Our Endangered Values

madame_zora

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I saw former president Carter on the Jay Leno show a couple nights ago, did anyone happen to catch that? He has recently written his first political book, his twentieth offering. I couldn't find a transscript of that interview, but the book itself is a noteworty discussion topic. While opinions about his presidency are divided and often not stellar, I doubt that many would question either his personal integrity or his honesty. He was one of the very few presidents to leave the White House in debt, so clearly he was not about the business of amassing personal wealth, as has been the custom.

Several of us have been saying that the Christians are the only ones who could put an end to this loathsome neocon movement, and we just may have our champion here. As a man who has spent the last two decades of his life in devoting himself to easing human suffering and recipient of the Noble Peace Prize in 2002, I doubt the words could be as resonant from anyone else.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4984885
 

dolf250

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I think it would be an extremely interesting read. However, much like almost any book, I think it needs to be read carefully. Both President Carter and Michael Moore have done the same thing regarding deaths with guns. “In the most recent year for which data are available, handguns killed…1,034 in Canada, and 30,419 in the United States.” If you take population into account the U.S is still clearly the leader, but the numbers change. If the population of Canada were 260 million instead of 29.2 million you would have 9206 deaths in Canada and 30 419 in the USA. Still a ratio of 3:1, but a little closer than the 30:1 the stats make it appear as.

He also writes that “The views of Americans have also been changing regarding the death penalty, with support for "life without parole" now at about half and only one-third believing that the death penalty deters crime.” I do not claim to know the figures, but he is comparing apples to oranges. Half support “life without parole.” It does not say how many support the death penalty- likely about half. What he says is that “one- third believe that the death penalty deters crime.” I personally do not believe that the death penalty deters crime, but I would love to have it as an option for the real scum who not only admit that they are guilty, but are proud of it. We have Clifford Olsen, who raped and murdered a number of children. He sent letters to the families and loves media attention. I would love to see him gone. I would have liked to see a percentage who opposes the death penalty versus the percentage that supports it instead of seeing the stats twisted.

Having said that I do think it would be an interesting read, and he does have some good points (even in the short excerpt that is provided.) The parties and their supporters are becoming more and more opposed to one another (and this goes as much for the Democrats as it does for the Republicans.) No one wants to see the other side and as such no one is listening. The left writes the right off as “scary and out of touch” while the right writes off the left as “liberal, morally bankrupt wing nuts.” I have seen a number of posts about how stupid the Republicans are. While some of the policy is horrid it is just as he says- “Stronger and sharper partisan differences have evolved among Americans in recent years.” I love the points he made, but from what I have observed nothing is likely to change as each side tries to marginalize the other.
 

B_horribleperson

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you know that part in the bill of rights about guns and a well maintained militia. well the time has come for us to have an other revolutionarywar, because the people have lost control of the government and the elected officals dont care about the people they only care about their corporate owners.
 

madame_zora

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horribleperson said:
you know that part in the bill of rights about guns and a well maintained militia. well the time has come for us to have an other revolutionarywar, because the people have lost control of the government and the elected officals dont care about the people they only care about their corporate owners.

Yeah, funny thing is I'm pretty sure that the bill of rights was suggesting a state militia to serve the government, but it works for giving us the right to arm ourselves to overthrow the government as well. Can't deny it's high time to take back our nation and restore some semblance of sanity.
 

Pecker

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Maybe one of the reasons Canada's murder rate is so much lower than ours is that they have to travel farther to find another human being to kill? By the time they find someone else, they've cooled off. :D
 

SpeedoGuy

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Pecker said:
Maybe one of the reasons Canada's murder rate is so much lower than ours is that they have to travel farther to find another human being to kill? By the time they find someone else, they've cooled off. :D

Or maybe Canada is populated with a less violent citizenry than America is.

SG
 

D_Martin van Burden

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It's interesting to note which values are in danger. The easy answer is that neoconservatism is quickly eviscerating any liberal, open-minded, or Democratic views. Again, EASY answer. It's more complicated than that, even if President Bush's behaviors and speech topics seem a little too predictable. "Stay the course," whatever...

Even though I am not a practicing Christian, I don't have a problem with some conversatives, neocons, etc. arguing that our land was founded by Christian forefathers. That's perfectly fine with me because, somewhere written in those principles, were a willingness to care for one's brethren, to solicit and practice compassion, to offer aid when available, to give to charity, and to embrace the good in those we encounter. Those are values I can live with, certainly. I'm afraid that these good components to Christian thinking are lost in the shuffle of profit-driven politics, greed, corruption, thinktanking, falsification or mystification of facts, hindered military intelligence, and cronical favoritism. On THESE grounds would I question the President rather rigorously about his proposed injection of good moral thinking into his campaign.
 

BobLeeSwagger

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madame_zora said:
Yeah, funny thing is I'm pretty sure that the bill of rights was suggesting a state militia to serve the government, but it works for giving us the right to arm ourselves to overthrow the government as well. Can't deny it's high time to take back our nation and restore some semblance of sanity.

The U.S. Supreme Court has never ruled that the Second Amendment grants a private citizen the right to own a gun. It's only ruled on the "militia" part in the past and has avoided doing more.
 

dolf250

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I love your post Dee. It seems greed and corruption has taken over every aspect of politics. In the U.S the Republicans have become as corrupt as you could want and here in Canada our governing party has been linked to Adscam- a multi million dollar program designed to kick government money back to the Liberals through ad companies in Quebec. Charges have been laid and the former prime minister named (our current Prime Minister was the minister of finance when this all happened.) Yet it is just politics as usual.

Chimera- if you think that immigrants are going to ruin Canada you need to learn your history. We took the Irish and hated them. We took the Chinese and hated them. After WWII we took the Germans and despised them. Now we take the Sudanese and the Koreans and we hate them. Each group was hated because they were going to ruin our country and thus far each has provided another building stone to get to where we are. I suspect that the same will hold true for the recent immigrants. Yes, we have problems with “Asian” gang violence and with infighting in the Sheik communities. I am not saying that all the violence is the fault of immigrants- heaven knows that we produce our own fine crop of wife beaters, thugs and murderers. I would suspect that time will work it out.
 

rawbone8

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Re: Chimera's post

Violent acts are carried out predominantly by males of a certain youthful range of age, and the population stats follow fairly predictable patterns based on demographics by AGE.

I think the mass marketing of pop culture – "gangsta" and criminal gang influenced "fashion" and the tendency that youths have to glorify weapons and having the so called balls to use them (street cred) has more to do with recent crime and violence in my city. Illegal guns are smuggled into Canada from the USA and access to these are the main problem in grievous violence we are seeing lately among youth. The youth culture glamorizing violence for most is just a phase. For those who act on it it can be deadly, and have long term consequences. But it definitely stirs the shit up to walk the talk.

Raging temperments and access to lethal force are so much more volatile than the past when a fistfight or beating or in extreme cases knifing was the probable outcome. The lack of concern and compassion for another's life is a troubling aspect of this culture of teen posers making their play for real.

So the immigration policy in this country of immigrants hardly threatens me. It's traffic in American guns, thug pop culture and woefully bad parenting.
 

rawbone8

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and on a lighter skinned note

From Dennis Miller's Saturday Night News on Saturday Night Live 10/8/88:

We should have a Volleyballocracy. We elect a six-pack of presidents.
Each one serves until they screw up, at which point they rotate.
 

madame_zora

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DeeBlackthorne said:
It's interesting to note which values are in danger. The easy answer is that neoconservatism is quickly eviscerating any liberal, open-minded, or Democratic views. Again, EASY answer. It's more complicated than that, even if President Bush's behaviors and speech topics seem a little too predictable. "Stay the course," whatever...

Even though I am not a practicing Christian, I don't have a problem with some conversatives, neocons, etc. arguing that our land was founded by Christian forefathers. That's perfectly fine with me because, somewhere written in those principles, were a willingness to care for one's brethren, to solicit and practice compassion, to offer aid when available, to give to charity, and to embrace the good in those we encounter. Those are values I can live with, certainly. I'm afraid that these good components to Christian thinking are lost in the shuffle of profit-driven politics, greed, corruption, thinktanking, falsification or mystification of facts, hindered military intelligence, and cronical favoritism. On THESE grounds would I question the President rather rigorously about his proposed injection of good moral thinking into his campaign.

Dee, I think that's exactly the point. I don't think that there are very many Americans actually questioning Christianity as such, certainly not Jimmy Carter, but rather the way in which it has been manipulated to serve a political purpose.

But as to your second paragraph, I DO have a problem with assertions that America was founded as a Christian nation, not because I dislike Christianity but simply because it's NOT TRUE! I get defensive whenever someone tries to pass of an untruth as truth then wonders what the problem is. The first six presidents were Deists, which was a religious movement following the age of Enlightenment that offered the theory that God put the world in motion and then left it alone. We were now responsible for what became of it. Pseudo-historians trying to paint a picture of George Washington as a Christian make me sick, you just don't get to change history by rewriting it, it's absurd. Yes, he had a pew in the
local Episcopalian church, because that was what was expected of a prominent family, but his attendance there ranged for rare to never, depending on what reports you believe. I haven't found ANYONE who is not themselves a neocon claiming to have even seen him in church at all.

You don't think there were plenty of fundies around back then? Sure there were! It was basically an "us" against "them" mentality back then as well, how little humaity changes. The main difference was that the Deists and Agnostics and Atheists got together and decided that the only way THEIR rights could be protected was by effectively executing a strong separation of church and state, and against much quibbling they won. They created the first experiment in a society based on freedom OF and FROM religion, that last was added by John Adams, if I recall.

Jimmy Carter's point was that Christianity is being made filthy by being used for politicking, and government is being hobbled by "christian values" which aren't even real. Neither aspect is being served and this whole movement, in addition to being completely unconstitutional (which nobody really cares about since they can't read history books anyway), is causing a moral decline because too many are losing faith in God because of the misrepresentation by greedy men.
 

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dolf250 said:
Chimera- if you think that immigrants are going to ruin Canada you need to learn your history. We took the Irish and hated them. We took the Chinese and hated them. After WWII we took the Germans and despised them. Now we take the Sudanese and the Koreans and we hate them. Each group was hated because they were going to ruin our country and thus far each has provided another building stone to get to where we are. I suspect that the same will hold true for the recent immigrants. Yes, we have problems with “Asian” gang violence and with infighting in the Sheik communities. I am not saying that all the violence is the fault of immigrants- heaven knows that we produce our own fine crop of wife beaters, thugs and murderers. I would suspect that time will work it out.
"For example, blacks are one eighth of the population of the United States and one eighth of the population of [Greater] London, England. In both cases they commit about half of the reported crime. Canada does not keep official crime statistics by race, but informal estimates are that the two to five percent of the people of Toronto who are black commit 30 to 40 percent of the crime."
 

GottaBigOne

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Chimera: If you believe so strongly that people are determined so much by their genes, then don't you believe that all your values, all your beliefs, all your actions, etc. are a result of your genes? Do you not then see how your actions are CHOSEN by you? Don't you see the contradiction? Or do you like the notion that you are not responsible for your beliefs or actions or preferences and that you simply heed to your genetic predispositions? Does having to make your own choices scare you that much? Do you fear taking responsibility that much? or are you simply mistaken, honestly. I know you have mind that values the rational, are you just convinced by the supposed evidence for genetic determinism? But can't you see the contradictions? Bad parenting is not caused by genes. Genes may play a role, as in the level of intelligence of the parents, but any such effect would be highly negligible. Bad parenting is caused by a lot of things, it is a complicated issue, with many factors and many facets. There are many different way to be a bad parent, therefore there are many different causes.
 

madame_zora

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In the situation we're in now, no one with any morals or personal convictions of any kind will be able to do any good in the position of the presidency, the system itself is too corrupt. Anyone who has any desire to do good for us will quickly be torn apart publicly by the opposing party so that the "other side" won't have a shining example of a good leader to hold up as a champion. We are screwed.
 

BobLeeSwagger

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madame_zora said:
In the situation we're in now, no one with any morals or personal convictions of any kind will be able to do any good in the position of the presidency, the system itself is too corrupt. Anyone who has any desire to do good for us will quickly be torn apart publicly by the opposing party so that the "other side" won't have a shining example of a good leader to hold up as a champion. We are screwed.

If it makes you feel better, American voters have been saying that for about 210 years.