What is Liberal?

I believe that sounded like a concession. Yes, yes it did.It would be far more civil, however to say "You have provided evidence I am unable to refute, neither can I offer a stronger case to prove my own assertion, so I must conceed the point."

Exactly correct.The problem is that many people (Faith included, apparently) have failed to see the difference between what is distateful, versus what should be illegal. One of these is a purely emotional response, and is universally valid. The other requires evidence of harm to the person, property, or rights of another.

like witches or muslims or werewolves or heretics? the naive ideal is expecting christianity to be able to get along with other religions, and act in a rational manner. so yes, i agree with you there. but the problem isn't my fault, or the founding fathers' faults. it's the fault of people like you who thought christianity deserved to rule the world. and look at the atrocities it has caused. no! no no no no no!have you ever read the declaration of independence? have you read the constitution? they clearly define when and how one group can be in power, and when another can rightfully rise above it and overthrow it. the foundation of american government is the lockean idea of social contract. where in the hell are you getting this fallen nature of man crap? you mean one of the people earlier who was railing against christianity? yes, it is. they were also trying to design a government that would not result in the people having to overthrow it. so far, i think, they have the longest-lasting model of a democratic government. they also wanted a stable government, that would not just cater to will of the people. the judicial branch was specifically designed to check the legislative and executive, by having no term limits and non-elected officials. yes, the judicial branch has more power now than originally intended -- but so does the president. this is why the liberals are worried right now, faith. those would take constitutional amendments, which iirc would take 2/3 of congress to ratify. this is ALSO what the liberals are worried about. starting to see things from our side faith? mmhmm. yeah, that too. oh! oh! i love this quote!

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God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. ... And what country can preserve its liberties, if it's rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

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-Thomas Jefferson

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jeeze, faith. you ALMOST had. look at hitler's use of language. study the history of his rise to power. leftist revisionist ideas, ha! you just told me everything that you consider leftist revisionist ideas. does that jefferson quote prove it enough for you? for once faith, i totally agree. the butchering of language in particular gets me, but the right is not innocent of this crime either. the left are likely to be just as offended as the right if i wrote blasphemies on my shirt and protested a church. the founding fathers', no doubt, wouldn't have. saying there is no god niether breaks their arms, nor picks their pockets. the attacks on free speech come from both sides. the right is stronger and more out front, the left sneakier and takes the back: acceptable use of language. it's evil both ways. no, i share the worry because i've seen supposed christian leaders and theocracies. plain and simple, they're evil. what we have now is not good christian leadership (tolerance? we're at war) but a wolf in sheeps clothing. and we've all seen it before. hitler? "christian." the crusades? "christian." the inquisition? "christian." all totally contrary to the ideals of christianity.jesus wouldn't blow up an abortion clinic. he would have compassion on the people inside, and comfort them.

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אָרַח

faith; i was purposefully quoting out of context. i was making something called "a joke."

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אָרַח

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
WAR IS PEACEput this one with "oceania has always been at war with eastasia:""the left spins words"

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אָרַח

oh, i'd forgotten that they outlawed religious music.

It's interesting that you mention this.The New Testament Jews thought the Messiah would be a military leader who would overthrow the Roman government. Instead, according to Christianity, He told His disciples to "give to Ceasar what is Ceasar's, and to God what is God's." Jesus' teachings focused on turning individual people's hearts, and compassion for your fellow man, regardless of his beliefs. Not once did He "strike down a heathen."Modern fundamentalist Christians seem to think that Jesus has somehow turned into the miitaristic megalomaniac the Jews thought He would be. Where Jesus never involved Himself in government, Christians nowadays seem to think that He would want His teachings forced through legislation. Where Jesus used miracles and simple moral conversation to convert people, fundamentalists would like to force their faith on the populace. Faith would even like to outlaw two religions, one of which is a major world faith.This is a difference between conservatives and liberals for me. Conservatives seem to try to make things the way they "used to be," because the old ways were obviously better. Never mind if the old ways were all that great really, or if the world was even actually like what they think it was. Fundamentalists believe Christianity should be this extreme and forceful becuase "that's the way it's always been." Fundamentalists disbelieve evolution and science because "this is the way we've always believed." As if tradidtional thought somehow made the world stay flat.Liberals look to the future, and analyze the present and past with a rational mind. This is why liberals tend to be more educated than conservatives - liberalism is not for the intellectually lazy. Liberals will examine a policy and examine it based on its merits alone, not because things have "always been that way." Liberals pursue a secular government because it is the least tyrranical in that it persecutes no faiths.This is not to say that either conservativism or liberalism iis entirely good or bad. Examining the past is a valid method of determining whether a policy should be kept, and "traditional values" CAN have worth. Liberals sometimes go too far in the pursuit of individual rights, giving rise to political correctness because apparently we were at some point given the right not to be offended.As usual, the ideal is somewhere in the middle. We cannot base our society on the "way it's always been." Neither are all traditional policies bad.The world would be a much better place with a little less extremism from both sides.

fundamentally, i am a christian because i think jesus had the right idea. he's not the only person that said things like this, either. hardly christian. so, this begs a question: who's more christian? the tolerant left, or the religious right? vice versa. i think education promotes liberalism. it's simply a more educated view. at least with the conservatives today.hey conservatives -- if you're so interested in being conservative, why not stick to the values of your party, instead of this extremist crap? there's nothing essentially wrong with real conservativism. we'd just disagree on economics, and maybe slightly on government size (though i doubt it). which i totally disagree with. i'm all about offending people. agreed. but i also think the extreme left is not as bad as the extreme right, nor as popular. personally, i'm a moderate liberal. the only thing i'm extreme about is civil liberties.

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אָרַח

It is commonly referred to as the Abortion Industry. I didn't make it up. And I didn't say anybody took it lightly, although some do. My point was that not taking it lightly demonstrates a recognition that you're talking about killing a human being, as there would be no other reason for not taking it lightly, and yet at the same time the fact that it IS about killing a human being is denied by euphemistic terminology in the same breath with the statement about not taking it lightly. By accepting it as a possible reasonable decision that is yet not to be taken lightly you are doing what I'm saying is the usual schizy thing of acknowledging that it is killing a child while denying it in the same breath. (There ARE genuinely rational grounds for abortion in the case of threat to the mother's life but they are extremely rare with modern medical techniques, and I assume you are not talking about such a situation or you would have said so.) I believe that is a disingenuous and artificial idea. I admit that there is some ambiguity here, but a baby is only in a limited sense part of the woman's body and pregnancy about the woman's body. Clearly it is a separate and different life. Abortion may not strictly speaking deserve the name murder, especially since I believe it is usually done with total denial that it is a child, and when it is acknowledged to be a child the mother usually can't go through with it, but it is the killing of what will *inevitably* become a human being if it continues without interference and using dehumanizing language to describe it is deceitful.I really don't know exactly how it should be treated legally except that blanket legalization has produced the atrocity of over 50 million abortions since Roe v Wade and that's just unconscionable.

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Conservatives seem to try to make things the way they "used to be," because the old ways were obviously better.

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Strictly speaking, that is not even "conservative" -- that is "reactionary". A true conservative would be fighting to preserve the status quo. Seeing that Roe v. Wade has been with us for over a generation, for example, the true conservative position would be to preserve abortion rights -- trying to turn the clock back is the reactionary position.It would appear the "liberal" and "conservative" no longer have their traditional meanings -- rather, the words now simply represent laundry lists of positions on various issues.

well, if you notice, our political system has a weird trend to it.originally, it was the democratic republicans, and the federalists. when the federalists dissolved, they split uo in the whigs and the republicans.i think what we're heading for is the dissolving of the democratic party and/or the absorption into the republican party, and the rise of a new party.

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אָרַח

Correct, according to the true definition. That's part of my point. The extremities of both political wings seem to have at least partially (much more so in the Conservative case) taken over the definitions of their more moderate descriptors.

I disagree. The folk we're talking about, the Classic Creationists, the current crop of Conservatives as reflected by the Republican Party in the US, the Fundamentalists and Evangelicals are not trying to make things the way they used to be, but rather the way they imagine they used to be. There is no connection with the reality or historical accuracy of their imagined past. That past, whether it's the Creation Myth of the Bible, the Flood, the Exodus, the foundation of the US as a Christian Nation or any other subject is not based on fact but rather some fantasy world they have created.If they actually recognized the reality of the past, there would be no Classic Creationists, no CPT theory, no claims that the US is or ever was a Christian Nation, no issues over Ten Commandment statues, Gay Marriage or even abortion.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

We've always had a secular government.It's absolutely inaccurate to say that those things were true "for all of its prior existence"; for instance abortion was legal in the US right up to the 1900's, and the rationale for its illegalization was not Christian morality but medical concerns about the safety of the procedure. It's just more of your revisionist history to assert that America had always been anti-abortion prior to the 1960's.The Sixities are not the start of the liberalization trend you have such a bug up your ass about - you need to try the seventies. The 1770's, that is. How on Earth does that make any sense? If a person is a Christian, then their "mentality", whatever that is, must be Christian. If you mean that they're not Christians like you, well, thank God, because you're no Christian at all. You would actually have to follow the teachings of Christ for that to be the case. Absolutely false, which you'd know if you had done the research.

I know. That's why I said: Sorry if I wasn't clear enough. I meant to say that history was not always what the current run of conservatives THINK it was. They tend not to rely on those pesky "facts," and instead prefer to imagine that they USED to be on top, and the world USED to be the way they want it.It lets them think they're persecuted.