The problem I see with this elucidation of rights is how one goes about guaranteeing them. In other words, without the positive right of society to enable a police force, how do you enforce your negative right to be safe from murderers and thieves?

I have a feeling the answer has something to do with a lot of guns, but I'll await your reply.

Who would that be, exactly?

Seriously. Is there anyone, anywhere within reach of a single lever of power who is "pressing" this issue?

Don't feed the trolls?

It's a suggestion that many have tried to make before, and no doubt others will make again. I tend to agree with you, though I have seen many well-written posts here that elegantly dispatch points made in posts that I would have thought not worth the effort.

Your Mileage May Vary, as we old-timers say... it seems to me that trolls are like mosquitoes. Some of us may try to ignore them, and some may swat and itch. Either way, they are here to stay.

Line = 1

The identifier "void" is undefined.

Sorry, that just made me think "it puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again..."

As I've mentioned before, I see shooter 0-for-2 as sort of like the online version of one's annoying little brother/sister. Getting under your skin is a "win" for her/him, regardless of how she/he gets it.

That is the game. The primary question is whether it's a game you want to play (the secondary one being, of course, whether you want to drag the whole comments thread along for the ride).

No.

I kind of wish we would, but nah gun happen. For good or ill, he is as much a part of this place as WT and bebop-o. He's target practice. He's a scratching post. He's Lord Foul the Despiser, the one you love to hate. He's here to validate the prejudices of those of us who believe (or want to) that there's no one intellectually honest on the other side.

In my experience, they do exist, but they have to much self-respect to be trolls on progressive blogs.

I suppose it has a chance in California, but a place where you could ever get more than 12 inches of snow? Dubious.

The car is sold in Canada and I do believe it sometimes snows there.

the utter lack of empathy that seems to be a defining characteristic of thirty-somethings these days

I am going to call you out on that comment, as I've come to expect, quite frankly, better of you.

"Utter" lack of empathy is a "defining" characteristic of the whole cohort of people from age thirty to thirty-nine? Could you have painted with any broader a brush, Other Paul?

There are many ways in which society has coarsened, and we certainly are well-marinated in the "I got mine" mentality here in God-blessed America. But I don't see empathy as any more lacking in the thirtysomes (I'm 41, FWIW) than it is in my own age group or those much older or younger.

And I have to say, short of at the Naval Observatory, I don't see an "utter" lack of empathy at all.

I generally make allowances for hyperbole, but this one was a bit hard for me to swallow.

Apology not needed, but accepted... I am equally dismayed by the shift of the cosidetto "Overton window" into realms I consider barely human - but I guess I blame my elders, not the younguns, for that!

I don't have any guesses as to why. "9/11" is certainly part of the reason (and note that I include the govern/media response as part of the overall event), along with the long-term trend of we Americans solving our problems through violence.

When I think of these times, it's Burke and Yeats who come to mind the most. All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.

"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." -- Plato

Some dead white men are worth quoting. When John Lennon was my age, he'd been dead for a year.

I'll say no more.

They you REALLY should have read - what? - like the fifth post in this thread:

http://tinyurl.com/2tzfdc

How does godless evolution explain human evil?

It doesn't.

Neither does it explain the movement of planets in their orbits, four-man backfield defense or the popularity of NASCAR.

It actually has nothing to do with any of these things.

Thanks for asking, though.

Namaste.

Japanese Buddhists call it gasshō. It has twelve forms, the first of which I learned as a Jodo-shu adherent: called the kenjitsushin gassho - "steadfast-being-gasshō." It is the symbol of the multitude of different things being, at the same time, One.

Respect is the key, and something this group never extends toward its opponents.

And humility, and likewise.

Gonna try and spitball an answer to that one... 'cause it's what they're called?

With due respect to TomT, it doesn't seem to have been Glenn's point that Bush's lip service to Constitutional values was a "rhetorical shift," rather that it was such obvious bullshit doublespeak that it seemed as if Colbert had written it...

http://www.searchlores.org/schopeng.htm

#3: Attack something different than what was asserted.

If zero-for-two hasn't hit all thirty-eight ways yet, hold on: she/he will.

So we have this one guy telling us we "all... love Israel" and one-or-more anonymi castigating us for supposedly blaming "teh j00z" for everything.

I guess ya just sees wot ya wants ta see...

I agree.

The one where he was talking about his husband cheating on him with his sister was like, ew. Isn't that why we have Springer?