Multi-culturalism boon or bane?

[Comic Book Guy]

Originally Posted by inked

I do love the exhibition of blind faith in the teeth of the evidence! Especially when it comes from stalwart relativists like CBG and BJ.

The evidence or examples of this being ?

I deduce that the more accurate description of what you say you're feeling is "very self-satisfying", as you've presented no argument, evidence or demonstration of insight or knowledge. It goes without my saying that it's not all admirable.

[Tessar]

No more discussion on that train of thought, please. That is a personal dig and it can only devolve further from where it started. Either show the reason a person is wrong with facts, or drop the point because you don't think they can understand it.

There is more than one guilty party, which is why I am saying this publicly... especially considering I just issued a warning.

[GrayMouser]

Some rather...interesting theories going around here.

The USSR and the other members of the Communist International certainly were socialist. "Communism" is the most extreme form of socialism, in which all goods are held in common and no markets operate- the social condition which Marx described as "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs."

In Marxist theory this stage would be reached after the overthrow of capitalism and a transitional stage of socialism. Neither the Soviet Union or any of the other "Communist" states ever claimed to have reached this condition"; they all considered themselves to be in the transitional period of socialism, where the means of production were collectively owned, but a market operated both for wage labour and consumers.

Mao boasted that China would jump from socialism straight into communism; the result was the disastrous "Great Leap Forward" in 1957 (30 million+ dead of starvation) and Pol Pot tried the same thing from an even worse situation with even worse results.

[GrayMouser]

But of course there are/were many other forms of socialism around- guild socialism, syndicalism, anarcho-socialism, the Israeli kibbutzim, Christian socialism "One Big Union" (the Wobblies) and many other experiments in what Marx dismissed as 'utopian' socialism.

Within Marxism there was always the "official" Communist Party- Moscow stooges- and various other alphabet soup parties, fronts, vanguards, militant tendencies, usually at daggers drawn- see "Life of Brian" and the People's Judean Liberation Front (not to be confused with the Judean People's Liberation Front or (gasp) the People's Liberation Front of Judea.

And of course the "Democratic Socialists" ( capitalised to mark it as a distinct movement); basically the various left-wing political parties belonging to the Socialist International: the Labour Party in Britain; German Social Democrats and others in northern Europe; French and other southern European Socialists, NDP in Canada and the Australian Labor Party (not Labour) and other equivalents around the world, who have generally evolved into mild welfare-statism, abandoning the ideas of nationalisation which they originally held.

[GrayMouser]

Originally Posted by Insidious Rex

On a related note Ive always found it interesting that North Korea likes to officially call itself the DEMOCRATIC PEOPLES REPUBLIC of Korea (I guess TOTALITARIAN STALINIST DICTATORSHIP wouldnt go over as well with Kim Jong-Il) while South Korea calls itself the REPUBLIC OF KOREA as if North Korea is truly more democratic than South Korea. And of course then theres China...

The rule of thumb was that any nation that called itself "Democratic", wasn't;
any nation that called itself "People's Republic" was based on keeping the people as far as possible from the levers of power.

[GrayMouser]

As for Adam Smith, while he wasn't the absolute cheerleader for laissez-faire capitalism that modern conservatives would make him out to be, he definitely believed in capitalism and the beneficial effects of free-market competition. Yes, he had some scathing opinions of businessmen and their tendency to collude against the public interest, but his solution was government intervention to keep the market free - more Teddy than Franklin, so to speak.

[GrayMouser]

Gwai said:

Indeed, as far as I can tell, there is no more ethical concern in Smith than there is in Machiavelli, and this is one of my big beefs with him.

The guy who wrote "The Theory of Moral Sentiments"?

Smith believed, as a good Enlightenment Theist, in a benevolent Deity who had established a moral law by implanting in our breasts a feeling of sympathy toward others. He also believed that, in the cruel world we live in, such a feeling is insufficiently strong to overcome our selfish desires, on a universal scale.

As a result we focus our limited facilities on those closest to us- spouse, children, family neighbours, communities, countries.

Thanks to Divine Providence ordering the Universe the way it is, our own selfish desires lead to the greater good- this is where the idea of the "Invisible Hand" comes in.

The administration of the great system of the universe ... the care of the universal happiness of all rational and sensible beings, is the business of God and not of man. To man is allotted a much humbler department, but one much more suitable to the weakness of his powers, and to the narrowness of his comprehension: the care of his own happiness, of that of his family, his friends, his country.... But though we are ... endowed with a very strong desire of those ends, it has been entrusted to the slow and uncertain determinations of our reason to find out the proper means of bringing them about. Nature has directed us to the greater part of these by original and immediate instincts. Hunger, thirst, the passion which unites the two sexes, and the dread of pain, prompt us to apply those means for their own sakes, and without any consideration
of their tendency to those beneficent ends which the great Director of nature intended to produce by them.


... In spite of their natural selfishness and rapacity, though they mean only their own conveniency, though the sole end which they propose ... be the gratification of their own vain and insatiable desires, they divide with the poor the produce of all their improvements. They are led by an invisible hand to make nearly the same distribution of the necessaries of life, which would have been made, had the earth been divided into equal portions among all its inhabitants, and thus without intending it, without knowing it, advance the interest of the society.
n of their tendency to those beneficent ends which the great Director of nature intended to produce by them.
......

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_The...ral_Sentiments

(Full disclosure- have read "Wealth of Nations' but only extracts from "Moral sentiments")

[GrayMouser]

Originally Posted by inked

if an occurrence is in Africa among soccer fans, is it multicultural or merely local?

If an occurence is in Africa among Christians supported by American Churches, is it multi-cultural or merely local?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/22/us...er=rss&emc=rss

http://www.talk2action.org/story/2010/6/19/71031/5867

[inked]

You can go to the Mall in Gaza!

http://www.tomgrossmedia.com/mideast...es/001127.html

Now that's American Western multiculturalism at its most capitalistic!

[Comic Book Guy]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100720/...bian_prom_date

Bigoted ogres disgraced and harmed financially. What an odd, backwards society America is.

[inked]

I know, but the ACLU is like that!

[GrayMouser]

Originally Posted by Comic Book Guy

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100720/...bian_prom_date

Bigoted ogres disgraced and harmed financially. What an odd, backwards society America is.

While congratulations are due to Ireland for passing civil partnership laws for gays on Tuesday, I notice your country has been hauled up in front of the EU Court for violation of civil liberties due to its highly restrictive abortion laws.

A little less crowing, maybe?

[Comic Book Guy]

Indeed, we could all do that, but it's more fun to poke fun at other cultures we don't play a part in or hold responsibility for? The Republic of Ireland still has a very archaic but recent enacted blasphemy law! If that was taken seriously we'd be dragged back to the days of bog-trotting obscurantism!

[inked]

Indeed, without the scientific evidence that life in truth begins at fertilization, on might be justified in considering that life is legally defined. But since even the most illiterate might learn from pictures that life begins at fertilization (witness the elephants, dogs, and cats, to name a few seen on the Discovery Channel or Animal Planet), it is indefensible to slaughter the unborn in the name of "rights". Whom, exactly, has such a right, if the mother's life is not in immediate danger? Why, the biggest, strongest, and most wielding of power - a la Voldemort (the contemporary representation of that N word German philosopher of power who gave us, via the Third Reich, Hitler).

One might say that the way a society treats its most vulnerable members is a measure of its civilization. But that leaves most of the Western world prostrate in its alleged defense of "rights" and reveals it to be solely materialistic.

Well, one reaps what one sows.

Then. again, a nice turn in the pool at Gaza should relieve such concerns if they dare raise their heads above the water to interfere with our selfish enjoyments:http://www.tomgrossmedia.com/mideast...es/001127.html .

Nice pool for a blockaded in-humane embargo, eh?

[Jonathan]

Originally Posted by inked

Indeed, without the scientific evidence that life in truth begins at fertilization, on might be justified in considering that life is legally defined. But since even the most illiterate might learn from pictures that life begins at fertilization (witness the elephants, dogs, and cats, to name a few seen on the Discovery Channel or Animal Planet), it is indefensible to slaughter the unborn in the name of "rights".

No, the concept of "life" and its beginning a matter of semantics. And culture too, if we're to stay somewhat on topic here. Ask a Christian and life begins at conception. Ask a Jew and it begins at birth. Ask a cell biologist and they might say life began billions of years ago and, all living organisms today are just branches of that first piece of life. It's not realistic to assume the existence of a "truth" of where/when the life of an organism begins.

(Nota bene, the ethics of abortion is a different matter which I don't feel like bringing up).

Originally Posted by inked

Then. again, a nice turn in the pool at Gaza should relieve such concerns if they dare raise their heads above the water to interfere with our selfish enjoyments:http://www.tomgrossmedia.com/mideast...es/001127.html.

Isn't that the modus operandi of media worldwide, to favour the reporting of humanitarian crises over humanitarian triumphs?
But maybe there's a point in that, since it's the crises we all want (and need) to rectify.

[inked]

Wow. Speaking of Mao and culture and multiculturalism:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...ryId=128546334

Life as defined by science not convenience nor semantics, Jonathan. But, hey, science doesn't count when it interferes with our sexual expressions and their natural concommittants. I strongly suspect that the programmatic destruction of in utero whales or seals would be met with a different response. As long as it's only in utero humans is there a "semantic" discussion.

[Comic Book Guy]

Originally Posted by inked

Indeed, without the scientific evidence that life in truth begins at fertilization, on might be justified in considering that life is legally defined. But since even the most illiterate might learn from pictures that life begins at fertilization (witness the elephants, dogs, and cats, to name a few seen on the Discovery Channel or Animal Planet), it is indefensible to slaughter the unborn in the name of "rights". Whom, exactly, has such a right, if the mother's life is not in immediate danger? Why, the biggest, strongest, and most wielding of power - a la Voldemort (the contemporary representation of that N word German philosopher of power who gave us, via the Third Reich, Hitler).

One might say that the way a society treats its most vulnerable members is a measure of its civilization. But that leaves most of the Western world prostrate in its alleged defense of "rights" and reveals it to be solely materialistic.

Well, one reaps what one sows.

Then. again, a nice turn in the pool at Gaza should relieve such concerns if they dare raise their heads above the water to interfere with our selfish enjoyments:http://www.tomgrossmedia.com/mideast...es/001127.html .

Nice pool for a blockaded in-humane embargo, eh?

Are you addressing me with this non-sequiter about abortion, a vague passage about Hitler (N-word? What? Do mean Nietzsche, who died a good 30 years before the Nazis came to power?) and economic life in Palestine?

It's funny that moralising about "vulnerable members" is immediately followed by a witless sneer about a humanitarian crisis in the Middle-East. If the "writer" is belittling the undisputed suffering of people of Gaza, which includes children who have been lucky enough to be born, then that raises the question: is he/her aware of this hypocrisy?

[BeardofPants]

I think he's trying to emulate 'jesus tap dancing christ'.

[Comic Book Guy]

Originally Posted by BeardofPants

I think he's trying to emulate 'jesus tap dancing christ'.

Que, BeardofPants?

[BeardofPants]

Sometimes the funneh is only in my head. /facepalm

I meant that he was tap dancing (avoiding the argument). Hence emulating the slang phrase jesus tap dancing christ.