gdp's Comments

Glenn Beck - The 912 Project : The 9/12

Mon, 6 Apr 2009 22:28:24 +0000

"How ca nyou live by America is good?" "Its true that in the pledge of allegiance it says one nation under god but that was writtne in a different time, before people from so many different cultures had immigrated and before atheism became a recognised belief. I also disagree because i am an atheist." Atheism has existed for quite a long time. part of the writings of the bible which were written at about 900 BCE mention (in low terms, obviously) those who say in their heart "there is no god." Dobra, I respect your right to believe there is no God and your courage in joining and debating on a forum which is probably vastly a theistic population. However, in a spirit of honest debate, I must share things with you that scholastic Atheist thinkers, such as Kai Neilsen and Bertrand Russell, have admitted. 1) Atheism provides no basis for objective good. An Atheist cannot logically disavow or avow a moral code purely on the basis of reason. "We have not been able to show that reason requires the moral point of view, or that all really rational persons should not be individual egoists or classical amoralists. Reason doesn't decide here. The picture I have painted for you is not a pleasant one. Reflection on it depresses me . . . . Pure practical reason, even with a good knowledge of the facts, will not take you to morality." -Kai Nielsen 2) Atheism provides no basis for the equality of mankind. Evolution is by nature, an elitist structure where the most evolved have the most power. There is no basis for the equality of human beings without a pragmatic assumption. I'm not saying that Atheists are not moral people; You can be a very moral, upstanding Atheist. However, you cannot logically justify or explain why you do good apart from a baseless assumption that good exists; you have to assume that certain things are good as an Atheist to get anywhere in moral matters, which is terribly subjective and easy to abuse. Without the existence of Divinity or some kind of a Supreme Being, "good" and "evil" are words without purpose. There are only instincts, and we choose between those instincts out of convenience or pragmatism purely based on our own self-interest (note I did not say selfishness, there is a difference). Atheism itself is kind of difficult to justify logically; are you saying that for every being that exists, that being is not God? How do you know? Have you met each and every being that exists? If you want to talk about Soft Agnosticism, which is "I do not know if there is a God, but I'm open to the evidence," or Hard Agnosticism "I do not know if there is a God, but I know that no one can know if there is a God," we can also talk about those positions. Atheism is more difficult to defend than either of those positions, also.

Glenn Beck - The 912 Project : Three Police Officers Killed in Pittsburgh Shooting

Mon, 6 Apr 2009 22:17:14 +0000

Right on. We need to make the intellectual argument that a government using pre-emptive strikes, legislatively, is a recipe for tyranny. As Dr. Paul has noted, the people should not be presumed guilty until proven innocent.

Glenn Beck - The 912 Project : Three Police Officers Killed in Pittsburgh Shooting

Mon, 6 Apr 2009 21:01:36 +0000

"That is why we need to take away the right to own guns! If no one has guns, no one will be shot by them." No, the criminals (who do not respect laws) will find ways to acquire guns, and will use them against the law-abiding citizens who do not. Criminals have even less to fear when they know none of the average people are armed. "We all (enlightened ones) know that guns are going away... we are going to chip away one step at a time until it happens. It how we do things... I mean really... gay marriage in a country boy state?" I'll bet your enlightened. Probably about as much as those who considered themselves the "enlightened ones" in the 20's and loved Mussolini and Hitler before his annexation of Austria and Poland. Funny how the enlightened ones never see it until it's too late.

Glenn Beck - The 912 Project : Three Police Officers Killed in Pittsburgh Shooting

Mon, 6 Apr 2009 20:49:08 +0000

Those who disagree that capital punishment is a deterrent have never been to Saudi Arabia.

Glenn Beck - The 912 Project : Three Police Officers Killed in Pittsburgh Shooting

Mon, 6 Apr 2009 20:47:59 +0000

Talking about the possibility of Obama "taking our guns" doesn't cause violence. By the way, I find it shameful that people on this forum are attacking you for honestly speaking your mind, though. Let me make a few points: My belief is that the overemphasized point in all this is that "he thought Obama was going to take his guns." There is nothing wrong with believing that Obama is going to take guns. That isn't the crux of this. The argument is that *Because he believed Obama was going to take guns away, he became violent," so those who argue that Obama is taking away guns are at fault. The fault here is that he thought violence was the solution. If Obama was really planning on taking away guns, and this man got violent, wouldn't it stand to reason that regardless of Obama's plans, the fact that this man shot police officers is the part that is wrong? Not the fact that "He did it because he had an irrational fear"? The irrational fear is entirely periphery to this whole situation. The fact is he got violent because of his beliefs. That's it. People getting violent because we are asking questions about matters of facts is not our fault. It is their fault, and no one else's. What happened to individual responsibility, rather than incriminating people who are doing nothing wrong (just discussing whether or not something is true)? Are individual citizens guilty until proven innocent, so the government has to pre-emptively take their rights away, just in case they are one of those conservative nutcases? If someone became violent because they thought animals were being abused and shot police officers, that would be no different; their beliefs are not the problem, their actions and reactions are. Should we persecute PETA for having violent people in their midst and blame them for splinter groups whom they do not support but use their rhetoric to justify their violence? By the way, Obama's voting and interview record clearly shows that he will hamper law-abiding citizens from owning guns; economically or legally, or both. He's already tried it. He says lots of good things, but his actions are never congruent with his rhetoric. See http://www.ontheissues.org/domestic/Barack_Obama_...

Glenn Beck - The 912 Project : Bonuses at Freddie and Fannie are now in question. Barney Frank says "hold on here"

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 02:13:45 +0000

"As far as a new party, until they get adequate funding and win some meaningful elections they will never "As far as a new party, until they get adequate funding and win some meaningful elections they will never gain traction." This is correct. Both parties have installed certain mechanisms that make it extremely difficult and expensive for third party candidates to be heard, enter debates, or even be on the ballot. They are maintaining their position through these means, and through the statement some potential third-party voters give: "I'd vote for him if there was a chance he could win." Funny how we pre-determine that someone can't win, then don't vote for them because they can't, which makes it impossible for them to win.

Glenn Beck - The 912 Project : Proposed "Cap & Trade" Policy Looks Like A Regressive Tax

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 01:45:33 +0000

I'm with you except for this: "2: George W. Bush will become the President of the Republic of Texas .You might not think that he talks too pretty, but we haven't had another terrorist attack," By the way, I'd like to sell you space alien insurance. Every client who has had my insurance has never had a space alien attack! "and the economy was fine until the effects of the Democrats lowering the qualifications for home loans came to roost." I strongly recommend you do more reading on this subject. Bush lowered the qualifications to some degree and encouraged Fannie and Freddie to buy more subprime loans. He did not move us into the direction of a more free market, he just continued Clinton's policies more slowly. He did not protest to the reigning view of Keynesian stimulus as the solution to recession. As soon as he came in office, he faced a strong recession and therefore took action to stimulate the economy, and Greenspan cooperated and dropped interest rates to 1 percent. Obama has entered the scene with a worse scenario, but he's doing the exact same thing; he is reinflating a bubble that hasn't been allowed to fully burst since the 70s. Reagan allowed a great deal of correction to occur, but not all of it was resolved in part because he ran a heavy debt (one of the biggest regrets he had about his administration). More government spending (Bush's policy as well as Obama's) will always maintain unproductive entities and prevent the private market from fully correcting faulty institutions and mechanisms. If Bush had allowed the first recession in 2001 to run its course and had not interfered (and bragged about how short the recession was), the current crisis would be less severe. Recessions are not a problem, they are a solution.