JamesP

If a "philosopher" on Wikipedia has an objective definition, then it's really not that difficult to determine if Stefan (or anyone) is a philosopher. By this definition, a philosopher is one that makes arguments from first principles based on reason and evidence. People who don't do that aren't philosophers. Most people have the mental capacity (though they may not have the emotional maturity) to evaluate this to some degree or another. If a "philosopher" on Wikipedia is self-referential, that is, only philosophers can truly identify another philosopher, then you've got a problem. How do we know that those philosophers are indeed philosophers? Well, they were identified as such by other philosophers. And how about them? It's an academic circle-jerk of philosophers regressing to infinity (or, at least, to an individual who got the idea that only people he called philosophers could be philosophers). Either way, this method is fraudulent. One of Wikipedia's greatest weaknesses is that it is subject to language manipulation. Arguments don't matter, only symbols do.

I'm not concerned with having credibility with people who assault children.

Who are these nameless people with whom credibility is lacking? Are there any examples? Any actual arguments? Is a lack of credibility in their eyes something that matters?

For something to be considered as having "worked," the end results must be positive and beneficial. The short term results of "obedient, well-mannered, and easily controlled" are grossly outweighed by the lack of empathy as an adult:

Except that it does not "work," at least not for what people says it does. It does not create obedient, well-mannered, nor easily controlled children. A recent study showed that it didn't even work in the short term with many children who re-committed the same "offense" within minutes after being spanked. What "works" about spanking is that you break your bond with your child, cause him to fear you, and induce Stockholm syndrome.

The car thing does vary by region. It's more acceptable to go without a car in certain cities, even in the US. In Boulder (where I currently live), there's a huge emphasis on using alternative transportation. Being a college town also contributes to this as not having a car in college is not that infrequent, either. I do own a car, though I did not for a few years after my last car. It is damned convenient but it is also not an inconsiderable expense. I would not mind going car-less again. I like having one but it wouldn't kill me.

Feel free to spend your time on this... unfortunately, Wikipedia is pretty damn close to a pure, direct democracy, which means that if language can be manipulated to serve an agenda, it will. The agenda to avoid personal responsibility encompasses many, many people.

Who are you hanging out with?

Could you walk me through that argument? I know I've heard it before, but I don't know that I've seen it broken down. I do acknowledge that there are statutes of limitations in current law. It may well be that this originates from common law. Either way, the money that the government has *right now* is stolen. There is no money it has which has not been stolen, be it directly in the form of taxes, or indirectly in the form of debts (future taxes) or inflation (almost as insidious as debts). Their theft is constant, hence I think they fall well within any statutes of limitations. [Edit] Oh hang on, I see, you're talking about land that the government currently *owns*, as in, land that was stolen by the government several hundred years ago. You still have the problem of how they're going to maintain it.

With what resources will the government acquire the land? If it uses tax money, that is stolen. I think a reasonable justice system would state that goods purchased with stolen money are subject to forfeit, so that's not a legitimate way to obtain property. It could just stomp in and steal it directly, but then again, that's not ownership, that's theft. I suppose that people could donate the land to the government, though again, the government doesn't have any money of its own, so it wouldn't even be able to protect the land without theft. And then, I suppose that people could donate time and money to the government so it could take care of the land, or buy land, but then the government is no longer the government, but a kind of charity... unless it continues to steal elsewhere. People might choose to donate time and money if they are consciously aware that the government is immoral, but it's going to be a very small segment of people.

This would be worth a call-in, I think. I notice you haven't asked any open-ended questions of Stef, though. You came in pretty hot on this one.

It's not meant to be a formula, but it also depends what happens when you hear that question. It may be that my irritation intensifies. I may experience an opening of my heart. I may not really know why I am feeling that way, either, just that I am having this experience. I'm sure to have thoughts about it but if you are new to RTR, it's worth holding the conclusions back until you're sure. You may still not know after you get some experience, but if you have not been doing this at all before, skepticism is a worthy approach. Also, RTR starts with the self. We are loaded with all kinds of conclusions about ourselves by the time we reach adulthood. They may be true, but you don't know until you examine the evidence. Does that make any sense?

Thanks And we have had some people make comebacks, while others have charged onwards to the triple digits. I'm very glad to hear that it's been useful!

The emoticons probably got fixed when I recached the posts.

OK, thanks for the heads up. Can you give me some examples of the emoticons not appearing, and the mp3s not appearing? Alright, I just set the entire content cache to expire. This should mean that YouTube embeds show up, and possibly that emoticons will also show up. MP3s, I'm not sure. If we want SSL on the forums, we may have to give up http MP3 embeds... I've also fixed the mixed secure/insecure content in the premium section (at least with the images).

OK--should be fixed now! Give it a try. I had to configure the chat to be non-HTTPS. Not much we can really do about that, unfortunately. Looks like they will support HTTPS for the chat in version 4.0. Not sure when this is planned.

Thanks for this. I've opened a ticket with the software provider. I know how to "fix" it but I'm hoping we can retain SSL over the entire site. The streamer is also broken, but I've been meaning to relocate that to freedomainradio.com for some time now (it's currently at anarchism-wow.com). I plan on doing that tonight. I did fix the error with the gradient_bg not being loaded over HTTPS... OK, just FYI... I'm attempting to fix this. The board may go down.

Warning points are based on moderator warnings, and we don't use those on this board (at least, not for now).

If there is a genetic component (there's no particular reason to believe, without actual evidence, that there is or isn't), then tens of thousands of years of varying oppression and repression hasn't bred it out of the human race. There are certainly environmental factors, though I don't know the degree to which they're understood (men with older brothers are more likely to be gay, for example). There was another thread on homosexuality that was opened recently. I find that interesting.

Why did you take half a sentence and respond to that as if that was all that I had said? That's not very honest.

Check it out. It should be fixed now for sure.

I thought I fixed that. I must have not gotten around to it!

My only real concern with gay parenting is pretty much the same concern as adoptive parenting (I'm ignoring surrogacy for the moment)--the baby may well miss out on the benefits of breastfeeding, and it's not like a child given up for adoption has been in a low stress environment while in the womb. Otherwise, it's about the self-knowledge of the parents and their capacity to negotiate and empathize with the child, which I think is orthogonal to sexuality.

How do you know it doesn't work if you haven't tried it? I don't have any close friends or family in my life who would wish the violence of the state against me for disagreeing with them.

Regarding adoption: the rigor of screening has everything to do with the agency. My father and his second wife were able to adopt a child, but they never interviewed me. You'd think that would be on the list.