Nice Planet XII: It's Cruel to be Kind!

[Kepler]

Re: Nice Planet XII: It's Cruel to be Kind!

Yeah, that was a mistake. What a ****ing joke.

I'm sure it was an honest oversight.

After two years of heated political debate, the Texas State Board of Education spent the past week incorporating their own conservative values into final guidelines for history and social studies classes taught in the state’s public schools for the next 10 years. They voted late Friday to adopt a host of sweeping changes. In the process, their decisions may force the entire nation to also adopt their radical right-wing re-write of history.

Among the proposed changes were plans to “teach” children to challenge the “solvency” of “long-term entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare” and other euphemistic views of history that, for example, would refer to the slave trade as simply the “Atlantic triangular trade.” Oh, the conservative members of the board also hoped that no one noticed that they omitted from textbooks the name of the 44th President of The United States: Barack Obama.

The last two proposals were eventually amended. The “Atlantic triangular trade” language was finally changed to the “trans-Atlantic slave trade.” And one Republican board member ultimately relented in his demand to refer to the first black president only by his full name: Barack Hussein Obama.

They even tried to remove Thomas Jefferson from a list of American history’s key thinkers. He was one of the founding architects of the modern philosophy of church/state separation, as well as the author of that obscure document called the Declaration of Independence. So naturally he had to go. That move failed.

Still in the document, however, were other proposals that would water down Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s generally repudiated anti-communist hearings in the 1950s and restrict inclusion of some modern Latino leaders in textbooks.

Funny how those brave crusaders against "state school propaganda" somehow missed the boat on this.

 

[Handyman]

Re: Nice Planet XII: It's Cruel to be Kind!

That's what is continued to be told, yet history seems to be "erased" from the textbooks. I'm sure there are some cultures that don't even mention the Holocaust, or the Armenian genocide.

Yeah they work for Donald Drumpf

 

[trixR4kids]

I thought we learned history to prevent repeating it? That's what I was told years ago. Syria is senseless.

When you have dictators who think they can just solve all problems (I.e protestors) through brutality you get what we're seeing over there.

 

[joecct]

When you have dictators who think they can just solve all problems (I.e protestors) through brutality you get what we're seeing over there.

There is evil in the world. Wishing it away or believing there is no such thing as a bad boy will not make it disappear.

 

[Kepler]

Re: Nice Planet XII: It's Cruel to be Kind!

There is evil in the world. Wishing it away or believing there is no such thing as a bad boy will not make it disappear.

There is no such thing as "evil" but there are evil acts. It's an adjective, not a noun.

Same goes for "good."

Mistaking adjectives for nouns is the root of most human problems.

 

[The Rube]

Re: Nice Planet XII: It's Cruel to be Kind!

That's what is continued to be told, yet history seems to be "erased" from the textbooks. I'm sure there are some cultures that don't even mention the Holocaust, or the Armenian genocide.

The Armenian genocide was not covered in my high school. For world history, it was focused on communism/Cold War, Holocaust, WWI and II, and the Vietnam conflict and Korean War.

 

[Kepler]

Re: Nice Planet XII: It's Cruel to be Kind!

The Armenian genocide was not covered in my high school. For world history, it was focused on communism/Cold War, Holocaust, WWI and II, and the Vietnam conflict and Korean War.

My Ninth Grade Modern European History teacher was named Ohanesian. He covered it in detail.

 

[The Rube]

Re: Nice Planet XII: It's Cruel to be Kind!

My Ninth Grade Modern European History teacher was named Ohanesian. He covered it in detail.

I should read up on it more. I know the bare-bones basics at best. Absolutely fascinating; the actual events, AND the aftermath about acknowledgement (or lack thereof).

 

[ScoobyDoo]

Re: Nice Planet XII: It's Cruel to be Kind!

Meanwhile the channel of conservative family values is run like the playboy mansion.

http://ijr.com/2016/08/678559-andre..._term=dailyconservative&utm_content=elections

In a lawsuit filed Monday and first published by The New York Times, Andrea Tantaros writes:

“Fox News masquerades as a defender of traditional family values, but behind the scenes, it operates like a sex-fueled, Playboy Mansion-like cult, steeped in intimidation, indecency and misogyny.”

And the best part.

Bill O’Reilly allegedly subjected her to unwelcome advances

 

[Kepler]

Re: Nice Planet XII: It's Cruel to be Kind!

Meanwhile the channel of conservative family values is run like the playboy mansion.

The political right has been a con since the mid 80s. This is no surprise.

 

[SJHovey]

Re: Nice Planet XII: It's Cruel to be Kind!

So, "journalists" who have literally traded on their T & A value at every turn to advance their careers are now surprised when they find out someone is actually interested in it?

My view is that if these women have "it" and want to flaunt it to get some place a more "plain" individual will never see, by all means. It's your body, and your reputation. But don't whine to me when you are then treated as a sex object.

 

[ScoobyDoo]

Re: Nice Planet XII: It's Cruel to be Kind!

So, "journalists" who have literally traded on their T & A value at every turn to advance their careers are now surprised when they find out someone is actually interested in it?

My view is that if these women have "it" and want to flaunt it to get some place a more "plain" individual will never see, by all means. It's your body, and your reputation. But don't whine to me when you are then treated as a sex object.

Wow.

 

[joecct]

There is no such thing as "evil" but there are evil acts. It's an adjective, not a noun.

Same goes for "good."

Mistaking adjectives for nouns is the root of most human problems.

Disagree. Hitler was evil. Pol Pot was evil, etc. Or are you implying that they were nice boys who screwed up?

 

[SJHovey]

Re: Nice Planet XII: It's Cruel to be Kind!

The political right has been a con since the mid 80s. This is no surprise.

Oh, for pete's sake. This is not a political thing. It's a power thing. Men in power have been taking sexual advantage of young females since there have been men in power and female interns. But your position is that because the right preaches family values while the left has no interest in the same, when they both use their power to elicit sexual favors somehow the Dems are morally superior??

 

[busterman62]

Re: Nice Planet XII: It's Cruel to be Kind!

Oh, for pete's sake. This is not a political thing. It's a power thing. Men in power have been taking sexual advantage of young females since there have been men in power and female interns. But your position is that because the right preaches family values while the left has no interest in the same, when they both use their power to elicit sexual favors somehow the Dems are morally superior??

Cut him some slack. He's going to have to vote for HRC. Demonifying the right eases the pain.

 

[CLS]

Re: Nice Planet XII: It's Cruel to be Kind!

Disagree. Hitler was evil. Pol Pot was evil, etc. Or are you implying that they were nice boys who screwed up?

You just used "evil" as an adjective, which was his point.

 

[Kepler]

Re: Nice Planet XII: It's Cruel to be Kind!

Disagree. Hitler was evil. Pol Pot was evil, etc. Or are you implying that they were nice boys who screwed up?

You can say Hitler was evil -- that's an adjective. "Hitler was evil" is short for "Hitler was an evil person."

But again, the distinction is not between evil and good, it's between evil (or good) as an adjective vs a noun..

I'll try to unravel it like this. "Wilt is tall." "Tall" is an adjective (the sentence is short for "Wilt is a tall man"). But there is no noun, "tall." There is a quantity, "height," and we can speak of measures of height: "Wilt is taller than Tyrion" means Wilt has a greater amount of the quantity "height."

So what are the analogous terms for good and evil? What is the "height" that good and evil are comparative quantities of? There's no word as obviously referring to that underlying scale, as there is with (tall <-- {height} --> short) or (hot <-- {heat} --> cold). Let's use an adequate word: (good <-- {goodness} --> evil). So, "Hitler has less goodness than Socrates" has meaning, and "Hitler is evil" and "Socrates is good" have clear meanings in that context.

But it's still important to remember that height, heat, and goodness are not things in themselves. Using evil as a noun starts us down the path towards reification, worse, personification of an abstract quantity.

So, Hitler was evil, but there's no such free-standing, ontologically meaningful thing as "evil." It lacks being, unless you make up a fairy tale and breath being into it. In fact the fairy tale is probably a psychologically vital way of dealing with the fact that it has no being, because we all still know what it "is" and that knowledge is a vital part of living in the world.

We should have a category called "ghost nouns" for things like this. Goodness and beauty definitely belong. Truth belongs once you get away from the baby steps of simple predication. Cause might, too. Kant thought God did but everybody else thinks that's just him sneaking in a favorite Son.

 

[Kepler]

Re: Nice Planet XII: It's Cruel to be Kind!

But your position is that because the right preaches family values while the left has no interest in the same, when they both use their power to elicit sexual favors somehow the Dems are morally superior??

My position is summed up by the Pirate King in Penzance:

I don't think much of our profession, but, contrasted with respectability, it is comparatively honest.

 

[ScoobyDoo]

Re: Nice Planet XII: It's Cruel to be Kind!

Meanwhile the channel of conservative family values is run like the playboy mansion.

http://ijr.com/2016/08/678559-andre..._term=dailyconservative&utm_content=elections

Reading on the Interwebs right now that Scott Brown couldn't keep his hands to himself either. Apparently SJHovey thinks this is all ok though. If you look hot expect to be harassed.

http://www.wmur.com/politics/scott-brown-named-in-fox-news-sexual-harassment-lawsuit/41328750

 

[Kepler]

Re: Nice Planet XII: It's Cruel to be Kind!

Reading on the Interwebs right now that Scott Brown couldn't keep his hands to himself either. Apparently SJHovey thinks this is all ok though. If you look hot expect to be harassed.

If women didn't want men harassing them, then why did they grow breasts, huh?!