The only reason the Proglibdyte left is such a fan of Ron Paul is because he is a non-interventionist. The liberal left's vision of the ideal world is the United States giving all its cash - no questions asked - to the United Nations. At that point the US is supposed to sit down, shut up, and do whatever the UN orders them to do. Then - in the minds of the left - we will have world peace. RP would do about 90% of that by just being an isolationist. He won't give the UN any money, but the left will settle for the US just shutting down all its involvement (especially military).

But American Exceptionalism is not jingoism or arrogance. It is a quick way to summarize the American spirit of enlightened self-interest combined with personal freedom and entrepreneurism. The liberal left hates to admit it, but the US Constitution, economy, and position in the world was no accident of chance or random luck. Our constitution was a model to the rest of the world. Our freedoms and way of life still make us the envy of just about everyone. People still want to come here in droves to escape oppression, poverty, and intolerance. America was innovating, inventing, testing, and producing when the rest of the Western world was literally standing still. This is not arrogance or snootiness. It is just fact. American Exceptionalism summarizes this - and apparently makes Proglibdyte leftists squeal like stuck pigs when they hear the words.

I've played this game all the way through. While the sliding block puzzler is fun (and challenging too boot), this game has one major flaw. It teaches you one important fact, err, I mean... opinion. Men SUCK. They suck even if they were to be the greatest person/human that has happened to ever live in this planet's history; i.e. a man that has solved world peace, stopped starvation dead in it's tracks, cured cancer, got the world economy to function perfectly,and also got republicans-Christians-liberals-socialists-democrats-Buddhists-the 1st world vs. the 3rd world-Laker fans vs. Celtic fans-any fundamentalists-libertarians-dogs vs. cats-and lastly the tea party'iers to all see eye to eye. He would still, somehow, be scum.

This game almost made me stop playing at the sure ridiculousness of the cookie-cutter reactions that all the males spouted out. They also never stuck up for themselves and were all complete "tools", especially Vincent, the main character (he's so bad that I'm certain we could upgrade him to power-tool status). There wasn't even one man in the story that had the cajones to just tell the offending (trust me, there is an opposite of a misogynist in this story, many of them--the opposite side is called misandry, BTW) opposite sex conversationalist to just: SHUT THE FUCK UP!

Still a fun game if you enjoy puzzlers; especially challenging ones.

Warning: You may want to kill the main character at many points in the game due to his utter and complete toolishness...

Actually I think he might be misremembering the twilight zone (at least if he's talking about the 1980s one which had an episode that sounds almost like that). In the episode, aliens actually land, go to the UN and tell the world that they are disappointed with our stockpiling of weapons of mass destruction. Everyone panics and in 24 hours world-peace is declared. Then the aliens show up and pretty much laugh their asses off after we tell them we declared world peace. They then explain that they were disappointed that our weapons were just so sucky, not that we had them. Basically, they go around the universe creating life and hoping they develop excellent weapons for war... or something like that

Tags for this video have been changed from 'short film, parking, self worth, world peace, dmv in a bar, smile, happy, hugh, newman' to 'short film, parking, self worth, world peace, dmv in a bar, smile, happy, hugh newman' - edited by xxovercastxx

I wish America was not fighting anyone. Being the worlds "peace keepers" and fighting for American self interest and two different things.

We should not fight anyone for any reason unless it is a direct national threat. We should not be meddling in the middle east. We should buy our oil through contracts not by installing government leaders on our behalf.

I hope what he was indicating is true. I don't think it is all correct but I wish it to be.


>> ^GenjiKilpatrick:

I wonder what the resident neo-conservatives think of these peaceful democratic Arab/Muslim/Islamic movements.
[And the fact that there are less than/only about 50 to 100 Al Qaeda left]
@<a rel="nofollow" href="http://videosift.com/member/quantumushroom" title="member since June 22nd, 2006" class="profilelink">quantumushroom
@<a rel="nofollow" href="http://videosift.com/member/bobknight33" title="member since May 9th, 2009" class="profilelink">bobknight33
Kindly & Sincerely

Haha very true! But I dunno, can you blame 'em? It kinda is what he campaigned on.

In reply to this comment by Mauru:
In reply to this comment by BoneyD:
[...]
My point was that it's not like it makes up for Obama's appauling Presidency to date. He's not been progressive at all, delivering more for the right-wing and his corporate sponsors than I think anyone predicted he would.

Which isn't entirely surprising given that just about everybody was expecting/hoping for ponies, unicorns, world-peace and lots of confetti.

In reply to this comment by BoneyD:
[...]
My point was that it's not like it makes up for Obama's appauling Presidency to date. He's not been progressive at all, delivering more for the right-wing and his corporate sponsors than I think anyone predicted he would.

Which isn't entirely surprising given that just about everybody was expecting/hoping for ponies, unicorns, world-peace and lots of confetti.

Oh plenty of time for world peace, old chap! Camping and shroom weekend in August

In reply to this comment by enoch:
In reply to this comment by alien_concept:
Hahaha, I know. Well it's not that much of a secret, it's just the drugs got bad and the music got worse Thank you sweetheart!

In reply to this comment by enoch:
A_C you are such a closet raver..
*promote!

happened in britain too eh?
same happened hear..sadness.
fucking fascists i betcha.saw world peace coming.

In reply to this comment by alien_concept:
Hahaha, I know. Well it's not that much of a secret, it's just the drugs got bad and the music got worse Thank you sweetheart!

In reply to this comment by enoch:
A_C you are such a closet raver..
*promote!

happened in britain too eh?
same happened hear..sadness.
fucking fascists i betcha.saw world peace coming.

>> ^Trancecoach:

Superman's taste in girlfriends is not what you think.


Haha, weird. At least world peace was achieved.

First off, thanks for replying. I enjoy these conversations. They give me lots of great things to think about and explore.

Now, I think you unintentionally changed my argument. My argument wasn't "How does science explain why I like sugar?" I know people like sugary foods already. My point was that science cannot tell me why it is that of all the yummy flavors of ice cream out there, I like chocolate chip mint best. This, by the way, is not a technical limitation of science. Science can, as you noted in your post, provide an explanation as to why I prefer eating ice cream to say, spinach. It can indeed tell me about all the processes that occur in my brain (which areas get activated, what chemicals get released, etc.) when I eat chocolate chip mint ice cream. The problem is that these processes will not be the same for all people who eat chocolate chip mint ice cream.

So what we have here, then, are people experiencing that same exact objective event--we're all eating the same ice cream--and getting different results. Science is utterly unprepared to deal with this situation. Science only works in a situation in which objective knowledge can be obtained. It shouldn't matter who is doing the measuring--you should get the same result. Yet in this situation, we have multiple people "measuring" (ie tasting ice cream) and getting different results depending on the person.

To truly answer the question of why I like chocolate chip mint best, we are forced to refer to subjective knowledge and explore my personal life history up to this point, including things like my experiences, feelings, attitudes, likes and dislikes, etc. These things cannot be measured. How do you measure an experience? How could you possibly understand what I meant by without being me--having access to all of my memories, thoughts, feelings, EVERYTHING that is me? The answer is simple: you couldn't. I could explain to you in crude terms that I like chocolate chip mint better than chocolate chip by only a little bit, but you will never be able to "know" exactly what I mean "by only a little bit" (without being me, that is).

Your argument is that this problem is simply a technical matter, but I'm curious if you've taken that view to its logical conclusion--that we have no free will and are simply automatons that function at the whim of electrical impulses and chemical reactions in the brain. If science truly could explain to me why I like chocolate chip mint ice cream over say pistachio without taking into account my subjective experiences, then subjective experiences would have no meaning at all. Is that really what you're suggesting?

Let me next address a couple of unspoken assumptions you made in your reply to me. One seems to be that people of faith stop searching for answers because they believe in a god or higher power. But here clearly we have significant counter-evidence to your belief--namely in the vast number of scientists who are also believers in some religion (see this article). As scientists, they must continue to look for answers and re-evaluate new evidence as it arises, which seems to run counter to your assumption.

Another assumption seems to be that science and "rational thinking" makes people less likely to believe in religion. Again, see the previous article, which shows the percentage of scientists believe in religion hasn't changed so much despite the advances in science from 1916 to 1997 (when the second study was done). Are there religious people who are closed-minded and refuse to re-evaluate new evidence as it arises? Absolutely. But that is not a characteristic of many religious people and therefore your assumption would be an over-generalization.

Now, on to your next assumption--that no one will cry over the loss of dark matter. While I agree that in an ideal world, this would be true, I think you and I can agree the world we live in would be far from ideal. Science takes a great deal of time to change. The very skepticism that science holds so dear also puts the brakes on quick change in consensus within the scientific community. People will refuse to change their beliefs quickly. Experimental data will be checked and re-checked and I'm sure criticisms will be made about experiment design and other factors. Few experiments are performed that are so well designed as to be able to defy criticism. Skepticism doesn't just require evidence for belief, it requires overwhelming evidence and hence any change will be slow (there are still scientists arguing against global warming).

Ironically, I think you could look at religious people as reverse-skeptics. Where a skeptic will not believe anything without overwhelming evidence to support it, a religious person will not change their belief in something without overwhelming evidence that the belief is wrong. And this, I suppose, is the main reason why skeptics and believers simply cannot agree with each other. There is not enough (I would say any, actually) reliable evidence (objective or subjective) to convince either side. How could there be? Most skeptics discount subjective knowledge (their own included) right from the start. Everyone is arguing over apples and oranges.

Now, by all means, when someone says the world is 6000 years old, or that Jesus walked with dinosaurs, or that evolution is "just a theory," by all means take these people to task. They're wandering about in the realm of objective knowledge where science reigns supreme. But when someone says they believe in something (religion, Democracy, volunteering, world peace, whatever), demanding they show objective evidence of their belief and ridiculing them if they can't meet your arbitrary standard of proof (science requires overwhelming evidence, but there's no clear definition of how much is enough) is just plain wrong in my opinion.

In reply to this comment by BicycleRepairMan:
Perhaps, but no religious apologist I've ever heard has managed to convince me of that. Thats my whole point. If a believer came to me saying something like "we have independent statistics showing a significant benefit of prayer among cancer patients", that would be the kind of thing that might make me admit that belief in god was a rational and logical decision.

To your point about chocolate preference, I wouldn't be as sure, it may be a technical limitation rather than an absolute one. We already know why people tend to like chocolate, for instance (evolved sugar craving) its a tad more tricky to find out the specifics of your particular taste, but if we fully understood every detail of the brain, it might not be impossible, even without actually being you. Either way, Chocolate is a perfect example of how our subjective experience fails us: Because our ancestors lived in environments where sugar was a rarity, our bodies treat every carbohydrate molecule like it was the jackpot, basically our bodies telling us "Sugar in large quantities is great for you" Well its not, and thats a perfect example of how objective knowledge and scientific thinking always prevail over the subjective assumptions we make.

Which brings me to the point about the sun moving across the sky, which is again were science triumphs: Yes, the default assumption was that the sun, moon and stars moved around the earth, but the important part of the story is that as scientists and curious apes as we are, we arent happy just making assumptions and stop there, we keep investigating, as we will do with dark matter, it may be the best assumption we currently have, but thats not the important thing, the important thing about science is that we keep trying to figure out exactly whats going on, and if that means scrapping the whole idea about dark matter, no scientist will shed a tear, (just like we didnt when it turned out we werent the center of the universe) we will rejoice in our deeper understanding of things.

>> ^SDGundamX:

What you see as a leap-of-faith may be to the experiencer a perfectly rational and logical decision.

If nothing else, Bill O certainly does unite disparate peoples against himself. World peace achieved through a common hatred of one loud mouthed, self important, self righteous moron of a talking head? Go figure... X D

You completely missed the point...

No - I grasped many points, and at a far deeper level than you realized.

The point is you have your beliefs at least in part (and my suspicion would be a large part) because of your religious up bringing or your integration into a religious/social group.

I already said that. Everyone's beliefs partly result from the groups they are involved in during upbringing. This kid has some 'group' somewhere that taught him to value the gay rights agenda more highly than other values & causes. That much is self evident.

What astonished me was that you berate a 10 year old for pointing out a logical fallacy

No, I'm berating him for comitting a logical fallacy. There is no equivalency with "Liberty & Justice for all" and the dogmas of special interest groups. The phrase is an absolute ideal like "Truth" or "World Peace". Some other kid could with equal justification say, "I won't say the PoA until the rights of businesses and churches are protected from prosecution." Advancing the self-defined 'liberty & justice' of one special interest group often comes at the direct expense of the definition of 'liberty & justice' for some other group. Therefore this kid's decision to refuse the PoA is arbitrary and unjustified. He's only 10, so such error can be excused to a degree. But his persistence in the effort is what moves him from 'misguided scamp' to fallacious ideologue.

More to the point, he took those beliefs and logically applied them.

No - he selectively and illogically applied them. That is no cause for praise. It is cause for rebuke & loving correction.

World peace!! Finally!

Also, it's powered by cold fusion!! Finally!

Is Ron Paul well known because libertarians are just screaming excited to have a visible leader? Because that sounded like a wandering whiny speech about not liking the left and Obama.

Obama was given the award "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.". Obama has made it a very obvious priority from day one to re-establish and exceed prior diplomacy with the rest of the world which is the keystone to world peace. He deserves it. It's awfully fast but he is working his ass off promoting diplomacy. And that's after inheriting George Bush's policy of starting wars unilaterally and giving the finger to everyone else in the world he couldn't buy off.

And about the wars - He inherited 2 wars in the middle east, how could you do better without making it worse in the long run?
* We're well on the way to being out of Iraq (To quote him "Let me say this as plainly as I can: By August 31, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end.".)
* And Afganistan... the Taliban (whom attacked us) controls a big chunk of the country and the recent national elections were tainted with fraud. It doesn't make you a hawk to say we might regret this if we don't fix this before we go home does it?

Ron Paul has no intellectually honest points, he's just pushing his agenda like the rest of them. He just does it in front of wood paneling and antique photos.