real people (us), legal people (corporations), and Christianity

[Oscar]

Dave:

Who are you?  I don't recall ever seeing you before in connection with anything assembly-wise.   You sound like an "artsy-fartsy" type to me.


Matt

Matthew,

"Dave Halitsky" has protested your use of the term, "artsy-fartsy" in describing him.

I think his protest is justified.  Although I must confess that I do not know what the term means, I have never seen the word "fart" in ANY form used in a complimentary sense.  

So, I think "Dave's" protest is justified.  You are name calling.  

Please don't.

BTW, just what does "artsy-fartsy" mean?

Thomas Maddux

[dhalitsky]

Tom -

Au contraire, I haven't "protested" anything.  If you and Mark wanta look the other way while Matthew and I step outside for a few moments, I assure you I can handle this matter myself.

However, last time I handled it myself, it seemed to upset you that invective can be slung by non-traditionalists as well as traditionalists.

So either way you want to play it is OK with me.  If Matthew wants to admit he was playing Rush's game (badly, I might add) and agree not to do it, I will remain polite.

If he doesn't, then all I need is your permission to ask him to step outside a few moments.

As a master rhetorician, you of all people should know how easy it would be to wipe the floor with ANYONE who has the usual reason for posting to this board.  So just lemme know when I can stop pulling my punches on people who seem to be looking for a fight.

Dave

[dhalitsky]

To vernecarty -

Hi - since we've never chatted via posts, I'm not sure if you were being sarcastic at my expense or not.  Either way, it's a good observation you made about Rush.  (Also, unfortunately about me - took me 1 common-law marriage and two legal marriages before I finally got it right on the 4th try.)

Anyway, if you are a Christian traditionalist (in the sense of that term here at the AB_ and also not fooled by Rush, I salute you.  You are one of the VERY few, in my opinion.  (Tom M will of course chide me here by asking for my evidence that most Christian traditionalists are pro-Rush; to which I would respond, certainly more than there are pro-Franken or pro-Garofalo.)

Dave

[sfortescue]

David,

Years ago, I listened to parts of a few of Rush's programs and gave it up because of his vulgarity.  My impression at the time was that he was indirectly discrediting the conservative agenda by associating it with vulgarity, but the way all of society has become so much more vulgar than it was at that time has proven me wrong.  The following seems quite unlike Rush.

James 3:17-18
But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy.  And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of them that make peace.

You might like a number of other things that James said.

Each election we're given the oportunity to choose whether we would rather be abused by big government or by big business.  The ordinary person has little chance against big business, but against big government he has no chance at all.

[vernecarty]

To vernecarty -

Hi - since we've never chatted via posts, I'm not sure if you were being sarcastic at my expense or not.  Either way, it's a good observation you made about Rush.  (Also, unfortunately about me - took me 1 common-law marriage and two legal marriages before I finally got it right on the 4th try.)

Anyway, if you are a Christian traditionalist (in the sense of that term here at the AB_ and also not fooled by Rush, I salute you.  You are one of the VERY few, in my opinion.  (Tom M will of course chide me here by asking for my evidence that most Christian traditionalists are pro-Rush; to which I would respond, certainly more than there are pro-Franken or pro-Garofalo.)

Dave

No sarcasm intended David. I feel quite badly for the man.
Verne

[dhalitsky]

Stephen M -

You never fail to impress; me, at any rate.

I would give ten or more years of my life to know exactly the thought process which led Blaise Pascal (who as you know was the co-father of projective geometry, along with Desargues) to give up his mathematical pursuits in favor of religious ruminations.  I know that his sister was "big" in the Port-Royal group of French Protestants, but I don't think that alone can account for her brother's change of heart.  If you have any thoughts on this matter, perhaps you might want to start a new thread, because it's off-topic for this one.

Speaking of matters off-topic, the mathematical line of inquiry started by CumulativeInquiry is doing quite well - see the post-stream at http://www.CumulativeInquiry.com/Forums.  CI is lucky to have obtained the services of Dr. David Wagner of UWaterloo, who has found a 1980 paper observing the correspondence between dim2/N-free posets with Baxter permutations.

With respect, as always
David

[dhalitsky]

to vernecarty -

I wish I could be as good a person as you.  I cannot feel bad for Rush and his ilk after all he and they have done to destroy real political discourse in this country.

Meaning his corruption of political terminology via his conflation of anything to the left of Ford into the term "liberal".  I have little patience with liberals also, but NOT from the same side of the spectrum as "conservatives"

Dave

[outdeep]

to vernecarty -

I wish I could be as good a person as you.  I cannot feel bad for Rush and his ilk after all he and they have done to destroy real political discourse in this country.

Meaning his corruption of political terminology via his conflation of anything to the left of Ford into the term "liberal".  I have little patience with liberals also, but NOT from the same side of the spectrum as "conservatives"

Dave

Dave,

I hear what you are saying and I half agree with you.  Unfortunately, reasoned, balanced arguments are seldom heard in today's sound-byte society.  When Rush started, there was very little outstanding conservative voice in the media.  You did have folks like Norman Lear who used entertainment to cast all conservatives as Archie Bunker.  I think Rush simply used the same tool to help swing the pendulum the other way.

I don't like the us vs. them one-way-or-the-other mentality of politics in our country, but unfortunately that is the way it is.

I wish we could ask thoughtful questions such as:

How can we support women's needs, bring male accountability to childbearing AND preserve the rights and needs of the unboard child as well?

How can we we have a business environment that makes the US a place where people want to do business but at the same time is a good steward of the environment?

How can we genuinely help the poor without creating a welfare mentality?  When is there a legetimate need which merits a handout and when do we require the person to demonstrate responsibility?  Is the government the best organization to do this or is there a way to mobalize organizations of compassion (regardless of their religious or non-religious affiliations)?

What is the best way to educate our children today in a pluristic society where we no longer gather at the schoolhouse with a common values system?

Unfortunately, politics works best when it is black and white.  Bush is a bumbling liar who misled the nation.  Kerry is a flip-flopping, arrogant opportunist.  Cut and dry.  Nice and simple.

This is why the Rush Limbaughs and Norman Lears and Jerry Fallwells and Al Frankins and Michael Moores have been so successful.  You can't blame Rush for using the same tools that liberals have always use and without Rush, you would only have liberals using those tools.  So, even though I don't like this process, they do kind of cancel each other out.

-Dave

P.S.:  To the original point, I wasn't happy about Rush's latest divorse either.  It demonstrates to me a disconnect between the message and the man.

[dhalitsky]

to Dave Sable -

A very thoughtful post in my opinion, and one well-worth considering carefully.

Re helping the poor without creating a welfare state mentality:

Don't know about you, but my grade school and high school buildings were built by funds provided by Roosevelt's WPA.   Also, I know plenty of my parents' friend who were GRATEFUL for a chance to work in Roosevelt's CCC and send some money back home for the famil.

Do you distinguish between welfare-state hand-outs and public works projects for the common good?  Do you agree that the young men in the CCC were NOT welfare-state ne'er-do-wells?

If so, the answer to your question is easy.  Stop this senseless war and spend the money on WPA-style projects to repair this country's infrastructure.

And if that isn't enough money, close the off-shore loopholes which permit corporations to pay NO TAXES while off-shoring the jobs of our fellow-citizens.

Sorry - didn't mean to get into a left-of-liberal rant there, but the topic of tax-free corporations HQ's in the Cayman Islands is relevant to the main thrust of this thread.

Best regards
Dave

[dhalitsky]

to TomM -

I haven't forgotten your request for an "argument", and am still working on a post worthy of your question.  But in the meantime, it would be useful to know your opinion on creationism and intelligent design in relation to the existence of genetically-determined diseases.  I'm serious here - the question of "perfection" in God's plan for our salvation is directly related to the question of why He did not create a "perfect" genome, i.e. one which did not give rise to diseases from which many innocents suffer.

Dave

[outdeep]

to Dave Sable -

A very thoughtful post in my opinion, and one well-worth considering carefully.

Re helping the poor without creating a welfare state mentality:

Don't know about you, but my grade school and high school buildings were built by funds provided by Roosevelt's WPA.   Also, I know plenty of my parents' friend who were GRATEFUL for a chance to work in Roosevelt's CCC and send some money back home for the famil.

Do you distinguish between welfare-state hand-outs and public works projects for the common good?  Do you agree that the young men in the CCC were NOT welfare-state ne'er-do-wells?

If so, the answer to your question is easy.  Stop this senseless war and spend the money on WPA-style projects to repair this country's infrastructure.

And if that isn't enough money, close the off-shore loopholes which permit corporations to pay NO TAXES while off-shoring the jobs of our fellow-citizens.

Sorry - didn't mean to get into a left-of-liberal rant there, but the topic of tax-free corporations HQ's in the Cayman Islands is relevant to the main thrust of this thread.

Best regards
Dave

Actually Dave what I was thinking specifically is this:  I grew up in Inglewood CA which, in 1959 was a nice, middle-class neighborhood.  When I was there in the 1960's, they were planning on building a freeway (which they finally did in the last decade or so).  In the meantime, they bought up all of the houses on 119th street and decided to make it into a low-income housing project.  I saw first-hand the destructive nature of a system where it was more condusive to receive a welfare check than work to better one's skills and get a job.  I saw the wild, low-incentive kids it produced who would often, as they say, "hit me upside my head".

Now, I understand that telling that welfare mom to work two full-time shifts and McDonalds and Wal-mart and even then you probably won't have enough money to pay rent and child care and car insurance isn't the answer either.  Sometimes if people are victems (even of their own doing), they could use some charitable help, but what form does that look like?

How do you provide for that woman training skills to better herself to get a better job?  How can the church pool together so she doesn't have to worry about child care?  At what point, when she is not taking responsibility, do you drop provisions and let her stew in her own misery?  Or, put another way, when do we stop looking at her as a victem but simply lazy?

Possibly the Roosevelt-like programs you suggest might not be a bad idea.  It certainly ties the needed help to the dignity of doing honest work.  

[vernecarty]

to Dave Sable -

A very thoughtful post in my opinion, and one well-worth considering carefully.

Re helping the poor without creating a welfare state mentality:

Don't know about you, but my grade school and high school buildings were built by funds provided by Roosevelt's WPA.   Also, I know plenty of my parents' friend who were GRATEFUL for a chance to work in Roosevelt's CCC and send some money back home for the famil.

Do you distinguish between welfare-state hand-outs and public works projects for the common good?  Do you agree that the young men in the CCC were NOT welfare-state ne'er-do-wells?

If so, the answer to your question is easy.  Stop this senseless war and spend the money on WPA-style projects to repair this country's infrastructure.

And if that isn't enough money, close the off-shore loopholes which permit corporations to pay NO TAXES while off-shoring the jobs of our fellow-citizens.

Sorry - didn't mean to get into a left-of-liberal rant there, but the topic of tax-free corporations HQ's in the Cayman Islands is relevant to the main thrust of this thread.

Best regards
Dave

Actually Dave what I was thinking specifically is this:  I grew up in Inglewood CA which, in 1959 was a nice, middle-class neighborhood.  When I was there in the 1960's, they were planning on building a freeway (which they finally did in the last decade or so).  In the meantime, they bought up all of the houses on 119th street and decided to make it into a low-income housing project.  I saw first-hand the destructive nature of a system where it was more condusive to receive a welfare check than work to better one's skills and get a job.  I saw the wild, low-incentive kids it produced who would often, as they say, "hit me upside my head".

Now, I understand that telling that welfare mom to work two full-time shifts and McDonalds and Wal-mart and even then you probably won't have enough money to pay rent and child care and car insurance isn't the answer either.  Sometimes if people are victems (even of their own doing), they could use some charitable help, but what form does that look like?

How do you provide for that woman training skills to better herself to get a better job?  How can the church pool together so she doesn't have to worry about child care?  At what point, when she is not taking responsibility, do you drop provisions and let her stew in her own misery?  Or, put another way, when do we stop looking at her as a victem but simply lazy?

It is the shameful conduct of we men, that is primarily responsible for the state of the family in America today.
My fellow African-American men get their hackles up whenever I get going on this topic. Forget about welfare, forget about racism.
The number one cause for what you see in the inner city today is that so many men, and escpecially we who ought to know better, are responsile for sixty percent of black childfen being born out of wedlock. Don't get me started...it is a betrayal
Verne

[outdeep]

It is the shameful conduct of we men, that is primarily responsible for the state of the family in America today.
My fellow African-American men get their hackles up whenever I get going on this topic. Forget about welfare, forget about racism.
The number one cause for what you see in the inner city today is that so many men, and escpecially we who ought to know better, are responsile for sixty percent of black childfen being born out of wedlock. Don't get me started...it is a betrayal
Verne

I do have to agree with you Verne.  When I was living in Inglewood, the conventional thinking was that the problem was poverty and that we would solve the problem with bussing.  All that did was cause people who could afford to move to move.  Then, of course, there was much talk about racism.

It was about the time when Dan Quale made his much-maligned Murphy Brown speech that I realized that the kids who had the most problems were without a male-role model (please note that I am not saying that all blacks had problems or that none had good family life.  I am just saying that the most wild and confused ones that I think back on didn't have a man in the house).  Now, both Mr. Quale and I are WASPs (white anglo-saxon protestants for those who forgot the term) so I can't necessarily speak with credibility.  However, when I saw the film Boyz In the Hood, the black filmmaker came to the exact same conclusion - the one boy who made it out of the hood was the one whose father took an interest in him.

[vernecarty]

It is the shameful conduct of we men, that is primarily responsible for the state of the family in America today.
My fellow African-American men get their hackles up whenever I get going on this topic. Forget about welfare, forget about racism.
The number one cause for what you see in the inner city today is that so many men, and escpecially we who ought to know better, are responsile for sixty percent of black childfen being born out of wedlock. Don't get me started...it is a betrayal
Verne

I do have to agree with you Verne.  When I was living in Inglewood, the conventional thinking was that the problem was poverty and that we would solve the problem with bussing.  All that did was cause people who could afford to move to move.  Then, of course, there was much talk about racism.

It was about the time when Dan Quale made his much-maligned Murphy Brown speech that I realized that the kids who had the most problems were without a male-role model (please note that I am not saying that all blacks had problems or that none had good family life.  I am just saying that the most wild and confused ones that I think back on didn't have a man in the house).  Now, both Mr. Quale and I are WASPs (white anglo-saxon protestants for those who forgot the term) so I can't necessarily speak with credibility.  However, when I saw the film Boyz In the Hood, the black filmmaker came to the exact same conclusion - the one boy who made it out of the hood was the one whose father took an interest in him.

The director of that film, John Singleton ((in which Cuba Gooding Jr played the lead role) was right on the money. There was a time in America when black families were far poorer than they are today, and racism was much more overt, yet the family was substantially more intact. We have produced now several generations of young men who view the essence of manhood as becoming a skilled sexual predator, and as well as of young women who do not know the meaning of the word chastity. Yes let them criticise me as they did Bill Cosby. I am as Black as the blackest of them.
Most of those parading themselves as having the right to speak for the community are living profligate and Godless lives, religious mantle notwithstanding
Some of you who are well-read and informed on this topic will be quick to remind me that while young black girls have their babies, pregnant white teens abort theirs and you would of course be quite right.
Ultimately, sin is truly color-blind is it not?

Verne

Spencer Holland, a D.C. phsychologist did an incredible study that showed that the academic performance of young black boys started to really fall behind at just about the age when these young men became fully cognizant of the absence of male role models in their lives. He theorised that the rapid increase in rebellion and dilinquency at that age was an almost unconscious reaction against the matriarchal system they found themselves trapped in - mothers or grandmothers at home, mostly female teachers at school. Man this study was  such a heartbreak I can't begin to tell you. Holland has been able to make a tremendous diffference by introducing many of these young men to Black men of stature and achievement in the community. This I believe is one of the best means of reversing the dismal trend we see today. We have to take some personal responsibility for this situation....

[outdeep]

I knew that didn't sound right.  It's John Singleton.  John Newton was a good guy too once Christ got ahold of him and he gave up that slave business.