No joke. First, Christan politicians of various denominations from various churches holding office in a secular country with a godless constitution is vastly different than when the church controlled king and country all over the western world. Our founding fathers saw to that. The church's power has been in decline for centuries thanks to luminaries like Paine, Franklin and Jefferson. The church has never regained anything like the power it held for the centuries before "the Age of Enlightenment". Source: any world history book. Second, we don't have any idea how many of today's politicians are atheist/agnostic or simple deists because in most places saying so is a sure fire way not to get elected. They wouldn't dare say if they were, but seeing as how most politicians receive a higher education and how higher education leads to a higher rate of atheism, I'd wager the rate of atheist politicians is higher than in the general population. Third, I never said there wasn't a Christian majority in the US. To begin with, I was speaking about the decline of the church's power globally. I shouldn't have to tell you the world has more countries than the United States. With the global economy this distinction (you are too inept to make) is more important now than ever.

The only one of us who should be ashamed is the one with absolutely no sense of perspective. The one who will dismiss the horrors of Islamic fundamentalism because "Christians do bad stuff too!!! WAAAA!" To be clear, the one who should be ashamed will be you, NewtBOY.

I'm inclined to think that the force happens simply from the way the card is chosen - the riffle takes so little time, and is sprung on the mark, that he's pretty much forced to say 'Stop' at what can perceived to be the right point. Awkward if he declines when asked to confirm, though...

Nobody can deny that the current situation made the life of that lady and her children infinitely more complicated, and it will make it more miserable in the future.

However, what about all the Chavs? No, I'm not being sarcastic. What about all the people whose life can hardly become more miserable, because it's been miserable all along with no hope for improvement? Life is shit for a lot of people, and it has been for a long time.

What were their options in this referendum?

Remain told them that their quality of living would decline in case of a Brexit, and that it would decline more slowly if they remain part of the EU. In short, they offered them fuck all. Any notion of reforming the EU from within to make it care about the proletariat is an illusion, and a costly one if you look at either Greece or the recessionary EU in general.

So they went with the demagogues, who spewed such outrageous lies that even Goebbels would be ashamed. But they made an offer nonetheless.

All this talk about stock prices or the exchange value of the Pound is meaningless dribble if you live in places like Nuneaton. How is telling them all to sod off an irrational decision if all they did for decades was shit on you?

So yeah, I fucking hate the anti-immigration part of the discussion. It's despicable. But the patronising reactions from not just the elites but also large swaths of the Remain campaign gives me assteroids.

The casual way they discuss how to ignore or reverse the result of the referendum is a sign of why it went this way in the first place. They look down on the decision made by "those people". It makes no sense to them, so it has to be irrational. Silly plebs are not informed enough to make smart decisions, let's educate them. Or better yet, let's make the decisions for them.

It just oozes condescension. And it breeds contempt.

To end on a personal note: how the German government now appears to be the moderating factor on the EU side is beyond fucked up, given how they were the ones to piss on the plebs the most with their anal fixation on austerity. You really cannot make this shit up...

Edit:
Here's one for sovereignty: just last night, Jean-Claude Juncker said that the European Commission doesn't want national parliaments to vote on CETA. What's the point of democracy then?

The problem is the GOP as constructed is already the minority party at least nationally. Since 1992, they've won the popular vote once in presidential races. Demographics favor voting blocs that track for Democrats. If the GOP splits into a moderate party and Tea Party, that is the effective end of the GOP, and the Tea Party would also be politically castrated. The people who built the Tea Party understood that the way to gain influence was as an insurrection within the GOP, not as a third party. For the Tea Party, it was a smart move. They've gained massive influence nationally compared to their numbers. But it is a cancer to the Republican Party that they've proven they're completely unable to control.

Every single problem or mistake you've listed is all due to one common thread - there are too many supporters of the GOP that are too radical. Why did McCain pick Palin? He was too moderate for the base, so he needed to up his conservative street creds, and he needed a minority splash to combat Obama being black. Combine those two, and you can't get Olympia Snow or Susan Collins, but you could get to either of them if you drop the "needs to be hard right conservative". Why did McCain move to the right in the first place? The base demanded it.

Why can't Obama do anything right according to no one in the GOP pretty much? Base is too rabid and demands it. Why did Romney shift to the right? Base.

You can blame the party for catering to the extreme too much, but the problem is the extreme makes up so much of what they have for support, they have no choice. Tea Party organizers astutely realized that, radicalized their supporters to threaten to not turn out for moderate candidates, and even to primary challenge even guys like Eric Cantor for compromising too much.

I mean this sincerely - the GOP party leadership is not at fault. Blame the original Tea Party organizers. Blame Tea Party candidates. Blame the media environment for increasingly favoring more radical candidates by creating partisan bubbles to carefully dissimenate information that suites partisan goals. Blame an electorate too stupid and/or apathetic to understand that neither conservative nor liberal ideology solves every problem (which is so painfully obvious that I can prove that in about 5 minutes), so you need to learn about each issue, and use those ideologies to form options, and then choose the one that's more likely to work, regardless of its ideological foundation. Yeah, that actually takes work and critical thinking, but you'll actually solve problems!

But that ain't happening, so it's time to sit back and watch the slow decline of the GOP as it eats itself alive, and Democrats will increasingly win because we'll keep being presented more with GOP candidates a majority of candidates can't stomach, and hope like heck the Democrats nominate at least someone semi-competent for office, because that's pretty much all we got.

I couldn't stomach voting for a single GOP nominee for president since George Bush, Sr. It's gotten worse because I couldn't stomach my choice for VA governor last year either. I had to choose between a batsh1t insane Cuccinelli or political sleeze in McAulliffe, and it was both the fastest choice to make for me, yet I was the least happy about having to make it for McAulliffe.

And just when I thought you couldn't get much lower from the GOP, they're on the doorstep of nominating Trump or Cruz for president of the entire country.

The economy has of course added jobs under Obama but you really can't talk about the unemployment rate (% unemployed of those actively looking for work) without factoring in the participation rate (% of in the labor force working or looking for work out of the population) which has been dropping since 2000 in the US.

This is not explained by baby boom retirees as even if you take a narrow 25-54 measure you see the same decline. China's acceptance into the WTO ('95) is often talked about as a turning point as it was in some ways an abrupt green light to many companies that opened up a huge labor pool and a led to an influx of outsourcing. I would argue the US government among many others has done a poor job of retraining manufacturing workers and financially supporting them to be mobile to find work elsewhere.

https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/LNS11300060

This is precisely why a large part of me actually wants Trump to win.

We're way too complacent. There has been a slow, steady, gradual decline that has lulled us into apathy -- even though the state of politics and "democracy" in the US (and arguably globally as a result) is absolutely pathetic and appalling at this point.

It is looking more and more likely that the general election will be Trump vs Clinton.

First of all, that alone demonstrates just how fucked we are. Our final two choices are likely to be the two people with the highest negative opinion numbers out of all the candidates. The cream didn't rise to the top, and instead the two biggest turds managed to avoid being flushed. South Park seems oddly prophetic; we have really ended up with turd sandwich vs. giant douche. I just can't tell which is which.

Second, I notice that a LOT of people (including "establishment" Republicans) are scared shitless by the prospect of a Trump presidency. In a Trump vs Clinton election, they say that they would easily prefer to vote for Clinton -- perhaps couched with the "lesser of two evils" descriptor, but still vote for Clinton.

I agree with the idea that Clinton is the lesser of those two evils. But that, in combination with our current level of apathy, makes me MORE afraid of a Clinton presidency than a Trump one. Clinton is a slick, dirty politician. People think they are going to dodge the Trump bullet by voting for her, but she is the archetype of what got us into this situation. She tells people only what she thinks they want to hear, while doing exactly what her donors (megacorporations) want her to do whenever the camera isn't on. A Clinton presidency will keep the masses just placated enough to NOT boil over.

Meanwhile, Trump seems like enough of a perfect storm that he could actually screw things up bad enough to make the masses stand up and take notice. Maybe that kind of slap in the face is what we need.

Clinton presidency: "Fuck it."
Trump presidency: "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not gonna take it anymore!"


In a hypothetical scenario where the general election was Trump vs Sanders, it would be much harder for me to be "pro" Trump. Because Sanders seems like maybe he's got the right mindset to change things for the better the *right* way. On the other hand, I kinda felt the same way about Obama. So, even in a Trump vs Sanders scenario, a big part of me would be "hoping" for Trump to win. Because *something* has got to snap us out of our apathy.

Guess Trump will be getting some 1400 more supporters.

America in decline.

Ya, I never understood why, if they won't eat meat, why they work so hard to make it look, taste, and smell like meat.

A store was serving non-meat CRAB samples. boasting "that there was no meat in the crab" -- and I declined the offered samples saying, "Then what's the point?"

I think it's just easier to simplify an argument when it's part of another society. Even George Saliba criticizes western civ by simplifying Copernicus, Galileo, and others into monopolizing crooks; something he warns his own, "morally just" Islamic society against.

Both Neil and George are railing against each other's society whIle acknowledging a truth.

Always good to hear both sides, and one from an actual historian, but honestly, none of this is news. Any time someone says "this" is why this happened, it's safe to call bullshit until you've seen a multitude of angles (deduction). It's like debating the multitude of reasons for the fall of Rome or the start of WWI. Nothing in history truly repeats itself because it's so convoluted there's rarely a single cause for rises and declines. It's just easy to find a historical pattern and then hold onto it as THE pattern of history and exclude things that are contrary.

Mongols have good bbq... Koreans have good bbq... Americans have good bbq... What does it all mean?!?!?!

@shang
@bobknight33

How do you propose they stop masses of people, the vast majority of which are clearly economic, social or political refugees from crossing? Build a fence like Trump says?

I would have thought living in the US with experience of Mexican undocumented migrants you'd have figured out that never works.

The reality is Europe, moreso than the US (because Mexico is relatively far more stable than the Middle East) will end up with refugees whether they like it or not.

The only question is whether you (1) manage than transition and benefit from the surge of young workers by training them to supplement the declining workforce and support the pensions of the bulging aged population to come or (2) some kind of loony comes to power and decides to stage endless raids for illegals turning Europe into some kind of authoritarian police state where every night you wonder if someone will mis-report you for harboring illegals and you'll be in store for a 3am SWAT raid.

If your answer to that is "no they're illegal", "I ain't paying for no training or educashionnnnn" then you sir, are unable to face reality and make the best choice of an imperfect situation.

"The decline in work has particularly affected those under age 29, and the less-educated, who are the most likely to be in competition with immigrants. A study by the economist George J. Borjas and others found that immigration reduces the employment of less-educated black men. Another study came to the same conclusion. A recent analysis by Federal Reserve economist Christopher Smith (2012) found that immigration reduces the employment of U.S. teenagers."

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/01/06/do-immigrants-take-jobs-from-american-born-workers/unskilled-workers-lose-out-to-immigrants

Update on the story.
https://medium.com/@kellyholmes/what-those-silly-selfie-girls-taught-me-a6085d9f1c20
Seems there was a contest to tweet selfies as part of a contest at the stadium, which the girls then participated in, doing what was asked of them. Fox and the Diamondbacks apologized for "shaming" the girls and offered free tickets which they declined, instead wanting the tickets to go to families of victims of abuse.

See, I agreed with everything you said up until that last statement (that I quoted below).

All organized religions brutally and mindlessly suppress individual freedom. But lately the target de jour seems to be Islam. People like Sam Harris got off track when they forgot that the real target is the dismantling of all organized religion and focused almost exclusively on denouncing Islam--usually with obnoxious overgeneralizations and a complete lack of understanding how diverse Islam actually is.

And that's the major problem with the whole argument Dawkins and Maher are proposing (i.e. that you can't criticize Islam anymore). You can't criticise Christianity or Judaism or any other major religion without hugely overgeneralizing, either. Instead you need to target specific denominations within specific communities and how they practice the religion.

For example, are you upset about how "Christianity" has helped spread AIDS or protected pedophiles? Well then really you're really looking to criticize the Catholic church and it's stance on contraception and handling illegal activities within the church, not Christianity as a whole.

Upset with how gay people are viewed? Again, you're probably not looking to criticize the Lutherans, Presbyterians, and many other Christian denominations who have reformed in recent times to be accepting of LGBT members and clergy. It's not a Christianity problem so much as it is a problem of how specific people in specific places for specific cultural reasons interpret the texts of their religion.

Basically, I don't think it is a problem if people want to criticize how Islam is practiced in a specific context (say, for example, the use of female genital mutilation in some subsets of Islam in Africa). But I do think it is a problem when the speaker is simply set on demonizing the religion as whole rather than making a rational argument, for example overgeneralizing female gential mutilation (which actually pre-dates Islam and was incorporated into it later after Islam's rise of influence in the region) as an example of why Islam is evil.

Certainly people have the legal right to make such an argument (in the U.S. at least). However, I'm guessing most universities don't want to come across as looking in support of such ill-structured arguments that are more akin to tabloid magazine hit pieces than an actual intellectual argument which is grounded in facts and reason.

All that said, I have no inside information about the real administrative reasons why certain speakers have been declined/uninvited at specific college campuses.

It's a discussion we've been having in this country for as long as I can remember and was one of the prime arguments made for a vast set of reforms a decade ago. And I still don't buy it.

At the very basic level, the argument is that a declining percentage of working age people have to pay for an increasing number of pensions. But that's only half the story. The working age population has to generate enough output to sustain not just themselves and retirees, but also children, the unemployed, the sick, anyone not working. A shrinking population means less children, and most importantly less unemployed. Increases in productivity are more than enough to compensate for that, no need to increase birth rates or immigration.

Germany is regularly paraded around as a country in dire need of immigration, given our low birth rate. Even if we ignore for a minute that any 50 year population forecast of the past has been invalidated after maybe 5 years, the "worst" they could conjure up was a decline in working age population of 34% by the year 2060. So what? That's 0.8% a year. And since it's based on a population decline of 20% over the same time, it's an annual drop of 0.2%. That's their worst case scenario, and it's statistical noise.

We've had a massive increase in average age over the last century as well as two world wars and our system managed just fine. And an annual drop of 0.2% is supposed to bring it to its knees? Pah.

Now, I'm all in favour of immigration, primarily to spice things up and prevent our society from becoming too homogeneous. But our pension system needs neither mass immigration nor an increased birth rate. What it needs is for politicians to stop funneling funds from our "PAYGO" system towards their buddies in the private sector. Current income = current payments, public system. Everything else is too volatile and susceptible to the Vampire Squids on Wall Street.

As I said before, the US is a unique nation. We grant our people rights that no other nation before or since would consider. It has worked for us so far and I for one would not trade these rights to live in any other country.

I don't think we will need to rebel against our government or that the world is going to come to an end tomorrow. I do think that having an armed citizenry does prepare us for any situation and also does provide another check and balance for our government, should it ever try to deprive us of our freedom.

In any case, as screwed up as we may be, we are still the shining light. Even if we are Rome in decline, we are still Rome until another country is willing to step up to the plate. People still flock to us for the freedoms and chances that they can't get anywhere else in the world.