Muslim Menu runs into high speed trouble in Spain

[Stan Shannon]

Richard A. Abbott wrote:

get the impression that you regret the day when slavery and human bondage on the plantation was stopped.

So, if I express any negitivity towards points of view I find objectionable, or people I just don't happen to like, I'm not only a Nazi I'm pro-slavery? Wow, thats one hell of an unassailable intellectual template you've bound me up with. Almost feels like...shackles. Brave new world, indeed.

Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.

[Paul Conrad]

Stan Shannon wrote:

just go back to the far more intelligent practical intolerance of our past - eat what we serve or go hungry, your choice.

Good point. I bet the squirrels outside my house don't give a damn how their food is prepared. Just eat it or die....

"The clue train passed his station without stopping." - John Simmons / outlaw programmer "Real programmers just throw a bunch of 1s and 0s at the computer to see what sticks" - Pete O'Hanlon

[Oakman]

Stan Shannon wrote:

I'm not only a Nazi I'm pro-slavery

If you say so . . . :laugh:

Jon Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface

[R Giskard Reventlov]

Not 'alf; gorn to jingo 'eaven. :)

me, me, me

[Lost User]

Was my presumed impression of your discrimination flawed? Freedom of expression is a human right but we should always be cautious of abusing that right. Unless you view the application of Human Rights as applied in the here and now as both an abuse of your rights and an unacceptable shackle upon your personal space.

[Oakman]

Blimey!

Jon Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface

[Stan Shannon]

http://www.infoniac.com/offbeat-news/parents-lose-custody-of-their-children-for-teaching-them-nazi.html[^]

Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.

[Stan Shannon]

Richard A. Abbott wrote:

Freedom of expression is a human right but we should always be cautious of abusing that right.

Why single out that right? I mean, you're proving my point. You're saying that my freedom to express contempt towards some one else's expression is secondary to someone else's actual expression. That some are protected, some are controlled. Who gets to decide that? Where does tht power properly lay? With me or with the state?

Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.

[Oakman]

Stan Shannon wrote:

http://www.infoniac.com/offbeat-news/parents-lose-custody-of-their-children-for-teaching-them-nazi.html\[^\]

Right down your alley, eh? Espouse an unpoplar ideology and the state shuts you down. Must have made you happy to see someone told they couldn't expect any special treatment. Take the kids away from the NAZIs, kick the Muslims off the train, tell the Jews they can't eat kosher food; Put the blacks behind the line on the bus. All part and parcel of the kind of intolerant state you want to set up.

Jon Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface

[Stan Shannon]

The odd thing about using Alabama to defend Spain, is that what Spain is doing is the very definition of 'separate but equal'.

Oakman wrote:

Always has, always will. You don't really think they sold as much fish on Friday in New England before the Canucks and Irish showed up, do you?

Obviously. That is yet another reason why capitalism should be preferred to the alternatives. However, this would be capitalism simply taking advantage of a really stupid political demand (hence making the entire thing fascist. I know you try to blame the ancient Romans for fascism, but the concept is entirely modern and involves corporations cooperating with the state to achieve public goals)

Oakman wrote:

Once upon a time, my veddy veddy waspish ancestors said exactly the same thing about the Irish. Of course, on the other side of my family, I am half Irish. And yet the sun still shines and the earth still revolves. Armageddon did not come after all. . . Hmmmm. . ."Shannon." You aren't one of the damned immigrants, are you? With all your foreign ideas and ways?

Again, you are proving my point. The sun would be shining regardless of who gets to define our society. It shines on Islamic states, communist states and fascist states.

Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.

[Oakman]

Stan Shannon wrote:

You're saying that my freedom to express contempt towards some one else's expression is secondary to someone else's actual expression.

Stan, you don't want to express contempt. Your zero tolerance policy denies people the right to speak, unless you and the rest of your friends find it acceptable.

Stan Shannon wrote:

Who gets to decide that? Where does tht power properly lay? With me or with the state?

Your right to deny me free speech ends at your front door. I know you'd like to make sure you never heard anything that upset you or made you question your absolute rightness, just like the society USSR created for Uncle Joe, but unfortunately you don't have the Spetsnaz to enforce your every whim.

Jon Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface

[Stan Shannon]

Oakman wrote:

What settled the competition for land in North America was the capability of manufacturing ever-improving weapons.

And the will to use them.

Oakman wrote:

It's only the idea that the states trump the Feds that appeals to you.

Because that is the entirity of what defines the actual Jeffersonian democracy that We The People signed off on. Any thing else is a deviation from the original concept, not an enhancement of it.

Oakman wrote:

Stan, you are an idiot if you think that I'd defend the right for Muslims or Catholics or Blacks or any group that has played the professional victim card to ban ideas - most of which you have had the opportunity to hear me speak up for.

Yet you fail to realize that is precisely what you are doing.

Oakman wrote:

It is you are are defining a society where Muslims cannot be served as paying customers, where blacks need to sit behind the line on the bus, where intolerance for anything that doesn't suit you becomes enshrined in law by the community so so fondly imagine shares your fear of everything that is different.

I never suggested any such thing. There should be no expectation on the part of any one that the state should accomodate their cultural preferences, or that corporations or individuals be in any way required to respect them. All I ask is that any constraints upon my behavior be either explicitely defined in the constitution, or within the legal codes of my community as defined by that community of free individuals applying their freedom of speech, religion, and the press.

Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.

[Stan Shannon]

The irony is that I am the only one argueing against a totalitarian society. You simply are too brainwashed to understand the concept. The reason we have freedom of speech is specifically to be able to affect our society on all issues not strictly defined in the constitution. Otherwise, it is a meaningless 'right'.

Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.

[Oakman]

Stan Shannon wrote:

what Spain is doing is the very definition of 'separate but equal'.

By which I take it you believe that the Railway company was providing better quality food to the Spaniards than to the Muslims? Certainly you aren't crazed enough to claim that the South provided equal educational facilities or opportunities for blacks during the first half of the previous century.

Stan Shannon wrote:

involves corporations cooperating with the state to achieve public goals

Entities which carried on business and were the subjects of legal rights were found in ancient Rome, and India. In medeval Europe, churches became incorporated, as did local governments, such as the Pope and the City of London. The oldest business corporation in the world, the Stora Kopparberg mining community in Falun, Sweden, obtained a charter from King Magnus Eriksson in 1347. Surely you aren't saying there weren't alliances between corporations and the state befor 1900??? Time for you to get out the history books. And you seem to totally miss the deification of the state that is one of the hallmarks of facism.

Stan Shannon wrote:

Again, you are proving my point.

No, I am not. I was being witty. Unfortunately you are only half witty so you didn't catch my meaning.

Jon Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface

[Oakman]

Stan Shannon wrote:

The irony is that I am the only one argueing against a totalitarian society.

No, you are arguing against any society other than the socialist/fascist state you would institute.

Stan Shannon wrote:

The reason we have freedom of speech is specifically to be able to affect our society on all issues not strictly defined in the constitution

No, the reason we have freedom of speech is because we have freedom of speech guaranteed to us by our Contitution. Madison, Jefferson et al didn't add a proviso saying that Stan Shannon could determine when free speech was permitted and when it could be denied. You are like the Gun Control Nuts trying to pervert the meaning of one of the first ten amendments to support your desire to deny some people, some of the rights guaranteed to them in those amendments.

Jon Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface

[Lost User]

Stan Shannon wrote:

Where does tht power properly lay? With me or with the state?

Both. Human rights are deserving of protection firstly by ourselves (taking the moral high ground if need be) and secondly by statute if we display ourselves as incapable. So yes, they should be protected and, as necessary, enforced/controlled. That doesn't mean you should not protest if those who enforce/control such rights are themselves abusing them.

[Oakman]

Stan Shannon wrote:

I never suggested any such thing.

Yet you fail to realize that is precisely what you are doing. The dictatorship of the majority - a danger Jefferson warned about more than once - leads relatively quickly to an oligarchy and thus to an out and out totalitarian state. Lenin worked to achieved a majority in the legislature and once he had, the Party formed an oligarchy and what was at the time arguably a constitution that guaranteed more rights than ours did, supported a bloody-handed, cruel dictatorship. The kind you seem bound and determined to bring about. Of course, Uncle Joe ignored the Russian Constitution at will - pretty much the way you say you would, if you felt it necessary. 'Constitution when convenient' seems to be your watchword as it was his. What you don't seem to understand is that the majority doesn't need the Constitution, the minority does.

Jon Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface

[Ilion]

digital man wrote:

Oakman: For what it's worth, I have never claimed to be the repository of all the truth digital man: Only Illion does that ...

Your assertion about me is not true. And, even someone like you knows it is not true. Ergo: you lie.

[killabyte]

Oakman wrote:

fine old fascist bachground of Spain

hmmm and i thought the america dime had the symbol of fascism on it ..... it is present in the congress hall where the president give his state of the fascist nation from. hahaha

[Stan Shannon]

Oakman wrote:

The dictatorship of the majority - a danger Jefferson warned about more than once - leads relatively quickly to an oligarchy and thus to an out and out totalitarian state. Lenin worked to achieved a majority in the legislature and once he had, the Party formed an oligarchy and what was at the time arguably a constitution that guaranteed more rights than ours did, supported a bloody-handed, cruel dictatorship. The kind you seem bound and determined to bring about. Of course, Uncle Joe ignored the Russian Constitution at will - pretty much the way you say you would, if you felt it necessary. 'Constitution when convenient' seems to be your watchword as it was his.

Indeed. And that is precisely why they designed the government as they did. A very weak central government with clearly defined and limited authority. That was specifically to avoid the rise of large majorities which could use the central government to control the entire nation. That was the entire rationale for the anti-federalist whom Jefferson and Madison were the leaders of. They intentionally traded one big central tyranny for a million small ones. Of course, today, that has all been thrown away. Today we have powerful factions fighting over a governmetn which has tremendous power to influence our lives precisely because of your insistence that the central government have the authority to micro-manage local government via the courts, thus creating the very oligarchy you are trying to blame me for. The oligarchy is yours, pal, not mine.

Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.