OMFG... really bob... really... It's people like you that made me ashamed of being a Christian when I was a Christian. Completely believing anything they are told or read from someone with supposed authority without actual critical thought of the original source themselves.

I've hear that Jefferson never meant to exclude religion from politics and believed and repeated it myself for years. Then you know what I did? I actually read the letter that Jefferson wrote. I could have my son, who's going into 6th grade read it and he'd tell you the same thing I'm about to tell you. It's about keeping religion from unduly influencing politics. Especially when you read it in context with the letter that the church sent him that he was responding to, and it becomes more apparent if you read his drafts which were much more to the point.

Yes the phrase "wall of separation" does come from the letter and not the Constitution, but the 1st Amendment includes an establishment clause that prevents the government from favoring one religion over the others. Remember the pilgrims came here to escape a Christian nation that favored one form of Christianity over all others. Admittedly they were more about the fact they couldn't persecute others the way they thought they God wanted them to, but it was the government's church that prevented them from doing so. You can't even be King or Queen of England unless you belong to the Church of England, and if you were Catholic at some point in your past, you are disqualified, even to this day. Yeah, the Church of England no longer has as much influence over the laws as it did when the pilgrims and other early settlers escaped England to come here,

And if the only reason Christians are good is because of fear of punishment or hope for reward, then they are horrible people. Millions of people are good because they are good people without their faith dictating to them to be so. Most people of other faiths are good without the racist brutal Abramic God of the Bible. Most atheists are good without any god. Most pagans are good with their various gods. This insane all morality comes from God alone didn't make sense even when I was at my most evangelical, Fox News watching/defending mode. There were too many people in the world who's good without God and even in those days the concept that somebody would be good only because the Bible tells them so, or they are afraid of God's wrath if they don't is backwards. And as I read the Bible more and more, it became apparent that the far rights obsession with people's sin over love was misplaced (though the far right's sickening defense of Dugger shows a great deal of hypocrisy since if Dugger was on the Left, they'd be all about his sin rather than showing any sort of love, it's when others sin differently than they do they get upset, like at the gays). It was reading the Bible that moved me to the left as the clear Christian way, since the right defends and loves the people Jesus condemned and shames the people that Jesus defended and told us to love and help. It eventually got to the point I couldn't hold onto faith when over half the Christians of this Nation just blindly follow what they are told in church and on Fox News over the truth that Jesus and the Bible was teaching and thinking they were doing the Christian thing at the same time. I then began to do a critical analysts further and eventually became an atheist, because they are all equally bad/good. There is nothing new or original in the Abramic faiths that wasn't there before or since either in the same region or elsewhere... all those other elsewhere's where Jehovah somehow couldn't make himself known, as if he was just a figment of one small regional tribe or worse a racist jerk not worthy of following.

Anyhow, the best way to maintain Christianity is to keep it out of politics. Because what happens if you set things up to let religion influence politics and the Muslims gain power? Then you'll be crying how religion shouldn't influence politics. Or perhaps not that extreme, perhaps some form of Christianity that other Christian's don't agree with gains power and influence? Perhaps the Morman's or the Catholics or the Jehovah Witness? At what point does religious influence stop? When laws are passed that any church that doesn't practice or allow the speaking in tongues is outlawed? The 1st Amendment is designed to keep religion out of politics in order to protect religion.

Let's break that last sentience out again. The 1st Amendment's establishment clause is designed to keep religion out of politics in order to protect religion. The whole point is to keep one form of one faith from dominating all other forms of the same or other faiths. It protects those other forms Christianity and other faiths.

Finally there is no war on Christianity. I admitted that long before my fall from faith. I was there with it all, with how it was targeted, but the reality is there is no war on Christianity here... all that's happening is specific forms of Christianity are loosing their influence on other Christians and society as a whole, and they are very vocal about how it's persecution, because like the pilgrims, they are no longer allowed to persecute others the way they want to. Maybe if the people screaming about how Christianity is being persecuted while they try to deny equal rights to others because they sin differently than us, would actually show the love of Christ and behave the way He actually would have in modern society rather than trying to show how Christian they are, then perhaps Christianity wouldn't be losing the numbers they are. I know I, and many other atheists, likely wouldn't have had at crisis of faith if it wasn't for the far right. I never would have explored the logical and theological problems with Christianity and the Abramic faiths... I'd probably eventually found a more Quaker, left leaning (most the Quaker "Friends" related churches in this area are the far evangelical right Fox News types) type church that seems to be more in line with the Bible and teachings of Jesus, but the far right pushed me into a far more critical mode than I would likely ever have gone to on my own. So keep it up those on the far right, you are the ones destroying and making a war on Christianity. You push more and more people away, and more and more people stop seeing any difference between the far right and radical Islam.

You make words like caveman!

YOU are the one being asinineningly stupid with ideologically rigid statements that simply do not match historical fact. I don't consider governmental involvement in society inherently good or bad. It can hurt; it can help. I never claimed any utopia whenever government gets involved. There are no easy answers. You said the private sector is ALWAYS better. That is absolutely ridiculous, and easily refutable.

You just said before that if you are dependent on government, than you have no self pride, and weren't brought up well. So I blew that idiotic argument out of the water by simply proving how you are dependent on government. Now you change your thesis to this chestnut - it's only good for government to do anything if it corrects a horrific problem within the private sector.

And this is also total utter complete bullcrap.

Tell me - what change in the last 150 years made the biggest change in literacy rates in the US? Compulsory education laws in conjunction with the formation of the public school system. Absolutely, without question, this is the case. You can complain all you want about the public school system today, but there is no denying the impact they had on making society more skilled and knowledgeable, and they were governmental institutions by enlarge, and still are today. This came about during the banning of child labor, but it goes well beyond outlawing gross negligence in the private sector, yet, it was absolutely a big net positive for society.

See? It's really not hard to find examples to kill delusions formed by ideological rigidness. You just have to not be so insanely blind, that you miss obvious historical examples of these kinds of things.

And once again, I NEVER said governmental intervention is always good. You however DID say that private sector solutions are always better, when they clearly aren't always better, and that anyone who depends on the government for anything lacks self pride.

And you're dead wrong. Even your analysis of the ACA is idiotic. If Obamacare is government overreach, and government overreach is what causes prices to go up, why then did cost increases slow as ACA came online? Why do so many countries with larger government overreach in the form of universal single payer health care have lower costs than we do? Mind you that I am NOT saying their health systems are better, but it's an absolute fact they cost less than ours.

You're full of crap!

Black people and police are not equivalent groups for comparison. Police are a special group that have legal authority to use force, including deadly, against people and you are at their whim if they aren't a good person.

I know that you used black people because you are trying to push that back on other people (projecting is the term, I believe) and black people are on your mind. I know, I know, you aren't racist. You are just "stating facts."

Police are just people. Some good, some bad. I've dealt with great ones and I've dealt with ones that lack any semblance of honor or integrity. The major issue I have is that that accountability for police bad behavior is unreliable and varies greatly. I believe part of this is pure self interest in people saving their jobs and keeping their department looking good while backed by an "us vs. them" attitude that becomes prevalent among police over time.

I think the "us vs. them" attitude is a tough one to avoid for police departments. I think multiple factors feed into that. Politicians outlawing victimless crimes makes people take police less seriously and see police as a nuisance instead of a helping force. Managing police departments by quotas and numbers instead of hiring good managers to actually manage people. Police unions that protect violent cops preventing the firing of known/shown unfit cops until they do something that is bad enough that even the union can't protect them. As a cop, you usually deal with the assholes of society which will taint your view over time. Well, it's not something that going to change quickly, but ignoring the problem with transparent and consistent accountability does nothing but kick that can down the road.

ROTFLMFAHS!!!!!!
Your organization (the police) has fought tooth and nail to keep those names and the numbers from being complied in a useable form, or viewable form. You know this well, and yet you dishonestly pretend that not having them somehow invalidates the numbers the DOJ compiled. They're hidden from the public by the police themselves, and there's only one reason for them to be 'hidden', police are embarrassed at the real numbers. Police kill >10 times the number of citizens compared to the number of people that kill police, yet police are constantly whining about how 'dangerous' their job is (not even in the top 10 most dangerous in America), and insisting on rules and equipment to allow them to kill more people with impunity while putting themselves at less risk. Most Americans don't think cops should have their own laws or loopholes, nor should they have any offensive equipment not available to the public, and there should be no purely defensive equipment outlawed.
Blacks aren't necessarily resisting arrest more often, they are definitely being attacked by police more often. 100% of dog bites on blacks is telling to anyone with a brain...but not to you. So is 85% of use of force being against blacks. Blacks have a reason to not want to be under police control, it never ends well for them, and often ends with them dead, it is never just a minor inconvienience.
How often are those reported 'black' suspects actually not black, pretty often.
Of over 500 innocent deaths per year in this law enforcement report, how many prosecutions? How many convictions? I bet close to 0...if not 0.
Hey Bill O, non-violent civilians are not actively fighting military, armed or not....so not a war zone.
Since 99+% of officer's crimes are not even reported, and of those that are 99% are not investigated, and of the 1% of 1% left, <1% are prosecuted, so it's a good bet they got away with the improper behavior.
Wow, you're really blind to racism, aren't you? One person in a position of power does not erase racism, sometimes it causes it (can you say Obama)...and racism happens within races as well. The report on New Orleans shows that even when the police closely resemble the populace, racism still happens, even from black officers against black citizens. You've said some fairly racist things in this thread alone...but you are so used to blatant racism that you can't see your own racism, ever.
Eric Holder told us, we don't need to tell him. Give me a fucking break!
Now Bill O...that's a fraud.

"teaches right behavior"....
Do you mean like owning slaves, murdering infidels and heretics, raping women, crusading, inquisitioning, conquesting, etc.... Yeah, great book of morality, and wonderful moral behavior exhibited by it's believers...not.

It's only because people fail to follow the religious ideas wholly that religion is tolerated at all. If people acted like the fanatical Muslims, taking every word as law and acting on it, Christianity would have been outlawed in the US at the inception of the country (indeed, many of the founding fathers seemed to want this, at least in part). The 3 major western religions all require 'holy war' to spread the belief system if read honestly.

What he said is that only psychotics need religion to restrain them from immorality. If you aren't psychotic, religion harms you more than helps you.

Any catholic hospital would qualify as one opened by psychotics, since one of their 10 important rules is "no statues of anything", yet they do nothing but worship statues and icons. They institutionally ignore any 'rule' that's inconvenient, and insist on absolute adherence to any that further their current goals, which may change 180 deg tomorrow. Sure sounds psychotic to me.

I have yet to hear a logical reason people crap on Carter...they invariably just say 'Carter, if you don't understand why he sucked, I just can't talk to you', never ' Carter, this is why he sucked'.
EDIT: If it's all about leadership, stability, and helping, you must be conflicted that Tricky Dick is republican, huh? The Bushes can't help either. It's a wonder you can stick with your party, I quit the republicans when they quit being republican, before I could vote, during Regan.
Carter provided leadership in a responsible direction, but idiots desired placation rather than leadership and didn't follow. Regan placated his base, and we nearly had a depression. Carter started us on a non-interventionist foreign policy, because he personally understood the short and long term repercussions of intervening, now we've shit in their pot so hard and long that we CAN'T just go hands off anymore, we've already created our enemy. That said, it's like a junkie going cold turkey, it hurts them, may kill them, but if they survive they have a chance of life, if they don't stop, they die soon anyway. If we could find a good foreign policy methadone, we should use it at every turn and start worrying about us, IMO. If we had not installed our leaders and otherwise interfered in the first place, everyone would be better off, but that ship has sailed (in many cases because we didn't follow Carter's suggestion to stay out, I might add).
OK, got me with Boston. Ft Hood is a lone gunman, and those stopped prove my point. I think you know I meant foreign spawned terrorist attacks, but I grant I did not say that. But then you have to admit there were other successful attacks under Bush AFTER 9/11, like the guy who flew his plane into the IRS building in Texas.
Agreed, the spread of religion is always terrible, no matter which religion, some are worse than others at times, none are good. I could support outlawing organized religion, but grant that most would not.
Obama did not create radical Islam. If anyone did, it's Regan, by arming them to the teeth against the red menace, then just walking away.
I also disagree that Obama's the 'my way or the highway' guy/side. Please recall, "You're either with us or against us" is a republican slogan. The republicans stated before Obama was inaugurated that he was already the worst president ever, and their plan for the next 4-8 years was 'just say no' to everything, even to plans they designed, but they have never come up with any alternatives, just "not Obama's way" over and over, that's real 'not leading' as opposed to the type they accuse Obama of.
4.5 years of shitty economy, but trending up, not down even then.
Where I live, jobs have been an issue since Regan/Bush 1, so I don't think you want to point that finger here.
Not true, stagnant over the last 14+ years. They certainly went up in the 90's.
Once again, Bush economics caused the recession, salaries went down during the recession/depression. Salaries are on the way up now...not fast enough, granted, but up.
Obama has NEVER been able to do whatever he thinks/wants. That is delusional. Even when the democrats had the votes to do so, they didn't, because they suck donkey dicks. Happy? ;-)
Times were better for a special few under Regan, not most. Times got better for most everyone under Clinton.
We agree on your final point, the Bushes sucked, lets build on that and not make that mistake again.

DIS-FUCKING-GUSTING!

Charity being outlawed is just.... what a bunch of little pieces of shit, the assholes... tremendous assholes, horrible human beings, who not only proposed, but voted for something like this to become law.

@Chairman_woo

Well, I wouldn't link minimum pay to highest earners. I would perhaps add a tax penalty based on the income differential. Nor would I go to the extreme of outlawing all but co-operatives/shared ownership. Perhaps a very small tax break for them to encourage that form of business.

I have thought about tying politician pay to the poverty line. Want to be a Representative or Senator, congratulations, you get 2x to 3x the poverty line, and you can have up to 3 staff members at 1.5x the poverty line. No lifetime benefits and of course strict term limits for Congress and the Supreme Court (the President still gets lifetime protection, but no other lifetime benefits and perhaps 5x the poverty line while in office). Nor do they use the Capital building itself but once a year where a lottery decides who gets to go for the State of the Union. The primary idea is to make the number of Representatives we have based on the actual population, rather than shift the 435 that we've had since 1911 around based on state populations. With modern technology, they can stay in their home (computer drawn) districts. I wouldn't make them fully dependent on the state, this is just something somebody does to serve their community for a short time.

So yeah, basically the middle ground.

I was a Libertarian Anrcho-Capitalist after I left the Republican party because I couldn't stand how the Republicans want to legislate morality. Because at the time I was still convinced that sort of economics worked best... over time I realized, after actual vetting sources and looking things over, that the problem was more at the high end than I was led to believe... that and I got a heart just as my evangelical Christianity was about to collapse, mostly due to Republicans and eventually kept off by logic.

Some system where the wealth of the lowest paid worker was linked to the companies net profit would be nice. If their going to argue that whole "trickle down" thing they can only complain so much when we legally manacle them to their staff!

Or perhaps a national minimum wage based on a fraction of the highest earners.

Or going really crazy perhaps outlaw anything but co-operatives/shared ownership with staff. (that one is probably too complicated and problematic to be practical I fear)

I might suggest a similar system for politicians too i.e. they get paid as much as their poorest citizens, or some sensible fraction of that number. (including private assets to discourage corruption)

Maybe even go the whole hog and make politicians and high ranking civil servants utterly dependant on the state i.e. no significant private property and a state issued lifestyle which matches that of the poorest.

Too Extreme perhaps but if we meet them somewhere in the middle...

The Libertarians and Anarcho-Capitalists would probably go mental, but then how would we tell?

"You can't do it alone, you have to do it collectively..."

Remember the way they tried to eradicate any sense of collectivity from the cultures in the Southern Cone? How even group presentations in schools were outlawed as a danger to individual freedom?

Who are "they"? The Chicago Boys, of course.

Everything Giroux mentions can be read about in the truth commission reports from all those South American countries that had their culture upended in order to enforce the economic ideology as taught by Friedman in Chicago. Same thing, just imposed by external players and condensed into a rapid series of shocks.

Same ideology.

That would outlaw religion, since they have all been used to convert or kill others. I'm all for it. Praise Science!

One and the other is not the same. What you said here is the truth, knowing said pictures are "in the wild" can have devastating psychological impact when the child becomes old enough to realize what has been done.

However this feeling is not on a "post by post" biases.

My point is if child porn is banned because it fuels more CP, it fuels more thoughts in sick people, why not outlaw pictures of dead children for the same? Especially since one follows the other in so many cases?

Side note: I've just realized you're in Australia, and a very salient point worth mentioning is that you're probably thinking about how awful and "uncivilized" we are in America because you're comparing our police to yours, considering how much better your cops would be in a situation like this and how a fellow Australian criminal wouldn't deserve what these cops did.

It's possible you're just comparing our blood-thirsty cops to your more sensible, contemplative cops, but that you're forgetting to compare our blood-thirsty, cold-blooded, murderous cop-killer criminals with your more sensible, reasonable criminals. The cops here do things Australian cops might not do, but it may be because your cops don't have to.

Yes, it might help as it has in places like Australia for us to outlaw guns, however that won't ever happen because it's part of the inextricable bedrock used to found this great nation, so we have to do the best we can with what we have.