patrick.net

bap, i would have said that Jesus was a liberal. Is there anything in the NT where Jesus said he hated everyone, labelled everyone who was down and out a wrongdoer, and insisted that they should all die from capital punishment? and that the rich were being rewarded by god on earth, and that they were righteous because they were rich, and shouldn't do anything for the poor?

are we reading different bibles or something?

unfortunately, condi rice is an ex-texaco oil executive and chronic transparent liar for imperialism and big oil. hilary clinton at least has some intelligence, presence and human decency. she fought for healthcare reforms more in line with the rest of the world to lower costs for the elderly and disadvantaged, and was completely rolled by a money-grubbing, vested interest Republican majority in Congress. Australia offers free universal healthcare and has beaten big pharma by offering citizens the lowest priced pharmaceuticals in the world, paying $3 per script for pensioners (sometimes $0), and no more than $16 for antibiotics at full price. americans pay more for scripts than just about anywhere. america is ranked 37th in the world for overall quality of health care, and is particularly noted for its denial of access to care.

you pray to your god tonight, but i'll tell you now that the person you've been praying to so far has hooves, horns and a pitchfork...

RE: Kill vs. murder

How about war? Consider ourselves fighting a war against crimes.

wot, and bush isn't all about being a puppet, being selected and not elected, rigging polls, doing favours for crony capitalist mates, starting wars on false pretexts, and arranging for the rich to get richer while the poor get poorer? 'some people call you the elite. i call you my base'? he always looks so interested listening to the electorate too at public functions, and showed so much resolve and leadership after 9/11 and katrina...

i wouldn't have too much trouble looking hilary in the eye if she sincerely stands for social justice agendas, which is meant to be the domain of the Democrats. i doubt that the clintons, and, indeed, other democrat presidents and candidates, don't possess some faint glimmer of human decency. having said that, the 'left' in american politics is increasingly disappearing, and i've met elected labour party politicians who were right wing pillocks, where the right of labour is worse than the left of the conservatives... maybe hilary is a little too focused on time management and getting bang for her buck to bother hobnobbing with just anyone...

isn't hilary the triumph of issues over personality and substance over style?

decent, self-consistent and coherent policies and playing with a straight bat are more important to me than personalities - there are plenty of prickly left-wingers around with nevertheless an unerring moral compass.

RE: Kill vs. murder

How about war? Consider ourselves fighting a war against crimes.

yes, but the nazis/germans/prussians thought they were doing the right and noble thing too, in their own peculiar way. and there's always an element of 'what's in it for me' when countries go to war, no matter what propaganda they present to their people and soldiers. sometimes there's a strong element of longer term maneuvering in it as well - e.g. the US was engaging in WWII with a wary eye on the USSR, and didn't originally want to engage in 'the European war' at all...

do we have to go into just war theory now?

Just look at the murders that have occured because a Dutch newspaper ran a cartoon depicting Allah.

what would happen in the US if cartoons were published showing Jesus in a mocking light? surely there would be a strident backlash also... There has to be some respect for others sensitivities, rather than provoking them...

why do so many who said they’d leave the country if Bush was elected still live here?

i dunno, emigration is a hassle... where do you go? why do refugees in the sudan still live there?

And why is it considered such a bad thing to be patriotic?

Because every country/nation-state so defined therefore has the right to be patriotic, and hubristic, and claim to be the greatest country on earth. And that inevitably seems to have lead to wars and colonialism and squabbles over resources in the past. And you end up whitewashing all the dirty dealings and pretending they never happened by creating a 'civil religion' of flag-waving and false rhetoric and propaganda.

And further, you will never address any problems or deficiencies if you are supposed to be jingoistic and patriotic all the time - your society may actually have a rotten core. It's just like Orwell's 1984 society of brainwashing and propaganda. And maybe you're not all that great, individually - maybe you're dumbed-down, superficial, materialistic, wasteful of resources, arrogant, acquisitive, uneducated, ignorant, coarse, corrupt, socially regressive, uncompassionate and uncaring of others, who knows? Maybe other countries and societies have a better social settlement and more to offer and lessons to learn?

I think we've already covered the remnants of the death penalty, poor healthcare, poor social capital, ghettoisation, high homicide rates, high levels of violence, imperialism, etc when compared to similar countries...

Lawyer, alleged "feminazi," bestselling author, notoriously wronged woman, working mother, alleged murderer and adulterer, Senator, cookie-baker, First Lady, enemy of cookie-bakers, and quite possibly future president of the United States.

Shortly after the Tammy Wynette quote, the "cookie incident" cemented Clinton's reputation as the woman America loved to hate. For all the seething cauldron of outrage these comments produced in insecure, anger-driven morons like Rush Limbaugh and Jerry Falwell, Clinton's no-nonsense, take-no-crap attitude also established her as a something of a hero to modern working women. Naturally, this was considered a massive political liability for hubby, who already had the modern working woman vote locked up but was polling poorly among insecure, anger-driven morons (i.e., a large chunk of the American electorate).

It would be along the same lines as the outrage and protest aginst Eminem’s anti-gay lyrics. I don’t see the religious right making terrorist threats.

yes, what about religious fundamentalists in the US killing doctors who perform abortions and blowing up clinics? as an example

what if you don't agree with the death penalty? what if you think most americans are belligerent, overly religious meatheads and ignorant? or always blowing smoke up people's proverbials?

other countries see americnas as all sorts of undesirable things - insincere; over religious; hypocritical; money-obsessed; overly commercial; etc...

I happen to know a few Americans who have left and say they don't like the place, as a matter of fact.

there are plenty of places in the affluent first world other than the US to live - English and non-English speaking. It depends what you value, and the culture you grew up in...

If they didn’t we’d be far far more mired down in corruption and violence than we are.

but all the evidence is that you are horribly mired in corruption and violence - jack abramoff, the business-government nexus, etc. and the ol' gun death thing... remember the fbi under hoover declared that the mafia in america didn't exist, because they had some photos of him revealing he was gay... coming to america was the best thing that ever happened to the mafia...

and any leader certain vested interests don't like you assassinate - the Kennedys, who tend to stand for socially progressive values... John Jr was no accident...

Dick Cheney

The Early Years
Cheney voted to protect citizens' constitutional right to own armor-piercing bullets. He voted against the Clean Water Act. In fact, he voted against any bill that even included the words "corporate" and "pollution." He voted to protect the sacred constitutional right of a corporation to keep quiet about which local communities they flooded with toxins that cause cancer and birth defects.

Unlike his constituents' wives, Cheney's baton-twirling spouse Lynne wasn't just sitting around barefoot and pregnant all this time. Under Reagan, Lynne Cheney served as head of the National Endowment for the Humanities, protecting innocent citizens against the depravations of public broadcasting and from potentially confusing "propaganda" content, such as a documentary suggesting Africans might have a few legit gripes about centuries of colonialism, forced slavery and industrial exploitation.

Halliburton
When Bush Sr. was drubbed by Bill Clinton in 1992, Cheney decided it was high time he became a titan of industry. With nothing but insider Washington credentials on his resume, he became chairman and CEO of Halliburton Corp. in 1995. Cheney made millions leading the massive oil industry construction company, while carefully "tweaking" its accounting practices. A 1998 accounting change improved the company's revenues by $234 million over the course of four years.

The practice was further complicated by the fact that Halliburton was severely on the ropes at the time the change was made. In addition to suddenly boosting the company's bottom line just when Halliburton was going to get slaughtered on the stock market, Cheney and crew "neglected" to inform the SEC about the change until more than a year later. When Cheney quit Halliburton to take the vice presidential nomination in 2000, the company offered him a $20 million going-away gift, characterized as a "retirement package" for his many (five) years of service in the private sector. In a concession to public outrage and concerns that Halliburton was buying access to the White House, Cheney selflessly accepted only $13.6 million, indisputably preserving the ethical integrity of the Executive Branch.

During the 2000 elections, Cheney's history of heart troubles raised serious concerns among the electorate. Voters worried that if Cheney died while in office, his running mate George W Bush might be left in charge of the country.

9/11
Almost immediately after the 9/11 attacks, Cheney and his old crony Donald Rumsfeld (now Secretary of Defense) began beating the war drums for a new invasion of Iraq, despite a complete absence of any evidence that Saddam Hussein had anything at all to do with September 11 or al Qaeda in general.

Cheney got his way, eventually. After a staged confrontation at the United Nations, where Secretary of State Colin Powell was roped into making the improbable case for an invasion, the Bush administration discarded all hopes of attracting allies (other than faithful lapdog Britain), despite Cheney's last-minute "can't we be friends" tour of Europe. The U.S. went ahead with the invasion in spring 2003.

Halliburton and 9/11
Cheney's enthusiasm for the war wasn't solely driven by philosophy. His old buddies at Halliburton were finally seeing a return on that $13.6 million (and the $1 million a year in "deferred compensation" still being paid to supplement Cheney's measly six-figure government salary). Halliburton's first quarterly earnings report at the end of the short second Gulf War saw profits double from the previous period (more than $20 million), a gain which news reports comically characterized as coming "despite" the war.

Just before the Iraq war started, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers awarded Halliburton an "emergency" contract for oil fields reconstruction, which was awarded without the usual government bidding process because of said "emergency" (and despite the fact that the invasion wasn't on any particular timetable and the fact it had been in the works for a year and a half).

The deal was authorized for up to $7 billion, but the Army didn't trash the country with sufficient enthusiasm to make the whole amount, and the actual size of the deal is now estimated at $600 million (assuming Halliburton survives the lawsuits from competitors who inexplicably feel that something fishy is going on here).

A disappointment to be sure, but Cheney has four more years to make it up to them. And then there's always Syria... And Iran... And...

Bap33

My problem is that your philosophy does not allow for people like me, who are not religious, in your world view. What would you do with folks like me who have no interest in religion whatsoever, but are deeply ethical, not particularly liberal, and positive contributors to society? All I've heard so far is that there is no place for me in your society. This despite the fact that I am more ethical than many of those self righteous sorts I observe exhibiting hypocrisy on a daily basis. I don't really wish to live in a world/country where I am forced to lie about my own deep personal convictions in order to feel safe from my fellow holy-warrior man.

My issue is that those insistent upon prostelatizing their beliefs to me are rarely interested in hearing what I might have to say. This is fine up until the point where you begin trying to dictate my values for me.

Bap33,

Thanks for your comments. I do not take personal offense even though we disagree on many issues. You are rare, in my experience, in that you are willing to actually discuss these issues. I don't particularly like the overly-broad demonization of "the left". Many of my friends and family are "leftist progressives", and I assure you they are ethical, love this country, and most of them are even virtuous christians. There are also people on the "right" who I regard as hating this country. So for me, all that matters is the person, not the label. Labeling is a lazy way out of doing the hard work of evaluating issues and people on their intrinsic merits. (This is why I despise forums like "the futurist").

I also agree that the bible (implying the judeo-christian bible) is sufficient for many to lead a virtuous life. But I don't agree that it is necessary. Certainly, there were virtuous people before, and apart from the bible. And certainly there are and have been other religious cultures which embodied the same essential truisms about human ethics.

I'll demonstrate an example of the uselessness of "left/right; liberal/conservative" labels. One who is fiscally 'conservative' must favor market 'liberalization' for 'conservative' markets are protectionistic and impeded. Is this person "liberal" or "conservative". It depends upon whether you're talking about politcs or economics. What about the born-again christian farmer in Iowa who wants protection from Dutch factory farmers and globalization? He is politically conservative, but fiscally liberal (even more confusing he is favoring market deliberalization, which is a liberal ideal). See the problem?

If we were in China complaining about it’s government, this blog would either be blocked or taken down.

Only if it is hosted by Microsoft or served by Google. ;)

Just kidding.

Live Free or Die

Oh you've got to be fucking kidding me. See the comments from http://tinyurl.com/hv699 dude, far from fucking free, just a dying empire lashing out. Funny that we are going to go to war with Iran just when they start selling oil for Euros, funny that. Hmmm, Iranian Oil bourse and M3 not being reported in mid march and increased rhetoric about those crazy persians and their nuklear program.

hmm, the self-regulating 1984 society....

Why are right wing republicans so incoherent and illogical, and self-inconsistent in their world views? I don't mean bap33, I mean George HW Bush:

REPORTER: Mr. Vice-President, how can you claim that your home is in Maine for tax purposes and at the same time claim that your home is in Texas for voting purposes? Are you really a Texan or a New Englander?

PRESIDENT BUSH: I'm really a Texan. But I got one house. And under the law, every taxpayer is allowed, when he sells a house, and buys another house, to get the rollover. Everybody, if it turns out, and I may hire, I notice she said she has a new good accountant. I'd like to get his name and phone number because I think I've paid too much in the way of taxes.

And residence, Mr. Boyd, legal residence, for voting, is very different. And the domicile, they call that, very different, than the house. That they say you're living in the vice-president's house. Therefore you don't get what every -- I've got problems -- what every other taxpayer gets. I got problems with the IRS, but so do a lot of people out there. I think I've paid too much. Nothing ethical. I'd like to get some money back.

So Sean, what did that google result show you about how Christians react to Jesus being ridiculed?

This is a pointless point. Different cultures react differently. My point was that you don't deliberately flout taboos of other societies as a 'joke'. I don't care how they react or over-react - that's all culturally relative...

You can't say that you're morally superior just because you react differently in this context. It's not morally superior to run cartoons which you know will be offensive. Note that no deaths occurred in the countries where the cartoons were run, although they have high Muslim migrant populations.

You guys invaded a country that wasn't aggressing against anyone, and have killed tens of thousands of locals - to get oil, to get army bases in the region, and to stop oil trading in the Euro. The 'terrorists' (whoever they really were) ostensibly came from Saudi Arabia, your oil trading ally. Where's the moral high ground there?

I'm sorry I didn't mean to hate america, it was an accident, i swear... i was cleaning it and it went off...

heh, so I studied 5 years of political science, sociology, anthropology, psychology, social policy, and philosophy, just to encounter bap and the posited 'right-wing' wall of truth. so, is bap subsumed in my theories, or am i subsumed in bap's theories? is bap just a rambling discourse of unconsidered clichés, prejudices, stereotypes and low-quality judgements mindlessly parroting meta-narratives rebuttable on so many points of ethics and reason that you don't know where to even begin, and wouldn't even attempt it? is 'loving america, right or wrong', a disease? are the republicans fooling some of the people all of the time by pretending to be holy and religious and using christianity as a front while secretly looting the nation for themselves? is it just the rule of the elites, helping themselves to the wealth of the nation, beyond the wildest dreams and excesses of the pre-Revolution French court? and why has greed been elevated from a vice to a virtue? all these questions to be answered in another exciting episode...

You guys invaded a country that wasn’t aggressing against anyone, and have killed tens of thousands of locals - to get oil, to get army bases in the region, and to stop oil trading in the Euro.

Ummm... "you guys"...? Please strike my name from the "in favor of invading Iraq" roll call. And FYI, I'm not some Bill Buckley/George Will johnny-come-lately neocon who just recently changed my mind on the subject. This (plus all the religious right pandering, cronyism, corruption, etc.) is one of the main reasons I did NOT vote for Mr. Cheney for President in either election. ;-)

@Bap33,

Huh?

Oh, you meant jinx.

‘criminal’-hating

Is criminal-hating a hate crime?

involving extremely gruesome methods of capital punishment

Huh? We only talked about sensible methods like hanging. We oppose any punishment that involves dismemberment, disembowelment, or other forms of excessive pain.

don't the christians say, 'love the sinner, hate the sin'? what happened to that?

i think you guys are more into 'hang the sinner by ther neck until dead, although they'll be alive for a while still, and there are more humane methods which we prefer not to use, because we are really still unreflexive savages at heart'

perhaps the market is to blame for excluding some people from meaningful participation? so they turn to crime as the only way to make money? perhaps there's better ways to encourage civil responsibility in other people? you guys are knee-jerk fools...

i think you guys are more into ‘hang the sinner by ther neck until dead, although they’ll be alive for a while still, and there are more humane methods which we prefer not to use, because we are really still unreflexive savages at heart’

We should all forgive murders by hanging them. What is wrong with that?

Instead of having them live in fear on death row for decades, which is clearly inhumane, they should be given swift execution. From conviction to execution in one month. They should be given expedited appeal and decision so that their executions can proceed as scheduled.

Do you have anyone like this in your family? I do. Believe me, we’ve tried to ‘rehabilitate’ him for damn near 40 years, and you can’t ‘rehabilitate’ someone who doesn’t want to be helped. He’s just moved on from stealing and assaulting family memebers to complete strangers.

Absolutely, SQT. I fully recognise that there is a relatively small minority of people, mostly males, who have all sorts of behavioural problems, and who show recidivist and difficult behaviours. There are also loads of psychopaths in middle and senior management who get rewarded for channeling their brutality towards employees or 'customers' (e.g. realtors), but are too smart to let their urge to hurt, or disregard for, people get them into trouble...

The solution in most countries in the case of violent, difficult cases is to restrain them where they can't do any more harm, but still respect their right of personhood, no matter what mistakes they might have made. It's the curse of the demonic male, unfortunately. The urges that presumably had adaptive survival value in the wild don't work in civilisation. e.g. half of schoolboys out there have low-level ADHD, they're restless and adventurous and need to explore and mess with things... Girls are getting ahead of boys in academic circles because they're relatively quiet, studious and more gifted with language, on average - they run rings around guys in the service economy and 'chattering' occupations. Guys are still out there grunting monosyllabically and constructing buildings... Note that men in prison outnumber women by 10 to 1...

You should read 'Demonic Males' by Dale Peterson & Richard Wrangham: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0395877431/002-1029528-0077604?v=glance&n=283155

You religious right guys want basically an American version of the Taliban cept with Walmart and Jesus and the harder you push the more you alienate most of your own countrymen.

Absolutely. The Bible (OT in particular) is a Middle Eastern cultural document from 3,000 years ago. Look at the punishments in there - same as in the Qu'ran and civil punishments in the middle east. Look at the stuff even in Corinthians about women having to wear veils in the church. And you want to being back harsh death penalties - well, they have weekly beheadings in Saudi Arabia, you guys would love it there. They've even had stonings in Iran of late...

The Jewish people are simply an offshoot of the Arabic/Semitic people, and the whole belief system has flowed through from Judaism and Islam into Dark Ages Europe via Rome and then into America. So American Christian fundamentalists who quote the OT are a living, breathing reflection of Middle Eastern society of 3,000 years ago. At least the NT is a more humane refelction on how to live in a civilised fashion, with the exception of the writings of Paul, who I felt was a regressive influence on the church.

Addendum on religious evolution: Note that monotheism was a religious development in the Middle East, while the rest of the world had polytheistic or animist-type religions...

Some theorists believe most religions are a reflection of the culture and technologies of the societies they develop in - the middle easterners were pastoral herders before desertification, and indeed were the first to domesticate many species of animal - goats, sheep and pigs - which were native to that region - these animals and domestication techniques then spread east and west across lines of latitude into similar climates in Europe, allowing the build-up of surplus and prosperity. The point is, these 'pastoralist' societies tend to see their god as a single shepherd in charge of many sheep, whereas other cultures had a separate god for every natural force as an explanatory mechanism... Look at the multiple gods of the hindus, greeks, romans, germanic, nordic, celtic, south american societies...

The solution in most countries in the case of violent, difficult cases is to restrain them where they can’t do any more harm, but still respect their right of personhood, no matter what mistakes they might have made.

Who is going to pay for all these? It is all but resource allocation.

The solution in most countries in the case of violent, difficult cases is to restrain them where they can’t do any more harm, but still respect their right of personhood, no matter what mistakes they might have made.

Who is going to pay for all these? It is all but resource allocation.

Because human rights are a necessity, not a luxury of 'resource allocation'. The death penalty has never been about 'resources' but is an archaic punishment for serious transgressions - no-one in informed circles has ever argued that it is an economic burden if the death penalty is not applied.

The thing is, given that bad behaviour seems to be genetically inspired in a lot of instances (interacting with environment), then you or your kids or whoever could be unlucky enough to become a criminal - it's the luck of the genetic draw - you don't then go about extinguishing anyone you don't like based on a predisposition they did not choose. Remember that laws and sanctions are culturally relative, you could be killed just for disrespecting an elder in Australian Aboriginal society, for instance.

Alternatively, if the American cultural environment is to blame for criminality, that's not their fault either. Too much libertarianism after 30 years of Dr Ben Spock! It's interesting that Texans are apparently 5 or 6 times as bad as people in other states, going on the death penalty rates...

Regarding the 2 income latchkey kids, that's what happens when you let 'free markets' take hold of everything... work expands to fill the capacities available... property values rise to the level of 2 incomes in a bidding war... hence, a responsible govt would take steps to address these problems - the Aust govt started trying to get moms to stay at home by giving tax breaks, but the lure of 2 incomes and the cost of housing was too much for them... that's what you get for living in a laissez-faire society, sorry about that - the communists had it right after all...

left-wing theofascism

wow.

what does that look like?

except that, in the case of the US, jinx was right:

The good news is that currently the conservatives (neo-con, conservatives and republicans) control the house, senate, supreme court and the white house. (What don't you understand here?) Liberals aren’t in control. At all.

The bad news: This means if things are going wrong it's because the Bush admin is incompetent and conservative policies/strategies are simply not working.

i always think it's hilarious when george dubya says in his empty speechifying 'we detest non-democratic theocracies like iran' when he himself claims to have a hotline to god informing his every move and the last 2 'democratic' federal elections were rigged...

i don't want to be here when bap wakes up...

how do you use wordpress to get smilies, etc? i'm embedding html to do it at present...

You see, Sean, if your only solution to living within the rules is a rule of no rules then you have established a rule in the very act of having a rule against rules. If the law was “anything is ok and nothing is wrong” then what do you do when someone freely decides something actually is wrong ??

but i haven't said there should be no rules. i've simply said there should not be a death penalty, and that civilisation should be more mature and humane than needing one...

and there is more philosophical and sociological thinking and debate behind that view than bap's mind could comprehend or grasp in 10 lives of choosing not to seek an education, so there's no point really trying to argue it...

Alternatively, if the American cultural environment is to blame for criminality, that’s not their fault either.

Death penalty is not about fault assignment. Again, it is deterrence and disposal.

Because human rights are a necessity, not a luxury of ‘resource allocation’.

Criminals are the human rights violators.

the communists had it right after all…

Huh? What?

So Sean, what did that google result show you about how Christians react to Jesus being ridiculed?

oh, i dunno. it just came up with:

- the Crusades
- the Protestant Reformation
- Henry VIII, the Dissolution of the Monasteries and execution of abbots
- Bloody Mary (Mary I of England), Elizabeth I and the Catholic Rebellion
- the Nine Years War in Ireland
- the Spanish Inqusition, involving killing and displacing anyone not Christian in Spain, mostly Muslims
- the witchcraft trials, involving torture and burning at the stake, and the Malleus Maleficarum
- bombing of abortion clinics and killing of doctors
- invasion of Iraq
- Anne Coulter - 'kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity' heh

although those events didn't even involve ridicule, now i think of it...

Your (forgotten) philosophical roots:

Puritanism
One common criticism is that Puritans are fundamentalists. Many pundits posit a Puritan spirit in the United States' political culture, especially in its historical tendency to oppose things such as alcohol and sexuality. Puritans in colonial America were among the most radical Puritans and their social experiment took the form of a Calvinist theocracy.

On the contrary, some critics have credited Puritanism as being the very thing that founded American democracy. This view first appeared in Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America. According to Tocqueville, Puritans were hard-working, egalitarian, and studious.

There are authors who stake out a middle ground, such as James A. Morone, who in his book Hellfire Nation credits opposing tendencies within Puritanism with being the roots of both American democracy, through the desire to improve society and the world as a whole, and on the other hand with paranoia, hate, racism, sexism, and hatred of sexuality and youth.

Christian Fascism
'Christian fascism' is a term used by some to describe what they see as totalitarian fascist politics in the contemporary Christian right, primarily in the United States.

For example, the Reverend Rich Lang of the Trinity United Methodist Church of Seattle, gave a sermon entitled 'George Bush and the Rise of Christian Fascism' in which he said "I want to flesh out the ideology of the Christian Fascism that Mr. Bush articulates. It is a form of Christianity that is the mirror opposite of what Jesus embodied. It is, indeed, the materialization of the spirit of antichrist: a perversion of Christian faith and practice...".

Some who use the term Christian fascism do not describe an existing state of fascism, but rather an emerging proto-fascism, and warn that action is needed to stop the possible emergence of a theocratic fascist state.

Because human rights are a necessity, not a luxury of ‘resource allocation’.

Criminals are the human rights violators.

Yes, but my whole point is that you're lowering yourself to their level, and what you are doing is not well grounded in ethical philosophy or logic. If you disentangle it, you are really acting as badly as they are, so you are no morally better than they are. It is an archaic system that demands 'an eye for an eye...etc'

Remember theft only really started once people started to acquire things. Under the 'primitive communism' of Australian Aboriginals, all property was collectively owned and shared. All objects had to be given and shared on request, under a system of 'mutual reciprocity'.

Once horticultural societies evolved requiring a constant settlement for the long-term cultivation of crops and keeping of animals, man's tendency for theft and warfare seem to come to the fore, as it was easier to take a grown crop or animal rather than raising it yourself. After 200 000 of hunter-gather existence, this heralded the beginning of an age of accumulation and social stratification which may be only 10 000 years old.

The point is that present-day Western 'property rights' are entirely different to the co-operative rights of hunter-gatherers. In Aboriginal society, if you ask a relative for something, they are obliged to give it to you, no matter what it is. You in turn can do the same if they have something that you want or need. In this fashion, all the goods of a tribe are in constant circulation. This represents some 200 000 years of the hunter-gatherer social grouping pattern, by far the longest period of human history.

They would regard the hoarding, accumulation and social stratification of Westerners as greedy, selfish and incredibly anti-social, no good and completely destructive to the welfare of the tribe.

As did the North American Indians when conquered by Europeans.

So, which set of rights do you want to make reference to when you kill someone?

Yes, but my whole point is that you’re lowering yourself to their level, and what you are doing is not well grounded in ethical philosophy or logic.

I am sure it is very well grounded in utilitarianism.

Why are you preaching communism?

so utilitarianism then is morally wrong. I suppose we could mulch up dead people from hospitals and feed them to pigs to save waste, according to utilitarian theory, but I don't think that would be acceptable to most people, yourself excepted, presumably.

the communists had it right after all…

Huh? What?

that 'capitalism contains the seeds of its own destruction' - SQT maintains that it is breaking down families and the very fabric of society. People can't afford houses, children are running wild, crime is up, people are baying for the death penalty...

Marx simply asked for a system which 'gave to each according to their need, and asked from each according to their ability'.

That's why I am preaching Communism, just as Jesus did. ; )

In fact, as I said earlier, 'libertarianism' can scarcely be distinguished form Communism.

Marx wanted freedom from the '5 alienations' of present-day working life, of the alienation of workers from each other, from their work, from their lives, and from themselves, as created by the monotonous process work and atomisation of tasks in the early Industrial Revolution, compared with the craftsmen of earlier times and family-based businesses.

He saw a 'withering away of the state' as an end-point of Communism, also. Not that that has been achieved by Russia, China, Cuba, etc, which are really capitalist 'command economies' still.

Note that it suited the elite ruling class of America to demonise the Russians, Chinese, etc as they were afraid of losing their wealth and power if the ideas of Communism took hold in America. So they started another 1984-style propaganda war against Communism, infecting the general population, maintaining a troubled regressive welfare state and thus ensuring they could keep their wealth and power and status, while the ordinary people of America mouthed anti-Communist slogans and toiled in relative poverty - until progressive policies like the New Deal and GI Bill came along, only to be eroded in recent times with concomitant rises in drug-taking, social malaise and anomie, and the creation of a winner-take-all society which praises the winners and abandons and demonises the losers...

That’s not about capitalism, it’s about greed and social status.

Is there a difference?