Achilleez

Eamonn, I think that my position as an atheist is just about exactly as Hunt described it. Scouting has been a positive influence for my son and I hope he stays with it. While I have no objection to him being a Scout or a Christian, I just desparately hope it will never turn him into a bigot like FOG appeared to be with his last post. However, I won't lie and say that I like the BSA's membership guidelines either. I think they take away alot of opportunities from kids who could benefit greatly from Scouting. I am not suggesting that we throw away all the values that make Scouting gre

Could you please explain to me how giving free health care to poor people is facist. And who exactly was under the impressiong (aside from FOG) that Canada was ever socialist to begin with? We are still right of centre, unless you don't count the fact that we have a market economy and we are democratic. (actually we are supposed to be a monarch, with the queen running our country, but British control of Canada ended right after WWI.)

Our health care system is becoming less and less socialized all the time. Infact, if Steven Harper wins the upcoming election, there is a very good chance he will privatize it all-together, allowing American corporations to run them according to standards set by the Canadian government. Alberta is even beginning to experiment with privatized charter schools. On the other side of the coin, the New Democratic Party is gaining support from elsewhere in the country, so who's to say how we rank on the political spectrum anymore? If you hate our socialist ways so much, why have we been your lar

FOG, "Oh, I should learn the revisionist history taught by a socialist nation?" First, I don't know where you come off calling Canada socialist all the time, but I assure you it is as innacurate as me calling you a facist. Secondly, you seem to be the only person here who is a revisionist, because you remember history different than the textbooks say, but I suppose that's to be expected from someone taught in a 'facist' nation. ************** Oh, come back, proud Canadians To before you had TV, No hockey night in Canada, There was no CBC (Oh, my God!). In 1812,

RobK, I agree with you for the most part. My point in bringing the whole thing up was that the world sees the sweatshops and the pollution and they place the blame on the big rich Western countries, and alot of that blame comes from within those countries. FOG, I never said anything about the US government being involved in those sweatshops. The point is that the American companies that own those places are often chastised by liberal fools. Secondly, if you were to read my original post with more care you would see that I never criticized the USA for getting involved where the

"The British were supplying the Indians in the Northwest Territories with guns and whiskey and inciting them to attack and butcher the poor helpless farmers up and down the frontier who were only trying to scratch a living out of a couple acres of dirt. We sent a couple of patrols to the North, Why would we even want to annex someplace like Quebec to the north, when Las Vegas was waiting for us out West?" European settlers selling alchohol and guns to aboriginals was not something native to Canada. It was done in the USA as well as the most of the rest of Western Hemisphere. A

Yikes, TP - that hurt. FOG, Do you honestly place all of the blame of under-paid childworkers of international sweatshops soley on the local governments of that area? Is it OK that corporations from USA, Canada, and Europe set these factories up and run them the way they do because its not happening in their own countries and thus they can't be held responsible for anything that goes on there? America is not the only country guilty of things, but your faults are magnified by the envious population in question. I never read anything in the Kyoto agreement that allowed developing

If it weren't for some brilliantly stupid mistakes by your generals in 1812, the USA would probably currenetly stretch from the Gulf of Mexico to the Davis Strait to Elsmere Island. The world has a beef with America because life looks so easy there. Combine with that their tendency to intervene in foreign countries where they are not wanted, regardless of however badly they might be needed. It aggravates every single nation to know that whatever they do will be scrutinized by the all-powerful supernation in accordance with their standards of acceptability (is that a word? i don't know). T

Forgive me if I overlooked something, but where exactly did Deloe say that he was an atheist? Have we become so spiritually polarized that anyone who has something to say that doesn't coincide with popular opinion is automatically a member of an opposing religion? Furthermore, I haven't read anything by Deloe that implies he is doing anything other than trying to defend Scout Law, which I beleive is quite important to him. Why have we decided to group him with the atheists and BSA-haters? I for one am glad he picked up on a possible infraction of BSA morals and brought it to attentio

Since when was Iraq a terrorist nation? Have we all forgotten that Saddam and Osama bin Laden have been enemies for decades? Saudi Arabia could be labelled a terrorist nation because its government is activley involved in terrorist operations, but Iraq? Iraq has been in disarray and chaos ever since the UN took out a majic wand and redrew the borders of the Middle East nations. And has everyone forgotten that the evidence of weapons programs was primarily left-over factories from the 80's when the USA WAS FUNDING Iraq in its war against Iran. Colon Powell's speech to the UN where he presented

Why are we all so hotly defending the American population? As far as I can tell, no one has yet actually said that all of America is to blame for these incidents, aside from perhaps ScouterPaul's accusation of the President. Given, many people around the world are going to leap to the conclusion that America has been teaching torture techniques to its soldiers. Given, even the reasonable Arabs and Muslims are going to lose gratitude towards American troops over this. However, I believe the most important results from these events will be political. Not that people will hold the President

If you've ever studied philosophy or debating in school, then you've probably heard of the 'slippery slope' style of argument. A leads to B, which will lead to C, which will lead to D, which will lead to E. However, there are hundreds of variables and factors which may interrupt the process, making the conclusion that A will lead to E innacurate. This is what I saw in that article, a textbook example of slippery slope arguing.

Rooster7, I apologize, for I re-read the article that was in the Kitchner-Waterloo Record and found that the word 'shot' was never acutally used. It simply said that they were 'forced' to stand naked with a bag over their head. That might mean they were threatened with a gun, or it might not. As for your shot about assuming the worst from Americans, I have to say that you really are misguided when it comes to international relations, at least from up here. Canadians do not hate America. Some of us disagree with your policies and the things you do ('you' meaning the United States governm

Rooster7, I would have hoped that I would have slightly more credibility than for you to mistake that I was classifying the entire US army for the actions of a few perverted individuals. However, I do take offense to how you described the actions: " BUT, when some American soldiers who are risking their lives (and have probably seen a few friends die at the hands of insurgents) take their frustrations out on some captured enemy combatants" It really does sound like you are trying to defend the actions of these people. Stripping people naked and torturing them by making them sta

http://www.kansas.com/mld/eagle/news/editorial/8606421.htm Nothing has been mentioned of this yet, perhaps because of its highly controversial nature, and I decided not to post a link to the perverse pictures which are flooding the news in my parts.

Negative advertising works because it reaches and affects a larger group of voters than self-promotional ads. Self-promotional adversiting is only effective at re-affirming people who are already behind the candidate and hopefully persuading fence-sitters. The problem is, there are many less fence-sitters than there are people who are committed to a specific party, or at least to a political platform. So, when negative advertisements are broadcast, their target is not people who are already supporting the mud-slinger, nor the fence-sitters, but rather the supporters of the opposition. So when

As we speak, the first ever Hydrogen-highway, complete with hydrogen gas stations, is under construction in British Columbia.

I don't deny the legality of excluding persons based on religion. I also don't deny the legality of adultery. The NHL only accepts qualified, skilled hockey players because if they just admitted anybody, the organization would fall apart because people wouldn't pay to watch unskilled players. The NASA space program won't accept any astronaut who is not physically qualified because it would be dangerous to do so otherwise. These organizations have the right to exclude whomever they want also, but they happen to choose membership based on standards that must be met in order for the organiz

"Atheists have no faith and there is no comparison worthy of note. This is simply an attempt to compare an exclusionary membership policy to historical atrocities commited against a faithful community." So you are denying the existence of atheist mistreatment because atheists have no faith? Does that imply that you beleive atheists do not matter enough do be mistreated (such as killing insects with RAID), or that you simply don't see atheist mistreatment as religious discrimination because they have no faith? (which I might add is innaccurate, being as I am an atheist and a great deal of

While ignoring Wheeler seems like a convenient and noble way of ridding of him, it will ultimatley prove impossible. When someone goes around calling America a socialist nation, people will get angry and speak up. The posters on this forum are outside the control of any of us, and so it remains likely that we will see arguments with Wheeler for a long while to come.

"I had thought that after the events of 9/11/01, I was seeing sort of a "national understanding" develop that words like "terrorist" and "terrorist organization" were going to be reserved for people who among other things, kill or try to kill large numbers of people in order to make a political or religious statement." Politicians always have, and likely always will use any words they desire to serve their purpose, which is almost always painting someone else as bad. I agree, terrorist seems a poor choice of words, but I doubt you will ever know the psychological reasoning of Mr. Paige's

OK, there is a deeply misguided and severely intrusive poster running amongst us. After following several threads in which he made long, tedious rants about a variety of things, I have made the simple conclusion that he has no idea what he's talking about. Here is the progression of conclusions that he has made so far: "Evolution is the foundation of Socialism." "Socialism is the rebellion from God." "Atheism really manifests itself in the philosophy of Nihilism. Atheists are Nihilists and therefore materialists. " So, as promised by the title, I give you Wheeler's tra

I can't beleive I just wasted 20 minutes of my life reading through this whole thread and coming to the same conclusion I made when I read the title.

"Cause and effect do not go "ad infinitum". Aristotle said so. " Well, if Aristotle said so, it must be true. Oh wait, Aristotle also said that the areas between the Tropic of Capricorn and the Tropic of Cancer were uninhabitable because they were too hot. Looks like the boat hasn't sailed on that one though. Aristotle was a man, not a god. Why have you chosen to treat his words like Divine Scripture? I was also going to make mention of your poor grammar, but it looks as though that cow has already been milked.

You have a peculiar way of loving your enemies. To anyone else reading these posts, does anyone else find BW's unhospitable viewpoint troubling? From what I remember, Christians were a loving, generous lot who were happy to help all. Have Christians gone nasty in the 35 years since I've been one?