119 wrote:

American foreign policy is so bad I worry we could max-out our credit, Nineveh-style, Sodom & Gomorrah-style. We're not G-d's chosen nation. We weren't charged with a cosmic mission to spread democracy and American values [sic].

Did/does America have any credit to begin with?

When Americans discover that their country is not as good as they thought, then what? Should America get back on the godly path (as if it ever was on it)? Or is it appropriate to acknowledge that no secular nation whatsoever is God-chosen? Never was, except perhaps Israel and Judea up to Jesus' times, but that country got whipped by God just as any other, so on the outside there was little difference.

I tend to liken USA to the Roman empire. Was Roman empire a God-chosen nation? It surely built a great civilisation and spread it around as far as it could. But from the point of view of Israel and Judea, Romans were sheer colonists. And their devotion to their own state gods was sheer paganism.

Same with USA. Some aspects of "the American way of life" are contageous in themselves (particularly the decadent aspects of course), but spreading them around the world at gunpoint under the name of "democracy" and "freedoms" is sheer colonism. And the sense of religious messianism that Americans have, whenever it is seen as stemming from and protected by the Constitution - a secular document -, it is worship of the secular might of your nation, not worship of God.

Did the apostles try to put the empire on the right path, to reconcile it with God, by having the senate write a good constitution? Did they demand equal rights for Christians from the secular powers? No. They held to their own worship regardless of persecution. They had no hopes or delusions about a possible reconciliation - they in fact prophesied the opposite. The apostles accepted that martyrdom was their destiny. Insofar as your hopes depend on your nation, they are not depending on Christ.

I care more about the beauty of the game, orderliness of the tournament, and less about who will win. And I think agadmator and Suren are the best chess commentators on youtube.

DanielCC wrote:

Because if free will does not exist in its full sense, that of libertarian free will, then it casts moral responsibility into doubt.

Isn't libertarian free will absolute, which in turn would make moral responsibility also absolute? As such, wouldn't honest mistakes be as culpable as malicious acts?

Imagination is absolutely free in libertarian sense, and that has its consequences too. I would definitely not want my will to be similarly free, with instant gratification and all the latter consequences.

Libertarian free will cannot be had and should not be craved after. Will works the way it works, limited and restricted. Better to learn to live with it.

Jeremy Taylor wrote:

I lost my original reply, so I will be even more concise. Your point is simplistic at best. You're relying on a false and/or a very rigid idea of mainstream. Firstly, in many areas in which conservative opinions have been targeted by social media companies, the conservative or non-left-liberal positions are not obviously less mainstream than left-liberal ones.

Instead of calling my point simplistic and false, why not acknowledge that I am keeping to the obvious? Your argument falls apart because it attempts to combat the obvious with something much less obvious. Even worse, your claims have blatantly obvious counterexamples based on what you earlier linked to and what I already refuted.

For example, you approvingly linked to an ostensibly conservative (better: anti-liberal) columnist who cited Trump as a conservative voice. At the same time, hopefully you have heard Trump's consistent message where he denounces mainstream media as fake news. Do you deny that he has been beating it all the time during election campaign and as president?

To me the issue is very obvious: When you keep denouncing the mainstream and rejecting basically all journalism, then you are positioning yourself as FRINGE. So the question for the columnist becomes: Should fringe voices be given fair and equal treatment in the mainstream?[1] Add to this the fact that Trump actually does not represent any conservative value whatsoever, so the columnist is wrong in presenting Trump as a conservative voice, and that Trump's voice is actually not suppressed in media nor on Twitter, so the columnist ends up obviously mistaken on all counts and all claims.

To counter these obvious points with something less obvious will get you nowhere.

[1] For the sake of completeness, let's point out that Trump is not actually fringe: The president's post is as mainstream and as establishment as it gets, so his pretensions to be anything else are rhetorical nonsense and inappropriate to

Jeremy Taylor wrote:

Your fundamental point is fallacious. It assumes right-wing or conservative views are controversial but left-liberal ones aren't.

Which way is it according to you?

According to my impression, liberal views are trending toward broader acceptance, which is reflected in business behaviour (rules of conduct, terms of condition, and other such policies), resulting in increasing complaints by conservatives.

However, my assumption is not that there is anything inherently controversial in either liberal or conservative, left-wing or right-wing views. The social norm is the way of the world and the way of the world is always a bit off compared to God-given natural law. Due to human-centred focus, both liberal views and conservative views are revealed as off base when driven consistently to their end. Then again, when speaking about wordly issues as we are, we have to observe the ways of the world as they present themselves.

Can you answer: Which way is more controversial, liberal or conservative? In my view, the question itself is malformed at closer inspection. The world cannot do without either liberals or conservatives. Neither can be eliminated. Both must be present. But they do not mix well, which gives us the world the way it is.

Do you suggest that e.g. right is more right than left? Or do you suggest that there is a balance to  be had so that both can live in peace side by side? And the latter can better be had under conservative principles rather than liberal? Care to lay out the corresponding programme in full? In my view, since no such programme ever worked throughout world history, it never will.

Mainstream journalism and academia are as good as it gets in terms of fair and balanced. The world does not deserve any better.

Jeremy Taylor wrote:

I have no idea what point you are trying to say by talking about right-wing outlets and terrorism. You appear to be trying to link mainstream conservative views with terrorists and murder

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