When I was an agnostic I was resigned to die a meaningless death. That is all the hope this view of the world offers; one day you will die and it won't matter. You will be gone and after a certain amount of time no one will even remember you were here.

Thank God for Jesus Christ, who died for our sins and rose from the dead on the third day. Death is a punishment for sin, it is not something we need to accept as the natural order of things. Jesus Christ defeated death and by repenting of our sins and putting our faith and trust in Him as Lord and Savior, we can be forgiven of our sins and have everlasting life.

Death is not the end and we will all one day stand in front of God and account for our lives. Your choice is to either pay for your own sins or to let Jesus pay for them for you. Both choices are eternally significant.

I knew eco-friendly power use was against the natural order!!!

I would say this is the natural order...even in socialistic countries this is how government operates.

He certainly incorporates electro. I don't see any real jazz or swing in their style though.

Besides, I thought the natural order of things was for American black people to invent things which are promptly bitten by European white people and subsequently marketed back across the pond as the next European invasion or whatever. Seems to me Europeans haven't invented new style since Beethoven.

Natural order is decentralized, emergent, and unregulated.

natural order restored! I actually feel much better after this vid since his last comment about marriage equality...

Just as in the old model, the unknown band down the road wouldn't have gotten signed.

The concept of business has been around just long enough (longer than anyone alive) that people take it for granted. A sense of entitlement has arisen where we have somehow gotten the idea that business is the natural order of things. Almost like a machine where you put your hard work in on one end, and cold hard cash comes out the other end - and if it doesn't, then it must be somebody else's fault.

This is no more apparent than in the publishing industries. For a couple of generations they fell into a business model that worked so well for them - the ability to reproduce and control the supply of creative works on a physical medium; and be able to stick a large margin on it, enabled by marketing drives - that they begun to believe that being paid for somebody's creativity is the normal way of things. How they have forgotten that the service they provided was in an absolute sense, extremely new and so fundamentally reliant on a handful of fleeting technologies that are neither natural or fundamental to the works that they published.

Now it is normal to listen and to share music and other media, in the same way that it wasn't 20 years ago. The same way that 20 years ago it was possible to control the supply of music on a magnetic tape or plastic disc in the same way that it wasn't 50 years before that.

The talent, skill, experience and hard work required to create things that other people find interesting or entertaining is no less appreciated now than it ever was; but the talent, skill, experience and hard work required to then turn that into a viable business is a completely separate thing that should not be taken for granted, and one must adapt to the way things are now; not the way they used to be, in order to be successful.

If you are a creative person and you find a way to make a living doing what you love best then you should be grateful for having that chance. If you can't stand the idea of people appreciating your work without paying you - then find something else to do.

Hey detheter.." when an American tried to use an isolated case in Canada to justify opposition to gun regulations in the US"

Not true. Regulation of the insanity is all. See, here in America the current atmosphere of paranoia and mistrust of government was created not by and for any people but the ones running the entire planet into the shitter.
The worst city in the country(the one the President called home) from the worst state for crime (including police, whose collusion with criminals' in tomes) has the most restrictive gun laws. Television, the vilest of offenders offers-up pharmaceuticals, bobble-heads re-writing the English language and grooms fleshapoids for agendas whose brains are putty after years of programming.

Bottom-line for me nutters-all, would be this simple fact:
The police, military, active reserves, prison guards, private security forces, Nato troops, Swat teams, etc., all have weapons more capable of wreaking havoc on civilians than what civilians may already own or purchase therefore, Shouldn't civilians be so armed, under mandate of the natural order of life and freewill should they chose to do so, for what ever the reason as long as they are responsible for the same and ALSO responsible for taking part in the process that determines the equity of the laws governing their ownership and usage?

For the U.S., it will come eventually, as it will to the entire planet. Police, security, controlled, ordered, and sanctioned by mandate not vote.
Fascism plain and simple.
Radical Democracy, corporate police state, I don't care for either option thank you, and our shit would work just fine if the cunts were toppled and the script adjusted in favor of sanity over developmental disability and cushy slavery. Fuck That.

Now read Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin and count how many times the word the word "nigger" is used and think about the context of what you are reading before you recoil from seeing letters arranged on pages that make you feel....uncomfortable.

Other suggested reading:
http://www.tommyduggan.com/teacher.html

Oh, and Joseph Conrad "NIgger of the Narcissus" ??...Here's a moronic move by the publisher re-issuing the book in 2009(about the time when all this N-Word nonsense started??) written in 1897, the new printing calls it, "The N-Word of the Narcissus"
in a dull and vapid move to not hurt anyone's wittle feeewings when gazing at it on the shelf??! WTF?! Censorship of an issue someone has with semantics and etymology, etc....ludicrous.

Racist books should be read to kids to school them on HISTORY as well as guide them in a path to understanding the species and the social cauldron we live in now. You can't help the old fuckers, they're gonna have to work it out on their own...But please, teaching your children to reference a word by it's first letter?? Someone hand me that airplane bag, still got a few hours left on the flight.

I lapse into this diatribe for your benefit and edification EDB, not trying to be mean-I believe the recent fervor over Django Unchained got me back on the subject, as well as the inappropriate title of this offering.

I also believe that it is part of the natural order of the species to survive, and to avail oneself of all the tools necessary to do so during one's tenure here should be a no-brainer to modern man with an I.Q. of 90 or above, hence my stance on being able to bear arms with as many bullets as needed to accomplish the task by birthright-Why should only cunts have guns, eh? Makes no sense.

Hope you understand my stance on guns now...I ain't no ya-hoo and I know my way around all the guns I own and the ones I've had a chance to get my hands on after about 50 rounds with an unfamiliar handgun?? Holes in holes at 10 yards, all day long!

Oh and BTW, I called that phone number on this advert. "No Longer in Service"

Is this freal??

Great, these stupid humans have disturbed the natural order. When the last whale dies at the hands/flippers/fuzzy appendages of the genocidal otter horde we'll have only ourselves to blame.

>> ^VoodooV:

Or are you suggesting that the left just don't give a shit and say fuck'em if they don't be more reasonable, walk away from the negotiating table and commit to a 2nd American Civil War?

Mostly I'm saying the other side has already walked away from the table.

I don't really think they've quite committed to a full-on armed conflict yet, but I really feel like it's just a matter of time.
>> ^VoodooV:
When you step back and realize that all sides think the same thing about the other side, you start to realize just how absurd this shit is and that BOTH SIDES ARE FUCKED UP!!!! If you can't at least be aware of that absurdity...then we're doomed.


But we're not in some sort of mirror-image situation. When examining the policy proposals of Republicans, I generally think "bad policy that will make things get worse over time". Their view of us on the other hand is almost always some apocalyptic nonsense like "it will be the end of freedom," and we've even seen them talk about universal healthcare as if it'll be genocide.

I don't really think I (or the left generally) have all the right answers, or that our way of dealing with issues is the only way to do things. The right on the other hand is certain that their way isn't just the best way, it's the only morally acceptable way for things to be, and they are outraged, OUTRAGED that anyone thinks differently. They see their political preferences not as a mere point of view, but as if they are the natural order of things, and that people who want to do things differently are either a) fools who don't understand how the world works, or b) evil people trying to escape the consequences of their actions.

Mostly these days I think of conservatives as being in one giant cult.

Take a look at this, from Wikipedia's entry on cults:

Studies have identified a number of key steps in coercive persuasion:

• People are put in physical or emotionally distressing situations;
  
• Their problems are reduced to one simple explanation, which is repeatedly emphasized;
  
• They receive what seems to be unconditional love, acceptance, and attention from a charismatic leader or group;
  
• They get a new identity based on the group;
  
• They are subject to entrapment (isolation from friends, relatives and the mainstream culture) and their access to information is severely controlled.

People who have decided "both sides" are exactly the same will say "but the left is a cult too!" But that flies in the face of reality. What's the "one simple explanation" for everything that liberals have, and always repeat? Do they go around rejecting scientific studies, or economic statistics that don't come from an explicitly liberal source? Hell, is there any sort of strong sense of identity liberals have? Do we give unconditional acceptance to other liberals (hint: watch Cenk Uygur)?

I don't know how we get the right to change their ways, but we won't do it by pretending that the left can fix it by just changing their own behavior.

@dag @Fletch @LarsaruS

I think you're all forgetting that Hitler was a master of propaganda, and those statements affirming Christianity were just that. Hitler used a facade of piousness to cement his power with a predominantly Christian populace. Feel free to disagree, but then you have to deal with statements which he made to party loyalists, like these:

"National Socialism and religion cannot exist together....
"The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was the coming of Christianity. Bolshevism is Christianity's illegitimate child. Both are inventions of the Jew. The deliberate lie in the matter of religion was introduced into the world by Christianity....
"Let it not be said that Christianity brought man the life of the soul, for that evolution was in the natural order of things." (p 6 & 7)

Night of July 11-12th 1941

"Christianity is a rebellion against natural law, a protest against nature. Taken to its logical extreme, Christianity would mean the systematic cultivation of the human failure." (p 43)

October 10th 1941

"The reason why the ancient world was so pure, light and serene was that it knew nothing of the two great scourges: the pox and Christianity."

19th October, 1941, night

Doesn't seem like such a warrior for christ now, does he? The cult of personality that fletch is talking about just makes my point. When man tries to get rid of God, he just replaces God with himself. Human beings have the natural desire to worship, whether it is something like money, or power, or celebrity, or themselves, everyone who doesn't know the true God has at least one idol in their life they pay homage too.

To say there is no connection between atheism and communism is absurd. Atheism was at the roots of it, and that according to the communists themselves:

"Atheism is the natural and inseparable part of Communism"

"Our program necessarily includes the propaganda of atheism"

Lenin

“With disdain I will throw my gauntlet full in the fact of the world and see the collapse of this pygmy giant. Then will I wander god-like and victorious through the ruins of the world. And giving my words an active force, I will feel equal to the Creator.”

Karl Marx

“The first requisite for the happiness of the people is the abolition of religion”

Karl Marx

So you see there is a connection between atheism and the atheistic regimes that committed uncounted atrocities. Fletch, you're even denial about the definition of atheism, which is the denial of any deity according to the dictionary. A famous quote says that "without God everything is permissable". And that is the logical connection, that a man unrestrained by any thought of ultimate accountability can justify any kind of moral action to himself. Consider this quote from Joel Marks, the professor of philosophy at the University of New Haven

“This philosopher has been laboring under an unexamined assumption, namely that there is such a thing as right and wrong. I now believe there isn’t…The long and short of it is that I became convinced that atheism implies amorality; and since I am an atheist, I must therefore embrace amorality…I experienced my shocking epiphany that religious fundamentalists are correct; without God there is no morality. But they are incorrect, I still believe, about there being a God. Hence, I believe, there is no morality.

Even though words like “sinful” and “evil” come naturally to the tongue as say a description of child molesting. They do not describe any actual properties of anything. There are no literal sins in the world because there is no literal God…nothing is literally right or wrong because there is no Morality"

Please note, I am not saying atheists cannot be moral; I am simply saying that an amoral viewpoint can be a causal factor in committing atrocities, just as much as any zealout. Psychopaths suppress what they know is right and wrong, and dictators ordain it.

It goes back to my original point. It is human nature that is the problem, the corruption of which I attribute to sin. A moral person will be moral in every circumstance, whereas an immoral person will be immoral in every circumstance. You cannot chop it up to specific beliefs of methodologies..they only diagnose the symptom and not the cause.

A man can believe one thing, and be tolerant of others... as well as have faith that people, if given the choice, will eventually do the right thing... even if though that is different for everyone, the most fit and fair system has a chance to emerge




..." the problem that we have with dealing with this subject is we see people as groups, as they belong to certain groups and that they derive their rights as belonging to groups. We don't get our rights because we're gays or women or minorities. We get our rights from our Creator as individuals. So every individual should be treated the same way. So if there is homosexual behavior in the military that is disruptive, it should be dealt with. But if there's heterosexual behavior that is disruptive, it should be dealt with. So it isn't the issue of homosexuality. It's the concept and the understanding of individual rights. If we understood that, we would not be dealing with this very important problem." - Ron Paul



-------------------- So how does this translate to the issues:

Defense of Marriage Act: allows a state to decline to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states or countries.

"“The Defense of Marriage Act was enacted in 1996 to stop Big Government in Washington from re-defining marriage and forcing its definition on the States,” Rep. Paul said last week in a statement. “Like the majority of Iowans, I believe that marriage is between one man and one woman and must be protected.”

[[ SEE, there is his OPINION and PERSONAL BELIEFS ]]

“I supported the Defense of Marriage Act, which used Congress’ constitutional authority to define what other states have to recognize under the Full Faith and Credit Clause, to ensure that no state would be forced to recognize a same sex marriage license issued in another state,” he added. “I have also cosponsored the Marriage Protection Act, which would remove challenges to the Defense of Marriage Act from the jurisdiction of the federal courts.”"

He's not saying they SHOULD. He's saying the people have a right to choose. Not that they then have a DUTY to vote as he would. He wants people to decide, because he believes that marriage should ultimately not involve government

I see how his logic may appear convoluted, but it is not when taken to the conclusion: People decide (right or wrong), and everyone should be free.
---

In 2004, Paul was one of only 27 House Republicans who voted against the Federal Marriage Amendment.

In 2010, he flipped from a “no” to a “yes” on repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. “I have received several calls and visits from constituents who, in spite of the heavy investment in their training, have been forced out of the military simply because they were discovered to be homosexual," he explained. “To me, this seems like an awful waste.”
------
Eric Dondero is the one telling "eye witness" stories about Ron Paul and he is not exactly credible as a political rival and former staffer...

"After 4yrs of never accusing the Doc of actually knowing directly about it, he comes out full bore accusing he checked off on everyone of them, all the while contradicting himself in the same sentence that he only read about 30% and sent notes off to his staff or ghostwriters to complete the newsletters."

Eric Dondero was FIRED by Paul and wants to run against him for office.

Eric Dondero, a staffer who was fired.
http://www.dailypaul.com/196808/while-one-fired-fmremployee-passive-aggressively-betrays-rp-one-finally-clarifies

Rockwell has denied responsibility for the newsletters' contents to The New Republic's Jamie Kirchick. Rockwell twice declined to discuss the matter with reason, maintaining this week that he had "nothing to say."

Murray Rothbard championed an open strategy of exploiting racial and class resentment to build a coalition with populist "paleoconservatives," producing a flurry of articles and manifestos whose racially charged talking points and vocabulary mirrored the controversial Paul newsletters

In 1993, Rothbard wrote about Malcolm X and discussed the possibility of a separate state for blacks, but concluded that it would "require massive "foreign aid" from the U.S.A.". He also described black nationalism as "a phony nationalism" that was "beginning to look like a drive for an aggravated form of coerced parasitism over the white population."

http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard218.html


So who else did the newsletters? Lou Rockwell isn't of interest to me, MURRAY ROTHBARD is.

I am seriously disappointed that people here can connect the dots to Dr. Paul yet Rothbard is clearly innocent.

He just happened to die in 1995... and we've heard nothing about newsletter content as inflammatory as when he was involved, since.

You don't think Murray Rothbard, is worth looking at?

"Equality is not in the natural order of things, and the crusade to make everyone equal in every respect (except before the law) is certain to have disastrous consequences." - Murray Rothbard
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

he (Rothbard) also wrote film reviews under a pen name (anonymously)

Someone did the newsletters... in a way THEY KNEW would ensure their anonymity (because Ron Paul did not write the racist articles), perhaps by their position of trust in the company, or with tacit approval by one or more people attempting to subvert a cause for their own.

written misinformation is surely not all it takes to win you over

Why is it so hard to conceive that an active conspiracy to hide the newsletters from Paul was successful, when the outcome would be exactly the same as the one we're debating? The one where NO ONE has heard Ron Paul ever, EVER say anything like the things in the newsletters?

Ever. Not even HEARD him say it.

Still swiftboating and muddying the waters? Still not talking about Murray Rothbard's role in this all?





Well lets look at some actual facts:
----------------------------------BEGIN

In early 2008, this article revealed that "a half-dozen longtime libertarian activists—including some still close to Paul" had identified Rockwell as the "chief ghostwriter" of the Ron Paul newsletters published from "roughly 1989 to 1994."

Financial records from 1985 and 2001 show that Rockwell, Paul's congressional chief of staff from 1978 to 1982, was a vice president of Ron Paul & Associates, the corporation that published the Ron Paul Political Report and the Ron Paul Survival Report. The company was dissolved in 2001. During the period when the most incendiary items appeared—roughly 1989 to 1994—Rockwell and the prominent libertarian theorist Murray Rothbard championed an open strategy of exploiting racial and class resentment to build a coalition with populist "paleoconservatives," producing a flurry of articles and manifestos whose racially charged talking points and vocabulary mirrored the controversial Paul newsletters recently unearthed by The New Republic. To this day Rockwell remains a friend and advisor to Paul—accompanying him to major media appearances; promoting his candidacy on the LewRockwell.com blog; publishing his books; and peddling an array of the avuncular Texas congressman's recent writings and audio recordings.

Rockwell has denied responsibility for the newsletters' contents to The New Republic's Jamie Kirchick. Rockwell twice declined to discuss the matter with reason, maintaining this week that he had "nothing to say." He has characterized discussion of the newsletters as "hysterical smears aimed at political enemies" of The New Republic. Paul himself called the controversy "old news" and "ancient history" when we reached him last week, and he has not responded to further request for comment.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
You don't think Murray Rothbard, is worth looking at?

"Equality is not in the natural order of things, and the crusade to make everyone equal in every respect (except before the law) is certain to have disastrous consequences." - Murray Rothbard
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

he also wrote film reviews under a pen name (anonymously) .. so he was no stranger to trying to protect himself while expressing what he truly thought..

http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/ir/Ch5.html
http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.com/2010/07/murray-rothbard-lew-rockwell-and.html
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/still-states-greatest-enemy.html

----------------------------

In 1993, Rothbard wrote about Malcolm X and discussed the possibility of a separate state for blacks, but concluded that it would "require massive "foreign aid" from the U.S.A.". He also described black nationalism as "a phony nationalism" that was "beginning to look like a drive for an aggravated form of coerced parasitism over the white population."

http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard218.html

-------------------------------------------------------




I am seriously disappointed that people here can connect the dots to Dr. Paul yet Rothbard is clearly innocent.

He just happened to die in 1995... and we've heard nothing about newsletter content as inflammatory as when he was involved, since.

Get real people. It wasn't Ron Paul. The secret is in the grave at this point.