I'm an atheist and will always be one of the first in line to suggest that religions should be subject to criticism and the rule of law just like any other organization.

That being said, I'm not entirely comfortable with the idea that congregations are complicit in the misdeeds of the institution itself, whether or not they are aware of verified instances of misdeeds. ...Pretty slippery slope.

Expand that to, say, nations. In the history of the US, the government has committed some pretty indefensible atrocities. Genocide, mass relocation, and other offenses against Native Americans in the name of "manifest destiny". Enslavement of a race of people based on skin color, with disenfranchisement and continued abuse well after slavery was abolished, with elements that certainly persist to this day. Funding and supplying extremist organizations because they happen to have a short-term enemy that coincides with ours, which frequently comes back to bite us in the ass later. Using underhanded tricks including false-flag operations to justify wars and other offensive actions. Attempting to assassinate democratically elected leaders of foreign governments. And on and on.

Are all US citizens complicit in those misdeeds, merely by an accident of birth? But those things were in the past, you might argue. Given the depth of dirt you can find on our past with a little digging, I'd say it is reasonable to expect that there's things that the government is doing now that we may or may not be aware of that would be similarly difficult to defend.

Many/most Catholics can either remain intentionally blissfully ignorant about these problems, or will be able to go to great lengths to rationalize their way around them. Just like most US citizens don't lose much sleep over our government's past and present misdeeds. In either case, indoctrination puts the blinders on -- and can be incredibly difficult to escape.

For the religious, "love the sinner, hate the sin" is an oft-repeated phrase. As an atheist outraged by these scandals and the decades/centuries of intentional cover-ups by the Church itself, I might be tempted to turn that on its head. "Accept the religious, hate the religion." By all means, be outraged towards the institution itself. By all means, fight to end the protections that have allowed this kind of abuse to go unchecked. But perhaps try to keep some (Christian?) empathy for the average Catholic congregation members who have been brainwashedindoctrinated their whole lives and are likely in too deep to escape. Reserve that hatred for the clergy that abused their positions of power and control to commit these crimes, and the organizational system that systematically allowed it to happen while covering it up. They deserve every bit of hate you throw their way.

@newtboy,
without racial preferencing FOR white kids
I know for a fact though that in Canada any law, policy or practice that in any way, shape or form stated that has been abolished long ago. Any new ones would be destroyed in court immediately and without question. I've always understood the US to be the same, is that not correct? Is there anywhere in existence in US law, or policies that discrimination based upon race, outside of affirimative action, is ever allowed to exist?

I was convinced enough that the US was like Canada in this regard that back when Obama was president I had someone tell me about a Breitbart report claiming anti-white racism being dictated directly from the President's office. I barely bothered to look for evidence to disprove such a blatant lie from a known extremist propaganda rag. It's hard to express my shock/discouragement to hear that very same refrain, not from a right winger, but from the sources on the left adamant about the necessity of it...

I don't know how else to say this without repeating myself, but you can't achieve equality with racism. It is a situation where even if you are right, your still wrong. Putting actual race based discrimination into official party policy, and now apparently even into law is no longer something society is willing to tolerate. Doubly so when their children are the ones being discriminated against. The people will vote you out of office. You can kiss swing states goodbye. They will stack the Supreme Court against you to challenge and throw out the discriminatory law as unconstitutional.

You are fighting a battle you can not win. You are wrong to think that solving the problem of underfunded schools in bad socioeconomic regions is the harder nut to crack. Maintaining a law and systematic racism against whites to 'balance' the lack of opportunity is much harder, it's being dismantled already because people will not tolerate it. Demanding that university's open up XX spots for socioeconomically disadvantaged kids, regardless of race is already normal practice here in Canada and everyone can get on board. Doing it for race though, humans just don't work that way. The only times that's been successfully maintained is through force of numbers or military strength.

@newtboy

Your being dishonest and unfair to people with stuff like this:
"predicting so many of the educated would go along for short sighted, purely tribal reasoning, that's tougher."
and
"people have been claiming white men are the downtrodden powerless whipping boys.

I saw an op-ed in the nytimes back when the supreme court nomination was hot and had hoped the author's opinion were a minority. Segments of this Daily Show clip and your own feedback make rethink that. The op-ed wanted to concisely show how dangerously right wing and extremist current Justice Roberts was. To do this, the author stated that the Justice own chilling rationale for one of his decisions should tell us everything we need to know about him: "To stop discrimination based upon race, we need to stop discriminating based upon race"

Being insulting and dismissive of people's frustrations at being racially discriminated against as your post appears to do just makes for more division still.

Like any extremist philosophy Rand's writings contain elements of truth. The problem is that they offer a philosophical fig leaf for the rich and powerful to fully exploit their situation in business and politics without regard to the negative effects they may have on the rest of society.

A successful civilisation needs to understand the limitations of both sides of the argument and take the best of both worlds.

You lot are fucking psychos. America is turning into the next extremist state.

A good video and assessment by her. But it also seems like she talked to the actual level-headed leaders.

The problem is, there are also many folks that claim the MRM banner in order to use it against women, like most extremists tend to do.

@newtboy and @scheherazade,

I think I may have come up with a shorter line of evidence for a well armed population being protection against tyranny.

Granted, a poorly armed population with strong arms control laws doesn't necessarily devolve into tyranny. We can all demonstrate this with counter examples like up here in Canada. However, can anyone name an oppressive dictatorship that had 2nd amendment level freedoms for every man and woman in their state? I can't think of a single example myself.

As I said before, that doesn't lead me to immediately declare zero restrictions on guns are thus worth any cost to forestall future tyranny. However, I have to acknowledge that the NRA style argument for protection against tyranny isn't entirely without merit.

That leads to my objections with declaring that it is objectively obvious that gun freedoms must morally be pulled back, while at the same time objectively obvious that idealogical/religious practice freedoms must not. We have ample examples of extremists gathering together to plot violence, mayhem and death on a grand scale and putting some extra lines in the sand of when that becomes unacceptable is no more obviously immoral than restricting gun ownership.

I don't disagree that weapons don't necessarily make anyone more free. I also can't say people are wrong to observe in a civil war level of unrest, a dissenting party armed with fully automatic weapons has more leverage than one armed with knives.

Freedom to practice religion is not 'fairly safe' without guns, unless you want to ignore attacks with cars, trucks, IEDs, and, historically, civilian airliners.

I am mostly pointing out that restricting laws on gun ownership to protect people is not so terribly different from limiting freedom to practice/express idealogies. It is readily demonstrable that BOTH those freedoms have directly contributed to civilian casualties.

The difference between say, banning automatic weapons, and the banning of affiliation with extremist groups like the KKK or ISIL is mostly divided along partisan lines, logically they are pretty much two sides of the same coin, with democrats and republicans each decrying one as necessary and the other as evil.

It's not about it being not to my liking. It's about it being dishonest and incredibly right biased while claiming to be on the left. It's about the typical one set of rules for one side and a completely different set for the other that is how he makes his "points". It's a style of information that only works with those in the bubble and the ignorant, and it's insulting, no matter which side it comes from. He didn't have a single piece of new information or even a new take. Please don't pretend I don't give right wing ideas consideration. I couldn't point out the flaws if I didn't.

I don't waste my time hearing out the far anything. Extremists are to be educated or ignored, not given a soapbox and our attentive ears repeatedly. I've heard all I need from Nazis, fascists, alt right, antifa, anarchists to know their ideas don't hold up to critical examination, there's no reason to keep listening after that, I won't believe them, so what's to be gained? Hearing this weeks talking points? No thanks.

You can listen to the idiots that tell you these extremists represent the left, I say it's wishful thinking, because that's the only way the right can excuse or deflect from the Nazis and blatant racists the right welcomed into the party to win the last election. (To be clear, I may be left leaning, I'm not a democrat).
I was glad to hear the leadership of the Republicans finally publicly tell the Nazis and KKK that the Republicans don't stand with them and don't want their votes after Charlottesville, and I'm still waiting for a similarly dismissive statement from the Democrats about antifa.

Both (most) extremists groups say and do idiotic, barbaric things and should be arrested and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law at every opportunity....no matter what their political affiliation or leaning. Ends justify the means is the mantra of tyrants, and they come in all flavors.

How can I agree or disagree with such a meaningless statement....racial collectivists? enlightenment? I do agree, both act as if they are opposed to freedom, sanity, civil behaviour, and rationality.

i think you guys are missing the point of this video.this video was not produced for YOU.

this is a dog whistle video for those who identify as "right" leaning politically,and may be on the fence in regards to the alt-right.they may adhere to more conservative and traditional values but find the alt-right a tad to extreme,a tad too racist and neo-fascist.

and they most likely already find "leftists" and "liberals" offensive to their political sensibilities.

and here we have a video showing "lefties" perpetrating violence on innocent,rightwing by-standers..you know..their peeps.

so you watch with indignation and disbelief,while the rightwingers watches in horror and fear.this video is meant to do just that:instill fear and prompt a person to action and to view this action as righteous self-defense.

this is identity politics,pure and simple.

and now we have TWO extremists groups growing,and BOTH are convinced of their righteous convictions that THEY have a RIGHT..no..a DUTY..to perpetrate violence in the name of their ideology.

well,it is not EVERYBODY..

yeah..no shit sherlock.we get that.
not everyone is a neo-fascist,racist,super white nationalist.

nor are they all communists and black bloc anarchists.

but it IS those two groups who have adopted extremist ideologies that in their little pea brains have given them the moral authority to fuck some people up.

and THIS fucking video is a goddamn recruitment video for the neo-fascists!

communists and black bloc anarchists on my left..
racist neo fascists on my right..
here i am...
stuck in the middle...

*related=https://videosift.com/video/ANTIFA-is-a-major-gift-to-the-right

"According to the Government Accountability Office of the United States, 73% of violent extremist incidents that resulted in deaths since September 12, 2001 were caused by right wing extremists groups."

Loved this site once. Finding the best recent videos here without much effort was its definition.
People actually did a good job posting them here and often times I visited VideoSift to watch videos while eating dinner. Great memories.

Nowadays most videos posted here are political videos. Not objectively making fun or criticizing both sides, no. Only leftist videos with literal fake news content that have no value at all for making the world a better place. Before I found at least 7-10 videos a day that I enjoyed watching. Now? Not even one. NOT EVEN ONE! WTF happened to you?

You just see these political videos with just childish and retarded attacks, thinking if some pathetic and unfunny celebrity tells it, it is somehow more credible. This site has become a propaganda outlet for these extremist people, and if you dare speak up against it, you get voted down into oblivion and personally attacked (not your points you made).
To put it in a triggering word: Sad!
Good riddance.

I agree with most of his points, but from what I see, the left doesn't completely ignore antifa. I would hope that most of the left disavows these fascists against fascism at every opportunity. I would like the dnc to follow the republican party who, today, finally said they don't want the votes of Nazis and white supremacists...the dnc needs to say the same about antifa. These extremists on both sides threaten us all. They need marginalization.

"The 'no penis' thing....yeah, that's kinda nuts"
giggle

"I also see that the right has moved so far right that what one might consider 'centrist' today would be extremist right 25 years ago"

Which reminds me that in the entire conversation I've been pretty much writing off the Reps and the right. I'd really like to see them do all the same things just flipping left for right and all.

I would argue that the right hasn't gone so much further from the 'center' than the left has. Of course, the 'center' is always subjective, but my barometer is basically the only mantra from the libertarians I can agree on, your rights end were mine begin. Maximizing that mantra as much as the practicalities of real world allow is what I would consider an ideally centrist goal line.

Oh....that's....really? And here I thought Canadians were reasonable people.

The 'no penis' thing....yeah, that's kinda nuts, but couldn't they get around it by becoming a private club with membership dues rather than spa fees? At least here, private clubs make their own rules the members agree to when they join.....so far.

Public businesses that use public services to operate and serve the public, they have different obligations to society, imo.

I absolutely agree, the dems need to get their head out of their ass, denounce the extremists in their midst, understand that Clinton was a HUGE mistake, and move back to the center some, but I also see that the right has moved so far right that what one might consider 'centrist' today would be extremist right 25 years ago, so they need to be careful to not move past center and go right, or they'll lose for being republican light.