Way to misunderstand the "no true Scotsman" fallacy.
It annoys me how often people misuse "no true Scotsman".
You see the important point is to understand the basis of the membership of a set. Now the set of "Scotsmen" is defined by those who are either born in Scotland, born to scottish parents or naturalised to Scotland . Now there is some ambiguity about these criteria but these are all based on matters of birth or residency. The person who erroneously says "no true Scotsman would fiddle his taxes" (or whatever) is trying to associate a moral category with a birth or residency category and of course you can redefine scottishness based on a moral quality.
However Christianity is either a moral category or a belief category to start with so the "no true Scotsman" fallacy doesn't work in this one.
"My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. ....etc.... For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people.
Those were Hitler's PUBLIC views - his private views were somewhat different:
You see, it's been our misfortune to have the wrong religion. Why didn't we have the religion of the Japanese, who regard sacrifice for the Fatherland as the highest good? The Mohammedan religion [Islam] too would have been more compatible to us than Christianity. Why did it have to be Christianity with its meekness and flabbiness?
Quoted by Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich: Memoirs, pg. 115
and
Had Charles Martel not been victorious at Poitiers -already, you see, the world had already fallen into the hands of the Jews, so gutless a thing Christianity! -then we should in all probability have been converted to Mohammedanism [Islam], that cult which glorifies the heroism and which opens up the seventh Heaven to the bold warrior alone. Then the Germanic races would have conquered the world. Christianity alone prevented them from doing so.
Adolf Hitler's Monologe im Führerhauptquartier (Monologue with Headquarters of the Führer). Hamburg: Albrecht Knaus, 1980.
However, why you would lead with Mao as an example of secularism instead of, oh I don't know, the UNITED STATES, is beyond me.
It rather depends on what you mean by secularism. Does secularism simply mean the separation of church and state - or does it mean some kind of aggressive anti-religious stance?
Since the United States motto is in God We Trust" it is not clear to me why it should be held up as an example of secularism.
I would describe the United States as a deeply religious, (historically) overwhelmingly Christian, country that adopted an (officially) religiously neutral government system in order to prevent the otherwise inevitable rise of religious conflict. In doing this the founding fathers were extending the model for defusing religious conflict that had earlier ended the 30 years war in Germany. To portray the founding fathers as non or even anti-religious is more than a stretch.
The US government is thus a very different animal from the Chinese government - which still officially espouses atheism.
Hitler was Christian. Well actually the most that can be said is that Hitler publically espoused Christianity as a matter of practical convenience. His mother may have been catholic but his father was rather anti-church.
He is on record as saying that Islam would have been better for the German people. The Nazis also attempted to create an "Aryan" version of Christianity with the Jewish bits taken out!
If you want to take over a nominally Christian country you had better call yourself a Christian - it doesn't mean you are one.
Mao was Theravada Buddhist. Take that one up with the Dalai Lama!
Stalin was Christian and studying to be a priest but probably become an atheist. However, Stalin never actually did anything in the name of atheism.
Stalin did almost everything from the revolution up to mid WW2 in the name of "dialetical materialism" - of which atheism is a core tenet. To anyone who knows the history of the Russian Church between the wars your statement appears to be the result only of breathtaking ignorance!
Somewhere in mid WW2 he dramtically changed tack for a while because Russia was losing. After the war the soviet regime returned to its atheist mantra.
USA messed up the Olympics for Europe - and then didn't bother to watch
Once again many of the prime olympic events were scheduled to suit the US viewing public - and consequently were held at between 2.00 am and 5.00am for most European countries. I was unable to watch ANY of the swimming or major athletics finals live as a consequence of this. I would have accepted this if it was done to coincide with normal timings in the host country - but no. Following the usual schedule of these events in Brazilian time would have resulted in events at 11pm-1am ish - quite maneagable to stay up for.
Now I discover that, having made the Olympics unwatchable for much of the rest of the world, the US didn't even bother to watch it themselves. Thank you USA!!
So the link between fiction and law enforcement goes full circle.
There is little doubt in my mind that the contempt for due process that has been displayed by fictional detectives since... forever has influenced the behaviour of actual detectives - many of whom will have grown up watching these shows. Hell if a nice gentle forensic scientist like Quincy can threaten a newspaper man with "I can always come back tonight with a warrant and 20 officers tonight and 'trash' this place" in order to get a list of people who responded to a particular advert* - then why shouldn't I?
*old episode probably mad in the 70's I saw just the day before yesterday.
Use of a secret computer program is in violation of that principle - and the linked case does actually look surpringly similar to the present one.
A quote from the decision on that case reads "Nothing is to be done which creates even a suspicion that there has been an improper interference with the course of justice. "
Weakening the US through internal struggle, taking pressure of their nearer concerns. Maybe even weakening the NATO.
The only reason why they have any of these concerns was that their attempt in the immediate post cold war era- to join NATO was rebuffed. It seems to me that many western politicians want to retain them as an enemy.
What exactly do you believe the Russians are trying to achieve here?
It's not as if they were trying to win the world for communism anymore.
In other words why do you think Russia doesn't like the west and - equally what is there about them to dislike?
After all Russia's interest in what it regards as its own backyard (ie Ukraine - incidentally Kiev was the original capital of Russia) is really no different from the US meddling in South and central America and the Caribbean ( Chile and Grenada spring to mind in an instant.
Also why do we complain about Russia's actions in Ukraine whilst turning a 40 year blind eye to Turkey's blatant military invasion of North Cyprus, Saudi Arabia's bombing of Yemen etc etc etc
Reminds me of David Penhaligon - sometime leading light in the British Liberal Party:
After an opinion poll that suggested his party might actually win the next election he was quizzed by a BBC interviewer who said: "If an election happened now then you would become Chancellor - that's ridiculous isn't it? (Penhaligon was known as something of a jokey character). His reply was along the following lines: " Well when I consider the great responsibilities of the chancellor I do think 'who am I to take on such a task?' but then I go down to the House of Commons and see the man who is doing the job now (Nigel Lawson at the time) and all my doubts vanish!"
...are unconstitutional. The copyright clause reserves that right to Congress. That is actually the original purpose of the clause - because before that state copyright laws had created a mess of conflicting rules.
During the 1780s the shortcomings of local protection for writings and technological innovations in the context of an emerging national market and culture were becoming apparent, at least to some. The efforts of Noah Webster (1758-1843) and others to secure state protection for their writings vividly demonstrated these shortcomings in the instance of copyright.[3] The contest before state legislatures between John Fitch (1743-1798) and James Rumsey (1743-1792) over protection for the steamboat invention and the troubles of other inventors did the same in the patent context.[4] In 1787, in preparation for the constitutional convention, James Madison (1751-1836) identified "the want of uniformity in the laws concerning naturalization & literary property," as one of the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation's scheme of government.[5] Later, when he defended the Constitution in the Federalist, Madison observed that "[t]he states cannot separately make effectual provision for either" copyright or patent.[6] In 1787 F.W. Geyer observed that "a patent can be of no use unless it is from Congress, and not from them till they are vested with much more authority than they possess at this time."[7] As it happened, when in 1787 a new scheme of government for the nation was created during the constitutional convention in Philadelphia, in the form of the U.S. Constitution, it included a new federal power to legislate in the field of copyright and patent.
It's about a lack of respect for Artists. Those in power don't give a damn.
and it is up to the voters to vote in someone who does.
The fact is that not everything that is immoral is illegal - and with good reason.
The moment you start to confuse the two then you are in worse trouble than you could possibly arrive at by simply not being very moral.
As C.S. Lewis wrote “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
Re: I think the embarrassment that needs addressing...
.is that sometimes the artists whose music you use disagree with your politics, and they will voice that effect in this age of the internet and social networking. And that will make news.
Plus of course the purpose of copyright is not and has never been to prevent usage by someone in some cause that the creator disagrees with. It is designed to protect their financial/commercial interest only.
Even in the extreme case where one might successfullly argue that the usage had damaged the artist's public image and hence impacted his/her sales it would be a case under trademark or publicity rights law and most definitely NOT under copyright law.
Maybe we should be looking at removing all drugs from issues of legality.
Let's create the scenario, all drugs are legal. No restrictions on use and no restrictions on who can use. However, there are a couple of things that must take place now.
The first is that all people who willingly use drugs are now fully responsible for the consequences of their usage. That is, if they cause any kind of endangerment to the lives of other people, they will have mandatory death sentences applied. If they cause damage, they are fully required to restore said damage, up to and including life enslavement until full restitution is done.
Of course legalising drugs IS a good idea - but shortly after that I parted company from you.
The reason that legalising drugs is a good idea is that more than half the problems we have with drugs are related to the fact that they are illegal. In fact they constitute a "Criminal Business Opportunity".
If fact it is actually an International Business Opportunity - since that part of terrorist funding that doen't come from oil or kidnapping comes from drugs.
Legalising Heroin would have a major positive impact on Afghanistan.
Legalising drugs would also remove one of the major excuses for police harassment of minorities (and anyone whose face does not fit).
I think the one measure that would need to remain would be against promoting and marketing - as we have done with tobacco.
Perhaps the phrase "no sympathy" was a bit misleading - my real point was that in this case the phone was a piece of evidence left at the crime scene and the point of the search was to find the owner, so the situation is a little different from when the police stop someone and want to search his phone.
Do you think the police should have needed a warrant to say "home boy" to the dog?
On the post: Literal Fashion Police Arrest Hundreds Of WhatsApp And Instagram Users In Iran
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Uh, wrong conclusion
On the post: Literal Fashion Police Arrest Hundreds Of WhatsApp And Instagram Users In Iran
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Uh, wrong conclusion
Way to misunderstand the "no true Scotsman" fallacy.
It annoys me how often people misuse "no true Scotsman".
You see the important point is to understand the basis of the membership of a set. Now the set of "Scotsmen" is defined by those who are either born in Scotland, born to scottish parents or naturalised to Scotland . Now there is some ambiguity about these criteria but these are all based on matters of birth or residency. The person who erroneously says "no true Scotsman would fiddle his taxes" (or whatever) is trying to associate a moral category with a birth or residency category and of course you can redefine scottishness based on a moral quality.
However Christianity is either a moral category or a belief category to start with so the "no true Scotsman" fallacy doesn't work in this one.
On the post: Literal Fashion Police Arrest Hundreds Of WhatsApp And Instagram Users In Iran
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Uh, wrong conclusion
Those were Hitler's PUBLIC views - his private views were somewhat different:
Quoted by Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich: Memoirs, pg. 115
and
Adolf Hitler's Monologe im Führerhauptquartier (Monologue with Headquarters of the Führer). Hamburg: Albrecht Knaus, 1980.
On the post: Literal Fashion Police Arrest Hundreds Of WhatsApp And Instagram Users In Iran
Re: Re: Re: Re: Uh, wrong conclusion
It rather depends on what you mean by secularism. Does secularism simply mean the separation of church and state - or does it mean some kind of aggressive anti-religious stance?
Since the United States motto is in God We Trust" it is not clear to me why it should be held up as an example of secularism.
I would describe the United States as a deeply religious, (historically) overwhelmingly Christian, country that adopted an (officially) religiously neutral government system in order to prevent the otherwise inevitable rise of religious conflict. In doing this the founding fathers were extending the model for defusing religious conflict that had earlier ended the 30 years war in Germany. To portray the founding fathers as non or even anti-religious is more than a stretch.
The US government is thus a very different animal from the Chinese government - which still officially espouses atheism.
On the post: Literal Fashion Police Arrest Hundreds Of WhatsApp And Instagram Users In Iran
Re: Re: Re: Re: Uh, wrong conclusion
Well actually the most that can be said is that Hitler publically espoused Christianity as a matter of practical convenience. His mother may have been catholic but his father was rather anti-church.
He is on record as saying that Islam would have been better for the German people. The Nazis also attempted to create an "Aryan" version of Christianity with the Jewish bits taken out!
If you want to take over a nominally Christian country you had better call yourself a Christian - it doesn't mean you are one.
Mao was Theravada Buddhist.
Take that one up with the Dalai Lama!
Stalin was Christian and studying to be a priest but probably become an atheist. However, Stalin never actually did anything in the name of atheism.
Stalin did almost everything from the revolution up to mid WW2 in the name of "dialetical materialism" - of which atheism is a core tenet. To anyone who knows the history of the Russian Church between the wars your statement appears to be the result only of breathtaking ignorance!
Somewhere in mid WW2 he dramtically changed tack for a while because Russia was losing. After the war the soviet regime returned to its atheist mantra.
On the post: Comcast/NBC Tone Deafness, Not 'Millennials' To Blame For Olympics Ratings Drop
USA messed up the Olympics for Europe - and then didn't bother to watch
Now I discover that, having made the Olympics unwatchable for much of the rest of the world, the US didn't even bother to watch it themselves. Thank you USA!!
On the post: Publishers Association Sends Whiny Complaint Letter To Dean After Academic Librarian Discusses Sci-Hub
Re: Re:
You mean like the preprint archive?
https://arxiv.org/
On the post: Publishers Association Sends Whiny Complaint Letter To Dean After Academic Librarian Discusses Sci-Hub
Meanwhile
eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigori_Perelman
On the post: Judge Says Stash House Sting Operations Allow Prosecutors To Be Judge, Jury, And Executioner
Re:
There is little doubt in my mind that the contempt for due process that has been displayed by fictional detectives since... forever has influenced the behaviour of actual detectives - many of whom will have grown up watching these shows. Hell if a nice gentle forensic scientist like Quincy can threaten a newspaper man with "I can always come back tonight with a warrant and 20 officers tonight and 'trash' this place" in order to get a list of people who responded to a particular advert* - then why shouldn't I?
*old episode probably mad in the 70's I saw just the day before yesterday.
On the post: State Supreme Court Says Secret Software Used In Sentencing Determinations Not A Violation Of Due Process Rights
Re: Re: Re: Re:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_v_Sussex_Justices,_ex_p_McCarthy
Use of a secret computer program is in violation of that principle - and the linked case does actually look surpringly similar to the present one.
A quote from the decision on that case reads "Nothing is to be done which creates even a suspicion that there has been an improper interference with the course of justice. "
On the post: Putin's Internet Trolls Are Stoking The Vitriolic Fire By Posing As Trump Supporters
Re: Re: hostile Russian propaganda
Maybe even weakening the NATO.
The only reason why they have any of these concerns was that their attempt in the immediate post cold war era- to join NATO was rebuffed. It seems to me that many western politicians want to retain them as an enemy.
On the post: Putin's Internet Trolls Are Stoking The Vitriolic Fire By Posing As Trump Supporters
hostile Russian propaganda
It's not as if they were trying to win the world for communism anymore.
In other words why do you think Russia doesn't like the west and - equally what is there about them to dislike?
After all Russia's interest in what it regards as its own backyard (ie Ukraine - incidentally Kiev was the original capital of Russia) is really no different from the US meddling in South and central America and the Caribbean ( Chile and Grenada spring to mind in an instant.
Also why do we complain about Russia's actions in Ukraine whilst turning a 40 year blind eye to Turkey's blatant military invasion of North Cyprus, Saudi Arabia's bombing of Yemen etc etc etc
On the post: Those Viral Trump Supporting Singing, Dancing 'Freedom Kids' Now Plan To Sue Trump Campaign
Re:
After an opinion poll that suggested his party might actually win the next election he was quizzed by a BBC interviewer who said: "If an election happened now then you would become Chancellor - that's ridiculous isn't it? (Penhaligon was known as something of a jokey character). His reply was along the following lines: " Well when I consider the great responsibilities of the chancellor I do think 'who am I to take on such a task?' but then I go down to the House of Commons and see the man who is doing the job now (Nigel Lawson at the time) and all my doubts vanish!"
On the post: But Wait: Copyright Law Is So Screwed Up, Perhaps The Rolling Stones Are Right That Donald Trump Needed Their Permission
Re: Re: State copyright laws...
On the post: But Wait: Copyright Law Is So Screwed Up, Perhaps The Rolling Stones Are Right That Donald Trump Needed Their Permission
State copyright laws...
taken from http://www.copyrighthistory.org/cam/tools/request/showRecord?id=commentary_us_1789
On the post: John Oliver's Story On Campaign Music And Copyright Is... Wrong
Re: WeirdAlGotItRight
Those in power don't give a damn.
and it is up to the voters to vote in someone who does.
The fact is that not everything that is immoral is illegal - and with good reason.
The moment you start to confuse the two then you are in worse trouble than you could possibly arrive at by simply not being very moral.
As C.S. Lewis wrote “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
On the post: John Oliver's Story On Campaign Music And Copyright Is... Wrong
Re: I think the embarrassment that needs addressing...
Plus of course the purpose of copyright is not and has never been to prevent usage by someone in some cause that the creator disagrees with. It is designed to protect their financial/commercial interest only.
Even in the extreme case where one might successfullly argue that the usage had damaged the artist's public image and hence impacted his/her sales it would be a case under trademark or publicity rights law and most definitely NOT under copyright law.
On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
Re: Re: Re: Best of both worlds
Let's create the scenario, all drugs are legal. No restrictions on use and no restrictions on who can use. However, there are a couple of things that must take place now.
The first is that all people who willingly use drugs are now fully responsible for the consequences of their usage. That is, if they cause any kind of endangerment to the lives of other people, they will have mandatory death sentences applied. If they cause damage, they are fully required to restore said damage, up to and including life enslavement until full restitution is done.
Of course legalising drugs IS a good idea - but shortly after that I parted company from you.
The reason that legalising drugs is a good idea is that more than half the problems we have with drugs are related to the fact that they are illegal. In fact they constitute a "Criminal Business Opportunity".
If fact it is actually an International Business Opportunity - since that part of terrorist funding that doen't come from oil or kidnapping comes from drugs.
Legalising Heroin would have a major positive impact on Afghanistan.
Legalising drugs would also remove one of the major excuses for police harassment of minorities (and anyone whose face does not fit).
I think the one measure that would need to remain would be against promoting and marketing - as we have done with tobacco.
On the post: Court Says Cop Calling 911 With Suspect's Phone To Obtain Owner Info Is Not A Search
Re: Re: No sympathy
Do you think the police should have needed a warrant to say "home boy" to the dog?
On the post: Court Says Cop Calling 911 With Suspect's Phone To Obtain Owner Info Is Not A Search
No sympathy
It is really no different from the case of J Ealey who left his dog at the scene of the crime - all the police had to do was say "home boy!"
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