aguy2

The 'elitist philosophical circle jerk' idea can be laid to the feet of Plato not Socrates. My only substantive critque of the 'weighted vote', as a potential solution, is that it would require extensive and time consuming constitutional tweeking. Humbly requesting that our potential elected officials present the electorate with a fairly clean bill of mental health can be accomplished before 11/7/06. aguy2

The 24/7 threat of 'the tyranny of the temporary 51%'. Plus such goodies as emotionally stampeded 'fad laws' every few months! Didn't we learn anything from Socrates!aguy2

Great post! Lots of new, new to me, ideas. For instance the use of the term 'roll over'. Not 10 minutes before I proposed to my son the use of the term 'no roll overs' in lieu of the coopted term 'defeatest'. This seems to be the 1st time I have heard the term 'intellectual-friendly terrain' as an alternative to 'sociopathic-friendly terrain'. I still think that encouraging our pols to present the electorate with a clean medical 'bill of health',in this regards, could be a rational move and very quickly 'doable'. aguy2

The level of 'luridness' isn't the big point. It was and is the depth and width of the coverup. aguy2

I tend to use the term, "we get the government we deserve" quite a bit myself. You could very well be right, but I would think that even the public act of examining ways and means of altering the terrain of the political field, would be a sign of political health, and would in of itself make us more 'deserving' of a descent, rational, and effective government. aguy2

I want to make it clear that I am not talking about coercive psycholgical testing, but giving the pols a clear indication, through the auspices of the vote, that if they want to 'stand a snowball's chance in hell' of getting elected they had better present the electorate with certified 'clean bill of health' in regards to their being a possible 'sociopathic opportunist'. If the field is not rife with 'sociopathic opportunists' it would be highly likely that people truely qualified to lead and wield power would find the field more attractive. Realtime disagreement and the natural 'give and take' of politics would not go away, but the quality and worthiness of the various contenders could rise dramatically. aguy2

I was going to congratulate ParanoiA on beating me to the punch, when your post came up and devastated the idea. I certainly don't blame either of you for your cynicism, concidering the current American political situation, but seriously, the positions I am talking about still pay rather well and confer a lot of social status to there holders. Honestly though, don't you think that if we collectively have the ways and means of seeing that consciousless opportunists never achieve positions of public trust, we are being utter fools not to do so? aguy2

Are you confusing 'demo-cratic' with 'demon-cratic'? aguy2

The Scienctologists call it being 'clear', psychiatists call it being 'sociopathic', some primative theists might call it being 'souless', but no matter what you might call it, it seems to be a condition that can be physically tested for. These people have a high propensity to be opportunistic at best. Why not ask all our pols. to take "The Test", before we see fit to give them positions of leadership and power? aguy2

This may not stay true. Many of those that are niether Arab or Jew are starting to say, "A Semite is a Semite, is a Semite.", with the implication being that if we turned the whole middle east into a slag heap, we would thereby 'solve' the problem. aguy2

Jim, thanks for the reference to Godwin's law, I like the man's analysis. According to the law we would have to declare pangloss the 'wiener' unless you can show that your analogy is complete. What current states, with a muslim majority, would you classify as being 'islamo-fascist'? Syria would probably appear to be the closest to be on a fascist model, but even here if we had classified them as such, we probably would be finding the term to be a obstacle to peace, due to the fact that their help is needed in trying to find some solution to the current situation around Lebanon. aguy2

I don't think ww1 or ww2 involved all parts of the world simultaneously either. Archie Bunker, et al called ww2 "the big one" with a degree of accuracy, and hopefully, insofar as intensiveness and scale, it will remain so. aguy2

It was generally known as the 'cold war', and lasted from 1946-82. aguy2

There seems to be some confusion in this thread on which particular, current 'campaign' in progress, constitutes the current 'war'. Normally a 'war' of any significance is comprised of 'campaigns' that can be concurrent, sequential, or in large scale 'wars', both. The current world situation would seem to indicate that the world is involved in a global conflict of sufficent scale to be called, in truth, ww4; or some similarilly discriptive terminology. Do you think someone should do a poll? aguy2

Many of my fellow theists seem to be making a mistake in seeing their primary documents as being predictive in nature, when the documents clearly state that their function is to 'confirm', not to 'predict'. aguy2

My argument against the possibility of physical time travel is a lot more prosaic than the others presented in this thread. My argument is based on the assumption that individual point particles cannot exist twice at the same time. If this assumption represents the actual case, then the only possibility open for physical time travel would necessitate the instantanous transposition into the future of the atoms that are going to be part of the body going back in time. If it proves to be impossibile for a physical body to travel back in time, would this also preclude the possibility of transmitting information and patterns back in time? I would tend to think that the case for information time travel might be a 'different bag of beans' altogether. aguy2

Iranian public opinion has generally felt for some time that joining the 'nuclear club' will mean Iran has come of age as a major player on the world stage. I would say that Ahmadinejad's loudmouthed support of their program is largely "pandering" to longstanding Iranian public opinion. aguy2

Has anyone seen what Thomas Freidman has to say about the 'realpolitiks' of the current situation. In essence he is saying that if we have to depend on our current Rumsfield/Chaney/Bush team of incompetent losers to do something constructive, we better except a nuclear Iran as a done deal. aguy2