3 ppl called Olivia Newton John but nobody had heard of Whitesnake!!!!

*head explodes*

Here's a link to the actual writings being advertised in this clip, in case anyone wants to jump down the rabbit hole.

http://www.mensenrechten.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/the-most-dangerous-superstition-larken-rose-20111.pdf

Whenever I see something as horrendous as slavery downplayed (by likening it to today's working class) I'm likely to find myself agitated, and I think that contributed to my tone when replying earlier, and I'm somewhat ashamed for overreacting.

I could be totally wrong with my interpretation of the video, however. I guess the best thing to do is present my interpretation before any argument ensues.

It seems to present the similarities between the relationship a plantation slave had with their masters and the negative parts of the relationship a modern citizen has with their government and employer and the influential elite.

By creating a character as odious as the slave owner, they are poisoning the discussion. Their grievances are with three separate groups of people, but they push them all into one. Then they tar him by making him the slave owner, making it almost impossible to have a real discussion about him. Furthermore, they dismiss any of the benefits they enjoy from the three groups they are demonizing.

I'm sorry. I didn't mean to go overboard, and it's been pointed out that I may have misunderstood the video in the first place. I hate the things you mention as much as you do when they are employed against me.

I will say that I'm not downplaying the evils of government as much as I'm upplaying the huge number of benefits it provides, as contrasted with the horrors of slavery.

Again I apologize for the tone of my argument.

Yes it is important the field you work in. You are going to spend something like 40% of your waking hours doing it. If you think doubleshifting manual labour under scorching sun and whips is somehow equivalent to 8 hours in an office environment where you answer phones or w/e, you've lost the thread.

You're right that not everyone can change jobs. You grossly exaggerate what is required to do so, however. Yes, changing between highly skilled careers that required a significant amount of specialized knowledge isn't available to all that many people. But you can't even see the miseries of slave labour from the desk of your first career, they're so far away.

You haven't thought too much about infrastructure and what it would mean to have it removed, have you? Of course infrastructure is a benefit to employers, but that's not relevant to how beneficial it is to the 'slaves'. I expect casual access to electricity, water, and world wide communication would have done a lot for slaves, to name just a few of the elements of infrastructure. I'm honestly starting to doubt your sincerity now.

Slaves had good healthcare? Holy shit. I never expected to hear something like that. I don't need to make a counter point here, as you've ridiculed yourself. American healthcare is shitty -- COMPARED with other developed countries. It is light years ahead of anything that has existed outside the jurisdiction of a government.

Yes, the influential have an advantage. Nobody is disputing that. It doesn't utterly negate your rights across the board. You can still travel. You can still educate yourself. You can still own property. You can still address many grievances by wielding your rights. This list goes on and on. ALL things a slave couldn't ever hope to do. I think the rest of your paragraph should have been moved to the protection from hostility section so I'll address it there.

I was addressing hostility from other slaves. You are probably right in that the tribalism it fosters can be very dangerous where countries clash. In a system without government, spats would result in undending blood feuds, all across the territory ruled by the anarchy, whereas under a state, if they happen across borders they can erupt into something far worse.

I don't agree with the way the US has handled the extremist muslim situation that they mid-wifed in the middle east. But are you going to tell me that you're less safe, now, even after all the alluded too transgressions, than some rural farmer in South Sudan, who is effectively living without any guaranteed rights?

I'm definitely for more compassion and socialism than seen in modern US policy, so I'm not sure what your point is. Are you trying to claim that policies on slave plantations were more generous towards the slaves than our current policies are towards us?

Let's just say that I'm loathe to accept an unsourced opinion than medieval peasantry lead better lives than the average government-laden citizen nowadays. I'm sure there are some points on which they did better. Superstition, sickness, famine, war, flooding. We honestly don't have anything that even compares to these in the modern world. If you could link it or something though, I'd love to read it. It sounds interesting.

These posts are getting too long.

It's definitely not spot on. It makes some points, but it misses them elsewhere.

Where is the option for the cotton planter to change careers to something they find interesting and challenging?

Where are the benefits of infrastructure?

How about healthcare?

How about individual's rights?

How about protection from hostility?

How about ever improving quality of life?

I'm all for complaining about the clown show that is the current state of US (amongst other countries) politics. But don't pretend that you are afforded no benefits by the state.

This has the intellectual honesty of a Bill O'reilly segment.

Wouldn't it tilt towards the wooden block (meaning indicate the wooden block was heavier) since bouyancy would have contributed more to the larger wooden block?

On the other hand she states they have identical mass (not weight), so in a vacuum they should register even.

I think there is a some truth to it being a gateway drug. But not in the sense that most people think of it. The reason I consider it a gateway drug is because once you start buying weed, you've begun to contact criminals and buy stuff from them. It makes it that much easier to now go a step further. You have the contacts, and you have already mentally accepted breaking the law. If you bought dope at the corner store like beer, the dope smoker would be no closer to harder drugs than the average teenager that buys beer.

However, to say that dope is a gateway drug on account of it's effects on the user makes no more sense than the same argument for alcohol.

Yeah, that chart is almost completely worthless. Clear indication that the publisher is either deceitful or ignorant.

There's a few groups, this being one, that I revisit every few months and am amazed anew at their brilliance. Just spectacular what they can do with a guitar and their voices.

A lot of mud slung in this clip, but nothing at all to back it up. It is not fundamentalism to hold a position that disagrees with you. Ask any of the three people criticized in the interview and they could explain their reasoning without resorting to dogmatic principles (might be hard for Hitchens...), racial superiority or any of the charges.

What is fundamental is the unshakable notion that all bad is equally bad so we shouldn't talk about the bad they do because some of us do bad. It combines fundamentalism with non-sequitur.

It is refreshing when you see something like this dealt with appropriately. His last sentence was the best though, "You can't fuckin' touch my neck!". I'm not sure that's a rule, kid.

Edit: I removed a largely unhelpful post I made. I apologise if someone was meaning to reply to it. It would have brought the discussion somewhere I don't really want it to go, and was almost devoid of content despite it's word count.

Instead, having thought a bit more, I think I'm going to try and restate your position to see if I understand it. Watching a few Greenwald interviews helped me to understand it. Please correct me if I'm off base here.

You feel that the current state of the Islamic religion is largely a result of past and current colonialism and interventionism from (mostly) the west. You're saying that we hold a lot of the blame, and that their religion has morphed into it didn't use to be, and has become violent in response to worldly grievances and zeitgeist.

If that is your stance, then we only disagree on the degree that the religion has changed. I think it has stayed more true to its roots than you do. Sounds like a good excuse for me to go on a history reading binge

Nice to see a lack of verbal abuse in a discussion like this. I appreciate it as I know I'm probably treading on thin ice in a lot of minds.

I disagree that texts are devoid of meaning until we give them some. The text itself if a collection of ideas and some of those ideas are horrendous. It generally is not an individual's qualities that determine the violence of the religion as much as the history of that religion's practice in the area they were raised. A peaceful and loving Aztec that was faithful would still have supported sacrificing slaves for all the same reasons, because they would have believed the underlying superstitions that made it a rational act given the premises.

I'm not sure Maher & co. view is as a strictly religious phenomenon. You really have to do a case by case analysis. Some make no sense but for religion, while other are very easy for my to sympathize with, even as an atheist. I have to admit I'm more familiar with Harris' views than Maher's, mind you, as I find Maher's presentation of his ideas can at times be half baked.

The reason why they specifically strap bombs to their chests is largely religious. Everyone else prefers living to kill another day. There's a religious reason why they are willing to sacrifice their children in this way. The reason that they behead people instead of other forms of killing them is because that form of murder is enshrined in their texts. All of these religious justifications lower the barrier for action. They make it that much easier for someone to accept that it's a reasonable course of action. And that's because of specific words in specific books.

I agree that is smells like apologist BS when Harris talks about western intervention having good intentions. I don't think the west has good intentions most of the time. However you have to acknowledge that there is something less reprehensible about trying to kill even a likely dangerous person (with the likelihood of innocent collateral damage) as compared with deliberately targeting exclusively innocent people. Yes the wedding party massacre was horrible. That was the worst case possible from our point of view, and some efforts will be made to avoid it happening again. If think that is morally significant. If you don't think intentions are relevant to morality, we will simply disagree.

Could you explain why you thought my previous post proposed a false dichotomy? It seems sound to me, even after looking at it a second time.

I don't disagree with your analyses of the underlying causes for the current version of the Palestinian conflict. History has shat on them and they're still stuck in it. Although I will nitpick that the tactic of suicide bombing is probably employed on account of specific Islamic beliefs, as relatively few such attacks are carried out by non-Muslims.

The IRA comparison is an interesting one with some meat on it, and I may meander a bit here as I explore my thoughts on it. The Northern Irish conflict, at its core, was not about religion, it was about sovereignty and independence. I don't doubt that both sides attempted to use the bible as a weapon. The very fact that the attempt was unable to create a sect that spread like wildfire across Christendom is a form of evidence that is it less applicable as a weapon. Certainly not proof, but I would count it a point in my favour, not yours.

Note that I'm not saying that there's nothing awful in the Bible, only that it is acknowledged that we don't take most of those parts of it seriously. Any attempt to do so would generate a chorus of condemnation throughout Christian majority countries the world over. Just look at how the we view the Westboro Baptists; they're a farce. Until the Muslim world is willing and able to do the same thing to it's fundamentals and fundamentalists it is not only fair to criticize it, it is important to do so. And when I say criticize 'it' I mean those beliefs that lead to bad shit.

If every terrorist act is predicated on worldly concerns, how do you rationalize the perpetrators of the Charlie hebdo massacre? How do you rationalize the absurd reactions to the shitty anti-Muslim movie that was made? How about the Danish cartoonist incident? The list goes on and on. These are acts that didn't significantly affect the 'injured' parties in any but a religious way. Their responses are explicitly and overtly for religious reasons, while being completely in line with a straightforward and insufficiently fringe interpretation of their religion.