panpareil

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Everything posted by panpareil

  1. They majority of Americans wanted slavery, the genocide of Amerinds, and the nuking of the Japanese. The majority is as vile as any other dictator. that is why Democracy is also called tyranny of the majority. I see the world as a pan-monarchy. Everyone is a divinely appointed absolute monarch with no one above them but god.
  2. Determinism has been eliminated by quantum physics and there is no bringing it back without a complete rewrite of physics. All that these studies prove is that we are unaware of the unconscious activity which precedes both our conscious activity and any measurable impulse. I am opposed to the theory of determinism on purely moral grounds. Determinism not only discounts free will it also discounts freedom and allows the institutionalization of all manner of horrors because that is just the way things are meant to be. The different between what is alive and what is not alive is creative free will.
  3. When the free stuff is gone or hard to come by people will seek out alternatives. For example, when unemployment compensation runs out people go to work.
  4. The above are taken from The Buffer Zone by Rev. Hensley. (with a few spelling corrections) Freedom has been a primary concern of the ULC from the beginning, if not the primary concern.
  5. I am the choir to your preacher.
  6. The irony of the joke is as follows. He feels his wife is going deaf because she does not reply to his question, but finds that she hears quit well and instead it is he that does not hear her reply. This joke is self deprecating and does not involve the misfortune or pain of others. The reason humor involves some form of suffering, either physical pain, emotional distress, or cognitive dissonance, is that this is our natural state. The point of humor is to cause us to step outside our suffering for a moment, to laugh not just at others but at our own predicament in the process. I personally feel we take suffering way too seriously and thereby exacerbate it.
  7. Instead of unrelated people paying for those in need, I see relatives bearing their responsibility and the costs. If it is unfair to the family, it is egregiously unfair to those who are unrelated. If it is not the responsibility of the relatives, how can it belong to anyone else. The concept of society is just the expansion of the concept of family, stretched and diluted to its extreme. If the concept of family and its corresponding responsibility is eliminated,then society itself collapses. Society cannot replace family. In programming terms Family is the class of objects that is extended to form the class Society. Society is dependent on Family, not the other way around.
  8. If you stop to consider the fact that no matter what you believe, the bulk of the planets inhabitants will think your belief set is wrong if not laughable, you might have a little more tolerance for the silly beliefs of others as they have for yours.
  9. Close. Some are more concerned about proof that the message is authentic rather than the meaning of the message.
  10. I think the reliance on the provenance of a message relieves one of the burden of actually understanding the message.
  11. The original ULC and the one recognized by the government is Modesto. This site is authorized by Modesto, The Monastery is no longer authorized by Modesto and is a splinter group and pretender. Since each minister ordained can or has started their own ministry, there are a large number of ULC organizations and ministries out there. The only requirement to belong is to have your ordination registered at Modesto. All branch sites provide this, excluding the Monastery. There is no benchmark to meet to join the ULC, except the nominal registration fee , I guess. The whole point is freedom of religion. Believe what you wish. Center your religious practices on whatever you wish. Just be prepared to grant all others the same due, That's the only way it works. Please bear in mind I am in no way an authorized representative of this organization. Just putting in my 2 cents.
  12. At our present time, and after all theologies, philosophies and modes of living have been tried. Almost everything is conservative of some previous opinion. As always, very few have anything new to say or propose. Outside of the ULC and only a subset of its members there is no true liberal organization to be found. And I mean that in the original sense of the word, that which supports freedom primarily. What I find disheartening is that so many seek freedom for themselves to empower them to eliminate freedom for others. I do not find the views of many atheists to be liberal at all. They have their nose in other peoples business as much as fundamentalists. It is also possible to be a conservative of the principle of liberality, to allow others freedom. And what makes you think those in the media support liberality, or freedom for others.
  13. What drained the coffers was the cost of government, which morphs into whatever seems to be for our benefit so that it can consume more of what we have and what those who are yet unborn will never get. Our government consumes resources like the world consumes fossil fuels.The home of the rich in our nation is now the counties that surround Washington DC which house our government officials. Our government saviors are nothing more than televangelists, dressing in expensive clothes, driven in limousines and private jets, living in mansions, partying with Hollywood celebrities, while crying ever louder for more money for their good works.
  14. I have to disagree with one thing. Islam was always monotheistic. Arabs were not. Every tribe had its own god before Mohammed united them. But I do agree about the demands of the faith though. It is very hard to be a good Muslim. Islam can best be understood as deriving from an early form of Christianity from a time before the deification of Jesus, closer to Judaism and Mosaic law. Think of the Essenes and the Ebionites. When Jerusalem fell, the remnants of these groups were dispersed into the Arabian peninsula, where they survived to become an influence on the formation of Islam.
  15. Waiting should be done for ripening fruit. Once ripe, waiting is a waste, of time and fruit. My wife and I share a duprass. There is nothing else. I cannot imagine being without her, nor remember a time before her. Our marriage just is, from the beginning to the end of time.
  16. I fervently embrace the concept of the ULC. It has become a template for how I approach all human organization and interaction. I enjoy reading and posting here. I am grateful for the opportunity to do so. And agree or disagree, I am fond of the people here.
  17. Scout Oath: "On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law; to help other people at all times; to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight." Scout Law: "A scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent." While some may find problems with parts of this oath for various reasons, I think no one would discard the entire contents. I find myself to this day straightening myself to these ideals with the hope of a better world.
  18. Hamilton's death 1804 - Fort Sumter 1861 = 57 years. Yeah should have rounded up not down. And I do realize the war was only about slavery to the abolitionists during the war, but was added to the history after the war to make Lincoln look better. Everything he wrote and everything he signed in to law, regulation, or outright order, did not favor the abolishment of slavery one iota. He was also entirely opposed to integration of blacks on an equal level into white society. He instead favored Liberia as the solution. Before the war the several states interpreted the constitution to allow states to declare federal law unconstitutional if they determined it was so. Thus nullifying the enforcement of any federal law in a state that found it unconstitutional. These nulllifications were generally about tariffs that protected northern industrialists and allowed them to collect higher prices for their goods. In effect redistributing wealth from the south to the north, much the way subsidizing of green energy while regulating carbon energy redistributes wealth from one group of industrialist to another in our present times. In both cases the ultimate financial burden falls on the consumer in the form of inflated prices. The northern states were will to do that in exchange for more jobs, and higher salaries. The south on the other hand just got the inflated prices, and because the tariffs decreased imports it also affected the price of their crops overseas. As far as autonomy, there would never have been a United States if such a centralized government were ever outright proposed. They were sold a federation of states and instead received a government much like what they had fought to free themselves from.
  19. That's all well on paper, but do not confuse what was written, with how our founding fathers acted, or what they individually intended. The army existed long before the Constitution, and was reassembled within a year of the ratification of the Constitution in order to enforce tax collection and to protect its tax collectors. It failed at the former mainly because there were not enough tax collectors. The Constitution was written to replace the Articles of Confederation for two specific reasons to have a centrally controlled military and to collect taxes so the the central government could effectively act. The need for these was brought out by Shay's Rebellion and by foreign states seeking to divide and conquer the confederation. At the beginning of the national government it existed as an extension of the state governments and as a means for them to act together. It was not intended by most of the signers to replace the state governments. A state meant a separate country. We were the United Countries of America. Hamilton was the main architect of the end of individual state power. His frustration with the decentralized nature of the Continental Congress during his time in the military in the revolutionary war brought him to seek a more militarily efficient centralized government. His contributions to our constitution were meant to create a centralized mercantile empire like England at the time. We are lucky Aaron Burr put a musket ball in him. The states were not finally subdued until Lincoln fifty years later in a war to collect taxes. It Hamilton had lived another twenty years and accomplished more of his political machinations the "Civil" war would have never happened, and slavery would still have ended as it did elsewhere without military action. The tariffs alone, if collected, would have crushed the plantations and ended slavery, or they could have been seized, paid for and freed by the national government. The only reason for the war was to solidify a centralized government and eliminate state power to oppose it.
  20. All these problems that you mention happen because the government is not the proper place to turn to if you want to fix your life. The primary task the government was designed for is to wage war. This is the template for all the other departments grafted onto government. Hence the war on drugs, the war on poverty, etc. The progressives saw the first two world wars as marvelous examples of organizing to solve social problems. Their success is such that even a cut to the increase in spending on these programs will send us careening right back to where we started. Making it seem that they have made no progress at all. The problem of poverty is still as bad as ever, as is the drug problem. On poverty alone we are spending enough money to give each man woman or child in poverty a check for almost $290 each week. But the bulk of the money never ends up in the hands of the poor. Instead it helps fund the paychecks of those who live in the wealthiest counties in the country, those that ring Washington DC.
  21. I procrastinate and I hate to write. I hate everything that I write. It's never as good as I want it to be. That's one of the reasons why I come here, to become better, not just at writing either.
  22. Lordie, I think it is a matter of how you choose to communicate through what you are typing. I could be wrong but it seems what you are typing out is coming from a phone and not a computer keyboard. The small screen and keyboard of a phone increases the use of incorrect and incomplete spelling along with cutesy hip misspelling of words. Twitter's 140 character limit has only added to this propensity. This is nothing new. 1337 or "LEET", short for elite, has been around for decades and was used by gamer and BBS culture to be cool and set their subculture apart from the mainstream. Using text in this way only serves to hide meaning not to express it. So, if you want to be understood and taken seriously, changing your style of communication could get you better results. Another growing problem is the move from computers to media delivery devices. Windows 8 turns a computer into a glorified phone. The devices are being dumbed down for the masses which does not bode well for employers looking for higher skill sets. Somebody has to create all the media content and apps for these devices, but they cannot be created on these devices. And the users of these devices are in no way prepared to do so. Which I think is by design. At the present many people are creating enough content on their own to make purchasing from the media vendors unnecessary. If media creation devices become unavailable the entire internet will become just like television. Enough of the gloom. And you guys are picking on Lordie, because that is what it looks like. Sheesh! If it is too much bother to decipher what she is attempting to convey, just move on already. It would be the adult thing to do.
  23. Pelagius's expositions of thirteen epistles of St. Paul http://www.archive.org/details/pelagiussexposit01pela