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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
I'm referring to that specific belief, not religion as a whole, whatever I may personally think. If you wait for God to intercede instead of doing something to fix your own life, you're actually violating the Bible; and many theologians find the "sky-man who desires prayer" idea to be dangerously simplistic.
But I suppose it invites a derail.... /sigh
edited 17th Jun '16 6:29:51 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Okay. It came across as a Dawkins-esque snipe at religion as a whole. My bad.
Our thoughts and prayers go to those who can't get off their seats and instead wait for Providence to provide.
Fighteer, please don't use scare quotes around "progressive left" if you don't use them around "center left". No double standards.
edited 17th Jun '16 6:39:37 AM by TheHandle
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.![]()
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Religion in America is a font of some of the most dumbed-down political discourse ever put to the human voice or the printed word, so that last item belongs there.
edited 17th Jun '16 6:39:31 AM by CrimsonZephyr
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."![]()
They aren't scare quotes; they are ambiguity quotes, because nobody seems to be able to nail down the definition of what "progressive" means. But point taken; I should have used them for both terms. Fixed.
edited 17th Jun '16 6:41:20 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Certainly when one wants people to turn their brains off, one resorts to the Sacred and the Taboo: things people are not allowed to question and/or examine. These Sacred and Taboo things need not be supernatural, but it helps.
edited 17th Jun '16 6:41:27 AM by TheHandle
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.And the people who profit by getting other people to turn their brains off are among the most dangerous in the world, be they secular, religious, or whatever. Direct democracy offers no protection against that, though; rather, it tends to magnify the impact of anyone who can be charismatic enough to sell snake oil to enough people.
Ultimately, there is no protection that a democracy can offer against the majority of its citizens voting against their best interests. The good news, if you can call it that, is that most people generally want things that are beneficial. The bad news is that a staggering amount of them don't vote, leaving the franchise to be executed by the most passionate, who are often driven by toxic ideas.
edited 17th Jun '16 6:43:58 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Oh, aye. But if it's not religion, then such people will find other tools for turning people's brains off, as we're seeing in the rise of the European right. (Xenophobia's a good one.)
It just so happens that in America, the force that used to be the driver of Progressivism (no ambiguity, since it meant something specific) has been hijacked by our fascists.
edited 17th Jun '16 6:45:42 AM by Ramidel
There is a very good reason why the Constitution enshrines public education as a fundamental right, and it's because the Founding Fathers knew that the only way to guarantee the sustainability of a representative democracy (or a democracy of any sort) is to have an informed populace that can distinguish truth from lies and vote in their collective best interests.
Whenever a politician tries to sabotage education, you can be absolutely certain that they have malicious intent, no matter how reasonable they might sound. I give you, thus, today's Republican Party.
Again, this is stark. We can't reclaim our democracy for progressivism overnight, no matter what the Sanders people may claim. But if we don't start systematically kicking the GOP out of government at all levels, we're never going to get there.
edited 17th Jun '16 6:54:45 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"![]()
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"The majority don't vote" has a simple if obnoxious solution: Compulsory Voting
.
Very frustrating fact: the people who are most knowledgeable about politics are also usually the most biased. [Looks for a source. Can't find it. Could swear I read that somewhere...]]
Then at one point in recent history it all got botched when people decided history should be about celebrating and enshrining America's heroes and victories, among other things.
I remember talking to a Texan once; they had an incredbily skewed, epic narrative of their nation's history, and, according to them, it was what they were taught in high school. It was especially jarring that the guy's parents weren't born there, but he talked about the XI Xth century actions of Texas as "we" and "us".
edited 17th Jun '16 6:57:19 AM by TheHandle
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.I think we're mischaracterizing the New Deal as something elite-driven. The elites of the day did not want the New Deal, Roosevelt's name became a dirty word among the 1% of the time, the thing is that the Democratic party presented a broad enough coalition that had some elite buy-in that the proposals made were not too radical, and that their constituency was based almost evenly in farmers and the industrial proletariat.
Leftist politicians being elites themselves (like the Roosevelts or the Kennedys) had very little to do with the fact that their proposals might be moderate in nature, their policies are a product of what's popular and viable within the party.
The only thing the elites as a whole accepted about the New Deal was the fact that it was democratically legitimate (although they did try to sue parts of it into the dirt until the court-packing attempt scared the Supreme Court into a more moderate stance), and that they would not enact a coup against democratic decisions that ran counter to their interests, unlike what the wealthy did in other countries. Their acceptance was of the legitimacy of the process.
It's roughly true, even if the decision to accept the legitimacy of the process was, at its heart, motivated by fear of the Torches and Pitchforks mob storming into their mansions and skyscrapers and evicting them forcibly.
But note that those elites promptly began a program to undermine people's faith in the New Deal through numerous tactics, such as adopting a Calvinistic model of piety whereby wealth was the reward for merit, making both direct and indirect appeals to racism to keep the populace divided, inciting wars to stir up patriotic fervor and let them curb freedoms, building up economic edifices with fantastic power to influence policy by buying politicians, and so on.
edited 17th Jun '16 7:06:53 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"I don't mean to be pedantic, but I don't recall any part of the Constitution (or any of the amendments) specifically referring to public education. Is it a consequence of other clauses? I'm not trying to be an asshat (I certainly agree that good public education is critical to a healthy democracy), but if I end up in a situation where I run into a super-strict originalist interpreter I don't want to be caught making a statement I can't back.
The damned queen and the relentless knight.Well, crap. I'm trying to find the details on that, hang on.
Edit: Okay, I'm wrong. It's not in the Constitution, and mandatory public primary schooling was not law in all states until 1918. [1]
Not sure how I messed that one up.
edited 17th Jun '16 7:14:00 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"The idea of compulsory education (in the West, it existed in limited forms elsewhere) was in its infancy in the UK at the time of American independence, and didn't really get underway until the early-mid 1800s. At the Federal level it's not a right, though there are laws supporting it. In some states a properly-funded education is a Right, like in Kansas where it's leading to the current court problems because the state is badly underfunding education.
Sanders had a live video stream to his supporters last night, during which he acknowledged meeting with Clinton and discussing their points of agreement and difference. He stated that stopping Donald Trump from getting elected is the most crucial task they face, and encouraged his supporters to consider running for office themselves (probably as part of that ground-up effort that we keep saying the country needs from progressives).
He made no statement about quitting the race or endorsing Clinton, but his campaign website has shut off the parts that solicit donations, present Bernie's platform, and tell people where to go to see him.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

We know that those toxic individuals represent a minority of the total population; their advantage is that they are motivated to vote disproportionately to their numbers. Our only counter is to get out and vote against them, and this break between "center-left" and "progressive-left" is threatening that solidarity.
To take a recent example, if almost 90% of Americans (and 85% of Republicans) want improved gun control legislation, why has Congress not passed it a long time ago? Because people who support gun control will still vote for their Congresspeople on the basis of bullshit like whether gays can marry, or whether Hillary looked at them funny.
edited 17th Jun '16 6:49:41 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"