patrick.net

I'm pretty sure the Christian right would bring back slavery if they could.

Dan,
who would you say is responsible for our current wealth redistribution system that has me being forced to part with my wages under threat of punishment for them to be handed to someone who did not earn them in any regard? Is that not the same as slavery? I am made to support/work for/ earn for another, against my will. Slavery. Right? Right!

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Dan8267 2012 Mar 25, 12:22pm

Dan,
who would you say is responsible for our current wealth redistribution system that has me being forced to part with my wages under threat of punishment for them to be handed to someone who did not earn them in any regard? Is that not the same as slavery

Mostly, your employer.

Employers take the lion's share of a producer's production before the government even comes in with taxation.

Now, do I think takes are too high? My effective tax rate for the income tax alone is 25%. That's ridiculous for someone who doesn't live in a mansion. Counting other taxes (SS, medicare, sales, etc.), my effective tax rate is over a third of my income. Counting the inflation tax, it's probably about half of my income.

And where does my tax money go? Mostly to unjust wars and bailouts of large corporations and banks. Both parties are to blame for that, but the Republicans are worse because they allow corporations and banks to become too-big-to-fail instead of enforcing anti-trust laws. And then they allow those too-big-to-fail corporations to do anything they want.

If I had complete fiat, the income/ss/medicare/sales tax would all go away. The government would perform all rent-seeking functions including banking and natural resource extraction, and all rent profits would be used to fund the government.

Naturally, I'd have to cut spending by 90%, but that's easy. I'd start with the military and all subsidies including farming and oil. I'd limit SS to those born before VE day. The Baby Boomers would simply have to pay part of the check for once.

to be handed to someone who did not earn them in any regard?

The amount of your produced wealth that goes to the poor via taxation, whether the poor person is someone who got sick or is just a lazy bum, is a tiny fraction compared to the amount of your produced wealth that goes to the ruling class.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/ejorQVy3m8E

I am made to support/work for/ earn for another, against my will. Slavery. Right? Right!

Taxation, although certainly unjust in our society, is hardly slavery. Real slavery, as it occurred in our country, was far worse. At least your employer doesn't whip you and rape your wife and daughters. That was the norm in the south during slavery.

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ArtimusMaxtor 2012 Mar 25, 9:28pm

I love a good citizen. Nothing forces you to be a good citizen. DEM no good louzy Welfare people if someone gives dem a job. Its a bitch trying trying to straighten out equality.

Try feedin straight people my old buddy used to tell me. We used to get liquored up and laugh our assess off. The guy was just plain smart about life. Give me the BS of how people stick together. He new how to make people work for him. There are lemmings and sharks. He weren't no lemming. I'm no shark. Just don't have that ability. Also I don't have to be one which is nice. I could tell him. Paper is nothing it makes you go into work everyday. Paper is debt and consumption.

MLK was a great guy, yea. We just love a pacifier. Hey I'm not stupid. Know what you assume all of them are. They really aren't. Thats just the way it goes. I could care less for the sharks amoung them. But then again. Hey. They have a way of looking at little. It don't all belong to them. However they have a nice way about things. Unlike sum people I know. I have always liked them for the most part. Theyre thought "might be" if your going to wreck the world. Because were for the most part "not stupid enough to do something like that". Turn it into a shithole where nothing comes up. Your going to feed us to. Bonded servitude which many of them laugh at. Oh we move slow stupid were on a 24 clock till we get paid. I guess they know a bad deal when they see one. You owe you agree to are earth bound facts because your dealing in things taken from that earth. Not something inane like Jesus falling out of the sky saying pay them.

People in the "modern world" just aren't very concious of the fact. That people who don't break up things that should make it a nice place. Don't like them very much. In fact some of them the despise them. "Modern" is sold on we are the greatest "most civilized". When in fact they owe and owe and owe. Its never going to change.

Princess Pickle (from a far off land) might have asked why do we have to feed dem? Because they will wreck all our assets and burn them to the ground my little hamburger topping.

Citizens are real troopers.

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leo707 2012 Mar 26, 3:10am

I'm pretty sure the Christian right would bring back slavery if they could.

I don't think so. As a culture slavery has become immoral, and this attitude permeates even the christian right. So, I don't think that modern christians would promote the return of slavery.

However, there is nothing in the bible that prohibits slavery; in fact the "morality" in the bible assumes that people own slaves and gives rules on how one should treat there slaves. If human society were to undergo a moral transformation where slavery became "OK" again then I think that christians -- right wing or not -- would be able to easily reconcile it with their beliefs.

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Dan8267 2012 Mar 26, 9:13am

leoj707 says

Dan8267 says

I'm pretty sure the Christian right would bring back slavery if they could.

I don't think so. As a culture slavery has become immoral, and this attitude permeates even the christian right. So, I don't think that modern christians would promote the return of slavery.

This is one of many things that I hope I'm wrong about. Still I need to see something other than hate coming from the Christian right to believe they have learned their lesson. They still try to whitewash the whole slavery thing by saying that the Civil War was about state's rights, not human rights.

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CL 2012 Mar 27, 8:11am

True, he was just another religious zealot in a land of religious zealots. Christianity wouldn't even exist if it hadn't been for Saul turned Paul and later Constantine, ever the politician.

Paul sucks. The only thing he done was Yesterday. Ooops....I mean, the only thing he done was First Corinthians, 13. I think it was the inspiration for Rundgren's "Real Man".

23 nope 2012 Mar 27, 4:35pm

Poor persecuted christians, with their 90% majority. It must be hard.

24 dublin hillz 2012 Mar 28, 2:12am

Completely innaccurate analysis. I know plenty of Catholics, especially the young non-anglo Catholics who are quite liberal in their views. In fact, they will be voting for Obama even if he were to face Santorum in the general election. They believe and rightfully so that the mainsteam religious right in this country is basically the antithesis of what Jesus stood for. Moreover the values of the "right" whether socially or fiscally speaking is the antithesis of what Jesus stood for.

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MisdemeanorRebel 2012 Mar 28, 2:14am

The whole religion is based on Marytrdom, which explains they always try to twist things so that they are the persecuted.

Most of the lurid Roman prosecution crap - mass burnings, thrown to lions, etc. is rubbish, that first appear long after these events occurred with no confirmation in any Roman accounts or records. Some barely literate monk writing in some Benedictine Monastery in Alsace around the High Middle Ages type deal, almost thousand years later. The Lion stuff in particular dates from the building of Saint Peter's, when the Pope was pulling apart the remains of the Colosseum for stone to build it with many, many centuries after the end of the Western Empire. A good excuse for as to why the Pope was pulling apart the landmark, rather than "We're too poor to import stone from elsewhere". All the memorials of Martyrs allegedly thrown to the lions also dates from about this time, and is not mentioned prior to it.

The "Prosecutions" were mostly about pledging allegiance to Rome and less about Religion:

Early Christians, regarded Jews, Pagans, Mithraists and Zoroasterians alike as "Devil Worshipers" or "Christ Deniers" - they didn't see idols as silly, powerless things like the Jews or Zoroasterians, but as actual evil spirits (Spirit in Greek: "Daemon")or Devils. And they behaved with that mentality when confronted with other religious followers and temples - and the Great Leader of Devil Worship, the Roman Emperor.

Jews, who also refused to make supplications at Imperial Statuary were not persecuted. Because unlike Christians, Jews thought Pagans were just "silly" for worshiping rocks, were not believers in an immediate End of the World, and by that time had come to grips with the Diaspora (although even before 70AD many tens of thousands of Jews were voluntarily living in Rome, Alexandria and elsewhere, as well as many "Hellenized" Jews - what we might call today "Secular Jews" - who liked being Roman Citizens, probably the majority). A mere prayer to the God(s) for the Emperor's health was considered enough of a supplication by Roman Authorities - and that was generally required only of those who had raised suspicion upon themselves by public action or utterance.

The only time you'd see Jews or Zoroasterians harassed in the Roman Empire would be during the times of Hebrew Revolts or Wars with Persia, and AFAIK were not imperially sanctioned, and mostly mob violence. The same shit you see in all ages and in all times happening to a minority in a country that's at war with the minorities' home country (Germans in the UK/Japanese in the USA in WW2)

We have 3 punishments handed down to misbehaving Christian Leaders by Diocletian, the only ones that survive. In an era where the death penalty was ubiquitous, not a single one is a death sentence. Maybe, giving the more reasonable Church historians benefit of the doubt, a few hundred died under both Decian and Diocletian.

However, there are accounts of Christians committing a form of "Suicide by Cop":

Unhappy men! Unhappy men! If you are thus weary of your lives, is it so difficult for you to find ropes and precipices?"

- Antoninus, a Roman Proconsul for Asia, addressing Christians who came to him, cursed the Emperor to his face as a Devil Worshiper, and demanded to be put to death as martyrs.

So imagine if you will, around 250 AD, a handful of manic street preachers running through the streets screaming "Rome is gonna fall; it is a cesspit of Satan! Embrace the Messiah of Heaven, not the Emperor of this fallen World!", ripping down Imperial Decrees, spitting on statuary, assaulting Priests of every kind, and then being arrested for treason. Rather than poor Christian slaves being hunted down 24-7 by the non-existent secret police and thrown into the nearest arena to wrestle with panthers, for the mere act of drawing a fish symbol in a grotto.

Later on, unsurprisingly, a group called the Donatists rose up, who wanted to excommunicate their fellow Christians and dispose Christian Leaders who had behaved themselves and obeyed the authorities in cutting out the fanatic crap.

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FaithInHim 2012 Mar 28, 6:09am

simchaland says

I am a flaming Liberal. I kind of like Jesus, the historical one and not the inflated idol that whacko right-wing Christian Fundamentalists have invented.

YOUR Jesus is a false jesus. Jesus was not pro-gay or pro-abortion. Jesus said that :But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death. Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God."

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leo707 2012 Mar 28, 6:11am

YOUR Jesus is a false jesus.

No, yours is.

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Dan8267 2012 Mar 28, 6:46am

Jesus was not pro-gay

If Jesus was a homophobe, which he probably was given the time in which he lived, then he was an asshole and no god. Why would you worship a bigot?

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leo707 2012 Mar 28, 8:50am

leoj707 says

FaithInHim says

YOUR Jesus is a false jesus.

No, yours is.

Sorry, mines is correct. Your's is wrong.

Who said that I had a jesus, but regardless yours is wrong...

...sorry.

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Bap33 2012 Mar 28, 11:26am

who says a man is a bigot if he is not in favor of sexually deviant male sodomites?

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Dan8267 2012 Mar 28, 1:03pm

Define the word racist.

Bigotry based on race.

Then tell me if it is possible to be racist towards gays.

Logically no. Such a person would simply be a bigot, but not of the racist variety as homosexuality is not a race.

Bigotry is bad. It makes people act mean towards others, hurt others, and infringe upon the rights of others.

From your username and icon, I presume you are a devote Christian. You do remember that Jesus said "love your neighbor as yourself" and "that which you do unto the least of my people, you do unto me", right? How do you rectify hatred of homosexuals with that philosophy? It seems to me that you are holding two contradictory beliefs at one time.

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Dan8267 2012 Mar 28, 1:07pm

who says a man is a bigot if he is not in favor of sexually deviant male sodomites?

I'm not in favor of man on man ass sex. But I think that homosexual men are equal under the law, and that they are not an abomination. To treat them as second class citizens is Unamerican. To treat them as subhuman is Unchristian.

Really, do you have to be reminded by the atheist of the tenants of your own faith? How about the golden rule? Do unto others as you would have done unto you.

How can anyone rectify the golden rule with holding up a sign at a funeral saying "your fag son now burns in hell"?

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MisdemeanorRebel 2012 Mar 29, 12:43am

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xl9otu_saturday-night-live-lyle-the-effeminate-heterosexual_fun

Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God."

The effeminate? That's harsh. Poor Lyle.

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Bap33 2012 Mar 29, 1:52am

who says a man is a bigot if he is not in favor of sexually deviant male sodomites?

still waiting for this answer. Dan said he is not in favor of sexually deviant male sodomites, but I do not feel Dan is a bigot.

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leo707 2012 Mar 29, 2:03am

Dan said he is not in favor of sexually deviant male sodomites, but I do not feel Dan is a bigot.

"Not in favor" (i.e. neutral) is different than treating someone like a second class citizen. Trying to create a different set of "rights" and using pejorative terms to describe someone is not remaining "neutral" towards them.

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Bap33 2012 Mar 29, 3:49am

thanks for sharing your personal opinions.
The question stands unanswered.

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leo707 2012 Mar 29, 4:27am

thanks for sharing your personal opinions.

You are welcome.

The question stands unanswered.

To use Dan's definition.
Dan8267 says

[Bigotry] makes people act mean towards others, hurt others, and infringe upon the rights of others.

"Not in favor" can be neutral or against. Based on his comments Dan is neutral towards the idea of non-heterosexuals. He does not disparage or seek to create a different set of rights for them. So you are correct Dan is not a bigot.

However, another person could be "not in favor" of non-heterosexuals and at the same time, "act mean towards [non-heterosexuals], hurt [them], and infringe upon [their] rights." This second hypothetical person would be a bigot.

That make sense? I hope it helps clear things up for you.

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Dan8267 2012 Mar 29, 7:46am

Dan said he is not in favor of sexually deviant male sodomites,

Just to clarify, Bap. Although I do not engage in anal sex with other men and find the idea repulsive, that does not mean I think that men who do are morally or legally inferior. Consenting men have every right to have anal sex. It's none of yours, mine, or the government's business.

I find old people having sex to be repulsive. That doesn't mean it is immoral or should be illegal. And there are more old people have sex in Florida -- shudder -- than there are gay people having sex here.

Just because you or I find something icky, doesn't make it despicable. I wouldn't even use the term deviation as that term implies derogation.

Now, I have yet to hear one sensible reason whatsoever from anyone in all of history as to why homosexual anal sex should in any way be immoral.

Some things make sense to call immoral: rape, murder, physically harming a person or animal in any way. Other things don't make sense to call immoral and are arbitrary cultural rules like: not eating meat on Friday, not eating pork, do not wear mixed fabrics.

So tell me why homosexuality should be considered immoral. And don't bother using Bible quotes. The Bible is OK with slavery; it's not a moral authority.

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Dan8267 2012 Mar 29, 7:48am

leoj707 says

Based on his comments Dan is neutral towards the idea of non-heterosexuals.

Actually I wish a higher percentage of men were gay. Less competition.

It's all about supply and demand. If only I had access to the army's gay bomb, I'd have detonated it in college. Then I would have gotten a lot more action. ...from women that is.

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Dan8267 2012 Mar 29, 7:51am

leoj707 says

He does not disparage or seek to create a different set of rights for them.

Correct. I believe in equality under law. No exceptions.

I don't get how anyone can call themselves American and not believe in that idea. It's the very foundation of our country. Granted, the founding fathers certainly fucked up in implementing that principle with the 80 years of slavery after the revolution, but the principle is still the very reason we sought independence in the first place.

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Dan8267 2012 Mar 29, 7:58am

thanks for sharing your personal opinions.
The question stands unanswered.

I think you're not understanding our answer. A person who thinks that homosexuals should be prosecuted for sodomy is a bigot because he is treating homosexuals as subhuman and it's an arbitrary prejudice.

From Merriam-Webster

bigot: a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices; especially : one who regards or treats the members of a group (as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance

Anti-gay laws are wrong for the same reason that race-based or class-based laws are wrong. They unjustly turn one group of people into second-class citizens or worse.

A hundred years from now, people are going to look back at the anti-gay laws in the same way we look back at the Jim Crow laws. You don't want to be on the side of bigotry when all the Internet chats and TV videos from our time are accessible on a single holochip. You'd be viewed by the 22nd century people the same way that slave owners are viewed by us today.

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Bap33 2012 Mar 29, 1:21pm

Correct. I believe in equality under law. No exceptions.

agree 100%. Lets start there.

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Bap33 2012 Mar 29, 1:21pm

Hate Crime. There should be no such thing. right?

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Dan8267 2012 Mar 29, 3:13pm