Back in the dim, prehistoric past, we were animals. We're still animals, but since we've learned to speak, we have some social, cooperative and practical skills that other animals lack. Animals, including other social animals like wolves and bees take what they need from others, including killing them, and don't worry about consequences beyond immediate self-defense during the actual act. Within the pack, wolves may fight over who gets the choicest bits, but they ultimately try to make sure everybody has enough to eat.
Prehistoric people were this way too, but as they became more specialized and tool-based, the need to generalize the basic fairness within the tribe became important. Tribes that respected internal property rights tended to have less internal fighting, greater specialization, and better cooperation, resulting in better survival. This is the basis of our notions of right and wrong, good and evil. Stealing from and killing each other is bad. Stealing from other groups or animals, not so much. It's practical, and there's evolutionary pressure to see that we do it. But young people sometimes have a hard time seeing the big picture, so they have to be taught how to behave. Most people get the point fairly quickly. Some do not. By stealing from their friends, they can give themselves a small advantage, and by hiding it, they may be able to get away with it. In a small group, they can't hide for long, and eventually they're caught, and appropriate punishments were dealt out.
We're also animals that like stories and like to tell stories, and we're curious about how things got to be the way they are. So naturally, we made up stories about that, and passed them on. Some of them made more sense than others, and some of them were better stories than others. Many of the ones that survived had a "moral", a broader point that the listeners would be able to learn from and adapt to their own lives. Until the invention of writing about 5000 years ago, we couldn't write the stories down, so there were a lot of these stories being passed around orally. Like other things, which stories survived was subject to some evolutionary pressure. Among the ones that survived were ones that leaders realized helped the social order and made it easier to do their job.
Many of these stories had a powerful person. Sometimes this was a chief or king, but sometimes this person was more powerful than any real person could ever be. The Babylonian hero Gilgamesh is one example. These superheros over time developed a new name. We call these beyond human superheros "Gods". In many stories, these superheroes never really died, but were out there in the stars or the forest somewhere, helping us along.
Somewhere along the line, somebody had the bright idea to connect punishment for bad behavior to these stories. Since the superheroes rarely actually came back to punish wrongdoers, there is need for some alternate reality in which wrongdoers get theirs. Since some sort of afterlife is a common element of these stories, it was convenient to use that: even though you managed to hide your crimes from us, you can't hide from the superheroes, and they'll punish you in the afterlife. For most people, this was unnecessary. But for a few of the wrongdoers, it did work. Since it was impossible to distinguish a wrongdoer who was effective at hiding from a rightdoer, it was important to try to convince everybody of their validity. It didn't completely work, of course: some bad people didn't believe in the stories, and some bad people didn't care. But lots of good people didn't believe in the stories either. As long as they didn't do anything to undermine the system, there was no harm in that. Lots of people see the larger point, which is to behave in ways that don't undermine the social fabric, without needing the stories to keep them in line.
Over time, some of these social groups grew bigger, and a shared group of stories was often part of the social fabric that bound larger communities together. Prior to the development of writing, about a thousand people was the practical limit, but after that, much larger groups became possible. In a small group, it was very difficult for a bad person to stay hidden for long. But as groups grew larger, it became much easier for a determined bad person to hide their misdeads. One response to this was specialized policing. A certain number of bad people would get caught this way, but criminological and judicial skills were still pretty primitive, and a lot would get away with it. A lot of leaders came to believe that the only solution was to force people to believe in the whole afterlife with punishments for the wrongdoers schtick, and that not believing in it was just as bad a crime as real crimes, like stealing. It didn't help much, but that didn't keep them from trying.
Wise leaders through history have realized that allowing people to have their own belief systems, including skepticism, is the best policy, and many of the greatest scientific and political advances have come out of these societies. Periclean Athens, early Imperial Rome, Andalusia, late colonial New England, late 19th century Vienna and Budapest, and many more, have mostly had an official religion, but were completely tolerant of others, and achieved great things because of it, and didn't suffer from higher crime rates at all. Many of these enlightened periods ended with religious fanatics taking over and destroying not just religious freedom, but the successful society as well.
29 March 2012
24 March 2012
Our Transit Future
This is speculative. There's a fair bit of engineering to be done for some of this, but all are completely possible using today's technology--albeit expensive. There are no breakthroughs required, just the will to do it. In several cases, they are extremely cheap to operate, while being expensive to initially build.
For the longest, fastest trips, we will use Evacuated Tube Transit, or VacTrains. Traveling in evacuated tubes at thousands kilometers per hour, it takes so long to accelerate and decelerate that it's impractical to share tubes between different routes in most cases, even when they're roughly co-linear. Thus these will be largely point to point routes, initially between our biggest cities, passing under oceans, over or through mountains. There are a lot of difficult engineering problems still to be solved, but the advantages are so large it's hard to imagine this technology won't eventually be adopted. Trips will be in relatively small vehicles, unscheduled, provided as demand requires. Energy use is extremely low--there's no air drag, and rolling friction is negligible (they'll probably use maglev). Once the thing up to speed, it's traveling on momentum until it's time to slow down--and you can use slowing down to generate power! Imagine: New York to Sydney in an hour, leaving any time you wish.
Intermediate distance travel will be implemented with High Speed Rail which resembles the current form, possibly using maglev, traveling at a few hundred kilometers per hour between cities no more than a few hundred kilometers apart and probably no less than 50. It's almost as expensive as VacTrain to build but because the trains are atmospheric they can't run more than about 500kph. Because there's a power and aerodynamic advantage to it, trains will be long and run on schedules. All of today's HSRs are electric and I see no reason to think that might change.
Conventional Aviation will serve routes that are not yet served by VacTrain or HSR. Over the long term, these will more resemble regional airlines than the majors. Aviation has amongst the highest energy demands of all and will thus remain one of the few users of Fossil Fuels and their artificial replacements.
Ballistic travel is possible. The technology used to put people into low earth orbit and return them safely can also be used to provide point to point travel anywhere in the world at speed as high or higher than evactuated tubes, and using it that way will allow economies of scale to reduce the cost and increase the safety for both types of destination. Rockets consume a lot of fuel although some use non-fossil varieties. I think it is really only practical if there's also a significant business putting people up into low earth orbit and recovering them. I think this can only happen if there are meaningful (read: profitable) space colonies, probably mining asteroids.
Conventional interurban or commuter rail will serve high volume corridors that are too short for HSR or VacTrain. Some existing rail is powered by Diesel, but much is electric and over time I'd expect these corridors to be electrified (or re-electrified).
Personal Rapid Transit will largely replace municipal bus, light rail and subway systems. Where practical and grade separated, this will occupy the rights of way those systems used, with a cheaper, faster, more convenient alternative. You can get four PRT lines into the space occupied by a single subway track, and since most of these are two way, that means as many as 8 PRT lines. Since each of these has roughly half the capacity of the subway, that means a net doubling of line capacity. It's far more than is necessary in most places. Building new PRT routes will be far cheaper than anything except bus routes and they are easy to connect up with existing PRT routes. PRT can serve some intercity routes, but probably no more than 50km or so.
Battery electric cars will completely replace carbon combustion cars. These are practical for short routes that are not yet PRT-ized (or so lightly traveled that they will never be PRT-ized). A few examples: very low density dwelling--less than two or three people per acre. Point to point service for handicapped. (PRT is much more amenable for handicapped than conventional autos but there are some situations that just can't be helped). There will be plenty of ambulances and other rescue vehicles serving the PRT, but some need to serve other houses.
A bus is just a big car that carries a lot of people and runs on a scheduled route. Routes that are not PRT-ized, such as low density rural areas, may have a battery or fuel-cell electric bus on it, very much as today. Buses are much more amenable to fuel-cell energy density issues than are cars.
The biggest present problem with battery electric cars is that they can't be used for longer trips. The solution to this is better roads: Provide a charger that travels along with the car as it drives on a longer trip. This probably consists of a dedicated lane on certain roads (I think the present US interstate system is a good place to start) which has some sort of power lanes. When you drive on it, you surrender control of your car to the computer and it couples to the power system and recharges your battery as you drive, billing you by a system resembling the current RFID passes used for Toll Roads and Bridges in some places. Because the computer is driving, and traffic is grade separated from human controlled traffic, the speed limit can be whatever is practical for the road, unlimited by driver limits, and the cars can drive close enough to the one ahead to take advantage of its aerodynamic draft without risking the driver ahead doing something unexpected. When you want to get off, you press the button and the takes takes you off the special lane and merges you with the human-controlled traffic, and hands over control. Travel by car between most urban areas will be a lot slower and less convenient than vactrain or HSR, but there are a lot of reasons you might want to drive--sightseeing, for example.
Freight can be moved by many of these same systems. Most larger facilities will have their own PRT freight dock. PRT freight can intermingle with human traffic up to the capacity of the system. PRT freight can be unscheduled, providing Just In Time delivery for almost all goods. This actually reduces the size of loading docks, while increasing their capacity quite dramatically. I think there's an application for a Less than Car Load transfer points: a container drop off point which transfers directly to PRT freight vehicles without going inside a building. The container serves as a sort of temporary warehouse.
Smaller buildings won't have their own PRT station, so if you need a large item delivered--a refrigerator for example, this will still use a delivery van. Except for being battery-electric powered, this will be just like today's vans. Small deliveries will use couriers riding in the PRT and walking the last few hundred meters, possibly with a cart.
The other modes can also ship freight, although it'll be more like air freight. If it's heavy and large, it's probably better to use conventional containers, on trains and ships. Most of these can be electrified, so they can get their power from renewables, but there's little application for shipping a sofa halfway around the world at 5000kph, although there clearly is a market for documents and other small objects. Long Haul Trucks and Containers should mostly be shipped by train, although something resembling the current long haul truck system can be electrified using the power rails for electric cars. This presents a special wear problem for the dedicated lanes that needs to be resolved.
Petroleum, natural gas, and artificial fossil fuel like fischer-tropsch or algae or ethanol, will still be used for airplanes, and probably some other specialized vehicles needing high energy density (I'm thinking of a pumper fire truck) but it will probably cost $50/gal or more and will only be used where there really is no alternative. Most human and freight transport will be done in vehicles that get all the power they need from their guideway. Battery electric vehicles have a range of 70 miles today and with frequent charging stations and charge-while-you-drive solutions, their effective range can be infinite.
For the longest, fastest trips, we will use Evacuated Tube Transit, or VacTrains. Traveling in evacuated tubes at thousands kilometers per hour, it takes so long to accelerate and decelerate that it's impractical to share tubes between different routes in most cases, even when they're roughly co-linear. Thus these will be largely point to point routes, initially between our biggest cities, passing under oceans, over or through mountains. There are a lot of difficult engineering problems still to be solved, but the advantages are so large it's hard to imagine this technology won't eventually be adopted. Trips will be in relatively small vehicles, unscheduled, provided as demand requires. Energy use is extremely low--there's no air drag, and rolling friction is negligible (they'll probably use maglev). Once the thing up to speed, it's traveling on momentum until it's time to slow down--and you can use slowing down to generate power! Imagine: New York to Sydney in an hour, leaving any time you wish.
Intermediate distance travel will be implemented with High Speed Rail which resembles the current form, possibly using maglev, traveling at a few hundred kilometers per hour between cities no more than a few hundred kilometers apart and probably no less than 50. It's almost as expensive as VacTrain to build but because the trains are atmospheric they can't run more than about 500kph. Because there's a power and aerodynamic advantage to it, trains will be long and run on schedules. All of today's HSRs are electric and I see no reason to think that might change.
Conventional Aviation will serve routes that are not yet served by VacTrain or HSR. Over the long term, these will more resemble regional airlines than the majors. Aviation has amongst the highest energy demands of all and will thus remain one of the few users of Fossil Fuels and their artificial replacements.
Ballistic travel is possible. The technology used to put people into low earth orbit and return them safely can also be used to provide point to point travel anywhere in the world at speed as high or higher than evactuated tubes, and using it that way will allow economies of scale to reduce the cost and increase the safety for both types of destination. Rockets consume a lot of fuel although some use non-fossil varieties. I think it is really only practical if there's also a significant business putting people up into low earth orbit and recovering them. I think this can only happen if there are meaningful (read: profitable) space colonies, probably mining asteroids.
Conventional interurban or commuter rail will serve high volume corridors that are too short for HSR or VacTrain. Some existing rail is powered by Diesel, but much is electric and over time I'd expect these corridors to be electrified (or re-electrified).
Personal Rapid Transit will largely replace municipal bus, light rail and subway systems. Where practical and grade separated, this will occupy the rights of way those systems used, with a cheaper, faster, more convenient alternative. You can get four PRT lines into the space occupied by a single subway track, and since most of these are two way, that means as many as 8 PRT lines. Since each of these has roughly half the capacity of the subway, that means a net doubling of line capacity. It's far more than is necessary in most places. Building new PRT routes will be far cheaper than anything except bus routes and they are easy to connect up with existing PRT routes. PRT can serve some intercity routes, but probably no more than 50km or so.
Battery electric cars will completely replace carbon combustion cars. These are practical for short routes that are not yet PRT-ized (or so lightly traveled that they will never be PRT-ized). A few examples: very low density dwelling--less than two or three people per acre. Point to point service for handicapped. (PRT is much more amenable for handicapped than conventional autos but there are some situations that just can't be helped). There will be plenty of ambulances and other rescue vehicles serving the PRT, but some need to serve other houses.
A bus is just a big car that carries a lot of people and runs on a scheduled route. Routes that are not PRT-ized, such as low density rural areas, may have a battery or fuel-cell electric bus on it, very much as today. Buses are much more amenable to fuel-cell energy density issues than are cars.
The biggest present problem with battery electric cars is that they can't be used for longer trips. The solution to this is better roads: Provide a charger that travels along with the car as it drives on a longer trip. This probably consists of a dedicated lane on certain roads (I think the present US interstate system is a good place to start) which has some sort of power lanes. When you drive on it, you surrender control of your car to the computer and it couples to the power system and recharges your battery as you drive, billing you by a system resembling the current RFID passes used for Toll Roads and Bridges in some places. Because the computer is driving, and traffic is grade separated from human controlled traffic, the speed limit can be whatever is practical for the road, unlimited by driver limits, and the cars can drive close enough to the one ahead to take advantage of its aerodynamic draft without risking the driver ahead doing something unexpected. When you want to get off, you press the button and the takes takes you off the special lane and merges you with the human-controlled traffic, and hands over control. Travel by car between most urban areas will be a lot slower and less convenient than vactrain or HSR, but there are a lot of reasons you might want to drive--sightseeing, for example.
Freight can be moved by many of these same systems. Most larger facilities will have their own PRT freight dock. PRT freight can intermingle with human traffic up to the capacity of the system. PRT freight can be unscheduled, providing Just In Time delivery for almost all goods. This actually reduces the size of loading docks, while increasing their capacity quite dramatically. I think there's an application for a Less than Car Load transfer points: a container drop off point which transfers directly to PRT freight vehicles without going inside a building. The container serves as a sort of temporary warehouse.
Smaller buildings won't have their own PRT station, so if you need a large item delivered--a refrigerator for example, this will still use a delivery van. Except for being battery-electric powered, this will be just like today's vans. Small deliveries will use couriers riding in the PRT and walking the last few hundred meters, possibly with a cart.
The other modes can also ship freight, although it'll be more like air freight. If it's heavy and large, it's probably better to use conventional containers, on trains and ships. Most of these can be electrified, so they can get their power from renewables, but there's little application for shipping a sofa halfway around the world at 5000kph, although there clearly is a market for documents and other small objects. Long Haul Trucks and Containers should mostly be shipped by train, although something resembling the current long haul truck system can be electrified using the power rails for electric cars. This presents a special wear problem for the dedicated lanes that needs to be resolved.
Petroleum, natural gas, and artificial fossil fuel like fischer-tropsch or algae or ethanol, will still be used for airplanes, and probably some other specialized vehicles needing high energy density (I'm thinking of a pumper fire truck) but it will probably cost $50/gal or more and will only be used where there really is no alternative. Most human and freight transport will be done in vehicles that get all the power they need from their guideway. Battery electric vehicles have a range of 70 miles today and with frequent charging stations and charge-while-you-drive solutions, their effective range can be infinite.
07 March 2012
Rebutting "20 Obvious Truths"
In an astounding little bit of ignorance, conservative blogger John Hawkins posts "20 Obvious Truths that will Shock Liberals". The title should have been "20 blatant lies that will make liberals snicker":
1) The Founding Fathers were generally religious, gun-toting small government fanatics who were so far to the Right that they'd make Ann Coulter look like Jimmy Carter.
Not even close to true. There were some religious people among them, but it should be observed that Thomas Paine repeatedly and explicitly denied the existence of God, and Thomas Jefferson and George Washington both overtly and conspicuously rejected conventional church observance. When the Continental Congress decided that they needed to have an invocation while they were working on the Declaration, it was John Adams they selected to give it. Adams was a deacon in what church? He was a Unitarian. Adams wasn't an atheist but many Unitarians today are. After they were out of office, Adams and Jefferson had a long exchange of letters that have come down to us, in which they came to agree on an idea known as "Deism", which is the belief that if there is a God, He doesn't participate in the day to day activities of the universe in any way. Jefferson was one of the few gun advocates among the founders. Very few Americans owned firearms until the civil war. getting enough guns was a big problem during the revolution. Read about Eli Whitney and the Springfield Armory. Remember that a gun was a huge, heavy, expensive object in the 1770s. You had to be very rich to own one and it was totally unrealistic to carry one around much.
2) The greatest evil this country has ever committed isn't slavery; it's killing more than 50 million innocent children via abortion.
That's just silly. Slavery and its aftermath killed at least that many, and most of them were or had been children who actually were wanted.
Did you know that aborting a viable child is still illegal even after Roe vs Wade, except in certain very rare circumstances?
Unhygienic abortion killed hundreds of thousands of innocent women and girls every year, and still kills more than 200 every day, mainly due to the work of idiots like you. Women who had lives, and were wanted by their families. Sometimes their pregnancy was their fault, but usually it was someone else's. Unwanted children are a leading cause of poverty and crime. You cannot stop abortion. It is a necessary evil, like chemotherapy. But you can make it safe, and you can minimize the causes of unwanted pregnancy. But you're opposed to doing either.
3) Conservatives are much more compassionate than liberals and all you have to do to prove it is look at all the studies showing that conservatives give more of their money to charity than liberals do.
the link shows that Red states have a higher percentage of people that give to charity. Blue states have a higher percentage of people living in poverty and can't afford to give, so this is a specious comparison. you're going to have to find better evidence than that. Remember also that giving to churches is considered charity in this country, even when the churches are blatantly profit making enterprises.
4) When the Founding Fathers were actually around, there were official state religions and the Bible was used as a textbook in schools. The so-called "wall of separation between church and state" has absolutely nothing to do with the Constitution and everything to do with liberal hostility to Christianity.
Yes, the founders were very aware of the damage religion had caused in the past and were determined to avoid it. Article VI of the constitution says there shall never be a religious test for public office, and the first amendment bans state imposition of religion. Yes, the constitution does impose a wall of separation.
5) The biggest problem with our economy today is Barack Obama. His demonization of successful people, his driving up gas prices, his regulatory overload and threats to increase taxes have terrified businesses into hunkering down, refusing to spend money, and declining to hire new people. Replacing him would do more than any government policy to spur economic growth.
Name one time that Obama has demonized success. He has frequently spoken to just the opposite position. He named Immelt and Geithner, both very pro-big business guys, to important cabinet level positions. He has cut taxes beyond even what Bush had done, his regulations are less than what existed during most of the Clinton administration and far less than during Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson, when the economy was booming. The biggest problem with the economy are people who think austerity is a solution to our problems, and those that think that financial regulations are unnecessary.
6) Not only are conservatives more patriotic than liberals, but most American liberals "love" America in about the same way that a wife-beater loves his wife.
I think you've got that one almost exactly backwards. Progressives, conservationists, egalitarians and other actual patriots want to preserve what's good about America, while exploiters, retrogressives like you, and jingoistic symbol worshipers want to steal what they can, damn the consequences. Many conservatives think they're somehow more patriotic than others, but they don't know enough history or science to understand that that's not true, nor do they understand the consequences of a lot that they do. But I don't say they're anti-patriots in some way, just that they're mistaken about some of their practices and beliefs. What you say is offensive and ignorant.
7) Out of every 100 cries of “Racism” you hear these days, 99 are motivated by nothing other than politics.
It's true. about 90% of the racism I hear these days is people talking about some guy they think is a Kenyan socialist. They've learned to not say anything about ordinary black people, but since this is politcal, they figure he's fair game.
8) Anyone paying income taxes is certainly paying his “fair share" -- and then some -- compared to the people who pay nothing.
Most of the people who pay nothing have almost no income. A few have enough income they can afford to buy politicians.
9) You don't have a "right" to anything that other people have to pay to provide for you.
Roads, police, military, schools?
10) If we can ask people to present an ID to buy alcohol, drive a car, or get on an airplane, then asking them to present identification to vote is a no-brainer.
Except the identification you speak of is contrived to disenfranchise large groups of people, most of whom tend to vote for democrats. There is no evidence that the problem it purports to solve is significant (one study of the 2008 national election found 12 cases of voter fraud, of over 128 million voters. at least a million votes were swung toward the republicans by election fraud, mostly perpetrated by elections officials. At least 5,000 democrat voters were disenfranchised by election fraud in Florida in 2000 (caging), and possibly as many as 100,000. Bush won this election by 500 votes)
11) There's absolutely nothing that the government does smarter, better, or more efficiently than the private market with roughly equivalent resources.
The police department? roads? public education? financial regulation? all of these are things have been tried privately. a few have worked on a small scale but failed, in some cases spectacularly, when done privately.
12) The biggest problem with education in this country is liberals. They fight vouchers, oppose merit pay, refuse to get rid of terrible teachers, and bend over backwards to keep poor kids trapped in failing schools.
The biggest problem with education is underfunding it. Yes, there have been problems with union abuse, but there's far more trouble caused by starving the beast.
13) Fascism, socialism, and communism are all left-wing movements that have considerably more in common with modern liberalism than modern conservatism.
Liberalism is a form of moderation. look up the word in a dictionary. Some fascists started out as socialists but became right wingers when that was obviously failing. Hitler and Mussolini, for example. Both were tools of the big corporations, just like you. Communism is a left wing movement. Liberalism is a centrist movement. Fascism is very much a right wing movement.
14) The Democratic Party was behind slavery, the KKK, and Jim Crow laws. It was also the party of Margaret Sanger, George Wallace, and Bull Connor. It has ALWAYS been a racist party. Even today, white liberals support Affirmative Action and racial set-asides because they still believe black Americans are too inferior to go up against whites on an even playing field.
The civil war was seen in the south as having been provoked by a Republican president, Lincoln, and for a century they held a grudge against all republicans. So they supported democrats. When the southern Democrats weren't racist enough for them, they founded a few parties of their own, such as the Dixiecrats, George Wallace's American Independent Party, and others. Lyndon Johnson was widely regarded as a race traitor for supporting the civil rights act, so many of them switched sides in protest.
Ted Bundy was active in Republican politics. By your reasoning, the republicans are behind sex murderers. I'm not accusing you of that, but you're doing the identical thing to non-rightwingers.
15) A man with good morals who falls short and becomes a hypocrite is still a far better man than a liberal who can never be called a hypocrite because he has no morals at all.
Again, that's just stupid, ignorant and offensive. A man with good morals is generous, considerate and thoughtful. conservatives are none of these things.
16) The most dire threat to America's future and prosperity in the last 150 years hasn't been the Nazis, the Soviets, or Al-Qaeda;, it's the spending and overreach of our own government.
You're right that none of these things is a particularly big threat to America's future, and only the Nazis ever were. Greed, austerity and narrowmindedness are big threats to America's future.
17) Greed isn't someone wanting to keep more of what he earns; it's people demanding a greater share of money that someone else earns.
Good point. Tax financial profits higher than income gained through work. right now they're taxed at about half the rate.
18) Most of the time in American politics, the liberal "victim" is really a bad guy who is absolutely delighted by the opportunity to pretend to be "offended."
I can't think of a single example of this. Andrew Breitbart and James O'Keefe built their entire careers on it.
19) Jesus Christ was not a conservative, a liberal, or a politician. He was also not a capitalist or a socialist. Still, you can say this: Jesus drew sharp lines about what's right and wrong, he wasn't tolerant of what the Bible categorizes as sinful behavior, and there's absolutely no question that he would adamantly oppose abortion and gay marriage.
Not true. Birth Control and after-birth "exposure" were common practices during Jesus's time and he spoke not a word on the subject. There's one tiny passage in the old testament about homosexuality and it's surrounded by much more extensive and explicit passages promoting slavery and how bad it is to handle the flesh of a pig (think football). If Jesus ever considered these things at all, it hasn't come down to us. Even if you were right about these being sins, a big part of his mission was compassion for sinners. Didn't you know?
20) When you demand that other people fund your sexual escapades by buying your contraception, your sex life becomes their business.
Huh? I think you're talking about health insurance paying for birth control. virtually all doctors regard birth control as a necessity. Many women take the hormones for health reasons--they may not be having sex at all. Even if you have sex only occasionally, you still need to take it regularly for it to work at all. Because some crackpot in Rome thinks it's abhorrent doesn't give them the right to override the doctor's orders.
1) The Founding Fathers were generally religious, gun-toting small government fanatics who were so far to the Right that they'd make Ann Coulter look like Jimmy Carter.
Not even close to true. There were some religious people among them, but it should be observed that Thomas Paine repeatedly and explicitly denied the existence of God, and Thomas Jefferson and George Washington both overtly and conspicuously rejected conventional church observance. When the Continental Congress decided that they needed to have an invocation while they were working on the Declaration, it was John Adams they selected to give it. Adams was a deacon in what church? He was a Unitarian. Adams wasn't an atheist but many Unitarians today are. After they were out of office, Adams and Jefferson had a long exchange of letters that have come down to us, in which they came to agree on an idea known as "Deism", which is the belief that if there is a God, He doesn't participate in the day to day activities of the universe in any way. Jefferson was one of the few gun advocates among the founders. Very few Americans owned firearms until the civil war. getting enough guns was a big problem during the revolution. Read about Eli Whitney and the Springfield Armory. Remember that a gun was a huge, heavy, expensive object in the 1770s. You had to be very rich to own one and it was totally unrealistic to carry one around much.
2) The greatest evil this country has ever committed isn't slavery; it's killing more than 50 million innocent children via abortion.
That's just silly. Slavery and its aftermath killed at least that many, and most of them were or had been children who actually were wanted.
Did you know that aborting a viable child is still illegal even after Roe vs Wade, except in certain very rare circumstances?
Unhygienic abortion killed hundreds of thousands of innocent women and girls every year, and still kills more than 200 every day, mainly due to the work of idiots like you. Women who had lives, and were wanted by their families. Sometimes their pregnancy was their fault, but usually it was someone else's. Unwanted children are a leading cause of poverty and crime. You cannot stop abortion. It is a necessary evil, like chemotherapy. But you can make it safe, and you can minimize the causes of unwanted pregnancy. But you're opposed to doing either.
3) Conservatives are much more compassionate than liberals and all you have to do to prove it is look at all the studies showing that conservatives give more of their money to charity than liberals do.
the link shows that Red states have a higher percentage of people that give to charity. Blue states have a higher percentage of people living in poverty and can't afford to give, so this is a specious comparison. you're going to have to find better evidence than that. Remember also that giving to churches is considered charity in this country, even when the churches are blatantly profit making enterprises.
4) When the Founding Fathers were actually around, there were official state religions and the Bible was used as a textbook in schools. The so-called "wall of separation between church and state" has absolutely nothing to do with the Constitution and everything to do with liberal hostility to Christianity.
Yes, the founders were very aware of the damage religion had caused in the past and were determined to avoid it. Article VI of the constitution says there shall never be a religious test for public office, and the first amendment bans state imposition of religion. Yes, the constitution does impose a wall of separation.
5) The biggest problem with our economy today is Barack Obama. His demonization of successful people, his driving up gas prices, his regulatory overload and threats to increase taxes have terrified businesses into hunkering down, refusing to spend money, and declining to hire new people. Replacing him would do more than any government policy to spur economic growth.
Name one time that Obama has demonized success. He has frequently spoken to just the opposite position. He named Immelt and Geithner, both very pro-big business guys, to important cabinet level positions. He has cut taxes beyond even what Bush had done, his regulations are less than what existed during most of the Clinton administration and far less than during Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson, when the economy was booming. The biggest problem with the economy are people who think austerity is a solution to our problems, and those that think that financial regulations are unnecessary.
6) Not only are conservatives more patriotic than liberals, but most American liberals "love" America in about the same way that a wife-beater loves his wife.
I think you've got that one almost exactly backwards. Progressives, conservationists, egalitarians and other actual patriots want to preserve what's good about America, while exploiters, retrogressives like you, and jingoistic symbol worshipers want to steal what they can, damn the consequences. Many conservatives think they're somehow more patriotic than others, but they don't know enough history or science to understand that that's not true, nor do they understand the consequences of a lot that they do. But I don't say they're anti-patriots in some way, just that they're mistaken about some of their practices and beliefs. What you say is offensive and ignorant.
7) Out of every 100 cries of “Racism” you hear these days, 99 are motivated by nothing other than politics.
It's true. about 90% of the racism I hear these days is people talking about some guy they think is a Kenyan socialist. They've learned to not say anything about ordinary black people, but since this is politcal, they figure he's fair game.
8) Anyone paying income taxes is certainly paying his “fair share" -- and then some -- compared to the people who pay nothing.
Most of the people who pay nothing have almost no income. A few have enough income they can afford to buy politicians.
9) You don't have a "right" to anything that other people have to pay to provide for you.
Roads, police, military, schools?
10) If we can ask people to present an ID to buy alcohol, drive a car, or get on an airplane, then asking them to present identification to vote is a no-brainer.
Except the identification you speak of is contrived to disenfranchise large groups of people, most of whom tend to vote for democrats. There is no evidence that the problem it purports to solve is significant (one study of the 2008 national election found 12 cases of voter fraud, of over 128 million voters. at least a million votes were swung toward the republicans by election fraud, mostly perpetrated by elections officials. At least 5,000 democrat voters were disenfranchised by election fraud in Florida in 2000 (caging), and possibly as many as 100,000. Bush won this election by 500 votes)
11) There's absolutely nothing that the government does smarter, better, or more efficiently than the private market with roughly equivalent resources.
The police department? roads? public education? financial regulation? all of these are things have been tried privately. a few have worked on a small scale but failed, in some cases spectacularly, when done privately.
12) The biggest problem with education in this country is liberals. They fight vouchers, oppose merit pay, refuse to get rid of terrible teachers, and bend over backwards to keep poor kids trapped in failing schools.
The biggest problem with education is underfunding it. Yes, there have been problems with union abuse, but there's far more trouble caused by starving the beast.
13) Fascism, socialism, and communism are all left-wing movements that have considerably more in common with modern liberalism than modern conservatism.
Liberalism is a form of moderation. look up the word in a dictionary. Some fascists started out as socialists but became right wingers when that was obviously failing. Hitler and Mussolini, for example. Both were tools of the big corporations, just like you. Communism is a left wing movement. Liberalism is a centrist movement. Fascism is very much a right wing movement.
14) The Democratic Party was behind slavery, the KKK, and Jim Crow laws. It was also the party of Margaret Sanger, George Wallace, and Bull Connor. It has ALWAYS been a racist party. Even today, white liberals support Affirmative Action and racial set-asides because they still believe black Americans are too inferior to go up against whites on an even playing field.
The civil war was seen in the south as having been provoked by a Republican president, Lincoln, and for a century they held a grudge against all republicans. So they supported democrats. When the southern Democrats weren't racist enough for them, they founded a few parties of their own, such as the Dixiecrats, George Wallace's American Independent Party, and others. Lyndon Johnson was widely regarded as a race traitor for supporting the civil rights act, so many of them switched sides in protest.
Ted Bundy was active in Republican politics. By your reasoning, the republicans are behind sex murderers. I'm not accusing you of that, but you're doing the identical thing to non-rightwingers.
15) A man with good morals who falls short and becomes a hypocrite is still a far better man than a liberal who can never be called a hypocrite because he has no morals at all.
Again, that's just stupid, ignorant and offensive. A man with good morals is generous, considerate and thoughtful. conservatives are none of these things.
16) The most dire threat to America's future and prosperity in the last 150 years hasn't been the Nazis, the Soviets, or Al-Qaeda;, it's the spending and overreach of our own government.
You're right that none of these things is a particularly big threat to America's future, and only the Nazis ever were. Greed, austerity and narrowmindedness are big threats to America's future.
17) Greed isn't someone wanting to keep more of what he earns; it's people demanding a greater share of money that someone else earns.
Good point. Tax financial profits higher than income gained through work. right now they're taxed at about half the rate.
18) Most of the time in American politics, the liberal "victim" is really a bad guy who is absolutely delighted by the opportunity to pretend to be "offended."
I can't think of a single example of this. Andrew Breitbart and James O'Keefe built their entire careers on it.
19) Jesus Christ was not a conservative, a liberal, or a politician. He was also not a capitalist or a socialist. Still, you can say this: Jesus drew sharp lines about what's right and wrong, he wasn't tolerant of what the Bible categorizes as sinful behavior, and there's absolutely no question that he would adamantly oppose abortion and gay marriage.
Not true. Birth Control and after-birth "exposure" were common practices during Jesus's time and he spoke not a word on the subject. There's one tiny passage in the old testament about homosexuality and it's surrounded by much more extensive and explicit passages promoting slavery and how bad it is to handle the flesh of a pig (think football). If Jesus ever considered these things at all, it hasn't come down to us. Even if you were right about these being sins, a big part of his mission was compassion for sinners. Didn't you know?
20) When you demand that other people fund your sexual escapades by buying your contraception, your sex life becomes their business.
Huh? I think you're talking about health insurance paying for birth control. virtually all doctors regard birth control as a necessity. Many women take the hormones for health reasons--they may not be having sex at all. Even if you have sex only occasionally, you still need to take it regularly for it to work at all. Because some crackpot in Rome thinks it's abhorrent doesn't give them the right to override the doctor's orders.
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