Moonlapse

Ah! Progressive policy making at it's finest!

God, I hate politicians.

Are you trying to even remotely suggest that 10,000 BC didn't do justice to the concept for you? As soon as I saw wooly mammoths and some sort of pyramid building in the preview, the exasperated forehead-slapping began. I wonder if that movie is set in ancient Bosnia by any chance...

Good job. There seems to be a sort of social sickness around here where people hesitate to help anyone unless someone else takes initiative.

I wouldn't mind seeing a good adaptation of Jean Auel's books with no-name actors and directed by some sort of Bruckheimer nemesis who can cater to the tastes of a history buff.

I'm keen on a UNRV t-shirt. Keep us updated, Moon? Sure thing, I've given it a little more priority.

Dark chocolate and dark beer. And dark Google! Haha! and dark humour!

I'm waiting to see who will be the LP candidate.

Read carefully: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_Hitlerum I'm not particularly making reference to mentions of Nazis, which are in some ways justified, but to the methods of association described and how they relate to the political issues being discussed which also exist outside the scope of slavery.

Indeed, it's completely absurd from a rational point of view. Those people are controlled by a social environment that has convinced them that an eternity of indescribable torment awaits them if they deviate from the prescribed rules. The only point of reference is usually the pastor and the other members of the group (along with approved outlets of media) which often use techniques such as hypnotism and subliminal messaging (often oblivious to the fact they are using these techniques) to exert influence. If you've ever noticed the wall of noise created by a church band, the repetitive or formless background music, or the constant affirmative outbursts of group members during fervent spoken prayer of the pastor - these are good examples. An intrustion of objective reasoning in this situation is almost shocking and is immediately attributed the influence of Satan or of demons. It also has a near immediate affirming effect as members cling more tightly to their beliefs after momentarily glimpsing soimething that threatens to undermine the entire structure of their reality. I can tell you from personal experience that if you are raised in this environment, you have no other scope of reality. To reject it requires a complete re-evaluation of everything inside your mind and everything that you can sense, a transferrence of your mental dependency to another ideology, or even a denial of any sort of meaningful thought except for a hatred of Christianity.

I guarantee that at the root of that belief was someone like a church pastor subtly manipulating them with the guilt of not having faith. I've seen it first hand on numerous occasions. I don't doubt that the parents had the best of intentions and I'm sure that they are being fed the notion that it was in the hands of God and that no man can understand God's plan. Questioning the notion shows a weakness of faith and indicates temptation by Satan to lead you astray when you are most vulnerable. One should be happy that the girl is now with God. Etc.

Thanks mate. Are we the resident pissheads, or what? You'll come to find that this place is full of pissheads, I think its a prerequisite for promotion. By pissheads, for pissheads.

Good luck to you, sir. I know the feeling.

Welcome and congratulations!! If I could, I'd buy you a beer!

But Faustus, I've already been told the discussion is over.

Heheh, I am! I didn't discuss anything, I just posted some links.

Very uplifting, thanks.

Read the last two sentences of of paragraph 29: http://www.bartelby.org/124/pres31.html Lincoln is speaking about this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corwin_Amendment

Well, I can say that I've never sunk so low as to smoke crack. Dark chocolate and dark beer.

Here's my recommendation to all the chocolate lovers: Chocolove 61% Dark Chocolate Bar This tops any other chocolate I've had, though I admittedly don't go out of my way to find new chocolate to taste. It's like crack.

I don't think he has any prime responsibility either, but he shares at least some responsibility along with the parties on both sides that ultimately escalated the conflict to civil war during the previous decade or so. The Civil War exchanged slavery for death, poverty, intense hatred, and oppression which still exist to a certain extent almost a century and a half later. There are a myriad of possible sequences of events that could have ended slavery without war and all of the unintended consequences, but that won't make for a very fruitful discussion. I just wish slavery had ended without sacrificing Constitutional integrity, or that abolition had been a part of the Constitution to begin with. Anyways, I'm getting deeper into the conversation than I intended. There is rarely ever an absolute right and wrong side to every conflict, despite the consensus. History is more complex than that. I'm out.

Let's suppose that your observation is correct. How does this observation lead to a criticism of Lincoln? It wasn't Lincoln who fired on Fort Sumter. Had the South been ruled by reason and had not resorted to initiating an armed rebellion, your list of ills could have been avoided. That's obvious. I never put the blame on Lincoln. We've already identified most of the South's mistakes and wrong doings, but aggressive maneuvering and mistakes on both sides ultimately led to violent civil war. There is no doubt the South was wrong on slavery and that they initiated violence. However, slavery would ultimately fail regardless of all other factors, as it has in every other Western country. If the issue here is simply abolition, it would have happened with or without civil war. But there's also the matter of constitutionally legal secession, regardless of whether the reason for doing so is right or wrong. State membership in the Union was designed to be voluntary. Period. The North's prevention of constitutionally legal secession ultimately makes both sides complicit in the overall conflict. Slavery was going to end, regardless of the war. That leaves the issue of the war itself and its governmental and social consequences, which are nearly permanent, unlike slavery. My original point is that criticism of Lincoln is Constitutional and social, and is separate from the issue of slavery. Somehow there is an embedded belief that criticizing Lincoln automatically puts you on the bad side of the issue of race. A sort of reductio ad Lincoln.

The criticism of Lincoln is not a criticism of abolition. It's an observation that slavery could have been abolished without the staggering amount of causalities, without creating the intense animosity that has lasted to this day, and without permanently distorting our constitutional government. I don't think its simply coincidence that the only Western country that abolished slavery with an all out civil war is the one with the longest lasting and most polarized racial problems. The KKK was established in the aftermath of civil war. It's simply being pointed out that there was possibly a way to accomplish abolition without the long term collateral damage. Our current reality including the 60's is what it is because of slavery and the Civil War.

Just a relevant article I came across yesterday... The War Against the South and Its Consequences