Do You Guy's Know The Difference Between:-

[Oz and the Orchestra]

View attachment 343867

______

Well done, Sir.

Without saying a word, you have effectively shown this OP from England that the Colonists are just as well informed as when we kicked their pompous asses out about 250 years ago.

I can have a gun, I have to pass a background check and I can't just get any firearm but that's not very different from you. I fail to see how the Bill of rights gives you protections that the government can't take away nor do I see why owning a weapon would have any impact on it. Laws can and have been changed before. 17 times to be exact in the case of the Bill of rights. Many countries have the same rights codified in either their normal lawbooks or their constitutions. So if that's your parameter for measuring freedom quite a few countries have them. So what other parameters do you consider supportive of your assertion that the US is the best country in the world by an order of magnitude?

You can have a gun? Seriously? Can you have this?

Or this?

Our Constitution has been changed 17 times in the last 229 years, post Bill-of-Rights. It's not easily done but it's done by a process. It's not just changing a law. Rights coded in laws passed by legislators or dictated by government are not rights; they're privileges. Our Bill of Rights grants no rights at all; it acknowledges and protects rights.

Tell me a protected right in any country that we do not have here in the US. I don't think you can. Oh, sure, you'll say the right to not be shot by a gun but that right exists everywhere but is guaranteed nowhere. In fact, it is less guaranteed in countries where civilians don't have guns and history proves it.

So, give me a right that any country has that we don't have.

I'll tell you one thing you won't be able to tell me is a country other than the United States where their rights are protected against government by the people, themselves.

Listen, - Cotton eyed Joe, your always going on about your War of Ind. Truth is we'd given up on bothering to cross the pond just to get in a blow. The real reason you wanted independence was because Britain was in the process of abolishing slavery which didn't suit the likes of slave owning traitors Washington and his gang, Also because you wanted to keep hanging women for witchcraft (though in reality cos they knocked you back) as in Salem, that Britain had long phased out.

Why on earth would any right minded person need all those guns? I can't believe there really yours! What possible threat do you face in Oklahoma? -The odd twister, the odd home grown terrorist - Mc Vey. Neither of which can be -protected against with guns anymore than corona virus.

Do the right thing, sell them and give proceeds to the World Health Organization!

 

[forkup]

View attachment 343867

______

Well done, Sir.

Without saying a word, you have effectively shown this OP from England that the Colonists are just as well informed as when we kicked their pompous asses out about 250 years ago.

I can have a gun, I have to pass a background check and I can't just get any firearm but that's not very different from you. I fail to see how the Bill of rights gives you protections that the government can't take away nor do I see why owning a weapon would have any impact on it. Laws can and have been changed before. 17 times to be exact in the case of the Bill of rights. Many countries have the same rights codified in either their normal lawbooks or their constitutions. So if that's your parameter for measuring freedom quite a few countries have them. So what other parameters do you consider supportive of your assertion that the US is the best country in the world by an order of magnitude?

You can have a gun? Seriously? Can you have this?

Or this?

Our Constitution has been changed 17 times in the last 229 years, post Bill-of-Rights. It's not easily done but it's done by a process. It's not just changing a law. Rights coded in laws passed by legislators or dictated by government are not rights; they're privileges. Our Bill of Rights grants no rights at all; it acknowledges and protects rights.

Tell me a protected right in any country that we do not have here in the US. I don't think you can. Oh, sure, you'll say the right to not be shot by a gun but that right exists everywhere but is guaranteed nowhere. In fact, it is less guaranteed in countries where civilians don't have guns and history proves it.

So, give me a right that any country has that we don't have.

I'll tell you one thing you won't be able to tell me is a country other than the United States where their rights are protected against government by the people, themselves.

Listen, - Cotton eyed Joe, your always going on about your War of Ind. Truth is we'd given up on bothering to cross the pond just to get in a blow. The real reason you wanted independence was because Britain was in the process of abolishing slavery which didn't suit the likes of slave owning traitors Washington and his gang, Also because you wanted to keep hanging women for witchcraft (though in reality cos they knocked you back) as in Salem, that Britain had long phased out.

Why on earth would any right minded person need all those guns? I can't believe there really yours! What possible threat do you face in Oklahoma? -The odd twister, the odd home grown terrorist - Mc Vey. Neither of which can be -protected against with guns anymore than corona virus.

Do the right thing, sell them and give proceeds to the World Health Organization!

No I can't own all those. On the other hand you can't own just any weapon either so it's a matter of degrees. Changing any law is done by process. I don't see how that supports your assertion.

As to protected rights we have that you don't. The right to quality medical care is protected in my country. Or the right to send my kid to any school I select for him regardless of my address. The right to own pot springs to mind if that's your thing. Probably can find some more but suffice to say I can name rights that I have that you don't.

 

[Levant]

You can have a gun? Seriously? Can you have this?

Do soldiers on the battlefield attack with fifty automatic rifles each and thousands of rounds of ammunition carried on their backs? Obviously they do not. Why would that be? Because the most deadly threat is a man with ONE rifle, not a hundred, with a small amount of ammunition, not the thousands of rounds which seem to frighten you so much. Switzerland has a trained and retired military which keeps their automatic weapons and ammunition for them at their residences in case they are needed. The Swiss don't go around murdering people with their assault rifles, do they?
Neither do 99.99999% of Americans with such weapons. As I recall, most of the mass murderers in the U.S. have been Democrats. Facts such as these trigger Democrats and bring out their hatred, anger, and mendacity.

In typical leftist fashion when they've lost the debate, you're changing the topic. We're not talking about how useful such a gun collection is in a battle - though it is very useful; the owner of that collection can arm his entire neighborhood. The man with a single rifle can fight only until the first spring or firing pin breaks.

Imagine if a bunch of Jews in Germany had owned collections like that? Even those others who were pacivists before the Final Solution, could have fought back.

But we weren't talking about that. We were talking about liberty and freedom. Can you have that? That was actually one of the smaller gun collections Bing showed me when I searched for gun rooms.

 

[Levant]

Listen, - Cotton eyed Joe, your always going on about your War of Ind. Truth is we'd given up on bothering to cross the pond just to get in a blow. The real reason you wanted independence was because Britain was in the process of abolishing slavery which didn't suit the likes of slave owning traitors Washington and his gang, Also because you wanted to keep hanging women for witchcraft (though in reality cos they knocked you back) as in Salem, that Britain had long phased out.

Why on earth would any right minded person need all those guns? I can't believe there really yours! What possible threat do you face in Oklahoma? -The odd twister, the odd home grown terrorist - Mc Vey. Neither of which can be -protected against with guns anymore than corona virus.

Do the right thing, sell them and give proceeds to the World Health Organization!

I didn't say they're mine. But you're full of shit. The British didn't fight the war for 8 years because they just didn't want to cross the pond any more. Not much is more irritating than phony liberals from other countries who are so jealous of US success, so angry and humiliated that we had to, and did, save their asses in two world wars, that they have nothing more important in their lives than to spend their free time on the computer bashing the United States, and lying to do it, instead of on political forums debating the needs of their own countries.

The Salem Witch Trials were in the 1690s. The British did that, not the US. The US is not the nation of slavery; it's the nation that ended it. The nations that built the slave economy in America were Spain, Portugal, nations across Africa, UK, France, and others. Slaves were imported into North America for more than 150 years before the United States was formed.

It is easy to quote revisionist historians who want to trash the United States about slavery but the fact is that it was the UK who was the nation of slave owners and created the slave economy in the United States. Our pride is that we ended it. Your shame is that you created it and ruled it for over 150 years.

 

[Oz and the Orchestra]

You can have a gun? Seriously? Can you have this?

Do soldiers on the battlefield attack with fifty automatic rifles each and thousands of rounds of ammunition carried on their backs? Obviously they do not. Why would that be? Because the most deadly threat is a man with ONE rifle, not a hundred, with a small amount of ammunition, not the thousands of rounds which seem to frighten you so much. Switzerland has a trained and retired military which keeps their automatic weapons and ammunition for them at their residences in case they are needed. The Swiss don't go around murdering people with their assault rifles, do they?
Neither do 99.99999% of Americans with such weapons. As I recall, most of the mass murderers in the U.S. have been Democrats. Facts such as these trigger Democrats and bring out their hatred, anger, and mendacity.

In typical leftist fashion when they've lost the debate, you're changing the topic. We're not talking about how useful such a gun collection is in a battle - though it is very useful; the owner of that collection can arm his entire neighborhood. The man with a single rifle can fight only until the first spring or firing pin breaks.

Imagine if a bunch of Jews in Germany had owned collections like that? Even those others who were pacivists before the Final Solution, could have fought back.

But we weren't talking about that. We were talking about liberty and freedom. Can you have that? That was actually one of the smaller gun collections Bing showed me when I searched for gun rooms.

Listen, - Cotton eyed Joe, your always going on about your War of Ind. Truth is we'd given up on bothering to cross the pond just to get in a blow. The real reason you wanted independence was because Britain was in the process of abolishing slavery which didn't suit the likes of slave owning traitors Washington and his gang, Also because you wanted to keep hanging women for witchcraft (though in reality cos they knocked you back) as in Salem, that Britain had long phased out.

Why on earth would any right minded person need all those guns? I can't believe there really yours! What possible threat do you face in Oklahoma? -The odd twister, the odd home grown terrorist - Mc Vey. Neither of which can be -protected against with guns anymore than corona virus.

Do the right thing, sell them and give proceeds to the World Health Organization!

I didn't say they're mine. But you're full of shit. The British didn't fight the war for 8 years because they just didn't want to cross the pond any more. Not much is more irritating than phony liberals from other countries who are so jealous of US success, so angry and humiliated that we had to, and did, save their asses in two world wars, that they have nothing more important in their lives than to spend their free time on the computer bashing the United States, and lying to do it, instead of on political forums debating the needs of their own countries.

The Salem Witch Trials were in the 1690s. The British did that, not the US. The US is not the nation of slavery; it's the nation that ended it. The nations that built the slave economy in America were Spain, Portugal, nations across Africa, UK, France, and others. Slaves were imported into North America for more than 150 years before the United States was formed.

It is easy to quote revisionist historians who want to trash the United States about slavery but the fact is that it was the UK who was the nation of slave owners and created the slave economy in the United States. Our pride is that we ended it. Your shame is that you created it and ruled it for over 150 years.

It would have made no difference if a group of Jews had a bunch of guns - they wouldn't have used them.. The Nazi's were the elected government and did things gradually.

Britain abolished slavery in 1833, It took the yanks another 32 years and a civil war,

You didn't 'save us' in WWII, We defended the world against the most evil regime in human history yet you waited till Hitler declared war on you to enter,

 

[Oz and the Orchestra]

Listen, - Cotton eyed Joe, your always going on about your War of Ind. Truth is we'd given up on bothering to cross the pond just to get in a blow. The real reason you wanted independence was because Britain was in the process of abolishing slavery which didn't suit the likes of slave owning traitors Washington and his gang, Also because you wanted to keep hanging women for witchcraft (though in reality cos they knocked you back) as in Salem, that Britain had long phased out.

Why on earth would any right minded person need all those guns? I can't believe there really yours! What possible threat do you face in Oklahoma? -The odd twister, the odd home grown terrorist - Mc Vey. Neither of which can be -protected against with guns anymore than corona virus.

Do the right thing, sell them and give proceeds to the World Health Organization!

I didn't say they're mine. But you're full of shit. The British didn't fight the war for 8 years because they just didn't want to cross the pond any more. Not much is more irritating than phony liberals from other countries who are so jealous of US success, so angry and humiliated that we had to, and did, save their asses in two world wars, that they have nothing more important in their lives than to spend their free time on the computer bashing the United States, and lying to do it, instead of on political forums debating the needs of their own countries.

The Salem Witch Trials were in the 1690s. The British did that, not the US. The US is not the nation of slavery; it's the nation that ended it. The nations that built the slave economy in America were Spain, Portugal, nations across Africa, UK, France, and others. Slaves were imported into North America for more than 150 years before the United States was formed.

It is easy to quote revisionist historians who want to trash the United States about slavery but the fact is that it was the UK who was the nation of slave owners and created the slave economy in the United States. Our pride is that we ended it. Your shame is that you created it and ruled it for over 150 years.

Further if your founding fathers were so advanced in social equality, how come they didn't recognize Gay & Transgender
folk in their Bill of Rights?

 

[danielpalos]

Liberalism/Socialism & Communism?

And hands up if any of you have ever actually read Das Capital?

Our federal form of Government is applied socialism. We have a public social sector and a private capital sector. A duopoly.

 

[danielpalos]

Listen, - Cotton eyed Joe, your always going on about your War of Ind. Truth is we'd given up on bothering to cross the pond just to get in a blow. The real reason you wanted independence was because Britain was in the process of abolishing slavery which didn't suit the likes of slave owning traitors Washington and his gang, Also because you wanted to keep hanging women for witchcraft (though in reality cos they knocked you back) as in Salem, that Britain had long phased out.

Why on earth would any right minded person need all those guns? I can't believe there really yours! What possible threat do you face in Oklahoma? -The odd twister, the odd home grown terrorist - Mc Vey. Neither of which can be -protected against with guns anymore than corona virus.

Do the right thing, sell them and give proceeds to the World Health Organization!

I didn't say they're mine. But you're full of shit. The British didn't fight the war for 8 years because they just didn't want to cross the pond any more. Not much is more irritating than phony liberals from other countries who are so jealous of US success, so angry and humiliated that we had to, and did, save their asses in two world wars, that they have nothing more important in their lives than to spend their free time on the computer bashing the United States, and lying to do it, instead of on political forums debating the needs of their own countries.

The Salem Witch Trials were in the 1690s. The British did that, not the US. The US is not the nation of slavery; it's the nation that ended it. The nations that built the slave economy in America were Spain, Portugal, nations across Africa, UK, France, and others. Slaves were imported into North America for more than 150 years before the United States was formed.

It is easy to quote revisionist historians who want to trash the United States about slavery but the fact is that it was the UK who was the nation of slave owners and created the slave economy in the United States. Our pride is that we ended it. Your shame is that you created it and ruled it for over 150 years.

Further if your founding fathers were so advanced in social equality, how come they didn't recognize Gay & Transgender
folk in their Bill of Rights?

Our Founding Fathers did an most Excellent job at the Convention with our federal Constitution and supreme law of the land. It is not ambiguous in any way, only very well Expressed. Our original Constitution and Bill of Rights were both gender and race neutral from Intelligent Design and Inception.

 

[Levant]

It would have made no difference if a group of Jews had a bunch of guns - they wouldn't have used them.. The Nazi's were the elected government and did things gradually.

Britain abolished slavery in 1833, It took the yanks another 32 years and a civil war,

You didn't 'save us' in WWII, We defended the world against the most evil regime in human history yet you waited till Hitler declared war on you to enter,

Britain abolished slavery in Britain in 1833. They created the mess in the US and it took us a while to clear it up but we stopped the import of slaves in 1807. The BRITISH southern colonies objected to ending slavery and the Union made concessions to get them into the Union with specific intent built into the Constitution to use the Union to end slavery. Slavery of Africans in the west is a European, and specifically BRITISH, legacy. The United States fought a war and lost hundreds of thousands of lives to end what the BRITISH started in THEIR colonies.

Slavery in America is BRITISH sin, more than United States of America sin. You can stick your holier-than-thou head back up your ass now.

Oh, before you go back in that dark hole, without the US, you'd be speaking German. How fucking ungrateful can the British be to pretend now, 60 years later, that you didn't need us to save you from the Germans. What a fucking lie. When the Islamists take over your country, I hope we don't help at all except to take ALL steps necessary to wipe out your military so the Islamists can't use it to attack us.

 

[forkup]

You can have a gun? Seriously? Can you have this?

Do soldiers on the battlefield attack with fifty automatic rifles each and thousands of rounds of ammunition carried on their backs? Obviously they do not. Why would that be? Because the most deadly threat is a man with ONE rifle, not a hundred, with a small amount of ammunition, not the thousands of rounds which seem to frighten you so much. Switzerland has a trained and retired military which keeps their automatic weapons and ammunition for them at their residences in case they are needed. The Swiss don't go around murdering people with their assault rifles, do they?
Neither do 99.99999% of Americans with such weapons. As I recall, most of the mass murderers in the U.S. have been Democrats. Facts such as these trigger Democrats and bring out their hatred, anger, and mendacity.

In typical leftist fashion when they've lost the debate, you're changing the topic. We're not talking about how useful such a gun collection is in a battle - though it is very useful; the owner of that collection can arm his entire neighborhood. The man with a single rifle can fight only until the first spring or firing pin breaks.

Imagine if a bunch of Jews in Germany had owned collections like that? Even those others who were pacivists before the Final Solution, could have fought back.

But we weren't talking about that. We were talking about liberty and freedom. Can you have that? That was actually one of the smaller gun collections Bing showed me when I searched for gun rooms.

Uhm. I answered your question directly without evasion although the question by itself was a switch. If I asked you to support your assertion that the US is freer than other countries and you reply by asking me to list freedoms I have that you don't. You switch the burden of proof by asking me to support an assertion I never made.

Nevertheless, I still answered your question. Then again very ironically, you go off on another poster for switching the subject. I have to say you have some serious balls, just not a lot of self-reflection.

 

[ding]

The foundation is materialism meaning the idea that all change in history is economically driven.

No. That all there is is the material. A humanistic and benevolent concept according to which man does not bear any evil within himself, and all the defects of life are caused by misguided social systems, which must therefore be corrected.

Solzhenitsyn said it best. "Everything beyond physical well-being and the accumulation of material goods, all other human requirements and characteristics of a subtle and higher nature, were left outside the area of attention of state and social systems, as if human life did not have any higher meaning. Thus gaps were left open for evil, and its drafts blow freely today. Mere freedom per se does not in the least solve all the problems of human life and even adds a number of new ones.

And yet in early democracies, as in American democracy at the time of its birth, all individual human rights were granted on the ground that man is God's creature. That is, freedom was given to the individual conditionally, in the assumption of his constant religious responsibility. Such was the heritage of the preceding one thousand years. Two hundred or even fifty years ago, it would have seemed quite impossible, in America, that an individual be granted boundless freedom with no purpose, simply for the satisfaction of his whims.

Subsequently, however, all such limitations were eroded everywhere in the West; a total emancipation occurred from the moral heritage of Christian centuries with their great reserves of mercy and sacrifice. State systems were becoming ever more materialistic. The West has finally achieved the rights of man, and even excess, but man's sense of responsibility to God and society has grown dimmer and dimmer. In the past decades, the legalistic selfishness of the Western approach to the world has reached its peak and the world has found itself in a harsh spiritual crisis and a political impasse. All the celebrated technological achievements of progress, including the conquest of outer space, do not redeem the twentieth century's moral poverty, which no one could have imagined even as late as the nineteenth century.

As humanism in its development was becoming more and more materialistic, it also increasingly allowed concepts to be used first by socialism and then by communism, so that Karl Marx was able to say, in 1844, that "communism is naturalized humanism."

This statement has proved to be not entirely unreasonable. One does not see the same stones in the foundations of an eroded humanism and of any type of socialism: boundless materialism; freedom from religion and religious responsibility (which under Communist regimes attains the stage of antireligious dictatorship); concentration on social structures with an allegedly scientific approach. (This last is typical of both the Age of Enlightenment and of Marxism.) It is no accident that all of communism's rhetorical vows revolve around Man (with a capital M) and his earthly happiness. At first glance it seems an ugly parallel: common traits in the thinking and way of life of today's West and today's East? But such is the logic of materialistic development.

The interrelationship is such, moreover, that the current of materialism which is farthest to the left, and is hence the most consistent, always proves to be stronger, more attractive, and victorious. Humanism which has lost its Christian heritage cannot prevail in this competition. Thus during the past centuries and especially in recent decades, as the process became more acute, the alignment of forces was as follows: Liberalism was inevitably pushed aside by radicalism, radicalism had to surrender to socialism, and socialism could not stand up to communism.

The communist regime in the East could endure and grow due to the enthusiastic support from an enormous number of Western intellectuals who (feeling the kinship!) refused to see communism's crimes, and when they no longer could do so, they tried to justify these crimes. The problem persists: In our Eastern countries, communism has suffered a complete ideological defeat; it is zero and less than zero. And yet Western intellectuals still look at it with considerable interest and empathy, and this is precisely what makes it so immensely difficult for the West to withstand the East.

I am not examining the case of a disaster brought on by a world war and the changes which it would produce in society. But as long as we wake up every morning under a peaceful sun, we must lead an everyday life. Yet there is a disaster which is already very much with us. I am referring to the calamity of an autonomous, irreligious humanistic consciousness.

It has made man the measure of all things on earth — imperfect man, who is never free of pride, self-interest, envy, vanity, and dozens of other defects. We are now paying for the mistakes which were not properly appraised at the beginning of the journey. On the way from the Renaissance to our days we have enriched our experience, but we have lost the concept of a Supreme Complete Entity which used to restrain our passions and our irresponsibility.

We have placed too much hope in politics and social reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life. It is trampled by the party mob in the East, by the commercial one in the West. This is the essence of the crisis: the split in the world is less terrifying than the similarity of the disease afflicting its main sections.

If, as claimed by humanism, man were born only to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to death, his task on earth evidently must be more spiritual: not a total engrossment in everyday life, not the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then their carefree consumption. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one's life journey may become above all an experience of moral growth: to leave life a better human being than one started it.

It is imperative to reappraise the scale of the usual human values; its present incorrectness is astounding. It is not possible that assessment of the President's performance should be reduced to the question of how much money one makes or to the availability of gasoline. Only by the voluntary nurturing in ourselves of freely accepted and serene self-restraint can mankind rise above the world stream of materialism.

Today it would be retrogressive to hold on to the ossified formulas of the Enlightenment. Such social dogmatism leaves us helpless before the trials of our times.

Even if we are spared destruction by war, life will have to change in order not to perish on its own. We cannot avoid reassessing the fundamental definitions of human life and society. Is it true that man is above everything? Is there no Superior Spirit above him? Is it right that man's life and society's activities should be ruled by material expansion above all? Is it permissible to promote such expansion to the detriment of our integral spiritual life?

If the world has not approached its end, it has reached a major watershed in history, equal in importance to the turn from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. It will demand from us a spiritual blaze; we shall have to rise to a new height of vision, to a new level of life, where our physical nature will not be cursed, as in the Middle Ages, but even more importantly, our spiritual being will not be trampled upon, as in the Modern Era.

The ascension is similar to climbing onto the next anthropological stage. No one on earth has any other way left but — upward."

 

[ding]

Marx's theories revolved around the idea that the bourgeoisie exploits the proletariat and takes what they produce for themselves. Marx definitely didn't count on a society where the proletariat would be in a position to buy for themselves most of what they produced (consumer society). His whole theory was built around the idea that that inequality would eventually cause a revolution.

Not exactly, his rhetoric was intended to create a revolution and it has. Europe bought it. And it's happening here too. Cultural Marxism is still Marxism.

 

[ding]

As to the goal of Socialism. Again you are making assertions that reality just doesn't bear out. As I said before the Socialist movement was the driving force for most if not all major social changes, none that I can think of are about uniformity. Universal Suffrage isn't about uniformity it's about giving everybody an equal vote for political representation. Abolishing of child labor is not about uniformity but about giving every child equal rights to an education. The founding of labor unions isn't about uniformity but rather about ensuring workers have not just duties but also rights. If you can think of one feel free to mention it.

It's a religion dressed up as a political/economic system. It's a reaction to Christianity.

 

[ding]

As to me seeing the truth of your predictions at a later date. It's kind of unfalsifiable, isn't it? You can claim that the reason that your prediction hasn't come out is that not sufficient time has passed for the next millennium and there's no way to disprove it. Here's a novel thought though, you could be wrong? Might be worth entertaining... maybe?

Maybe, but time will tell.

Did you notice how the pandemic economic relief in Europe won't be dealt with with being loans but with grants instead. Looks like your beliefs are getting ready to be tested as the richer nations subsidize the poorer nations. It's inevitable and according to you, the right thing to do, right? This is just the beginning of sharing your wealth.

 

[forkup]

The foundation is materialism meaning the idea that all change in history is economically driven.

No. That all there is is the material. A humanistic and benevolent concept according to which man does not bear any evil within himself, and all the defects of life are caused by misguided social systems, which must therefore be corrected.

Solzhenitsyn said it best. "Everything beyond physical well-being and the accumulation of material goods, all other human requirements and characteristics of a subtle and higher nature, were left outside the area of attention of state and social systems, as if human life did not have any higher meaning. Thus gaps were left open for evil, and its drafts blow freely today. Mere freedom per se does not in the least solve all the problems of human life and even adds a number of new ones.

And yet in early democracies, as in American democracy at the time of its birth, all individual human rights were granted on the ground that man is God's creature. That is, freedom was given to the individual conditionally, in the assumption of his constant religious responsibility. Such was the heritage of the preceding one thousand years. Two hundred or even fifty years ago, it would have seemed quite impossible, in America, that an individual be granted boundless freedom with no purpose, simply for the satisfaction of his whims.

Subsequently, however, all such limitations were eroded everywhere in the West; a total emancipation occurred from the moral heritage of Christian centuries with their great reserves of mercy and sacrifice. State systems were becoming ever more materialistic. The West has finally achieved the rights of man, and even excess, but man's sense of responsibility to God and society has grown dimmer and dimmer. In the past decades, the legalistic selfishness of the Western approach to the world has reached its peak and the world has found itself in a harsh spiritual crisis and a political impasse. All the celebrated technological achievements of progress, including the conquest of outer space, do not redeem the twentieth century's moral poverty, which no one could have imagined even as late as the nineteenth century.

As humanism in its development was becoming more and more materialistic, it also increasingly allowed concepts to be used first by socialism and then by communism, so that Karl Marx was able to say, in 1844, that "communism is naturalized humanism."

This statement has proved to be not entirely unreasonable. One does not see the same stones in the foundations of an eroded humanism and of any type of socialism: boundless materialism; freedom from religion and religious responsibility (which under Communist regimes attains the stage of antireligious dictatorship); concentration on social structures with an allegedly scientific approach. (This last is typical of both the Age of Enlightenment and of Marxism.) It is no accident that all of communism's rhetorical vows revolve around Man (with a capital M) and his earthly happiness. At first glance it seems an ugly parallel: common traits in the thinking and way of life of today's West and today's East? But such is the logic of materialistic development.

The interrelationship is such, moreover, that the current of materialism which is farthest to the left, and is hence the most consistent, always proves to be stronger, more attractive, and victorious. Humanism which has lost its Christian heritage cannot prevail in this competition. Thus during the past centuries and especially in recent decades, as the process became more acute, the alignment of forces was as follows: Liberalism was inevitably pushed aside by radicalism, radicalism had to surrender to socialism, and socialism could not stand up to communism.

The communist regime in the East could endure and grow due to the enthusiastic support from an enormous number of Western intellectuals who (feeling the kinship!) refused to see communism's crimes, and when they no longer could do so, they tried to justify these crimes. The problem persists: In our Eastern countries, communism has suffered a complete ideological defeat; it is zero and less than zero. And yet Western intellectuals still look at it with considerable interest and empathy, and this is precisely what makes it so immensely difficult for the West to withstand the East.

I am not examining the case of a disaster brought on by a world war and the changes which it would produce in society. But as long as we wake up every morning under a peaceful sun, we must lead an everyday life. Yet there is a disaster which is already very much with us. I am referring to the calamity of an autonomous, irreligious humanistic consciousness.

It has made man the measure of all things on earth — imperfect man, who is never free of pride, self-interest, envy, vanity, and dozens of other defects. We are now paying for the mistakes which were not properly appraised at the beginning of the journey. On the way from the Renaissance to our days we have enriched our experience, but we have lost the concept of a Supreme Complete Entity which used to restrain our passions and our irresponsibility.

We have placed too much hope in politics and social reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life. It is trampled by the party mob in the East, by the commercial one in the West. This is the essence of the crisis: the split in the world is less terrifying than the similarity of the disease afflicting its main sections.

If, as claimed by humanism, man were born only to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to death, his task on earth evidently must be more spiritual: not a total engrossment in everyday life, not the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then their carefree consumption. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one's life journey may become above all an experience of moral growth: to leave life a better human being than one started it.

It is imperative to reappraise the scale of the usual human values; its present incorrectness is astounding. It is not possible that assessment of the President's performance should be reduced to the question of how much money one makes or to the availability of gasoline. Only by the voluntary nurturing in ourselves of freely accepted and serene self-restraint can mankind rise above the world stream of materialism.

Today it would be retrogressive to hold on to the ossified formulas of the Enlightenment. Such social dogmatism leaves us helpless before the trials of our times.

Even if we are spared destruction by war, life will have to change in order not to perish on its own. We cannot avoid reassessing the fundamental definitions of human life and society. Is it true that man is above everything? Is there no Superior Spirit above him? Is it right that man's life and society's activities should be ruled by material expansion above all? Is it permissible to promote such expansion to the detriment of our integral spiritual life?

If the world has not approached its end, it has reached a major watershed in history, equal in importance to the turn from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. It will demand from us a spiritual blaze; we shall have to rise to a new height of vision, to a new level of life, where our physical nature will not be cursed, as in the Middle Ages, but even more importantly, our spiritual being will not be trampled upon, as in the Modern Era.

The ascension is similar to climbing onto the next anthropological stage. No one on earth has any other way left but — upward."

Ever heard the expression less is more? Anyways I suggest you look up the definition of the term materialism, you will find it has more than one definition and a definition as it pertains to the term Marxism.

Historical materialism, also known as the materialist conception of history, is a methodology used by some communist and Marxist historiographers that focuses on human societies and their development through history, arguing that history is the result of material conditions rather than ideals.

 

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Marx's theories revolved around the idea that the bourgeoisie exploits the proletariat and takes what they produce for themselves. Marx definitely didn't count on a society where the proletariat would be in a position to buy for themselves most of what they produced (consumer society). His whole theory was built around the idea that that inequality would eventually cause a revolution.

Not exactly, his rhetoric was intended to create a revolution and it has. Europe bought it. And it's happening here too. Cultural Marxism is still Marxism.

That's exactly what his theories predicted so what do you mean "not exactly". As to Europe bought into it. Last I checked we still haven't rejected Capitalism. What we reject is the idea that Capitalism by itself leads to a stable society. A fact that the US has recognized as well.

 

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As to the goal of Socialism. Again you are making assertions that reality just doesn't bear out. As I said before the Socialist movement was the driving force for most if not all major social changes, none that I can think of are about uniformity. Universal Suffrage isn't about uniformity it's about giving everybody an equal vote for political representation. Abolishing of child labor is not about uniformity but about giving every child equal rights to an education. The founding of labor unions isn't about uniformity but rather about ensuring workers have not just duties but also rights. If you can think of one feel free to mention it.

It's a religion dressed up as a political/economic system. It's a reaction to Christianity.

It was a reaction to the excesses of the industrial revolution. Christianity got dragged into it because of the simple fact that back in the time of the industrial revolution the church was part of the establishment and a proponent of the status quo. History of socialism - Wikipedia You also aren't giving an actual counter-argument but rather giving yet another assertion.

 

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The foundation is materialism meaning the idea that all change in history is economically driven.

No. That all there is is the material. A humanistic and benevolent concept according to which man does not bear any evil within himself, and all the defects of life are caused by misguided social systems, which must therefore be corrected.

Solzhenitsyn said it best. "Everything beyond physical well-being and the accumulation of material goods, all other human requirements and characteristics of a subtle and higher nature, were left outside the area of attention of state and social systems, as if human life did not have any higher meaning. Thus gaps were left open for evil, and its drafts blow freely today. Mere freedom per se does not in the least solve all the problems of human life and even adds a number of new ones.

And yet in early democracies, as in American democracy at the time of its birth, all individual human rights were granted on the ground that man is God's creature. That is, freedom was given to the individual conditionally, in the assumption of his constant religious responsibility. Such was the heritage of the preceding one thousand years. Two hundred or even fifty years ago, it would have seemed quite impossible, in America, that an individual be granted boundless freedom with no purpose, simply for the satisfaction of his whims.

Subsequently, however, all such limitations were eroded everywhere in the West; a total emancipation occurred from the moral heritage of Christian centuries with their great reserves of mercy and sacrifice. State systems were becoming ever more materialistic. The West has finally achieved the rights of man, and even excess, but man's sense of responsibility to God and society has grown dimmer and dimmer. In the past decades, the legalistic selfishness of the Western approach to the world has reached its peak and the world has found itself in a harsh spiritual crisis and a political impasse. All the celebrated technological achievements of progress, including the conquest of outer space, do not redeem the twentieth century's moral poverty, which no one could have imagined even as late as the nineteenth century.

As humanism in its development was becoming more and more materialistic, it also increasingly allowed concepts to be used first by socialism and then by communism, so that Karl Marx was able to say, in 1844, that "communism is naturalized humanism."

This statement has proved to be not entirely unreasonable. One does not see the same stones in the foundations of an eroded humanism and of any type of socialism: boundless materialism; freedom from religion and religious responsibility (which under Communist regimes attains the stage of antireligious dictatorship); concentration on social structures with an allegedly scientific approach. (This last is typical of both the Age of Enlightenment and of Marxism.) It is no accident that all of communism's rhetorical vows revolve around Man (with a capital M) and his earthly happiness. At first glance it seems an ugly parallel: common traits in the thinking and way of life of today's West and today's East? But such is the logic of materialistic development.

The interrelationship is such, moreover, that the current of materialism which is farthest to the left, and is hence the most consistent, always proves to be stronger, more attractive, and victorious. Humanism which has lost its Christian heritage cannot prevail in this competition. Thus during the past centuries and especially in recent decades, as the process became more acute, the alignment of forces was as follows: Liberalism was inevitably pushed aside by radicalism, radicalism had to surrender to socialism, and socialism could not stand up to communism.

The communist regime in the East could endure and grow due to the enthusiastic support from an enormous number of Western intellectuals who (feeling the kinship!) refused to see communism's crimes, and when they no longer could do so, they tried to justify these crimes. The problem persists: In our Eastern countries, communism has suffered a complete ideological defeat; it is zero and less than zero. And yet Western intellectuals still look at it with considerable interest and empathy, and this is precisely what makes it so immensely difficult for the West to withstand the East.

I am not examining the case of a disaster brought on by a world war and the changes which it would produce in society. But as long as we wake up every morning under a peaceful sun, we must lead an everyday life. Yet there is a disaster which is already very much with us. I am referring to the calamity of an autonomous, irreligious humanistic consciousness.

It has made man the measure of all things on earth — imperfect man, who is never free of pride, self-interest, envy, vanity, and dozens of other defects. We are now paying for the mistakes which were not properly appraised at the beginning of the journey. On the way from the Renaissance to our days we have enriched our experience, but we have lost the concept of a Supreme Complete Entity which used to restrain our passions and our irresponsibility.

We have placed too much hope in politics and social reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life. It is trampled by the party mob in the East, by the commercial one in the West. This is the essence of the crisis: the split in the world is less terrifying than the similarity of the disease afflicting its main sections.

If, as claimed by humanism, man were born only to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to death, his task on earth evidently must be more spiritual: not a total engrossment in everyday life, not the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then their carefree consumption. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one's life journey may become above all an experience of moral growth: to leave life a better human being than one started it.

It is imperative to reappraise the scale of the usual human values; its present incorrectness is astounding. It is not possible that assessment of the President's performance should be reduced to the question of how much money one makes or to the availability of gasoline. Only by the voluntary nurturing in ourselves of freely accepted and serene self-restraint can mankind rise above the world stream of materialism.

Today it would be retrogressive to hold on to the ossified formulas of the Enlightenment. Such social dogmatism leaves us helpless before the trials of our times.

Even if we are spared destruction by war, life will have to change in order not to perish on its own. We cannot avoid reassessing the fundamental definitions of human life and society. Is it true that man is above everything? Is there no Superior Spirit above him? Is it right that man's life and society's activities should be ruled by material expansion above all? Is it permissible to promote such expansion to the detriment of our integral spiritual life?

If the world has not approached its end, it has reached a major watershed in history, equal in importance to the turn from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. It will demand from us a spiritual blaze; we shall have to rise to a new height of vision, to a new level of life, where our physical nature will not be cursed, as in the Middle Ages, but even more importantly, our spiritual being will not be trampled upon, as in the Modern Era.

The ascension is similar to climbing onto the next anthropological stage. No one on earth has any other way left but — upward."

Ever heard the expression less is more? Anyways I suggest you look up the definition of the term materialism, you will find it has more than one definition and a definition as it pertains to the term Marxism.

Historical materialism, also known as the materialist conception of history, is a methodology used by some communist and Marxist historiographers that focuses on human societies and their development through history, arguing that history is the result of material conditions rather than ideals.

Then let me summarize it for you... Everything beyond physical well-being and the accumulation of material goods were left outside the area of attention of state and social systems which dismissed the higher meaning of human life. Gaps were left open for evil. Unlimited material freedom does not solve the problems of human life. It adds new problems. Limitations were eroded. A total emancipation occurred from the moral heritage of Christianity. State systems became materialistic. Man's sense of responsibility to God and society has grown dimmer as the West became selfishly legalistic and has led to a spiritual crisis and a political impasse. As humanism became more and more materialistic, it increasingly became more aligned with socialism and communism. Such that it proved Karl Marx's statement that "communism is naturalized humanism" to be true. Boundless materialism, moral relativity and subordination of religion are the foundations of humanism and socialism. Humanism which has lost its Christian heritage cannot prevail against the current form of materialism. Liberalism leads to radicalism. Radicalism leads to socialism. Socialism leads to communism. The calamity of an autonomous, irreligious humanistic consciousness has made man the measure of all things on earth and is the root cause of our loss of restraint of passion and loss of responsibility. We have placed too much hope in politics and social reforms at the expense of our spiritual life. The quest for carefree consumption of material goods has come at the expense of our spiritual life. Our performance should not be measured by our material success. Materialism has led to a loss of self restraint.

Now to correct your understanding of materialism...

Dialectical materialism, a philosophical approach to reality derived from the teachings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. For Marx and Engels, materialism meant that the material world, perceptible to the senses, has objective reality independent of mind or spirit.

Dialectical materialism | Definition & Facts

Dialectical materialism, a philosophical approach to reality derived from the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. For them, materialism meant that the material world has objective reality independent of mind or spirit and ideas arise only as products and reflections of material conditions.

www.britannica.com

 

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Marx's theories revolved around the idea that the bourgeoisie exploits the proletariat and takes what they produce for themselves. Marx definitely didn't count on a society where the proletariat would be in a position to buy for themselves most of what they produced (consumer society). His whole theory was built around the idea that that inequality would eventually cause a revolution.

Not exactly, his rhetoric was intended to create a revolution and it has. Europe bought it. And it's happening here too. Cultural Marxism is still Marxism.

That's exactly what his theories predicted so what do you mean "not exactly". As to Europe bought into it. Last I checked we still haven't rejected Capitalism. What we reject is the idea that Capitalism by itself leads to a stable society. A fact that the US has recognized as well.

I suggest you go back and re-read the thread because I am not up to showing you how you took us down this path only to reverse your course.

 

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As to the goal of Socialism. Again you are making assertions that reality just doesn't bear out. As I said before the Socialist movement was the driving force for most if not all major social changes, none that I can think of are about uniformity. Universal Suffrage isn't about uniformity it's about giving everybody an equal vote for political representation. Abolishing of child labor is not about uniformity but about giving every child equal rights to an education. The founding of labor unions isn't about uniformity but rather about ensuring workers have not just duties but also rights. If you can think of one feel free to mention it.

It's a religion dressed up as a political/economic system. It's a reaction to Christianity.

It was a reaction to the excesses of the industrial revolution. Christianity got dragged into it because of the simple fact that back in the time of the industrial revolution the church was part of the establishment and a proponent of the status quo. History of socialism - Wikipedia You also aren't giving an actual counter-argument but rather giving yet another assertion.

If you want to understand the history of socialism, you are going to have to actually read a book and not a wikipage.

The Socialist Phenomenon