Continue what, your grammar lesson? When you have a body, you possess it. That makes your relation to your body genitive.
I will assume then that your comment later about anal sphincters refers only to the latter. I didn’t mean to imply by my post that I agreed with the vitriol in the professor’s letter, just that I don’t believe in war and can’t respect the choice to be involved in the military. I’m disappointed in the level of intolerance a pacifistic view is receiving here, but I am hoping it’s only because of the style of the original message being pitted.
I did not get Veteran’s Day off from my employer but I would have taken it off if offered, because the business would be closed. Atheists take Christmas off too; doesn’t seem relevant to the discussion, although it does frighten me that Veteran’s Day was referred to like a “holy day” in another thread.
I will admit that I am as ignorant of military actions as Monty implies I am, if only because I can’t stand to read about them. I can’t bring myself to give up idealism on this one, so I will shut up as it has nowhere to go.
gigi: So then you admit to speaking of that which you know nothing about.
Awfully belligerent for someone who has yet to lay out an argument.
So far you have established that property exists. I assumed that you were going to go on from there and explain why we have a natural right to it. Apparently you did not. Just for the record, I’ve never voiced an opposition to the fact that property exists. Nor even that we have a right to it…only where that right comes from. You have yet to establish a link between our being born with property and our right to keep it.
By the way, let’s agree on what we are debating. I am defining the “natural right to property” as meaning that it is natural for those that have constructed, established or been born into it to keep that property without it being taken without compensation. I argue that this situation exists because humans have decided that it should exist. My argument that this is so is that if you look into the animal kingdom, for the most part, this attitude does not exist. Lions frequently steal the food from the cheetah that made the kill. Animals fight over territory. Indeed, the only species that appears to believe that you have a right to property absent the strength to keep it is humans. Therefore, this is a human established concept and that our “right to property” is a man-made construct. If you have a different definition, please say so and perhaps we are arguing about nothing.
And please don’t take this to mean that I don’t enjoy and thoroughly believe that a right to property is extremely important and good. I do. I am just under no illusions as to where that right originates.
Well, since what I said was:
You can assume anything that you like.
[bolding mine]
Well, just who would you call on to defend you and yours if your town were to be attacked? The local cops? Right. They do such a great job of preventing crime now that I’m sure that they’d be just great repelling an invasion.
Well, if gigi can’t respect the choice to be involved in the military, surely others are entitled to not respect the choice to be a pacifist and speak their mind accordingly.
And all seem to be skipping the fact that if this guy keeps teaching, he is not working with us old and cynical adults but kids fresh from high school. They will prolly not be full of shame for what he has done, but hold him up as a hero. He will not affect the Air force Academy much, but he does affect how many young minds a semester?
There are way to many people running around today who do not think that they can be held accountable for their free speech. I think a lot of the fault for this is due to where we are right now, an impersonal and anonymous medium where we are protected for our actions.
Just how many would be willing to gather in a quiet wooded glade with everyone from this thread present, with no police, or cameras and get in all the same faces with the same words and be surprised at what happens to walk in the door we have all opened? Just how many ambulances would be needed.
Never happen so no response to that idea is necessary, just might think sometime about the fact that when a person opens the door, it is too late to complain about what walks in.
You all have a nice day. It was an interesting thread.
NPR just reported that the professor’s being suspended for writing the e-mail.
Woo hoo!
I posted a link to the statement where they explain about the suspension four days ago. See page two.
Of this thread that is…
Retroactive woo hoo!
My stepfather owns cattle. Each cow has a body. When the cow has a body, it possesses it. That makes its relation to its body genitive.
I guess each cow is the shared property of my stepfather and the cow itself. 
There’s been a great deal of discussion of the value of soldiers in this thread, and I think galen has made an essential point here.
Lots of countries, past and present, have or have had soldiers. Relatively few of those countries are or have had much in the way of freedoms. So to regard soldiers in general as the protectors of freedom is in error. It is, rather, the countries that shape the soldiers to be protectors of freedom, or not. To the extent that our soldiers are protectors of freedom, it is because we demand freedom.
However, it’s worth repeating that they protect our freedom. It is not necessarily the cause of freedom generally that our soldiers have served elsewhere in the world. Throughout most of the Cold War, for instance, our nation guarded against one particular source of oppression - the Communist world - but was quite willing to install and prop up other tyrants in order to do so. Our soldiers during that long war, whoever they were and however they became soldiers, and whatever their inner ideals may have been, were the tools of that policy, no more and no less.
The soldier indeed makes many things possible. But all in all, the soldier is a tool of policymakers, whoever those policymakers are. If the soldier is lucky, the policymakers make moral choices, and the soldier fights for a good cause. From a moral perspective, that’s the best the soldier can hope for. But in no war can both sides be fighting for a moral cause, and in many wars, neither side is. That defines the odds.
Now back to the OP: first, I agree that the prof in question is not only an idiot, but an extremely rude and boorish idiot. If he’s denied tenure (assuming he doesn’t already have it), it’ll be no great loss to academia.
Second, Milo was using this idiot as an excuse to slam a larger group, along the lines of like-minded people who used John Walker Lindh to slam Marin County liberalism, and I’ve got a problem with that:
So, Milo, are all business execs are like Bernie Ebbers? Should we say all soldiers are like John Allen Muhammad? Are all conservatives as loony and dishonest as Ann Coulter, Cal Thomas, and the staff of the WorldNetDummy?
I wouldn’t say so. So kindly put that broad brush away, now that you’ve seen how it works in the other direction.
And finally:
By that standard, Milo, it shouldn’t bother you when I chuckle over your profession.
Well, this story managed to hit Snopes - http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/outrage/cadet.htm
Interesting reading, to say the least.
RT wrote:
A political philosophy, where the term “political” comes from the term “politic”, is a philosophy about people, not cows.
That’s why I made very clear that I was talking about soldiers who defend rights. I don’t know why there would be any controversy about the kind of soldiers being talked about here:
"It is the soldier, not the reporter who has given us the freedom of the press. It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us the freedom of speech. It is the soldier, not the campus organizer, who gives us the freedom to demonstrate. It is the soldier who salutes the flag, who serves beneath the flag, and whose coffin is draped by the flag, who allows the protester to burn the flag." — Father Dennis Edward O’Brien, Sergeant, USMC
In case you didn’t know, that is the origin and context of this whole rather bizarre dispute. It’s on page 1 of the thread.
Lib: (1) So because we’re discussing political philosophy, the rules of grammar applying to the genitive case work differently with respect to animals? Are you saying that the use of the genitive case in the phrase ‘your body’ only implies ownership of the body, if the ‘you’ is a human being? I didn’t realize politics informed the implications of grammar in such a manner. Sounds Orwellian to me.
You should know, FWIW, that the root of ‘politic’ is (according to my dictionary, at least) in the Greek word for citizen, not person. So your exclusion of cattle here would seem to apply equally well to lots of categories of humans, I’m afraid: slaves, prisoners of war, illegal aliens, and maybe even legal ones.
- It’s good to know that soldiers who defend rights, defend rights. :rolleyes:
This may surprise you, Lib, but I read the OP. It said, in relevant part:
IOW, the dumb cluck ought to have the sense to be grateful to our military, because unlike other militaries in other countries, this one won’t throw him in jail or torture him to death for criticizing them.
Which brings us to what I believe was part of galen’s point as well as my own: the debt we owe for our military being that sort of military, instead of the other kind, is owed primarily to the citizenry - us - and not the military itself. We owe them a debt - no question - but the U.S. armed forces didn’t sit down and decide one day to abandon a previously-existing military dictatorship. The U.S. military was derived from the citizenry, and to the extent that it is the protector of freedom, it is that way because we continue to insist on it.
Father O’Brien has it exactly backwards, no matter what color you paint his words with; I read them the first time. It was the citizens, and continues to be the citizens, who earn the right to free speech and all the rest of it, by insisting on those rights. The soldier wouldn’t have had nearly as much in the way of First Amendment rights to defend from furriners, if the ACLU hadn’t done what it’s done to insist on those rights here. It is the citizenry who will insist on changes to the so-called Patriot Act and the authority of the Homeland Security Department if they unreasonably infringe on citizen prerogatives, and it will be citizens who take the government to court if they believe the specifics of those laws overstep the Constitution. And the soldier is out there protecting our freedoms, rather than in here, setting up a police state, because the citizens say that that’s how it will be. I’ll thank the soldier for his part in protecting us from foreign invasions, but the ultimate thanks is owed to ‘we, the people’.
RT: Our military is also part of us. That’s another good thing about it. Members of our military retain their right to vote, etc., even during their term of service.
Well, the problem is that, while soldiers might not be doing anything against Americans, they might be committing injustice against citizens of other countries or being used to violate international law.
For the record, I’m a veteran. In the tasks of my speciality in the Navy, Cryptologic Technician Interpretative (Navy linguist), I didn’t see anything protecting the American people. I did see a lot of protecting special interests and violation of privacy however.
And anyway, my experience in the U.S. military has convinced that soldiers and sailors should be condemned (I’m still trying to redeem myself for my service) and the military lessened into non-existence like in, for example, Costa Rica and Switzerland. This is not an necessary or desirable institution.
UnuMondo
RT
Son, you’re going to have a brain hernia if you don’t stop stretching. 
Yes, politics IS about people. There are no elephants in the Republican Party, and there are no jackasses in the Democrat Party.