My Daughter Went To A Ron Paul Rally

[KitemanSA]

Sapience is only a measure of understanding. I see evidence of so called "sapient" beings behaving much like monkeys every day. Sapience is a question of degree. I dare say there are plenty of people out there not much smarter than a dinoflagellate.

You seem to be are confusing sapience with sentience. Sentience is like temperature, there are varying degrees of it. Sapience is like boiling, it is a specific, related, but DIFFERENT issue.

Now, having said that, I am not positive that Homo-Sapiens is Earth's sole sapient species. That is why I personally am willing to allow some special protections for other possibily sapient species provided our own individual rights are not violated. Conversely, I am not positive all "humans" on Earth are indeed sapient. But I couldn't begin to suggest who might not be.

[KitemanSA]

Our programmed death MAXIMIZES out life, not the other way around. If you r way were true, we'd die at 30 or 40 when child rearing is done.

Not necessarily. There is benefit to the species of having grandparents who are able to assist in child rearing. H3ll, in today's society, many children are being raised by the grandparents exclusively! Consider Grandparents as a backup plan for regular parents, and you can see why it is advantageous for those children having them.

In which case there would be benefit to having great grand parents and great great grandparents and great^nth grandparents. Your hypothsis makes no sense. EITHER there is benefit to old folk or not. If so, we should live longer by your reasoning. If not, we should live shorter BY YOUR REASONING. But it is NOT for the group per-se, it is for the individual.
We individuals live as long as we do because our biology has MAXIMIZED what nature can do FOR EACH INDIVIDUAL. Until we have developed the ability to REMOVE accumulated damage at EVERY stage in our lives, attempting to artificially lengthen it will just kill us sooner.

[Diogenes]

Nonsense! They do this because their victims are weaker than are they. Do you think Genghis Khan's victims were programmed to let him get away with it?

Actually, yes. His mystique (the programming) was so great, his lowliest soldier could get away with wanton executions against far stronger groups.

You call it programing I call it acting in the certain knowledge that for anyone who raises a hand to stop them, retribution will be swift and excessively violent. Being dissuaded because there is a sword to your neck is not the same thing as "brainwashing." If your analogy were true, Grizzly Bears would also be brainwashing us.

No, that's just fear and the avoidance of pain.

Your statement is ridiculous on it's very face. The stronger have ALWAYS abused the weaker, and it has NOTHING to do with what the Weaker has been taught.

The weaker has been TAUGHT to be weak. Women kill their husbands with poisons and the like. Such things don't take STRENGTH. Similarly, a 5 poubd gun makes a 70 pound girl as "strong" as a 250 pound man, if she has not been trained into subservience.
Most religions preach subservience. Such religions are NOT the people's friend.

Yes, all the weak people should challenge the strong. That will work out great.

Not if they believe that people are TAUGHT to be victims. Victimhood is always the unfortunate consequence of dealing with someone from a position of weakness.

Weakness is taught. Technology levels all strength. It has for many centuries.

Superior technology is just another form of strength. Some people might term it a "force multiplier." But let's face it. YOU aren't going to be able to fight the rulers, unless they are in the middle ages, and you have machine guns. (Even then, you probably couldn't resupply yourself as needed, and you would have to sleep sometime.)

The fact is, whatever technology you possess, they have at least equal, and usually better. That is the entire point of my "Skynet is coming thread."

An APPROXIMATION is optimal when no other method works. To the Victims, they don't care WHY they aren't being victimized, they are only glad that they are not being victimized.

An approximation is better than a worse approximation but worse that a better approximation or the truth. The problem with approximations start when people denigh they are approximations and try to maintain them as "THE TRUTH". Christian teaching is an evolving approximation, not the truth.

You suffer from the delusion that everyone is a philosopher and has as their ultimate goal, the pursuit of the "TRUTH". Most people are more interested in being content with their lives and are perfectly willing to live under lies and tyranny if it is tolerable. Humanity is not of uniform mind about anything (which is a product of evolution. Having diverse behaviors improves the chances of overall species survival.) and yet you seem to believe it needs to see YOUR perspective as important.

Religion satisfies an instinctive and inherent need in (most) people, and the foolish ones among us are not those who believe in it, but those who cannot comprehend it's purpose because they have no need to believe in it themselves.

What you are going to need to get the world of humanity to behave as you prefer is to wait for evolution to evolve them into it. I suspect you are going to be waiting a long time.

Say what you like, but the "Santa Clause effect" has kept humans far more peaceful than they would have been otherwise. Given enough time, they might actually evolve to be civilized without it.

Not at all. It will be rejected by true believers of a different stripe who come in to fill the vacuum left by scientific determinism and replace it with a more stringent meme of their belief.

Ahhh grasshopper, but a valid science of morality would result in the strongest social / civil structure available and would be beyond a psycho-meme.

You can't get there from here. The forces of Darkness (in your opinion) will drag you down before you can escape into the light. Humans do not primarily base their decisions on reason and enlightenment. They tend to go with their visceral gut reactions.

I can't wait to see an atheist explaining to an Islamist why the science of morality forbids his head from being cut off!

i.e. the Muslims don't respect atheists or their arguments, and will eventually have the numbers to FORCE the atheists to accept Islamic doctrine or die.

Only if we stick to a weaker psycho-meme instead of getting real.

Speaking of "getting real", do you really think you can persuade them with "science of morality" arguments? I will tell you again, the only argument that they will understand is "My God is stronger than yours. "

In the evolution of memes the violent and Oppressive Islamic meme will defeat the weaker Christian meme which is apparently too weak to even fight for itself. The Agnostic/Athiest meme won't even get out the gate because people are born ignorant, not educated and knowledgeable.

Wow. Your arguement is that one of the psycho-memes will have to take over becasue it will be the stronger of the mentally defective memes. Interesting circular thought there.

Calling it "circular" thinking is not a rebuttal of the idea. I would like to hear your rebuttal of the idea. Please explain to us how you are going to "reason" with the Islamists. You might as well try explaining to the Tutsis why the Hutus aren't so bad.

Remember that Loyalty oath thing I mentioned before? Well the Islamists have that, but much stronger. The very act of questioning Allah is blasphemy. They are as you might say, "brainwashed" by the meme.

Again, you can't get there from here.

No, JUSTICE is the basic foundation of Justice. Justice involves the re-attainment of the voluntary condition.

You talk of "utopia" in a demeaning fashion, and here we see that you are actually a believer in it.

No utopia here. Just wrong-doers paying back.

In Fantasy land. Wrong doers do wrong because they see an advantage to it. That advantage is the result of both human nature and the past knowledge that they can get away with it. Quoting "scientific morality" to them is not going to change their perspective. In the words of Isaac Asimov, "I understand the principles of flight, I just don't believe them."

What makes you think the Eugenicists are done?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2862011/posts

I don't. I said that they will only be a problem if they control government.
Government's righteous purpose is to protect the human (aka sapient) right. Government's awful power and perversion is to become the fist of groups like eugenicists.

The "Law" is what those in power says it is. So is the "purpose" of government. It ought not be that way, but what ought to be and what is are not always the same thing.

I fear you have a serious misunderstanding of the nature and origin of government. Government originated with the Strong man who would see his will done. It started as tyranny and evolved (based on the philosophers of natural law) towards what we regard as serving a civil purpose, but make no mistake, Totalitarianism is government's natural condition, and the Liberals are trying to evolve us away from Republican government back to the Aristocracy/Monarchy form of government, where THEY (Media elites, University Elites, Legal Elites, etc.) are the new Aristocrats.

Well, actually, they started out as cooperatives. But without the "science" meme, they were subject to the psycho-memes of strongman government.

Psycho-Babble. To borrow an example from the bible, Jealousy and Contention started with Cain and Able. Brothers even today resent and compete against each other, though they may also have reciprocal love and concern for each other. The "Strong Man" started the first time two human males ever came into contact with one another. Every time a Male child is born he has the example of the "Strong Man" father ruling over him.

This form of government is completely natural and instinctive for humans. For millions of years, this was the form of government that every child awoke to the first time they drew breath.

Their EXCUSE was that the good of the "group" (menaing them) was more important than the right of the individual. So obviously slavery is right, see, the stongman said it, the preist said it. GOD said it, it must be true.

Remember that discussion we had earlier about how the relationship of the individual to the society being analogous to the cells of a body? While YOU might not be able to see it, most people understand it instinctively. They recognize those people who are like them (i.e. sharing the same genetic characteristics) and those who are different, and they create in their minds the boundary between "Us" and "Them". There is one set of rules to be used when dealing with members of "US", and a completely different set of rules to be used when dealing with "Them." If "Them" is a threat, or serves no useful purpose to "Us" then they need to be harnessed or eliminated for the benefit of "Us."

Now where does religion fit into this equation in your mind? I will point out that the Romans and Egyptians had completely different religions, and slavery was not a conflict with their beliefs. Indeed, it was religious CHRISTIAN fanatics (John Brown, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Lincoln, Susan B. Anthony, etc.) that brought slavery to an end in the United States, and a religious CHRISTIAN fanatic (William Wilberforce) that brought it to an end in England.

In 1785, he underwent a conversion experience and became an evangelical Christian, resulting in major changes to his lifestyle and a lifelong concern for reform. In 1787, he came into contact with Thomas Clarkson and a group of anti-slave-trade activists, including Granville Sharp, Hannah More and Charles Middleton. They persuaded Wilberforce to take on the cause of abolition, and he soon became one of the leading English abolitionists. He headed the parliamentary campaign against the British slave trade for twenty-six years until the passage of the Slave Trade Act 1807.

The Christian doctrine of Equality in the eyes of the Lord brought about a societal change that had existed since the dawn of man. (Among other useful and beneficial things Christianity has done for mankind.)

I doubt the adherents of Nietchse "Death to God" philosophy will have been so benign. Indeed, the "Ubermenschen mindset of the Subsequent NAtionalsoZIalistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei led to great suffering and death, and so did the Anti-Religious philosophy of Marx and Engels.

As a matter of fact, I dare say that Atheists are responsible for more mass murder than any other philosophy in History. It is an example, (Like China and Legal Drugs) where the real world seriously conflicts with "theory", except in the minds of it's adherents.

I would suggest that if one doctrine (Christianity) killed a million people in the last Thousand years, and another (Atheism) killed a Hundred million people in the last 100 years, then if I had a choice, I would prefer the deception of Religion to the truth of Atheism.

Then science and technology eliminated the slaves and now it is time for the science (and technology) of morality to eliminate strongman government too.

Yes, we can all thank Charles Darwin for demonstrating that Slaves are equal to everyone else, and deserve to be treated as equals. But wait! Wasn't Darwin's "evolution of the species" the justification used by the Eugenicists to argue that some people were superior to others, and therefore the Stronger should survive while the Weaker should perish? Didn't he inspire Nietzsche to urge the world to wait for the arrival of his "Uber Menschen"? Yeah, i'm thinking that Science and technology has not been so kind to the rights of man.



Your way of looking at life is very amusing to me. You have a complete contradiction of history with your perspective, yet your mind seemingly cannot grasp how such a thing could be so.

MORE LATER. Its EXHAUSTING correcting you!

I can understand why. You've spent a great deal of effort, but have yet to make any "corrections!" You are like an engine with an efficiency of 0%.

[Diogenes]

I fear you have a serious misunderstanding of the nature and origin of government. Government originated with the Strong man who would see his will done. It started as tyranny and evolved (based on the philosophers of natural law) towards what we regard as serving a civil purpose, but make no mistake, Totalitarianism is government's natural condition

I am not entirely sure it's so simple. Early Roman accounts of encounters with Germanic and Celtic tribes suggest that in some cases, the tribal groups elected their kings. Etymology would seem to support this.

There is more than one type of strength. If you've ever played "Dungeons and Dragons" then you know that someone can be superior in one talent but inferior in another. I can assure you they never elected anyone that wasn't in the prominent circle of leadership in some form.

The Modern English word king comes from Old English/kyning - where "kyn" has become the modern English word "kin." Along with the words leode and theod, the word kyn could simply mean "people." In other words, the English word king originally meant "of the people" - which in a pre-modern tribal language is probably as close as they can come to saying "president" or "prime minister."

I love etymology. It is interesting that you mention the relationship between King and Kyn, because that is the EXACT topic of discussion (On another website which I frequent) vis a vis the relationship between what is a natural born subject and the King. The argument on my side is that the relationship is indeed regarding membership in a related (by blood) family group. The word "Nation" is derived from Natal, or meaning "from birth" and the word Patriot, comes from "Father." Etymology demonstrates all sorts of connections between Country and "Land of My Father."

I am glad you pointed that out to me. I am going to shove it down a few throats over there. (Free Republic)

The Gothic language, which was very closely related to Old English (pretty much the eastern dialect of late proto-Germanic, while Old English would be the western dialect) uses the same sort of structure. The Gothic version of "theod" is "thiud," and the word for king is "thiudan," again meaning "of the people."

Then there were the ancient Greek democracies, the Roman Republic itself, and in northeastern North America the Iroquois Confederacy.

You can argue about to what extent any of these were "real" democracies. In most cases we know that who could vote was usually limited to certain classes of people.

As it was in the United States Republic.

Quite possibly elections were frequently rigged by the tough guys. Also, you were usually expected to vote in the open, at the same time as everyone else - meaning that everyone could see your vote and the possibility for vote intimidation would have been significant. Nonetheless, these are examples of a range of societies in which a democratic impulse was there from a comparatively early stage.

An open vote is not really Democratic. The ubiquity of coercion is simply too damaging to the expression of their actual opinion. The possibility of retaliation skews the results to the strong man.

Neither do I think this flies in the face of nature. Humans are not very fast or strong, and so when we became omnivores we had to become pack hunters. You need to get everyone to cooperate on the hunt. Bullying, grandstanding and other prima-donna-esque behaviors tend to demotivate the group, get people killed, and scare off the prey before you get close enough. Later on, building towns, learning to farm, domesticate animals etc. all required cooperation, so there was a constant selection pressure for cooperative instincts in humans.

Humans have a natural Pecking order, just like chickens and other animals. Within a group of members of the same caste, cooperation is possible, but between members of the ruling caste and the lower worker or warrior caste, there is no reciprocity. One orders, the other obeys. Equality of castes is a distinctly Christian notion created by the belief that in God's eyes, all are equal.

In the eyes of all the other deities, (including scientific atheism, as demonstrated by the Eugenicist) the strong rule while the weaker obey.

Now I agree with Diogenes that other early societies bear all the hallmarks of having been structured by the strong man of the strongest tribe in the area, and were fundamentally totalitarian. However, I suspect that both impulses are natural to humans: cooperation/democracy and authoritarianism/totalitarianism.

No doubt, but never forget that people operate primarily within their own understanding of their own social environment. They may contend and cooperate among equals, but God help those of a lesser caste who forget their place!

Also, looking at it from Aquinas' interpretation of natural law: both democracy and totalitarianism are rational. It is rational to get everyone's input and agreement before making a decision, so as to be able to see all possible options and judge the best one, and also so as to make everyone feel involved and therefore be as motivated as possible. On the other hand, it is also possible to rationally judge that democracy at times seems to become inefficient, as no one can agree and all the factions argue and continually fail to come to a decision. Therefore, you need an imperator to force a decision and take action quickly and decisively, before opportunities slip away. Either conclusion can "make sense" to a rational mind.

Vector sums in my mind. With Multiple forces at play, sometimes one is stronger than another and therefore dominates the outcome, and sometimes the other is stronger and dominates the outcome.

Once a Strong Man has established expectations and rules, he can change or go against them *IF* it is not too greatly objectionable to the rest of his people. He may have the levers of force, but put enough weight behind the weak end of the lever, and it will still move the stronger end.

[Diogenes]

what is beneficial to the group may not be beneficial to the individual.

There are some other ways to accomplish this than just tricking people with religion, though.

First, the biological imperative. As everyone has pointed out, there are examples in nature where the individual participates in an action that may harm it but which benefits the group. With humans, this was likely originally limited to small kinship groups. A person might be willing to get killed fighting off a predator, rescuing someone else from drowning, etc., since the other members of the group were close genetic relatives, and saving them advancing your own genes. This instinct is probably strongest in a parent protecting its children. Nonetheless, from this instinct a greater altruism towards the rest of humanity outside of one's kin group can arise.

Once the notion has arisen. Prior to that, people of different races and nationalities were simply not considered as deserving of the respect one gives to kin. I credit the teachings of Christianity as the seed of this idea. It eventually blossomed.

Second, once again we have the rationality argument. People can be rationally taught that if they curb their own selfish impulses, all of humanity benefits, which in turn helps them. If you rob from stores in your locality and there are no laws or state structure to stop you, eventually no one will run a store near where you live, and you'll have to grow your own food, move, or starve. Or a more extreme example: if you start a nuclear war, you'll likely get nuked back - MAD.

The people that do such things are only concerned with their immediate benefit, not the long term benefit for their community. This is a more primitive and regressive instinct in my opinion.

The right sort of religion can help to ingrain these lessons - but it's not absolutely necessary. A proper education, with some examination of history, law and philosophy (and perhaps evolutionary biology), even at the high school level, can also make these things clear.

We are standing before a Chasm, and on the other side lies the land of milk and honey. Till we can figure a way to bridge the chasm, we will have to deal with the reality on this side of it.

I think trying to teach appropriate philosophy to people so that they might not need religion to control their behavior is akin to applying a constant force to avoid falling. If you can keep it up and maintain it, it might eventually work, but I doubt any society has such a force of will. The default instinctive position is to recognize a chain of command leading all the way to God (The Ultimate Strong man) and to supplant that natural instinct for the bulk of the population is a gargantuan (and probably futile) task.

Individuals may be able to see it easily, and behave, but for much of humanity, the thought will always occur to them to take advantage of others if there be no fear of retribution.

You see, what makes "God" work so well is that it constrains people to watch themselves. They are their OWN guard of good behavior, and no one can constrain a person so well as themselves.

My sense is that what's going on in Western civilization and a number of other societies right now isn't so much due to a lack of religion, but due to a lack of rationality. A great many people have been willfully refusing to consider the consequences of their actions for quite a while. Maybe that's because so many of us have "cheater genes," but I doubt humanity would have evolved in the first place if the "cooperation genes" did not exert as much influence on the average person's behavior as the "cheater" ones. A powerful societal meme in favor of rationality would give the cooperation instinct the upper hand over the selfishness instinct.

Oh, I am all in favor of rationality, but I am dubious that such an attitude can be quickly made common among humanity. I think we all have "Cheater genes" but we also have different requirements on "levels of opportunity" needed to trigger them. I think over time, if humanity is kept in a a society where rationality rules, then evolution will result in the population adapting to it as part of our firmware, but in the mean time, we need the crutch to prop up our condition until the concrete eventually hardens.

The longer a condition persists, the more likely it will be for a species to adapt to it. You have to make genes unused to get rid of them. It is a slow process. If you try to go too quickly, you will likely lose the gains that have already occurred.

I like the rationality meme because, unlike religion, it is not prone to the possibility of being undermined by a crisis of faith, in which the individual says "everything I believed was a lie" and then proceeds to throw away his or her morality in the belief that God was the only reason to hold those morals.

Every system has loses. The idea is to minimize them. I wonder what the suicide rate is in Atheist Russia?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... Union.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/eur ... story.html

[Diogenes]

For example, killing one's own offspring is a severe violation of natural morality.

Well no. Actually it isn't. Happens all the time in nature.

Really? When? I have heard Hungry sows will sometimes eat their piglets, and I have heard male cats will kill kittens to bring the females back into heat, but what other examples in nature do you have for a parent to intentionally kill their offspring? .

Among humans it has been a known - if despised - "procedure" for at least 2,500 years. Why has it happened in the past? Scarcity of resources is one reason. Also social standing - which is to say the woman (or family) thinks it can get a better deal if the woman doesn't start out with a family. Probably a good idea since it leads to stepfathers.

Rationalization. Very similar to "The slaves are better off being taken care of by their masters." It overlooks the salient point.

Which is to say competition for resources.

It is all quite complicated. And however much we don't understand the forces at work - there are forces at work. We should respect our ignorance. It reduces hubris. Which is often followed by nemesis.

All this is no more mapable that "climate" science is. i.e. we get parts. We don't get other parts and the interactions are quite complicated.

Yes, it's quite complicated. Some humans are property, and some humans are not.

It was much simpler when all offspring were in lain eggs. Carrying a unique offspring around with you leads to some confusion as to who's property it is.

[Diogenes]

Which, if you are wise, you will feign for a while until you can remove them.

Doing the "wise" thing will only work for those people who are in such a position as can get away with it. The other thing the bad guys do is after they have ganged up and beaten a group of people, they make them swear loyalty oaths. Those who refuse to swear are killed.

The idea is to create a social stigma against defying the King. Even if you were able to hide your discontent from the gang, what are you going to do about the loyalty oath? After you've sworn it, attempting to undermine the King, or even suggesting such a thing is called "Treason."

Surely you jest. As far as I know EVERYONE knows that oaths sworn under duress are not binding.

OMG! Let us pull out the Marquis of Queens berry rules, and show them to our oppressors! You have an odd way of understanding life outside of the scope of it that you currently live in. The ENTIRE POINT of a King forcing someone to swear an oath is to DEMONSTRATE his ability to apply duress.

The first thing you need to understand is that those who CREATE the rules, get to apply them as they see fit.

Yes, you may be committing "treason" but against who? Someone who is violating your right to voluntary action. In other words, someone who is evil. What is that saying about tolerating evil is not a virtue, treason to it is not a vice?

A greater evil is being killed and allowing your wife and children to be enslaved because you wanted to get into a pissing contest with the King. When you are living in a land where the ruling principal is "Might makes right" you may explain how they are evil when you are in a position to "speak softly and carry a big stick."

I am trying to get you to comprehend ideas which are anachronistic to your zeitgeist. The world was not always as you see it before you now. The evolution from where we were to where we are now is comprehensible, but not when you postulate ideas which are completely out of their proper time.

In the General theory of human interaction in primitive conditions, Government begins as the dominating will of of some person within that society, and he is not responsive to arguments that it is being unreasonable. Our society has EVOLVED the notions of fairness and equality, they are not INHERENT to the human instinct.

The very opposite is.

[Diogenes]

The idea is to create a social stigma against defying the King.

Defying the King is my natural habit. According to my friends:

http://classicalvalues.com/2012/03/inva ... -our-land/

They don't come right out and say it. Instead they say I'm a bad influence. In the body of the post and in the comments. I was honored.

Long ago I postulated the existence of "contrarians." They are people who often don't know what to think until they can find out what other people think just so they can take the contrary position.

Now I am not suggesting that is what motivates you, (at least not in all cases) but I think it is a common motivating factor for many people.

Defiance is also a human instinct, but most of the time people won't try it if the risk equation doesn't come out right. The efforts of Kings to force loyalty oaths are intended to modify the risk equation such that it benefits the King.

I personally think "Contrarians" are a manifestation of Nature's (evolution's) tendency towards redundancy with slight modifications. Obviously if all organisms approached a situation in exactly the same manner every time, there may come a circumstance which results in a 100 percent fatality for every member of the species, but by having contrarians in the population, the odds are greatly improved that some component of the species will go in a different direction on some decision, than would that of the other parts of the group.

Some of the Followers will follow one group, and others of the followers will follow the contrarians, and if one side gets killed, the other side may very well survive.

It is like the Aristocrat that sent one son to fight alongside one Important ruler, while sending another son to fight alongside his opponent, so that regardless of which side won, the Family would be regarded as an ally and therefore spared the ravishment normally inflicted on the losing side.

Contrarians are a manifestation of nature's "Try EVERYTHING!" approach.

[KitemanSA]

OMG! Let us pull out the Marquis of Queens berry rules, and show them to our oppressors! You have an odd way of understanding life outside of the scope of it that you currently live in. The ENTIRE POINT of a King forcing someone to swear an oath is to DEMONSTRATE his ability to apply duress.

The first thing you need to understand is that those who CREATE the rules, get to apply them as they see fit.

And to the greatest extent known, they get supported in such suppression by religions preaching that it is "right". Many fools believe such evil preachings.

People forced to swear such oaths are under NO moral obligation to respect them, despite what the oppressor or his religeous servlings say.

When people finally begin to understand that, civilization will finally win out!

[Diogenes]

This just in, on a related note over at Instapundit they have this quote.

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: “While predominantly Christian countries offer Muslim immigrants and visitors full rights of religious expression, including the freedom to build mosques, there is no reciprocity.” Plus this: “For many Muslims, however, the rise of tolerance in Christianity looks less like maturity and self confidence than like the senescence of a religion in decline. Christianity, these critics say, is losing its hold on the western mind. The rise in religious tolerance is the result of necessity — the churches are weak, the believers indifferent, and so Christians no longer have the inner conviction to stand up for their faith. . . . Don’t hold up your flabby faith and your immoral, secular societies to us as examples to imitate, these Muslim critics say. "You are tolerant because you are decadent, open because you have lost the will and the strength to defend yourselves and your ideas.”

[Diogenes]

Another item, just in.


Romney Denounced by 850 + Rabbis


http://www.rabbilevin.com/2011/12/romne ... abbis.html


I agree with them.