is too expensive so the number of workers go up while the number of job creators goes down. Soon we'll all be working for Corporations.
That's what people like me want to stop. We won't change this trajectory by going down the same path we've been going down for the last hundred years. We have to face the facts that politicians are more willing to give attention to those with deep pockets than those with barely two nickels to rub together.

I agree with all of that.

>> ^blankfist:
The rich will always prevail within a human government, and no amount of legislation will change that. It hasn't in the past, and it won't in the future.

I'm not so sure they'll always prevail. We'll never have a perfectly egalitarian society, where no man ever rises above another, and I don't think we should. But monarchy and oligarchy should be able to be killed off, or at least sent into long periods of remission. To quote that guy who ran for President in 2008, and then disappeared, no one can stop millions of people calling for change. Just ask Ben Ali, and Hosni Mubarak, maybe even King George III.

My cure for creeping oligarchism is to push for changes in social norms to promote egalitarianism. I want people to realize that nobody's intrinsically superior or inferior to anyone else, that they are their brother's keeper, that we're all in this life together, we're only really different on the outside, etc., etc., etc.

I push for increased deference to basic human dignity and fairness for everyone. When I think I can get away with it, I say we should all love one another, and make sure to forgive people as often as possible.

In terms of politics, this translates into social justice. Not because I have any particular desire to compel people to do things they don't want to, but to at least put forward the notion that it's as wrong to let a homeless man starve as it is to kill someone in cold blood, and that if government can do things to stop the latter, it should also do things to stop the former.

If people would treat people who act purely on self-interest as being morally wrong instead of morally neutral (or even morally virtuous!), then things, big things, would change.

Anyways, I agree with you on protectionism being bad, and I agree all your examples are things that shouldn't be happening. I still don't think eliminating unions does anyone any kind of good, and I think it's antithetical to both of our belief systems, for the reasons I said.

That's cold blooded

>> ^dannym3141:

Tough question though.
If "God" appeared to you in such a way as you knew it WAS "God", an omniscient and omnipresent almighty unanswerable power, and you KNEW that you weren't imagining or hallucinating, would you kill your child if that "God" told you to?
Could be an ultimate test of faith, could be an ultimate test of morality.


Test of morality. I suppose you could say faith if you wanted to present the idea of faith that "god" knows what he's doing, but then I would have a lot more questions about why *I* had to be the one doing the killing when a supposedly omnipotent being could just have him keel over. No moral person should ever obey an order to murder a child in cold blood no matter who's authority it was on. If this supposed authority wants it done so badly they can bloody well do it themselves with everything in my power standing in their way.

I thought that too, also, if they were reptiles, they would be cold blooded and therefore could not live underground as they so obviously do... poorly researched documentary... poor

>> ^direpickle:

This said that graboids are 1) reptiles and 2) invertebrates. These are mutually exclusive, and I don't think either one of them are true of the graboid. So much misinformation. Could get you killed.

Here is the translated lyrics:

The All Risks Agency, it’s really the last chance at the last moment,
the bad tricks of the thugs, the agency settle their cash,
if the injustice waits for you, the All risks agency wait for it at the corner.
for the victim at bay, all of a sudden, it will appear.
in the danger, these kings of cold-blood
these travellers without a visa
have delivered the good fight.

The All Risks Agency, it’s really the last chance of the moment.
The All Risks Agency, it’s really the last chance of the moment.

>> ^BreaksTheEarth:
So this is what a cold-blooded murder looks like.


No, not really.