Men: Would You Marry an American Woman?[W:771]

Henrin said:

Did you ever notice that wars are fought between nations, and it's why people say such things as "a war between nations", instead of saying "a war between the people of nations"? Countries love to fight each other, don't they?

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Did you ever notice that there was a big rush to enlist to fight in WWII? Vietnam, no rush to enlist. So it depends on why a war is being fought.

Isn't it interesting that we are defending the state in a fight that many times it picked? Did you ever notice that every offense that people say will be created under anarchy are almost all legally sanctioned by the state? Find me something that people will say will happen in anarchy and I will provide you with exactly how it is already part of government. That is the enjoyment of talking to people on this forum. They never understand exactly what they are saying. They support a policy that forces someone into action and then they speak of freedom. I laugh at them from my computer chair knowing they don't even realize how foolish they really are.

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The above are good observations.

RiverDad said:

The above are good observations.

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Here is another.

This thread hijacked from American Women to political leaning!

t:coffeepap:waiting:

RiverDad said:

We agree.



Here's my point - just because a parent engages in the practice of socializing her child to a parental norm doesn't imply that the lesson has stuck, even if the child begins to behave in the desired manner. This is so because we haven't controlled for the heritability of behavior. Does the parent hold that value because they too were socialized into holding that value or does the parent hold that value because it feels right, because there is something innate in the parent which allows that value to be expressed?

Here's Scientific American interviewing Harris:

But my primary motive was scientific. During the years I spent writing child development textbooks for college students, I never questioned the belief that parents have a good deal of power to shape the personalities of their children. (This is the belief I now call the “nurture assumption.”) When I finally began to have doubts and looked more closely at the evidence, I was appalled. Most of the research is so deeply flawed that it is meaningless. And studies using more rigorous methods produce results that do not support the assumption. . . .

There has also been some improvement in research methodology, due not to my nagging but to a greater awareness of genetic influences on personality. It’s no longer enough to show, for example, that parents who are conscientious about childrearing tend to have children who are conscientious about their schoolwork. Is this correlation due to what the children learned from their parents or to the genes they inherited from them? Studies using the proper controls consistently favor the second explanation. In fact, personality resemblances between biological relatives are due almost entirely to heredity, rather than environment. Adopted children don’t resemble their adoptive parents in personality. I’m not particularly interested in genetic effects, but the point is that they have to be taken into account. Unless we know what the child brings to the environment, we can’t figure out what effect the environment has on the child. . . .

The belief that parents have a great deal of power to determine how their children will turn out is actually a rather new idea. Not until the middle of the last century did ordinary parents start believing it. I was born in 1938, before the cultural change, and parenting had a very different job description back then. Parents didn’t feel they had to sacrifice their own convenience and comfort in order to gratify the desires of their children. They didn’t worry about boosting the self-esteem of their children. In fact, they often felt that too much attention and praise might spoil them and make them conceited. Physical punishment was used routinely for infractions of household rules. Fathers provided little or no child care; their chief role at home was to administer discipline.

All these things have changed dramatically in the past 70 years, but the changes haven’t had the expected effects. People are the same as ever. Despite the reduction in physical punishment, today’s adults are no less aggressive than their grandparents were. Despite the increase in praise and physical affection, they are not happier or more self-confident or in better mental health. It’s an interesting way to test a theory of child development: persuade millions of parents to rear their children in accordance with the theory, and then sit back and watch the results come in. Well, the results are in and they don’t support the theory!​

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Obviously there are genetic influences on behavior. Trust me, I am the poster child for that. I am almost the opposite of what my parents raised me to be and found success in life on completely different terms than they would prefer.

But .. genetic expressions of various personality traits are shaped by one's surroundings. For example, I may be predisposed towards a bad temper, however, life itself will teach me how to shape that predisposition. Will I let myself become angry all the time? Will I see to control it? Will I channel it this way or that way? When it is appropriate to be angry and when not? Genetics has an influence, but its the base material that we then shape with social interaction.

Before the 70s, culture was completely different (and much more a factor) and expectations and lessons were communicated through society itself. The world changed, or at least the US did. In much of europe (such as scandanavia) they still have these sorts of factors. So whatever society was doing, parents have to do now. The available TV shows are no longer things like leave it to beaver and one can no longer expect the neighbor's mom to have the same expectations as your own.

The influence of historical era is revealed in a
study of the cohort of Americans that was between
10 and 20 years of age during the economic Depres-
sion in America from 1930 to 1940. A large propor-
tion of these American adolescents, who are now in
their 7th decade, saved more money than the gen-
eration before or after and conducted their lives
with a gnawing concern over financial loss.
24
The protest against the Vietnam War at the end of
the 1960s also affected large numbers of privileged
adolescents who turned against the values of estab-
lished authority. College students seized adminis-
tration buildings or shared sexual partners in un-
heated communal homes.

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http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/104/Supplement_1/164.full.pdf

Parents can affect their children through at least
three different mechanisms. The most obvious, and
the one easiest both to imagine and to measure,
involves the consequences of direct interactions
with the child that could be recorded on film. For
example, a mother praises a 3-year-old for eating
properly, a father threatens the loss of a privilege
because a child refuses to go to bed, a parent names
an unfamiliar animal in a picture book. These ev-
eryday events that involve the rewarding of desir-
able actions, the punishment of undesired ones,
and the transfer of knowledge from parent to child
have a cumulative effect. Failure to discipline acts
of disobedience and/or aggression is correlated
with children’s asocial behavior.
6
Display of inter-
est in a young child’s activities is correlated with
greater levels of responsivity in the child.
7
However, these first-order effects can have sec-
ond-order consequences that appear later in life. A
7-year-old with a more extensive vocabulary than
her peers, because her parents encouraged language
development 5 years earlier, will master the tasks
of the elementary grades more easily and, as a re-
sult, perceive herself as more competent than her
peers. This belief is likely to embolden her to resist
domination by others and, perhaps, motivate the
initiation of unusually challenging tasks. The
7-year-old who was not chastised for aggressive
behavior earlier or who had abusive or overly in-
trusive parents is likely to be aggressive with peers.

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This is all very basic socialization and training. Whether its unPC to say so. Kids have to be raised a bit like dogs using pavlovian techniques of punishment and reward. They will modify their behavior and beliefs accordingly until they grow enough of a frontal lobe to question it. By then a lot of behaviors can be set in.

Henrin said:

I think when you look at the moral beliefs through time and cultures you there is a pattern that forms. A certain underlining understanding that is getting built upon as human understanding expands and people learn to understand themselves better. If however you are forming your own morality than I fail to see why you wouldn't use reason to find the answer. If the foundational support is built on essentially what amounts to nonaggression than there is no reason to consider anything that causes aggression morally valid. Of course, other things come into play here, but morally sound behavior would at some point even if it is culturally created have to have some sort of logic behind it. It can't simply be emotional and responsive to the world around you without there ever being a reactive response that makes people think of the consequences of those actions. If the consequences to aggression are always negative, as in pain or oppression, then clearly people could determine that it is the aggression itself that is the problem and apply it logically across the board.

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yes, there are patterns because those patterns are built by instinct and social behaviors learned through our primate ancestry. If we were lizard people, we would not give a damn what our fellow man did only what maximizes our own benefit because we would have completely different instincts.

Hell, the only reason you and I even care enough to be having this discussion is that we are both using differing methodologies to get at the same base concepts of morality and our emotional reward centers are going "hell yeah this is a good thing to talk about". Even if the expression and logical mechanisms differ. Our brains want us to achieve similar results, even from completely different angles.

Morality is NOT logical. You can of course use logical tools to arrive at what conclusions your instincts want you to arrive at anyway, which is what you are doing, but the only person you are fooling is yourself and other people who haven't sufficiently studied human nature to see what's really happening.

Also the VAST majority of human existence glorified violence (study ancient cultures sometimes, by our OECD standards, they are kind of messed up, but rampant tribalism, hatred of the other, dehumanization of enemies, the glory of war, and such as that are actually the norm). Nonviolence (outside of hindu and hindu offshoot culture, and they ritualize it to death to the point where they can get kind of weird with it) is a very new thing. And the only reason it is becoming a thing is because of liberals and their overemphasis on the care/harm arm of morality. I mean hell dude, look at the reaction to that thing going on in Crimea right now. There are people going "oh, lets go to war!! our president sucks because we should be going to war and acting like two bros in a bar fighting over a woman!! our honor as a nation is at stake" This is a very ancient way of thinking, yet is even still prevalent today.

RiverDad said:

But there are rational reasons. I subscribe to that reasoning. It convinces me. It's pretty tight reasoning too, so it's not confirmation bias that we're dealing with here.

It's funny what you're doing. Again, you're fleshing out Haidt's categorization. You just don't see the reasoning. It's quite likely that you could follow the logic of it but the right neurochemicals would not be triggered and so it just wouldn't "feel" right to you.

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It would not be neurochemicals, it would be synapses, but just the same I get what you are getting at. I understand Haidt's argument I am just saying that stating group loyalty is a moral is subjective.

For example, I'll offer up one point. People will feel a deeper bond with someone who shares common history, common values, common behaviors, etc.

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True.

This is the opposite of diversity. The high level of trust induces willingness to sacrifice and to share for the common good. That is absent in more diverse societies.

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Take that to the extreme and you have nationalism, hardly a moral virtue.

Can you convince yourself to empathize with a man who values Clitoridectomy as a practice to be inflicted upon his wife and daughters? As a viewpoint and cultural practice, that's pretty damn diverse from what most liberals in the West subscribe to. Can you leapfrog your loyalties and empathy over that chasm?

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Of course not. I mean, I get the cultural basis for it, but empathy does not mean that you should never make judgements based upon conscience. There has been a great deal of research done on the thinking patterns of liberals vs conservatives. Liberals tend to be far more tolerant and embracing of nuance, while conservatives gravitate towards moral absolutes. I would imagine that is playing a role here.

RiverDad said:

For example, I'll offer up one point. People will feel a deeper bond with someone who shares common history, common values, common behaviors, etc. This is the opposite of diversity. The high level of trust induces willingness to sacrifice and to share for the common good. That is absent in more diverse societies.

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Interestingly enough. Not everyone needs to feel a common bond with their fellow man (not that it doesn't happen, for example gay pride parades). I will go back to Haidt's model. Most liberals don't necessarily value diversity, what they actually value is individual dynamics over group. Diversity is a tool in the fight for that actually.

Lets go back to gay pride parades. In my own admittedly unscientific sample (my friends) those who go to gay pride parades go for their own reasons. They go because they want to change society to suit them better (and before you go on a tangent on that, everyone from all spectrums do this) but they go to feel individual acceptance too. Its a networking event. They emphasize their gayness so they have a place to fit in. this is an individualist perspective. Conservatives tend to do it differently, they often look at the group first and then look at themselves, which is almost the opposite process. (once conservatives decide on this or that perspective being the truth of things, they will conform themselves to it). In other words, liberals try to change culture to fit them and conservatives try to change themselves to fit culture.

Liberals tend not to care about the things you mentioned, unless they feel its personally useful for other moral and personal goals. This is both good and bad. For example, without much to balance the care/harm leg, liberals built an untenable government in terms of financial structure. We lead with our hearts and we hate to see suffering, but we also tend to ignore other realities. Society has become much more humane as a result, but it also became much more expensive because liberals tend not to know how to strike a balance. we tend to see harm in an individualist perspective (the movie Juno is a great example of this). We don't have enough group loyalty in this case. Conservatives (by my perspective) tend to have too much group loyalty and too easily dehumanize the other (welfare queens, queers, the lazy poor, stuff like that. Of course liberals are a bit oversensitive here I think as well). And while they would provide for a more cheaply run government, it would come at a great social cost which conservatives tend to underemphasize because those costs are not born within their group. The balance goes too far the other way.

Really, neither group is complete or good in their moral perspective, to do so is likely impossible since society and situations change all the time, require constant reevaluation of this balance. There really is no one size fits all solution here (of course we all think we have the answer! (but thats another aspect of human nature, humans tend to be bad at objectivity)).

Morality is both a blessing and a curse. Too little and we cause harm. Too much and we cause harm.

Also, I am writing this from conservative and liberal tendancies from a psychological rather than political perspective. There are of course a billion counter examples, because we have large groups and groups are not homogeneous. Its the danger of this level of generalization.

tacomancer said:

This is all very basic socialization and training.

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The examples you linked pointed to correlations but they didn't control for genetics. They didn't compare the correlations between biological children and adopted children, so the strength of the socialization effect is unknown.

Whether its unPC to say so. Kids have to be raised a bit like dogs using pavlovian techniques of punishment and reward. They will modify their behavior and beliefs accordingly until they grow enough of a frontal lobe to question it. By then a lot of behaviors can be set in.

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Here's the thing. I'm not being contradictory when I agree with your point. Yes, this works and there are two factors in play. There is the gene-environment interaction effect. The kid's behavior can be modified because your socialization is leading him towards a behavior that he finds rewarding in some sense that he would have trouble developing or discovering at his own at that stage of his life. This is less successful when socialization efforts battle against natural inclinations. The second point is that the heritability of behavior increases in effect as we mature, so the lessons you teach when they are young and which run against the child's inclinations will gradually be thrown off as the child begins to control more of his environment. The lesson doesn't stick and the only reason it did stick for a while is because of the parent's total control over the child's environment.

SouthernDemocrat said:

It would not be neurochemicals, it would be synapses, but just the same I get what you are getting at. I understand Haidt's argument I am just saying that stating group loyalty is a moral is subjective.

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The feeling of correctness would have a neurochemical basis, the process of developing a logical understanding would involve the firing of synapses.

As for group loyalty being subjective, yeah, that's Haidt's point. A liberal who doesn't see it doesn't recognize the moral basis but a conservative who does see it does recognize the moral basis. That chasm make the issue subjective.

Your argument is similar to a blind man telling a sighted man that a rainbow is subjective. A rainbow is not subjective to a sighted man, it's as real as a tree, house, car, person. A blind man can say that a dog is objective because he can be aware of it through senses other than sight but a rainbow, even if he understands the physics of it, is beyond his senses - it's not as real as a dog.

Take that to the extreme and you have nationalism, hardly a moral virtue.

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What are you talking about? Nationalism is as much a moral virtue as caring about equality and fairness.

tacomancer said:

We lead with our hearts and we hate to see suffering, but we also tend to ignore other realities. Society has become much more humane as a result, but it also became much more expensive because liberals tend not to know how to strike a balance.

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This is only true to a point. Liberals do lead with their hearts and are more feeling creatures than conservatives. They do hate to see suffering. The solutions that liberals proposed though don't paint them in the same light. Stealing from other people in order to provide aid to third parties doesn't indicate caring nor self-sacrifice. I can match the most heartfelt liberal in a caring content if I can make all of my donations to aid needy people on your credit card. I'd be lying to myself though if I convinced myself that all of my agitation, effort and spending proved to me that I was a caring person.

Interestingly enough, when the definition of caring is changed from "spending other people's money on a problem" to "sacrificing one's own well being to remedy a problem" then we see that it is conservatives who top the scale.

So there is this fine distinction in play here - liberals are certainly hyperaware of inequality and suffering, much more so than conservatives, but they don't follow through as well in terms of sacrificing their own well-being to remedy those problems.

As for society becoming more humane, there are always two sides to a coin, so looking only at the benefits which flow from a social welfare transfer scheme while ignoring the harms which were created on the other side of the coin, leads to a misleading conclusion. For Who, From Whom?

Really, neither group is complete or good in their moral perspective

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This is tricky because the conclusion really depend on how YOU define complete. Conservatives completely overlap liberals on ALL moral categories. We understand WHY liberals feel as they do. If completeness depends on understanding, then conservatives are complete. However, if completeness depends on matching the scale of liberal intensity in their moral categories, then no, conservatives can't compete and hence do not meet the condition of completeness. Of course, liberals not understanding two important moral values held by conservatives makes them incomplete by any definition and this is probably why so many liberals can't really get their heads around what the hell conservatives are thinking and feeling, why it looks so damn alien and evil to them.

There really is no one size fits all solution here.

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This only holds true if society benefits from the intensity of liberal moral values. Conservatives are bothered by lack of fairness and by inequality but liberals are bothered much more. So any policy solutions which develop from the increased intensity are really what we're looking at.

RiverDad said:

The examples you linked pointed to correlations but they didn't control for genetics. They didn't compare the correlations between biological children and adopted children, so the strength of the socialization effect is unknown.



Here's the thing. I'm not being contradictory when I agree with your point. Yes, this works and there are two factors in play. There is the gene-environment interaction effect. The kid's behavior can be modified because your socialization is leading him towards a behavior that he finds rewarding in some sense that he would have trouble developing or discovering at his own at that stage of his life. This is less successful when socialization efforts battle against natural inclinations. The second point is that the heritability of behavior increases in effect as we mature, so the lessons you teach when they are young and which run against the child's inclinations will gradually be thrown off as the child begins to control more of his environment. The lesson doesn't stick and the only reason it did stick for a while is because of the parent's total control over the child's environment.

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Given that I largely don't disagree with this point, there is no longer a need to discuss this.

RiverDad said:

The feeling of correctness would have a neurochemical basis, the process of developing a logical understanding would involve the firing of synapses.

As for group loyalty being subjective, yeah, that's Haidt's point. A liberal who doesn't see it doesn't recognize the moral basis but a conservative who does see it does recognize the moral basis. That chasm make the issue subjective.

Your argument is similar to a blind man telling a sighted man that a rainbow is subjective. A rainbow is not subjective to a sighted man, it's as real as a tree, house, car, person. A blind man can say that a dog is objective because he can be aware of it through senses other than sight but a rainbow, even if he understands the physics of it, is beyond his senses - it's not as real as a dog.

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I completely disagree. You are arguing from within your framework and because of your limited framework, making the assumption that there is an objective right and wrong. This is indicative of conservative thought processes are only occur because you are predisposed to think that way. Objectively, there is only situational fitness as this is how nature operates (for example the basis of natural selection). Your rainbow analogy fails because there is no rainbow. There is only the wish for a rainbow.

Think about it for a moment. Throughout history, there have been hordes of people utterly convinced that their way is the right way, bar none. We have multiple people such as tigger or phattonez who completely believe that they hold the objective truth, yet feel completely differently on just about everything. This is because they are predisposed to think that way, not because they hit on some secret knowledge.

RiverDad said:

This is only true to a point. Liberals do lead with their hearts and are more feeling creatures than conservatives. They do hate to see suffering. The solutions that liberals proposed though don't paint them in the same light. Stealing from other people in order to provide aid to third parties doesn't indicate caring nor self-sacrifice. I can match the most heartfelt liberal in a caring content if I can make all of my donations to aid needy people on your credit card. I'd be lying to myself though if I convinced myself that all of my agitation, effort and spending proved to me that I was a caring person.

Interestingly enough, when the definition of caring is changed from "spending other people's money on a problem" to "sacrificing one's own well being to remedy a problem" then we see that it is conservatives who top the scale.

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What constitutes theft is ultimately defined by society. This has been true of every society throughout history. Native American and Romani cultures have completely different concepts of property for example. Monarchy based societies are another example. Communist societies are yet another example. Regardless of the feasibility and success of these cultures, it is clear there is no single way to define property or theft.

Liberals simply tend to see it differently and in our eyes, your arguments are simply invalid

RiverDad said:

So there is this fine distinction in play here - liberals are certainly hyperaware of inequality and suffering, much more so than conservatives, but they don't follow through as well in terms of sacrificing their own well-being to remedy those problems.

As for society becoming more humane, there are always two sides to a coin, so looking only at the benefits which flow from a social welfare transfer scheme while ignoring the harms which were created on the other side of the coin, leads to a misleading conclusion. For Who, From Whom?

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Those are questions which always have to be reevaluated and reassessed as cultures and situations change. But there is a feasibility problem that was not apparent when a lot of this stuff was implemented in the 1920s or more recently, but hindsight is always 20/20. If we didn't bitch about this, we would be complaining about how something else wasn't working right :shrug:

RiverDad said:

This is tricky because the conclusion really depend on how YOU define complete. Conservatives completely overlap liberals on ALL moral categories. We understand WHY liberals feel as they do. If completeness depends on understanding, then conservatives are complete. However, if completeness depends on matching the scale of liberal intensity in their moral categories, then no, conservatives can't compete and hence do not meet the condition of completeness. Of course, liberals not understanding two important moral values held by conservatives makes them incomplete by any definition and this is probably why so many liberals can't really get their heads around what the hell conservatives are thinking and feeling, why it looks so damn alien and evil to them.

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Yes, I agree. Conservatives tend to see liberals as evil (liberals can see conservatives as evil as well). Also, you are completely misunderstanding Haidt's research. Let me explain again, too much or too little of a moral trait causes suffering. Too much ingroup loyalty and things like fascism or tribalism can arise (I think we can agree both nazi germany and today's middle east are messed up). Too little and you don't have a society at all. All moral foundations work this way. Its not a score to keep, but a tool to understand behavior. Judgment of whether this is good or not depends on the individual.

This however highlights what I pointed out about conservative thought processes. You saw this thing as a standard to conform to instead of a tool for understanding (which is what Haidt meant it for). Isn't that interesting? Reanalyze these factors given this new information please and hopefully you will see my point. Its not a competition, no more than a spoon is a competition.

The post got too long. I had to split it.

RiverDad said:

This only holds true if society benefits from the intensity of liberal moral values. Conservatives are bothered by lack of fairness and by inequality but liberals are bothered much more. So any policy solutions which develop from the increased intensity are really what we're looking at.

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Its pretty clear that society benefits from both conservative and liberal values, depending on the situation of course. Society is not monolothic but billions of individual situations forming some sort of whole that we then abstract because otherwise our minds can't comprehend it all. What we call society is nothing more than a model. In fact society benefits from all ideologies, even the ones both you and I intensely dislike.

So for example, in my relationship with my girlfriend, our personalities are such that both of us would buck against a "traditional" model. (I tend to buck against hard and fast rules that I didn't have a hand in creating in general). In this case, a liberal model works. In the case of PBS or google, a liberal model works better as there is a need for creativity and out of the box thinking. In the case of IBM, a more conservative model makes sense.

For whole societies, there is a time for creative solutions and there is a time for tradition. It depends on where we are at at that particular moment. Without the willingness to break from tradition we would have never changed our models and never developed (except perhaps technologically) from a social organization perspective. I.E. we would still exist within tribes. this would potential be disastrous as that style of organization does not do well in supporting large populations. Yet at the same time if we are too liberal, we invite problems already discussed

I purposely did not address current political structures because again my purpose is not to debate policy here, but to debate intellectual frameworks and emotional dispositions. (and I will not address current or past political events within this context if they are brought up, I want a higher level of debate here)

tacomancer said:

Conservatives tend to see liberals as evil (liberals can see conservatives as evil as well).

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More like this: Conservatives are evil and rational while liberals are dumb and emotional.

(I think we can agree both nazi germany and today's middle east are messed up).

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As is the hyperfeminism of the Nordic States, as was the Communism of the USSR/China/Warsaw pact, as was the Eurosocialism of the pre-Thatcher UK.

The arguments presented in this thread seem to show that believing that respect for tradition is a moral value leads on to engage in all sorts of circular reasoning to justify their beliefs: Tradition is a moral value, if you don't accept that it is, then you are a liberal and thus lack the capacity to recognize that tradition is a moral value.

RiverDad said:

More like this: Conservatives are evil and rational while liberals are dumb and emotional.

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Most scientists are fairly liberal while most deeply religious people tend to be conservative. That kind of throws out your whole "most conservatives are rational" argument. Moreover, some of the most emotionally charged arguments I have ever seen on Debate Politics were when a social conservative was defending their religious beliefs, cultural views, and arguing against what they saw as "naturalism".

tacomancer said:

In the case of PBS or google, a liberal model works better as there is a need for creativity and out of the box thinking. In the case of IBM, a more conservative model makes sense.

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PBS is doctrinaire liberal and there's nothing creative about following doctrine. It's like rebellious teenagers who want to be different, so what they do is they all follow the leads of their peers. A truly rebellious teenager, thinking outside of the box, would choose to follow an Amish lifestyle or something, not be a goth, not be casting a wide net to find a homosexual teenager who he could append to his social circle to use as a badge of his own enlightenment.

Google and IBM are in the same boat - they need to innovate and offer solutions. If you're looking for a truly revolutionary business, W. L. Gore & Associates probably fits the bill - no job titles, people are hired and then expected to develop their own job title and responsibilities. That's very far removed from traditional practices.

Without the willingness to break from tradition we would have never changed our models and never developed (except perhaps technologically) from a social organization perspective. I.E. we would still exist within tribes.

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There's nothing wrong, a lot right, about breaking with tradition but that doesn't imply that every break with tradition is beneficial and it's this distinction which seems lost on many liberals. Here's Chesterton:

RiverDad said:

Did you ever notice that there was a big rush to enlist to fight in WWII? Vietnam, no rush to enlist. So it depends on why a war is being fought.

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WWII had a huge propaganda machine and people were generally brainwashed into believing they had a duty to serve the state. On the note brainwashing, people need to realize there is a difference between raising a child to not harm others, and changing how a child thinks which can change how they are as a person. One is a matter of a code of conduct, and the other is a form of tyranny. Of course, saying that I believe you should empower the natural traits of children and it's why I don't believe in the idea of raising both sexes the same.

The above are good observations.

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I've said for a while now that those that desire to use the state to control people and assume control over their property are the same people that will bring about the end of anarchy and establish a governance by inflicting violence on the people.

Henrin said:

WWII had a huge propaganda machine and people were generally brainwashed into believing they had a duty to serve the state. On the note brainwashing, people need to realize there is a difference between raising a child to not harm others, and changing how a child thinks which can change how they are as a person. One is a matter of a code of conduct, and the other is a form of tyranny. Of course, saying that I believe you should empower the natural traits of children and it's why I don't believe in the idea of raising both sexes the same.



I've said for a while now that those that desire to use the state to control people and assume control over their property are the same people that will bring about the end of anarchy and establish a governance by inflicting violence on the people.

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Perhaps....you forgot or were never aware of Dec. 7th, or the a place called Pearl Harbor?

People tend to get angry and protect their future when it is at risk.

SouthernDemocrat said:

Most scientists are fairly liberal while most deeply religious people tend to be conservative.

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My Ph.D is in a science. So what that most scientists are liberal. The fallacy underlying your argument is that most really smart and rational people end up as scientists. See here:


Deeply religious people tend to be conservative. Yeah, that's only if we use a restrictive definition of what constitutes religion. Look at the deep convictions of liberals and environmentalists - they sure mirror the religious people in the depth of their beliefs in superstitions.

tecoyah said:

Perhaps....you forgot or were never aware of Dec. 7th, or the a place called Pearl Harbor?

People tend to get angry and protect their future when it is at risk.

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Which is actually a poor point to bring up since the story behind Pearl Harbor told by the US government was a falsehood.

Henrin said:

Which is actually a poor point to bring up since the story behind Pearl Harbor told by the US government was a falsehood.

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.....Okay....I think I understand where you come from now.


Have fun stormin' the castle!

RiverDad said:

PBS is doctrinaire liberal and there's nothing creative about following doctrine. It's like rebellious teenagers who want to be different, so what they do is they all follow the leads of their peers. A truly rebellious teenager, thinking outside of the box, would choose to follow an Amish lifestyle or something, not be a goth, not be casting a wide net to find a homosexual teenager who he could append to his social circle to use as a badge of his own enlightenment.

Google and IBM are in the same boat - they need to innovate and offer solutions. If you're looking for a truly revolutionary business, W. L. Gore & Associates probably fits the bill - no job titles, people are hired and then expected to develop their own job title and responsibilities. That's very far removed from traditional practices.

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Your second paragraph is good feedback. However, your desire to attack in the first paragraph does not warrant a response. I am trying to have a serious discussion please. Poisoning the water with that kind of crap is useless and counter productive.

RiverDad said:

There's nothing wrong, a lot right, about breaking with tradition but that doesn't imply that every break with tradition is beneficial and it's this distinction which seems lost on many liberals. Here's Chesterton:

In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”This paradox rests on the most elementary common sense. The gate or fence did not grow there. It was not set up by somnambulists who built it in their sleep. It is highly improbable that it was put there by escaped lunatics who were for some reason loose in the street. Some person had some reason for thinking it would be a good thing for somebody. And until we know what the reason was, we really cannot judge whether the reason was reasonable. It is extremely probable that we have overlooked some whole aspect of the question, if something set up by human beings like ourselves seems to be entirely meaningless and mysterious. There are reformers who get over this difficulty by assuming that all their fathers were fools; but if that be so, we can only say that folly appears to be a hereditary disease. But the truth is that nobody has any business to destroy a social institution until he has really seen it as an historical institution. If he knows how it arose, and what purposes it was supposed to serve, he may really be able to say that they were bad purposes, that they have since become bad purposes, or that they are purposes which are no longer served. But if he simply stares at the thing as a senseless monstrosity that has somehow sprung up in his path, it is he and not the traditionalist who is suffering from an illusion.​

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I would agree with this. Again, too much emphasis on liberalism can be a problem.

RiverDad said:

More like this: Conservatives are evil and rational while liberals are dumb and emotional.



As is the hyperfeminism of the Nordic States, as was the Communism of the USSR/China/Warsaw pact, as was the Eurosocialism of the pre-Thatcher UK.

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Are you able to respond as an adult?

tacomancer said:

Your second paragraph is good feedback. However, your desire to attack in the first paragraph does not warrant a response. I am trying to have a serious discussion please. Poisoning the water with that kind of crap is useless and counter productive.

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Oh brother. It's not a desire to attack, it's a rebuttal to you classifying PBS as an example of an organization which is creative and thinks outside of the box. They're doctrinaire liberal, so I'm objecting to your equation of doctrinaire liberal = thinking outside the box and being creative. Doctrinaire liberalism is really no different than doctrinaire Christianity. That's an adult observation served up to you, it's not an attack.

RiverDad said:

Oh brother. It's not a desire to attack, it's a rebuttal to you classifying PBS as an example of an organization which is creative and thinks outside of the box. They're doctrinaire liberal, so I'm objecting to your equation of doctrinaire liberal = thinking outside the box and being creative. Doctrinaire liberalism is really no different than doctrinaire Christianity. That's an adult observation served up to you, it's not an attack.

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They were the first of their kind to structure the company the way they did as was google

In terms of point of view there hasn't been much innovation since the dawn of man

Re: Men: Would You Marry an American Woman?

Probably too simplistic , but, IF we would learn to respect woman, they they would respect us....there is more to this, of course.
Love for one......My "extended" family, rife with all the usual problems, and an above average percentage of marrying "non-Americans".
A question too hard to pose to anyone...why?....forever a mystery....IMO, it a matter of intellect....FWIW.

A most interesting post, Tacomancer, any blogs ?

Henrin said:

WWII had a huge propaganda machine and people were generally brainwashed into believing they had a duty to serve the state. On the note brainwashing, people need to realize there is a difference between raising a child to not harm others, and changing how a child thinks which can change how they are as a person. One is a matter of a code of conduct, and the other is a form of tyranny. Of course, saying that I believe you should empower the natural traits of children and it's why I don't believe in the idea of raising both sexes the same.



I've said for a while now that those that desire to use the state to control people and assume control over their property are the same people that will bring about the end of anarchy and establish a governance by inflicting violence on the people.

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Henrin, your post.....is male bovine feces !
WW2 did not need propaganda, it only needed the truth.
Vietnam did need propaganda, probably did not recieve enough.
Kuwait Liberation....same as WW2.
Iraq Invasion...similar to Vietnam
only my opinions, of course