To Juan, saying ‘thank God!’ in a thread is casus belli for hijacking.
Funny, I remember this being a response to my post about the fact that secular states are worse than religious states. You then seemed to shift the goalposts about who killed more theists or atheists.
People in glass houses…
My point was that he was being misleading, which he was
That’s a strawman.
Wikpedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_The_Unknown_Story#Number_of_deaths_under_Mao
Slightly different to h is 20 - 40 million.
Or: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=47616
There’s 80, million, twice his top estimate.
No that’s not what he’s saying. Since the USA is a secular state and yet he counts the Iraq war under religious. Same applies for Nazi Germany.
But it does, that’s the thing. As much as it may offend your left liberal atheist sensibilities, the 20th C was the bloodiest in all of history. It also just so happened to be the first century in which we really saw the rise of the secular state.
You can stop lying anytime now. Or else show where I’ve done this.
Moreover, referring to a car as “black” will get you labelled a bigot by Juan. The car is “Africa American”.
By the way the theory I am presenting here is analogous to Hoppe’s point that a monarch will defend property rights, since they protect the status of his property.
And this is the equivalent of pouring gasoline all over a thread, and letting Juan’s responce light the fire.
Well what do you know. Yet another libertarian argument against immigration: the government isn’t able to artificially enlarge the tax base, interpersonal conflict is minimized, and people who want to make the State irrelevant to their lives have enough space to do so.
Yet, there is still the need to justify not letting someone from outside immigrate, let alone the question of how long away is the “outside.”
How would it not logically follow that the number of people killed under a regime would be a basis for stating that a state is worse? This is mind-boggling.
As is obvious from your reply - you throw numbers out there at random which have no basis; 90 and 70 are big differences. That claim is disputed even within your reference! Even conceding that, it doesn’t make a difference in the overall.
Additionally, you claim (causally I might add) that this century is the bloodiest without reference as correlating with the secularization of states, as if that were a truer measure. if anything were ever a straw man - your favorite term - this would be one.
You make claim that religious nations are more free - then protest when i take issue as though I have changed the subject. You make false attacks as though Bush’s claim that:
is not blatantly theist, yet call me a liar. Your capacity for reasonable debate has more than presented itself on this forum and I am not alone when I say that it is sophomoric. This debate is going no where so there is nothing left to say other than - peace be with you.
Ah, so THAT explains New Zealand’s grotesquely outsized government. Mind like a steel trap you have, sir.
The question is not about libertarian Paradise which, btw, would have MORE borders, not less; that’s why bums pass out on property anybody can be on rather than property where the owners set conditions on occupancy. Rather, the question is which country more closely approaches the ideal. New Zealand, with its low population density, appears to more closely approach that ideal for the reasons I noted.
You know, I was about to let sicsemper’s last post be, but now I won’t.
So, why mentioning it ?
Maybe you’re being unfairly misunderstood (not really), but it seems to me you hinted that monarchy and catholicism had something to do with lichtenstein allegedly being more libertarian than other countries.
False. America, Western Europe and Russia were and are choke full of christians who claim to believe in universal love. Except when it’s the time to firebomb defenseless civilians.
I don’t understand why racists and bigots resent being called racists and bigots. Is it some form of conservative PCness ? It’s nice to be racist, but please don’t mention it ?
When did I contest that?
And yet the difference between 70 and 90 is not so great as that between 70 and 20 or even 70 and 40.
You’re misusing my favourite term. And no, my point was that in the chance they’ve been given, your beloved secular states have done a great deal of damage. Far more than Czarist Russia or the Austro Hungarian monarchy did, that is for sure.
No, my point was that the USA is a secular state. It’s not difficult, really.
You were one the one who brought up the statistics, now that your claim has been evicerated you change your tactics. How open-minded of you.
Its about time you concede that his numbers are the most accurate before you dig yourself an even deeper hole.
Its pretty much implied that as a state becomes more secular that much of the emphasis placed on religion is shifted towards being put on the state, and history does prove this to be a valid statement.
You’re drawing coorelations where they can’t be drawn for American foreign policy is not dictated by theological concepts. What Bush said was nothing but rhetoric, and it can be understood only as such. There were actual reasons for which Bush decided to invade Iraq, claiming that he was doing “God’s will” is nothing but obfuscating what he did in the eyes of the religious right.
Alas, using the term “another libertarian argument against immigration” means that you take New Zeland’s situation to support your ideal immigration policy, not the other way around.
I wouldn’t bet anything on how much the American people actually follow the Christian ideal; instead they just claim to. Thus their actions speak not of the Christian ideal, but their own failure to live up to it.
But if we cram a bunch of people in with the Samoans and Anglo’s who sparsely populate that rugged island, then it’s no longer New Zealand and it’s no longer as free, isn’t it?
First of all, who get’s to define what is “New Zealand”, is it a geographical expression, a cultura one, or perhaps a mixture of both? Second of all, why would it automatically be “less free”?
Two points:
(1) Although Hitler always respected the Catholic church, no, he was not a Catholic, and indeed, only manipulated the church for his purposes, despising it as an ultra-montane authority he couldn’t control.
(2) Blaming Britain and France for starting the Second World War is disingenuous. Define Second World War. Germany annexed Austria, then having been giving the Sudetenland annexed Bohemia and Moravia. After this war seemed inevitable as she had undoubtedly violated the sovereignty of an independent nation, even though there were very few ethnic Germans there; her quasi-justifications had expired. Then she blitzkrieged Poland. By late 1939 she was ghetto-ising Poland’s Jews. Hitler, while his goals were indubitably eastern, had designs on the pacification of France, Romanian oil, the annexation of the Balkans &c. Should Britain and France have intervened? While I would personally have not intervened, on basic principles, I can see why the British and French intervened, and surely we can blame Hitler’s expansionistic designs rather than Britain or France’s will to preserve some sort of balance and peace in Europe.
While I agree with you that they have done a great deal of damage, one also has to look at the fact that Czarist Russia and the Austro Hungarian monarchies didn’t possess the technology of wholesale slaughter like the secular states did, either. We cannot say that had the Czar and other monarchies had large bombs, they wouldn’t have used them in the same manner as a secular state has.
I agree with Hoppe’s conclusions about monarchy v. democracy, but I don’t think the level of technology should be ignored here.
Yeah. I don’t know how anyone can say Hitler had any sort of fondness for the Christian religion. Afterall, the guy denounced it as “weak willed” and “the bastard child of the Jews” in his personal writings. He used the religions of the time as a springboard for his populist movement.
Except both France and Britian went on the offensive first. Hitler did not even concern himself with Western Europe until after they intervened. I believe he made it pretty clear that his goal was to return Germany’s borders to the pre-WWI status (the Russians were after the same kind of deal with the Eastern territories). Sure, he had no justification in his expansionism, but then again France and Britian really had no justification in intervening either. Not to mention the British were the first to use “total war” and target “strategic” civilian areas in bombing raids…
I think it goes both ways though. Sure, they didn’t have the technology to kill people to the same extent that we do now. But on the other hand they also would have been able to cover up any killings far easier than is possible today. Moreover, people then were far poorer than today, starvation would have been far easier.
Hitler wanted peace with GB, accordingly, he never would have touched France. Instead Great Britain, France and the USA decided to pave the way for Stalin’s entry into Europe.
Sure. I was just pointing out that it is rather hard to get any sort of accurate comparison due to the ever changing world of technology and such. I am not defending secular/democratic states by any means.
Well the US much later, but yes.