[QUOTE=Steerforth]Edward - This game doesn't hurt anyone? It will hurt everyone who plays it, including you, and will screw up kids. Give me a break. Yes, you have personal property rights, but they do have limits. Lets legalize rocket launchers, I'll only use them responsibly in my backyard. It won't affect anyone else, I promise. [/QUOTE]
Nobody is arguing that there are no limits... the question is "where is the objective line drawn." What you want is to just throw around your subjective and quite nonsensical limits around with no justification other than your irrational fear and hatred.
Lots of things cause some harm, but all of us as self-owning individuals have to decide for ourselves what harm we are willing to subject ourselves for whatever additional benefit might arise. As long as I am not directly harming any one else (and I am definitely not by seeing something like Manhunt on my own terms), you simply have just moral cause to suggest force be used against me. Ultimately, that's the REAL harm that goes on in our society -- it excacerbates every other form of harm that goes on in this country, just as the introduction of unjust force always does -- and that's what you are for. By your reasoning, I should be making your big mouth illegal.
[QUOTE=Steerforth]P.S. I never said the Constitution called for a National Chirch of any stripe, I just pointed out that Judeo-Christian values influenced and inspired our government. Its a historical fact, don't pretend our present day morals came from thin air. If you can't see the historical and continuing influence of Christianity in the world, including the arts, than your world is one of denial.[/QUOTE]
You didn't have to say the Constitution called for a national Church. All you had to do was suggest that your Christian values should be everybody's -- by force if necessary. I don't see much of a functional difference. If you do, then obviously your world is one of denial, and this critical thinking you go on to talk about is just your own delusional pipe dream.
[QUOTE=Steerforth]Don't be so consumed with the idea of free thought as to lose all ability to think criticaly. Some things are just plain wrong, sorry you had to hear it from me![/QUOTE]
Now it's your turn to give US a break. Saying that free thought isn't necessary for thinking critically is tantamount to saying you know how to think critically for the rest of us. Thanks, but no thanks.
[QUOTE=Steerforth]P.S. I'm too conservative to be a communist!
[/QUOTE]
Well first you say that, and then you go on to disprove it completely... as follows:
[QUOTE=Steerforth]No, government never calls for sacrifice or servitude. What a silly idea. Paying taxes is a 100% voluntary activity. Do the taxes you 'donate' buy weapons and pay for a war, or fund wellfare, or do they only go to the programs you happen to agree with? If you are ever drafted, just call and say you are busy for the next couple of years, and can't make it. Federal laws for illegal drug use are actually just casual recommendations. Congress has absolutly no power over my personal freedoms and the courts can't hold me responsible for my conduct. Hey, I'm a free thinker. Oh, wait, I'm actually an anarchist! Cool![/QUOTE]
How crazy to pull up a set of false premises and false alternatives and provide that as proof of anything. If I am ever drafted, I can quite assure you I won't serve a day. As much as I love this country and would fight for it (keyword) willingly in a situation that really called for it, I won't be its slave. Once I am that -- I am quite aware that there is little left to fight for.
I am in good company in that regard. As Ronald Reagan said when running for office in 1979: "the most fundamental objection to draft registration is moral...a draft or draft registration destroys the very values that our society is committed to defending... conscription rests on the assumption that your kids belong to the state…. That assumption isn't a new one. The Nazis thought it was a great idea.” And as Ayn Rand pointed out in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal: "Of all the statist violations of individual rights in a mixed economy, the military draft is the worst. It is an abrogation of rights. It negates man's fundamental right--the right to life--and establishes the fundamental principle of statism: that a man's life belongs to the state, and the state may claim it by compelling him to sacrifice it in battle. If the state may force a man to risk death or hideous maiming and crippling, in a war declared at the state's discretion, for a cause he may neither approve of nor even understand, if his consent is not required to send him into unspeakable martyrdom--then, in principle, all rights are negated in that state, and its government is not man's protector any longer. What is there left to protect?"
Everything that was wrong with the communist worldview is what is wrong with your worldview Steelforth. Communism is absolutely built on the individual not mattering in comparison to the State. It is built on sacrifices made by force and not by choice. That our own Government has been and is still guilty of these types of infractions is proof of nothing except that things need to change, eveven if they likely won't. I can't help it if you aren't smart enough to know that. Hopefully you'll keep this promise:
[QUOTE=Steerforth]Steerforth out![/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=Paul Campbell][QUOTE=Steerforth]Oh, well, some things are worse than censorship, like this game for instance. At least the UK has the guts to set a standard of decency for their country, and ban a game that has no redeeming social value.
[/QUOTE]
Amen to that. Unfortunately our country is so full of Lib... I mean people... that are more concerned about political correctness and not hurting anyone's feelings that we can't make uniform decisions to ban the worst stuff in this country anymore. Somebody would come out and say "Hey, it's art! It's free speech!!", at which point someone else would say, well, we can't ban it now, because that would go against that person's viewpoint.
[/QUOTE]
Well I for one am not afraid of hurting any of your feelings. I am not concerned about political correctness at all. I am concerned about the standard of moral decency that says that you stay the @#$% out of someone's home and property and life until they actually do quantifiable harm to someone else, and that until that time, you quote your opinions all day freely, with the caveat that you keep your unjustified guns (and your hired Government thugs) in your own closet.
If that's too liberal for you ultra-conservative types, then I'll gladly be called the most liberal of liberals.
[QUOTE=feilong80]
I largely agree, despite my discomfort with a band in the federal government level. A federalist approach would be more to my liking.[/QUOTE]
Either it is right or wrong, Rob, to go in and use Government guns and force to take money, property, or time away from an individual for playing a fictional account of violence that literally hurts nobody, or it is not. If the former, then no amount of Federalism is going to make it any better. The Constitution and Federalism and Law even as a concept are here to protect ouar ability to think and move freely. If they go against that, then they have lost their legitimacy, even by the wordy religious statements of the Declaration of Independence, but more importantly by the very nature of who we are as human beings.
I've always been far more impressed with Christianity's 1/3 of the world than I have been with Islam's number that is growing almost to eclipse that. The primary reason for this is that Islam attempts to force converts and force their values on everyone, right out of the mouth of their own God. Any religion that does that is worthless in my eyes for what should be to you obvious reasons. If Christianity has to become that for any of you three to think it will continue to be legitimate, I hope you will rethink that, even for your own sake as Christians.
Some say that Islam is the "next Communism", at least in terms of providing the largest threat to the liberties we have. I think we need to make sure that Christianity remains a religion that seeks willing converts, and doesn't become the NEXT "next Communism". Such a forced standardization won't just be a threat to the non-Christians, but given the serious differences among even Chrisitans, it can't be good for them either.
