The main one being that your support of a government strong enough to do your "ever so liberal" bidding is also strong enough to wring all our necks.

You are going to get a powerful government whether you like it or not. I can't think of a single example of government power being permanently reduced without some sort of calamitous event.

One of my father's favorite sayings was "There is nothing more permanent than a temporary tax". I've come to see his wisdom as I grow older.

Do you honestly think the government of the CSA would have been any less freedom destroying than that of the USA had the CSA survived to this day?

Beyond a critical point within a finite space, freedom diminishes as numbers increase. ...The human question is not how many can possibly survive within the system, but what kind of existence is possible for those who do survive. -Frank Herbert

Didn't she suffer massive blood loss in the vehicle carrying her before she was even moved?

@ bucky1

You're insane....

Every single one of them. They all flock here and they drive me fucking crazy.

This white nigger says fuck them all.

Nigga please.. ;->

Tell us something we don't already know..

Well, let's see. Cannons to the left of me, cannons to the right of me. Respectfully, L.W.M., your take on the necessity of our entry into WWI isn't persuasive for a number of reasons having nothing to do with your assertion that WT would avoid war even when it's offered unequivocally.

With much less respect for his argument than his existence, I say to bucky that I've never argued what he says I've argued, except when viewed through that woefully distorted lens which he seems unable to put down.

Bebop has it about right, as usual. Avoid being adversarial if you can. As mortals, though, we can't always manage it. Innocence is rarely an option, to err is human, etc. I'd like to live in eternity, and regret that I can't, yet I'm grateful that by one sort of grace or another -- meditating on one of bebop's songs, for example -- I'm occasionally afforded a glimpse of it.

Urbis et orbis, pax vobiscum.

Bebop, no, I don't wear a tie, literal or metaphorical -- not habitually, anyway. I can only remember wearing one six times during the last forty years; once to oblige a more elegant friend on a double date which demanded that he just had to impress, twice at funerals, and three times at weddings, including my daughter's.

But enough about me. How bout that OSU team, eh? When I was going there, it was a doormat, but just look at what T. Boone Pickens hath wrought with his megabucks. An inspiration to us all.

it's not a discussion but a contest to see who can win. I want to learn, not win.

HRH, sorry about your loved one. The prisons are full of so many people that were prisoners outside of prison. Prisoners of a system that warps the mind and keeps the victims victims. Victims who have not realized how many people are renting space in their brains who should be kicked out. And seeking solace in drugs or addictions only keeps the renters inside.

You are going to get a powerful government whether you like it or not. I can't think of a single example of government power being permanently reduced without some sort of calamitous event. ... Do you honestly think the government of the CSA would have been any less freedom destroying than that of the USA had the CSA survived to this day?

I agree, I wonder why you think I would not. The CSA/USA split might have kept both entities much weaker for much longer; and might have given the western natives a chance. However, worshiping Lincoln only furthers the power grabbing nature of our modern politicians. Even that fool in Pakistan claimed that he was following Lincoln's example as he overturned the county's constitution.

If you have a government, it will grow in power over time. If a government becomes powerful, it will oppress the people. There seems to be a lesson in these words for those that can see.

There is a book I've not read titled: Alone in the World?

Human Uniqueness in Science and Theology. by B.J. Wentzel van Huyssteen

~

It gets into todays debates concerning science and religion. It gets into universal "rationality" and all that postmodern relativism 'stuff' ...communal-consensus....Local. The mind-blow reads?

epistemology, tranversality, engagement, and "abstract esoteric" stuff...

I'm more and more into children books with art-drawings. The title response is a 'no' we are not alone...

No clobber others. Flip-flop the hair and it don't matter if we have no hair. And neither does it matter if the outward thread-clothes are fashion updated and in style? Or, adorn the interior of a unique soul.

No disembowel anybody in a religious or secular (same-same) meeting Place or send humans to be shredded and war bloodied. O, "weariness .... often creepeth upon minds..."

Try to be kindly disposed and get along. The stench engenders strife.

~cemetery=ceme. And 'ceme' means sweet. If a person becomes 'cimices' it (people) get an intolerable odor- as in Reptile.

Seriously,

it's medieval of a way of being ill.

I see; it did not occur to me that you believed in that. There is no actual quantitative evidence that it is necessary and no mechanism to enable it..

The irony of Bloomberg taking the reigns so we can "fix what's wrong with this country" is almost unbearable. With the exception of the Wall Street Journal, I can't think of a single person or institution that better exemplifies what's wrong with this country.

Big corporations have taken over our country and run it into bankruptcy for their own profit, and now their head cheerleader wants to be prez to perfect the take-over, not to solve the problems it's created.

As Keith Olbermann has angrily pointed out, the wingnuts have taken to imitating our moronic leader by truncating the name of the "opposition" to "Democrat," as in "Democrat Party" or "Democrat Senator." So I think that as a general practice, we can all follow suit with "Republic President" or "Independ Candidate Michael Bloomberg."

If the trend continues, all of those bastards will simply disappear by the end of the year.

Bebop-o, I have aspired to be an academonic, one of those people that Peggy Noonan says ruin everything!