Yet when you speak of the poor, those struggling simply to survive, suddenly they are the entitled ones. Suddenly, they are the ones who feel they "deserve" money, when those of wealth are screaming and raging about having to pay taxes, having to abide by regulations and oversight, having to take some shred of responsibility for their actions.
No one is "entitled" to food. No one is "entitled" to water. No one is "entitled" to clean air. These are not entitlements. These are necessities. Things needed to survive. Take away food, and they starve. Take away water, and they dehydrate. Take away clean air, and they choke. Take these away, and they will die.
Yet our times are more complicated, more complex, than times before. Food, water? They require something called money. They must be bought with money, and if you take that money away, they no longer have the food or the water that they require to survive. They are not concerned about entitlements, they do not feel entitled to the money of others - their minds are too busy, too elsewhere, towards just trying to find what precious little they can.
Look who advocates for such stark differences. Is it necessarily the poor arguing in favor of such welfare? Such is a crucial idea of the left-wing, and the left-wing is certainly not entirely of the poor. It is because we believe in the idea of intrinsic good of altruism. That it is of such importance that it is one of the fundamental concepts around which left-wing policies are pivot around. The willingness to sacrifice as a means of responsibility.
Then you look at the right-wing. Now I may imagine you might expect something like "but the right isn't all rich," and you are right. But what is it that they hold in common in this issue? That altruism takes a backseat to self-interest.
"...it is natural for liberals to see the federal government as a strong nurturant parent, responsible for making sure that the basic needs of its citizens are met: food, shelter, education, health care, and opportunities for self-development. A government that lets many of its citizens go hungry, homeless, uneducated, or sick while the majority of its citizens have more, often much more, than these basic needs met is an immoral, irresponsible government. And citizens who are not willing to support such governmental obligations are immoral, irresponsible citizens.
Liberals also see many social programs as functioning to promote fairness. They see certain people and groups of people as "disadvantaged." For historical, social, or health reasons, which are not faults of their own, such people have been prevented from being able to compete fairly in pursuit of self-interest. Racism, sexism, poverty, the lack of education, and homophobia are seen not only as barriers to empathy and nurturance, but also as barriers to the free pursuit of self-interest and self-development by disadvantaged individuals and groups. For liberals, it is the job of the government to maintain fairness, in the service of both moral self-interest and self-development. Hence it is the job of the government to "level the playing field" for the disadvantaged."
"Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think," George Lakoff, pages 179-180
In other words. altruism is essential because through altruism will people be able to better develop themselves, and as such, society. There is no "entitlement" to, as Lakoff says, self-interest and self-development. Even those who are wealthier left-wingers show concern for those at the bottom by the very virtue that they are at the bottom. That they have been given crap that they often are not responsible for themselves, but rather from generations past. They are born into poverty, and unless something is done, will die in poverty, the cycle to continue. To strip away welfare from them is to let them starve, let them dehydrate, let them freeze in the cold, let them get sick and die. And those for such removal of the essential help they need are indirectly responsible for their suffering by their actions of taking away that which they need to survive like decent people.
"To them [conservatives], social programs amount to coddling people - spoiling them. Instead of having to learn to fend for themselves, people can depend on the public dole. This makes them morally weak, removing the need for the self-discipline and willpower. Such moral weakness is a form of immorality. And so, conservatives see social programs as immoral...
The myth of America as the Land of Opportunity reinforces this. If anyone, no matter how poor, can discipline himself to clime the ladder of opportunity, then those that don't do so have only themselves to blame. The Ladder-of-Opportunity metaphor is an interesting one. It implies that the ladder is there, that everyone as access to it, and that the ony thing involved in becoming successful and being able to take care of oneself is putting out the energy to climb it. If you are not successful, then it is your own fault. You just haven't tried hard enough.
From this perspective, a morally justifiable social program might be something like disaster relief to help self-disciplined and generally self-reliant people get back on their feed after a flood or fire or earthquake. There is a world of difference, from the conservative perspective, between having government help a victim of a natural disaster (who does not have himself to blame for his misfortune) and having government help someone who is merely poor (who, in this land of opportunity, has only himself to blame for his poverty).
In addition, there is a related consideration that militates against social programs in the conservative worldview, what we have called the Morality of Reward and Punishment.
Strict Father morality [conservative model of morality] assumes that it is human nature to be motivated by rewards and deterred by punishments. If people were not rewarded for being moral and punished for being immoral, there would be no morality. If people were not rewarded for being self-disciplined and punished for being slothful, there would be no self-discipline and society would break down. Therefore, any social or political system in which people get things they don't earn, or are rewarded for lack of self-discipline or for immoral behavior, is simply an immoral system. Conservatives see the very existence of social programs as unnatural and immoral in this way."
"Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think," George Lakoff, pages 180-182
Just look at how they speak of the poor and jobless. Does "get a job" ring a bell? That they are lazy? That they are "welfare queens?" Or let's take it even further, what about abortion? That the mother must have the child, and why? Because that is her punishment! We've all heard it - don't want children, don't have sex. There is that self-discipline and willpower right there! Criminal justice? The death penalty is a deterrent! Drugs? Just say no!
They don't give an ass about altruism. Born into poverty? That is your fault! You want out? Try harder then, lazy bum!
This entitlement bull is a conservative invention! It was made to fit the narrative that the poor are moochers, that the poor deserve to starve! It's their fault, and starving is their punishment. And if they don't want to starve, then they can grow a pair, man up, and do some actual work. Never mind they might work two or three jobs just to get what scraps they already have. That's not work! That's laziness! You know what's really hard? Popping into a board meeting once a month, making a few phone calls, hitting it with some contacts, while you sit there on your ass behind a desk in a window office, only to go home in your private limo to your thirty-room mansion.
They think there is some magical correlation between effort and gains. There isn't. A man can work until his back breaks and make little, while another can sit on his fat ass and let a computer handle everything and gain everything. This idea that the poor think they are entitled is a load of bull. The truly entitled ones are those who scream about paying taxes with the money they never use, the money that just sits there, the money going to their seventeenth sports car, to their 90-inch widescreen LCD TVs, to the yachts they go out on two or three times a year, to their private jet, to their two or three football field-sized properties. Those who think money has some kind of special transcendence, that they think every dollar they earn should not go anywhere because it's theirs, those who complain about high taxes when they'll still make more money that God after the costs, those who complain about being unable to stash away their money in untouchable places, never to see the light of day, those who would rather horde their money like spoiled rodents than have it go somewhere where it could saves lives, education children, feed the hungry, heat the cold. No, give them all the middle finger, this money is mine and not a single one of you will see a dime of it.
They are the true face of entitlement.
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The idea of using an item as currency seems kind of silly, since it ties the value of money to the quantity of a particular resource (like the gold standard did in real life). I will grant that gold is probably the superior choice of paper between those two options, though.
Also, you getting banned just because you unknowingly used the wrong currency is a really stupid reason to get a ban. Some "friend" that was.
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As someone who's actually read the Communist Manifesto, I'm going to have to call ******** on this one. The Communist Manifesto would not support NDAA, because communists support the dissolution of the state. Communists also, at least theoretically, dislike war, since it is a mechanism for bourgeoisie to fight each other at the expense of the proletariat. Water fluoridation is nowhere mentioned in the manifesto. Communists don't like our system of money (also, the manifesto was written well before the financial system you criticize). The manifesto did not speak on the subject of mass media, since it didn't exist at the time of it's writing; however, it explicitly approved of anything that might help it overthrow the current order, which I assume would include media, and they certainly wouldn't persecute journalists and whistleblowers if they actually went by the manifesto. The communists would not have approved of Obamacare, as it operates through private insurance companies instead of having the collective provide healthcare. The communists said nothing on the subject of organic food, since pretty much everything was organic back in 1848; most modern communists are probably the sorts of people that would approve of organic food, as genetically modified food is a way for the bourgeosie to profit. Auschwitz was built by Nazis, who hated communists.
Why must you be so wrong on everything? Do you do this on purpose?
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What sort of Bush statistics should I get? Economic (unemployment rate, deficit, etc), or social (teen pregnancy rate, number of protest movements, etc)? As for Romney and Obama, well, Romney's too much of a flip-flopper to find anything decisive on him, and he was a liberal Republican as governor, so Ann could just put anything I find against onto that, and Obama's too conservative to find a whole lot of good in.
Ron Paul is insane, but most of the things I disagree with him on are things that Coulter would enthusiastically support (ie, his statement that the founding fathers intended for the church to eclipse the government in importance).
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Go Oinkers!
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I think the clock is more useful than the golden hoe :tongue.gif:. At least the clock theoretically has a use.
Also, I still wouldn't use gold for magic, unless it was for something like Respiration or Aqua Affinity that didn't lose durability as it was used. And the magical advantage iron has over diamond really doesn't make it worth using over diamond unless you're either short on diamonds or don't have an exp grinder, IMO.
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I've gone over the wiki page repeatedly, but it just isn't very clear.
It says that the modified enchantment level is equal to the enchantment level + a random number between 0 and the enchantability of the item + 1, and then that number is multiplied by a number between 0.75 and 1.25. However, the highest possible value this equation could give is (50 (max enchant level) + 25 (gold armour) + 1) * 1.25, which would equal 95. However, the table on the page lists enchantment ranges above this (Efficiency V goes up to 111).
What am I doing wrong?
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I STRONGLY disagree, 7-zip has been much nicer so far, and doesn't even bombard me with ads telling me to pay for the software :smile.gif:.