Ah, this explains why gay rights were so much more accepted before the current gay rights movement, and why countries without gay pride parades and gay rights movements are so much more tolerant of gays.
Hey, wait… that’s the opposite of reality.
We’re trying to catch up to Europe, but it’s so damned hard.
Liars and lies are irrelevant unless someone believes them; the one who ignorantly repeats the lie is then a trouble-maker but also a victim and, of course, not a “liar” himself. But without the liars you wouldn’t have the problem of ignorant people repeating the lie.
This shouldn’t have been hard to figure out, Starving Artist. Maybe you should have used your dictionary research time to employ your noggin instead! 
(Was the lie in question the one about Obama’s birthplace? I’d like to hear whether Doper right-wingers approve of the Congressmen who answer “I don’t know” when asked if Obama was born in U.S.A.)
They may be irrelevant but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. And what YogSosoth was claiming to be lies can’t be characterized that way because a.) he has no way of knowing if the beliefs he calls lies are incorrect; b.) the people stating those beliefs believe them to be true; and c.) there is no intent on their part to knowingly deceive as to the “real” truth, if in fact the real truth differs from theirs.
This particular right-wing Doper doesn’t care, provided they really don’t know. Are you suggesting that it should be the responsibility of every Republican congressman to dig into and verify for themselves the circumstances of Obama’s birth? And what would you expect the reaction of the left would be if they did? I would anticipate accusations of witch-huntery and that these congressmen were leaving no stone unturned in a ridiculous and laughable effort to keep Obama from the presidency myself.
And as for the rest of the things asked of me since last night, I’m going to have to let them go unanswered for now. A buddy of mine died unexpectedly last night of a heart attack at the age of 51, and I’m just not in the proper frame of mind right now to give them the time and thought they deserve. My apologies to all.
The word you’re looking for is “factually”, as in “factually correct”.
And the only censoring I’m looking to do is in the public sphere. You can go on lying to your family all you want, but woe be unto you if you try to take that to the public airwaves as a political platform.
Christians like you hate lies just as much, if not more so, than I do. It’s one of your commandments. You simply disagree on what is a lie, but if god wanted you to lie, he would have put footnotes on the bottom of those stone tablets.
Unlike Communism or Socialism, we are not being forced to take it all or leave it. Remember what you’re arguing here. I said those politics have some merits, you disagreed. Is any high chancellor of Communism preaching that people need to give up all their possessions or die? Compare that to how many priests are telling people you’d go to hell if you were religious but fail to follow their draconian edicts on birth control, abortion, or hell, even global warming.
So no, your religion is not the same as politics. Communism and socialism have merits we can take out and use. The Post Office has worked for hundreds of years. Governments own property. Eminent Domain, until the Roberts’ Supreme Court decided to expand it’s reach, had been used effectively in the past. Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security have helped millions of people. Those are the benefits of a slightly socialistic system. We can use those. With religion, until you guys drop the all-or-nothing bit, remains a pox on mankind.
(Realize that I am not justifying my beliefs because the opposition does it too.)
You guys do it too. If it’s wrong for me, then it is wrong for you, no?
My justification for “censoring” things is based on facts. No creationism should ever be taught to kids, unless it’s in the context that they are wrong. Why? Because creationism is a bunch of BS. That’s not censorship, that is fact.
Ask yourself why some speech is limited and you’ll find that it’s because of harm. Shouting fire in a theater, slander, making threats of bodily harm on another are all restricted. They are restricted because they can be harmful, and not even physically harmful (saying Paris Hilton is a man might be slander, but it would hardly cause her physical harm). Lies are the same way, and they are in a way worse than that because they aren’t even true. You can say any shit about anybody or anything! That can’t be abused to harm? I reject your conclusion that it is unlawful censorship. There is a great deal of worth in banning lies like religion, Holocaust denials, Chick Tracts, or calling gay people sinners because those things harm people, and inspire others to harm.
If you want to gather around in a group lighting candles in front of the Supreme Court every year to protest abortion, fine. But the second people like you start spouting irritating nonsense like abortion is murder and condoning it, doctors like George Tiller get killed. He was completely innocent because you know what? Abortion isn’t murder. Neither is homosexuality a sin. And everything said in a Chick Tract has been wrong. That’s a fact. Those are not.
a) They are incorrect because it is impossible for those beliefs to be real. Until such time as evidence is observed and recorded, such crazy things are no different from Bertrand’s Teapot or the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
b) Irrelevent. Crazy people believe all sorts of stuff. And it doesn’t prevent others who know the facts from muzzling those who should know better.
c) Unfortunately, that kind of traditionalist’s gamble has worked, but should not. Just because it’s always been that way doesn’t mean it should be so. They can and should shut down all religion instruction and replace it with something secular. That would be a good first step in solving this problem
Taxes should be kept nice and low. The only way to stop criminal gangs is to remove their source of income, and therefore power. Cheap recreational drugs, grass in off licences, E in clubs, crack and smack to be handed out by doctors (as methodone is given to smack heads now). These criminal gangs only came about when the drugs became illegal. Once pharmaceutical companies used to advertise and sell heroin and cocaine. Heroin addicts, even after the drug became illegal, could collect it on prescription, as Aleister Crowley did, for instance. When that was banned the addicts were still addicted and sought a black market source. The black market sources grew to a huge industry with every reason to advertise and spread their poison. The profit motive in action. Hence the current state of affairs. More: 85% of british burglaries are carried out by addicts seeking money for their next fix. Provide the drugs on the NHS, no need for burglaries. Maybe, without the constant threat of a lack of supply or an impure supply they can become productive members of society. Either way, illegal supply networks could be deprived of the vast majority of their income from recreational drugs, addictive drugs and prostitution which would inevitably lead to a decline in related crimes of violence.
Slander and libel are actionable because they DO cause physical harm of a sort; the loss of reputation is assumed to constitute real damage to a person’s ability to conduct their business. Losing property is harm. Paris Hilton makes money at least in part because of her image as a woman of fashion; spreading the rumour that she’s a man could hurt her earning potential and deprive her of property to which she is rightly entitled. It hurts her just as much as stealing her car.
Babbling about creationism doesn’t really cause an individual the same sort of harm. I don’t think such rot should be taught at schools, just the same way we shouldn’t teach children that two plus two is nine, but you can’t be seriously saying that stating religious belief should be a criminal offense?
Really, you can’t square banning Chick tracts with being a free country, can you? Forget whether or not the world needs Jack Chick and his bullshit; it doesn’t. But do you actually WANT the apparatus of the state going after ideas just because of which ideas they are? Is that a precedent you really, really want to set? Because, you know, the next President, or the next Congress, might not see things your way. They might decide to ban flag burning. Or atheist literature. Or something you don’t think is so offensive. You’ve already set the precedent that stuff can be banned solely because of its lack of “truth.” All it takes is the wrong person to get elected for that sword to gain a nasty double edge.
I’m not saying I disagree with your assessment of what is or is not true. You’re right. There’s no such thing as God; it’s absurd superstition. Creationism is fantasy. Jack Chick’s a bigoted, paranoid nut. But the issue is whether you want the government to use force to stomp on ideas - in fact, you’ve actually boiled it down to using government force to stop people from defining words in ways you don’t like. The government is not a fine instrument, and once you create that power you ain’t getting rid of it easily, so you’ll be very, very sorry when the Republicans are back in power. If you didn’t like the Bush administration, imagine what it would have been like if they could throw atheists in prison for saying God doesn’t exist.
Indeed, the logical extent of your position is that we must ban all public statements of religious belief. Did the Soviet Union strike you as being a free place?
Irrespective of any political differences we have, I wish you well.
Thank you very much. I appreciate your concern. 
I’m sorry to hear about your friend, Starving Artist, but will pursue this point in case another right-wing Doper can resolve my confusion.
There are varying degrees of “knowledge.” I don’t “know” that the plate tectonics theory is true except for what I read in textbooks, and some might argue that those scientists have been hoodwinked by the Devil just to test Christians who might doubt the Earth is only 6000 years old. As a simpler example, few Britons can say they “know” Prince William is the son of the Prince of Wales; a DNA test might confirm but DNA tests can be forged. Yet no one would say they doubt it unless they had evidence or were picking a fight.
Is the point clear? Democrats said no outrageous things about GWB’s birth. The Obama birth controversy has no evidence but the incontinent babblings of hypocrites and crazies.
I’m sorry, but any right-winger who can’t find it in himself to say “disapprove” to my question, will be regarded by myself as just another deranged hyprocrite; his opinions will be given no credence except for their amusement value.
This thread seems to have wandered from the original debate, but I thought I’d jump in anyway.
As Revenant Threshold has said, in the UK we actually have a lot less religous influence on government than you have in the US. We have a load of superficial stuff that is more traditiol then religous, like the Archbishop of Canterbury (who usually is more of a humanist than a religous nut anyway) but none of this makes any difference to the way the country functions. I’d like some of it eliminated, but since it’s harmless I don’t really care.
In the US you have a formalised separation of Church and state, but in reality you have exactly the opposite (it seems to me). Even aside from the obvious exceptions to this rule (‘In God We Trust’ etc) religion permeates your politics at every level.
For instance, every Presidential candidate in the States must play ‘The God Card’. If they don’t explicitly state that they are practicing Christians and have photoshoots at churches they can’t get elected. In contrast Tony Blair didn’t talk about his religous views because he was afraid people would think he was a loony. He was right, it would actually hurt your chances in this country to be devout in the US style.
This is my favourite but of this thread though:
Hilarious!
So something is ‘sane and most reasonable’ for the government to regulate as long as it’s something you don’t like. Well, I guess that’s something both Left and Right can agree on, now we just have to iron out the fine details…
I’ll start with banning guns, that ok with you?
Or if you equate 100 years of existence as a nation with one human year, it has just left its “terrible twos” and is now acting like a snot-nosed brat that has just become aware of its place in the world. We’ve still got the USA’s “teen years” to look forward to.
True. The US is a de jure secular country but a de facto religious one, while the UK is the other way around. How far do you think a US politician would get if he said something like this:
That guy leads one of the major political parties in the UK. He’d be lucky to make local councilman in the States.
I’m also not entirely sure how to explain how the House of Lords really works to anyone who hasn’t seen them in action. In principle an unelected legislative body packed with hereditary peers, political appointees and bishops ought to be an abomination in a democratic society. In practice, however, they tend to smack down the elected House of Commons whenever they’re trying to do something particularly egregious (for example, they kept rejecting the proposal to extend the period people could be detained without charge under the terrorism laws). All I can say is that it’s a British thing.
Thank you for my laugh of the day.
Yeah. The prime minister of Canada is one of those AMerican-type pharisees. He can trot out the “for God” quotes in the right context.
Generally, however, Canada like the Uk is a minefield for people who try to push “for God!”. Consider how many ethnic French-Canadians, Italians, Irish, Portugese and Philipinos we have - most are typically Catholic. Add in the huge immigrant populations from India and Pakistan, China, and even historically from the Ukrain - pushing American-based protestant conservative religion has to be a dangerous thing to do. The little weasel has eked out a minority in the last few elections…
I’m British ancestry, and I wouldn’t vote for the guy with a 10 foot pole; and I used to be a riding president for the Conservative party.
Chen, your cite is utter crap. You have failed to note that Steyn has never had any of his work banned in Canada (and in fact he is an occasional pundit on television, including on the public TVO network), he has never been prosecuted in Canada, the governments in Canada have never tried to ban his work, and the stink alleged in your cite was in fact Human Rights Commissions complaints raised by the Canadian Islamic Congress complaining about not being given space in Maclean’s Magazine (a nationally distributed mainstream magazine) to refute an article by Steyn that was published nationally by Maclean’s. The complaints did not succeed. As far as the Steyn matter goes, free speech is alive an well in Canada.
I find that odd, too - I don’t know what the religion (or level of religiosity) is for any politicians at any level here. That’s private - that’s between the politician and their God (or lack of God). I don’t need to know anything about that.
That is a good example of the USA being really backward.
I dasagree, but a very good example is DADT and Same-sex marriage. We are embarrasingly backwards on these issues.