Conservatives mean that they are liberal in the old sense, and liberals are Marxist.
Liberals mean that they are good, and that conservatives are fascists in a sense they never quite define.
Not sure if this holds. Not sure any longer what people mean when they define these terms. I think it is good to avoid any kind of enthusiasm. More and more I think of all terms, and all attempts at definition, at bill making, as a shell game.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
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Conserveral liberatives are folks who like to talk about(making money from) making stuff free. I'm not aware of anything in the health care legislation that precludes the possibility of adding a public option at some point in the future.
My wife worked as a health care provider for fifteen years in clinics run by the U.S. Public Health Service and by private non-profit consortiums dedicated to making low cost health care available to low-income and underserved communities in the United States. We moved overseas so she could work internationally fifteen years ago.
It's been distressing to see what insurance companies and the profit motive have done to usurp and undermine the community-based health care system she worked so hard to establish two decades ago.
It's refreshing to see that people who cut their eye teeth in the community-based politics of that era have emerged in time, it is hoped, to redeem that era's promise.
Well the south side of Augusta
Has the thickest piney woods
And if you go down there
To play Amen Corner
You'd better have the goods.
I think we should make the DeLater's the new American Royal family--provided the Queen Bee can provide an heir, of course.
At least we will all wear hats!
It's not clear to me how the healthcare bill will play out. Apparently it doesn't kick in until 2016, just after the big O has moved on, to write further memoirs as his self-understanding increases exponentially.
The good part of the bill is that it requires the indigent to be enrolled. This will mean that hospitals won't have to suck up the emergency bills perpetrated on them by those who have no money to pay. (At present, bums walk into the emergency room for colds, or for just anything, and the hospitals HAVE TO accept them, which creates a messy situation financially for the hospitals.)
If we could now go through with some kind of tort reform, the spiralling costs of medical insurance might go down.
Many doctors think they will have to leave the system, now, because their expenses will not be coverable. It's hard to know if that's the case.
Morally, we have to cover everybody to some extent insofar as they are citizens. I don't think we should pay for illegals.
It's hard to know what to do or what to think. The bill itself is colossal, and probably contains all kinds of bizarre and quasi-constitutional notions, and will itself be in the courts for another five years as the constitutionality of it is verified.
But if you look at the insurance offices, they are fairly posh. Skyrocketing insurance is coupled with insurance skyscrapers in most of our big cities.
I'm no expert, but I would say that there is probably a correlation.
In other words, I squeak and whine until things actually go through, and then I try to see the silver lining.
Meanwhile, there's a meanwhile.
Let's get back to poetry!
I think when you get lazy, Kirby, you post an absurdist rant like this.
None of which you seriously believe.
You're not running a humor site.
In order to be taken seriously, you have to be serious.
Comedy and tragedy go together like salt and pepper.
I have an alarmist side, and a more rational side.
We don't know what this bill is going to do.
Very few people have even read it. There are amazing amounts of money given to recalcitrant senators such as the one in Nebraska, and the other in Louisiana.
I don't know how the reconciliation process is going to work out.
We don't know for sure if it's even constitutional.
At this point anybody can walk into an emergency room and demand treatment for anything. If they are living on the street, that's going to bankrupt a hospital, eventually.
You have to think about these things, but I have yet to see a complete breakdown of costs.
I have only a partial understanding of this from my own experience. Once I had a kidney stone without insurance in Portland, Oregon. The treatment cost 15 thousand dollars. I had no money, and didn't have to pay.
How much does a stab wound cost, or a bullet in the liver? Do you think pimps have insurance? gang bangers?
California is packed with crazy gangs from all over the world, and they are all shooting each other and stabbing each other. Who picks up the costs?
We do.
The cost of making the youth pay up is also supposed to balance the whole thing somewhat.
And there is a good thing that you can leave your children on your insurance when they're past 18.
The bill is bizarrely huge, has enormous loopholes for Nebraskans, and so on. It's a mess. But so is the current system.
It's not going to destroy my life, I think. It may actually help to control costs.
I think conservatives, at least the ones I like to follow are mean-spirited. They do not focus on the symbolism of an act, but on some colder standard. The left is romantic like a soap-opera. The right is cold and angry like a construction site.
Whatever is actually in the health care bill, the important substance is that it establishes a right to first-class health care to all American citizens, and imposes an obligation on the government to pay for it. The symbolism of this in enormous, as is the constraint it will impose on the medical sector of the economy.
At least some of those sweetheart deals will be taken out through reconciliation, Kirby...
I think the right got a bit silly with all of their nicknames - the 'cornhusker kickback,' yeah, that worked - but then they piled on 'louisiana purchase' (which makes you think wait...that's a Good thing) and 'gator-aid' (it will rehydrate me!) and a few other things...
It got too cute.
Anyway, most, if not all of those, will be gone.
Here's the best, most straightforward, least partisan description of what's actually in the bill that I've come across:
http://tinyurl.com/healthcareoutline
I think conservatives are concerned about the overall structure. they forget specific trees and think about the forest.
Liberals are concerned about individuals. They are concerned about specific trees, but can forget the forest?
Kennedy had it right: ask not...
But there aren't any more like him, and if there were, someone would probably shoot them.
Last off his PT boat.
It's no accident that the right focused on blowing up smaller aspects of the bill to cause controversy...
While I understand and empathize with the principledness of pro-lifers, the right once again used the issue as a scare tactic, misleading and exaggerating about the federal government funding abortion...
The same with the previous boogeymen of the 'death panels,' of an 'increased deficit,' of 'it's long,' of 'sweetheart deals,' of 'no benefits will kick in until 2014' (there's a transition period, outlined with clarity here):
www.tinyurl.com/healthcarestepbystep
I'm glad they did some of this complaining, since it helped to throw out some of the bathwater - to give added weight to the no-federal-funding-for-abortions language in the bill, and to shed light on the sketchy sweetheart deals that will then mostly be taken back, yeah I'm glad that happened - ...
And when it came to the meat of the bill, they played the label game: 'government takeover,' 'socialism,' 'job-killer.'
Which is funny, since the two main aspects of the bill - the individual mandate and the health exchanges - were originally Republican ideas, free market solutions to counter single-payer plans and the public option.
Disagree with Bob Dole and Orrin Hatch of the early 90s. But don't call their ideas socialist, for cryin' out loud!
The point O'Reilly and co. are making is that if you have to buy insurance or else go to prison unless you can pay the fine, then the government can also force you to have a certain kind of haircut, or wear a Mao outfit, or buy the car that they mandate for you to buy.
I do see this as a step that hasn't ever been taken before, and it remains to be seen if it's constitutional.
The fun thing about it is that it will hit the young the hardest: the very people who lined up in droves to vote in Bam in the first place.
Who knows?
Maybe they'll like it, and feel they should put the elderly and infirm and all the people trickling over the border before their own need to buy a house, or to own a functional car.
Romney did something like this in Massachusetts, right?
He thought it would work, but it didn't, which is why Scott Brown got elected.
It's quite funny. Obama finally did something quite insane -- laying all his cards on the table, and paying off a dozen or more states, and finally, doing something really hilarious -- he's going to take the bill and personally rewrite it. I don't think he's allowed to do that (I thought Congress was only allowed to write the Bills, and his only power was to sign it, but now it seems he's somehow able to write the legislation, too.)
The right has some points.
We'll see how this plays out.
He's going to personally rewrite it?
That was not my impression at all...
That's not what reconciliation is.
Where do you get this stuff? What are you talking about? The executive order that's just about abortion?
It won't 'hit the young hard.' It will force the young to have insurance, yes...(I am already forced to have insurance by the company that I work for over the summers), but it will make it easier to actually have insurance (can remain on parents' plans until 26, which is cheaper, and will get assistance paying for it if we's poor).
My cousin is eternally in debt because he unexpectedly had appendicitis, but lacked health insurance. If this plan were in effect, that wouldn't've happened...
And this bill doesn't cover illegal immigrants, if that's what you meant by 'trickling over the border.'
There are still a few aspects of this bill that I'm uncertain about, both in terms of support and in terms of what, simply, is going to happen.
1) The effect on doctors' pay... (probably affects different doctors differently, but I haven't heard much about this from either side, and definitely haven't seen a simple, reasoned, reality-check explanation of any changes)...
2) What does it mean for seasonal businesses? I get the whole requirements for 50-employee, or 100-part-time-employee thing, but does this apply to temporary employment (again, with summer camp in mind...Is my boss going to be required to help provide for the insurance of the 220 staff we get over the summer, even though the year-round staff is about 12 people? How does that all work? What if someone has two part-time jobs, or works a temporary gig in the summer and a temporary gig in the winter?)
3) There are certain people with religious objections would that not have to get health insurance. Who are these certain people? What are the requirements for opting out based on religious beliefs? Is the Tea Party a religion?
O'Reilly was talking with Brit Hume last night and I picked up a few talking points.
I'm not really following this that carefully.
I talked to a very conservative car dealer yesterday morning and he was rather sanguine about the healthcare deal. That was something.
And Wall Street, they said on the public station, was up.
So much is spin and half-truths.
The right is saying that the bill is able to be changed easily from within the left.
The left seems to be saying that they are angry that abortion rights aren't covered, and they are also afraid of all the constitutional challenges ahead.
I'm trying to let go of this as it's huge, and I don't think it will affect me directly. Also, it's going to be 50-50, and we will have at least six years to get rid of it, perhaps.
I don't know how it will affect the November elections.
Usually it's something in the last two weeks that determines the elections.
Doesn't the Senate get to vote on this if it is changed to any remarkable degree during the reconciliation?
Where are you getting all your information?
I am following Althouse's comments, watching Fox and MSNBC, a bit of public TV, and reading the local paper on it.
But I'm not doing it 24/7. I am reading Marianne Moore's Complete Prose 24/7.
The reconciliation bill is a list of changes to the senate bill that the house has already passed, and the senate is hoping to pass soon.
(remember, back in the day, the house passed a bill, then the senate passed a bill, and those two bills were different, so now the house passed the senate bill And the reconciliation bill, with the expectation that the reconciliation bill will be passed...The senate bill is 'officially' law of the land until the reconciliation bill passes. The reconciliation bill has changes that bring it closer to what the House wanted, which is why the House was able to get the votes for the Senate bill...)
Here is a pretty good summary of what's in the reconciliation bill:
http://tinyurl.com/HCRreconciliation
Basically, the reconciliation bill gives some more subsidies to the poor and the old, increases doctor-pay for those who treat medicaid patients (yay!), strikes the cornhusker kickback (yay!), and makes small changes to how the rich are taxed and to what the penalties are for individuals who don't get health insurance.
I have been curious to know if prison sentences are still in the offing, in addition to monetary penalties.
The cost of administrating prison sentences and monetary possibilities should offset any gain to be had, and won't exactly contribute to the country's mental health.
But I don't know if they left the jail sentences in this new draft. I sure hope so, as it's bound to make people crazy.
I don't have time to look the tinyurls you've sent, but thanks for sending them. Maybe Thursday I can look at them.
Thanks again for all these updates.
Are you saying that you think people will be sent to prison for not having health insurance?
That's not in the bill - there will be a fine (the larger of $695 or 2.5 percent of income) with exemptions for people who either fall under the tax-filing threshold or who, if forced to purchase health insurance, would end up spending more than 8 percent of their annual income...
From the bill:
"In the case of any failure by a taxpayer to timely pay any penalty imposed by this section, such taxpayer shall not be subject to any criminal prosecution or penalty with respect to such failure."
So anyone who tells you that someone could be sent to jail for non-compliance is either ignorant or lying.
Here's the link I'm using for understanding the penalties for non-compliance:
http://www.slate.com/id/2247580/
The law professor quoted in that article says that, "Compliance will therefore be largely voluntary (although the IRS can still make a tax resister's life miserable, whether or not it can ultimately collect)."
So anyone who tells you that someone could be sent to jail for non-compliance is either ignorant or lying.
So it goes
oh, and in terms of where I get my information, I'm a child of the internet age - not from one site, but from either searching for something I'm interested in learning more about through Google news, or reading about it through a link on Fark.com...
Which is why I was able to find down-the-line, unhysterical, unbiased summaries of the HCR bill at CSMonitor and Reuters.
I sometimes watch TV, only to see politicians speaking live, or just to get a taste of what the talking heads are being dumb about today...
(I saw Glenn Beck comparing the passage of HCR to Hitler And Pearl Harbor. Yay! And the 'straight news' guys at CNN during the day are just dolts.)
Beck can be useful, like stomach acid. but if he doesn't have something real in his sights, he will go after anything. He's hilariously paranoid.
But he did oust Obama's Maoist "green" czar, Van Jones. And I think he found out something else, too.
He does occasionally find something useful.
I think he's delightful fun to watch, kind of like a rodeo clown on a wild ride of bull-.
But some of what he says has turned out to be true.
Our media is fairly insane. National Enquirer is what figured out the Tiger stuff, and also the Edwards stuff.
Edwards could easily have been VP. It's just too bad he wasn't when all this broke. Talk about a distraction!
It's only at the fringes of the media that one can expect to learn anything at all. Even though it is mostly lies, and half-truths, there is the possibility of something true being said.
In the MSM, there is no possibility that you might learn anything.
The MSM is as stale as a Dagwood cartoon -- a format that ossified in 1930 and is no longer relevant to anything or anyone!
Kirby,
I think the problem is rather the reverse regarding the penalty for ignoring the mandate to buy health insurance. The penalty under the Senate bill (and I think this was not changed in the reconciliation bill) is $750 per person per year or 2% of household income, which ever is greater. This is pretty low compared to health insurance premiums, partcularly in states with community rating. For example the lowest premium for any individual policy available in Delaware County, New York is $877 per month (source http://www.ins.state.ny.us/hmorates/html/hmodelaw.htm)
and recall the $750 fine is per year.
If the fines are not increased, there will be a strong incentive to choose to pay the fine rather than pay the insurance premiums while one is not sick, since you are now guaranteed by law to be able to buy health insurance without suffering a rate increase after becoming ill.
I don't think the American public would tolerate prison terms for not buying health insurance, though it's easy to misunderstand how everyone else thinks. I am not sure the public would tolerate fines that are sufficiently large enough to prevent the system from falling apart.
"In the case of any failure by a taxpayer to timely pay any penalty imposed by this section, such taxpayer shall not be subject to any criminal prosecution or penalty with respect to such failure."
So anyone who tells you that someone could be sent to jail for non-compliance is either ignorant or lying.
So what you're saying is that I can not buy health insurance? And then I can ignore the fines that are levied? And then I can just sign up for insurance once I get sick (since you can't discriminate against pre-existing conditions)? Is that really how it's going to work? Or am I missing something?
Edwards would have been V.P. only if Hillary were the presidential candidate - young-looking, good-smiling, sweet-talkin' Barack didn't need Edwards around...
crinkley-faced Hillary, however, may've had use for him...
William - those numbers were changed in the reconciliation bill, though not substantially (it's now 695$, or 2.5% of income, whichever is larger)...
W.B., kinda, but not really - the IRS will 'make your life miserable,' so that's an incentive against such shenanigans - and I heard some alarmists on Fox today talking about how the IRS might be getting more powers, such that it would be akin to being taxed...
Though on this point, I think we all are swimming in hearsay and intuitions - Needless to say, the prison thing won't happen...What exactly it will look will be, I think, somewhere between jailtime and 'not paying at all until getting sick and then jumping on insurance.'
Though yeah, I'm unclear on what that looks like..
But what if you don't pay?
Aren't there are all kinds of loopholes here?
I think jailtime needs to be added as a back-up, or else no one's going to do this.
People should spend a minimum of a month in jail. Which would then make them unemployable, perhaps, and lead to an increase in the suicide rate.
That would make for a very unpopular bill, but would at least make some sense in terms of REALLY scaring people to pay up.
Mr. Picklesworth
Despite the quote from Brett, I think the fines will have the same legal status as federal income tax. Even so, for anyone who is healthy and not terribly rich, there will be a significant savings from doing exactly what you say.
And of course, this situation will not work for very long. The question is what will give.
I'd be tempted not to get insurance just as a matter of principle. Soft authoritarianism isn't my cup of tea.
Isn't the IRS what got Capone? That's a fairly tough outfit.
I assume the idea is to get the law into the works, and slowly let it grow its fangs.
It is funny to me how unclear everything is becoming. Don't ask don't tell was just hilarious in this regard. You are fine as long as everybody knows you are gay, but you don't say anything.
Now we have the stealthcare penalty with unclear sentencing guidelines run by the IRS of all groups. And the only penalty is to pay less than you normally would.
It's like the situation with the borders. You can come over the borders, and the only penalty is that you might get shipped back.
You can hire these people, and there are no real penalties.
You shouldn't do it, but there are no incentives not to do it.
And plenty of incentives to do it.
It's very funny how things are going.
We're going to have bloodless wars conducted by predator drones without a clear rationale except that we don't have the courage to end the war.
Everything's so unclear.
Still, the jails are full of people. Absolutely chock full.
And meanwhile creeps like the guy in california who kept the 11 year old on his property as a slave for twenty years walked, and will probably walk again.
In the 70s the Talking heads sang a song called Stop Making Sense.
Maybe it's time for someone to make a song called Start Making Sense. It'd be a big hit in the loony asylums.
Oh wait, they closed the asylums.
terrorize = someone's trying to scare you and succeeding
terrified = an avalanche is coming your way
terrifized = Obama's thinkig up another bill --
In politics, it's what you can force upon your opponents that determines your degree of success.
Unfortunately, when the national debt is the whipping-boy, we may all lose in the end.
Republicans want to spend like mad on arms, de-regulate everything, and let the rich get richer. They're perfectly happy to let the debt balloon as long as they get to squeeze the poor, and seize resource to their heart's desire.
Democrats want to spend on social engineering and "benefits". They're perfectly happy to let the debt balloon as long as they get to squeeze the rich and big business.
The strategy of both camps seems to be to spend as fast, and as irresponsibly, as they can, before the other side does. Is this dumb, or what?
Almost any kind of excess spending, at this point, is irresponsible. If we hadn't engaged in two debilitating wars of choice over the last decade, we might have had a chance to fund national health. But the money's gone. We spent it. Pretending that we can turn right around and spend it again is madness.
Without population control, we'll never get a handle on health delivery. With 20 million illegal immigrants waiting at the emergency room entry gate, you can kiss your own coverage good-bye. Eventually, we'll all be visiting Lourdes, because there won't be any alternative to prayer.
Population control is a natural outcome of development and education...
Having it as a narrow goal is communistic and short-sighted and ineffective.
Progress and education and development are the keys - population control will just accompany this...
The healthcare bill is pretty deficit-friendly...
The problem really is that during the lastdecade (a period of economic growth), we spent instead of saved...
When the economy recesses, to bring it back, we need to spend again in the short-term.
This was complicated by the idiocy of the last administration, which went against all logic and spent willy-nilly when the economy was Growing.
Hopefully we have 8 years of a democratic president, so that we can finish up this needed economic stimulus-spending, and shake off the kinks that sillyBush's policies made structural, and end up in a fiscally responsible place in 6 or 7 years...
I wouldn't actually mind if we had a Republican house and senate in 2012 with a democratic president - as long as we had someone smart and pragmatic on the right like Newt to help balance the budget... The railroading that a 2010 Repub. majority would engage in might be too much obstruction too soon. The illegal immigration situation is silly - for the privilege of having unskilled labor being paid less than minimum wage, we have 20 million people who don't get taxed and who send much of the money they make away from our economy. I don't know if, economically, this is worth slightly cheaper goods.
But now that it has passed, it seems that 49% like the HCR bill and 40% don't. It's been heartening to see more articles that say 'this is what is in the bill,' and address the actual policies in it, as opposed to articles that say 'this is what the dumbass rightie talkingheads say, and this is the dumbass lefty response.'
Health-care should be mandated, as long as our hospitals are forced to take in everyone at the emergency room.
If those who opted out of health insurance got into a car accident were allowed to die if they didn't have health insurance, then it would make sense not to have a mandate...
Otherwise, the implicit deal is 'you can get healthcare when you're about to die if you have health insurance.' You have the privilege of at least emergency room access, so in exchange you need to get health insurance so you're not just getting a free ride...
As a country, we would need to pick one or the other for things to be sound - we've already decided that the emergency room can't refuse service...so it follows that everyone needs to have health insurance.
I think it is intellectually inconsistent to argue for a repealing of the health insurance mandate unless you also argue for the repealing of the emergency-room-service mandate.
'm I wrong?
If this is all finally about funding the emergency room mandate, then it does make sense.
How to get rid of the illegals is another question.
I say target the bosses who hire them.
Brett,
In a word, yes. :)
Exactly how to make the penalties work is a good question. Penalties are a lot of fun to imagine, but difficult to make work.
If you put a CEO in prison, it might make the company fold, which could affect a whole region.
Maybe you could just make a boss wear only one sock for a week if they are caught with an illegal worker.
This way they could still work, but they would be made slightly uncomfortable.
If you put a CEO in prison, it might make the company fold, which could affect a whole region.
Which means the punishment might be effective.
Pacifist that I am, I think that the only logical penalty for breaking a law is the rapid application of the death penalty.
This serves two purposes. One, it serves as a real deterrent to crime. Two it serves as a real deterrent to excessive criminalization of behavior.
Not surprised by this view of yours, G.M...
Did you ever see the episode of Star Trek Next Generation where they visit this uber-peaceful planet, and Wesley is playing some sort of game of catch, and accidentally steps over a small fence and onto a little garden, and it's against the law to step there, and the penalty for this is death?
Yeah, that's GM's kind of world...
Actually, Brett, it's not.
1st of all, that world is run by an overlord computer who enforces the law.
2ndly, do you think if the only available penalty for lawbreaking were death that such an obscure thing would be against the law?
3rdly, Picard's argument at the end of the episode about the law being more flexible is lame, half-assed, and wishy-washy.
2) yes. Where do you draw the line? Laws are about punishing crimes that harm the community. Stepping on that garden harmed the community. Thus, DEATH.
The punishment for an offense should fit the crime. You think that all offenses should end in death...Which is of course another manifestation of your heretical worldview.
In the Heavenly Kingdom, all crime separates us from God, and therefore all punishment is extreme, eternal death. Grace, however, washes away all of our crimes so that we are not judged how we should be.
We are on the kingdom of earth, however, and so applying Kingdom of Heavenish paradigms to Kingdom of Earth = silly.
1) A computer is an impartial judge - wouldn't you want an impartial judge to enforce the laws?
3) I don't remember Picard's wishy-washy argument about the law. His side is right, even if his argument was weak.
so it goes
2) yes. Where do you draw the line? Laws are about punishing crimes that harm the community. Stepping on that garden harmed the community. Thus, DEATH.
I should have mentioned this earlier--I thought about it on the way home.
Most of the point of that episode was not the unjustness of the laws--but their unjustness when applied to strangers. This serves two important purposes in my argument:
1) No person raised in that environment and aware of the laws and their punishment would break them
and
2) As I've said many times (since you are apparently bringing Jesus into a secular discussion--which is fine): you can't expect someone who is fallen to behave like someone who is saved. You should, however, expect someone who is saved to behave like Jesus. WWJD and all that.
The punishment for an offense should fit the crime.
Actually the crime should fit the punishment. Remember my point--such a policy would eliminate most non-harmful "crime" from the lawbooks.
You think that all offenses should end in death...
Again, the policy would naturally reconfigure what was and was not an offense.
Which is of course another manifestation of your heretical worldview.
Ah yes, that word again. Please show me, in the New Testament, where my worldview is heretical.
In the Heavenly Kingdom, all crime separates us from God, and therefore all punishment is extreme, eternal death.
Interesting. In the "Heavenly Kingdom" there would be no crime because we would not sin, being perfected in Jesus and what not.
Grace, however, washes away all of our crimes so that we are not judged how we should be.
Actually, we are warned about being measured by our own measures.
We are on the kingdom of earth, however, and so applying Kingdom of Heavenish paradigms to Kingdom of Earth = silly.
And where is this Kingdom of Heaven going to be? Moreover, where does it say the above--in the New Testament?
1) A computer is an impartial judge - wouldn't you want an impartial judge to enforce the laws?
Here you are missing the point. The point is that the Star Trek world is a made-up world. It's an interesting illustration but it only goes so far--ripping off an old Orson Scott Card story is hardly definitive proof. I was talking about in the real world.
3) I don't remember Picard's wishy-washy argument about the law. His side is right, even if his argument was weak.
Only because you say so, with whatever authority you think you have.
so it goes
Don't quote Kurt at me, sonny.
Please, don't call me Sonny.
I much prefer Cher:-)
Oh, you Know what I meant by Kingdom of Heaven.
It's perfect because all who enter have been cleansed by the grace of God...
All those without Grace are burned in hell throughout eternity (or no longer exist, depending on your mileage).
So I may have located the 'law' in the wrong place, but you get my drift.
All have sinned and fallen short (falling down, down, waaaaay down)... But that's not kingdom of earth stuff...
Once again, your world-view just doesn't giggidy with reality...
There are lots of crimes that don't deserve death...
I mean, it seems that very, very few do.
Where do You draw the line? You say the lines would be redrawn, but by whom? And to where?
Should we kill the peeps who threw bricks through them windows? Or is that just another behavior without consequence...
What if I steal a car? DEATH?...weird!
"Here you're missing my point..."
Here you're missing My point...Your world is a made-up world, G.M., so we might as well have a computer in there.
Hell, even the OT, hardass as it is, has punishments other than death.
It doesn't take much authority for me to say that there should be laws that punish crimes other than death. This just takes common sense. ( And being good at analogies. I'm good at analogies, thus I can have a pretty basic understanding of equivalencies from one group of objects to another.)
But God did it in the O.T., so he seems to have been on my side at least before Jesus, and there's really nothing Jesus said that washes away that basic approach...that gvmt should punish crime, and that some of those punishments needn't be death. Where does he say otherwise?
You, of course, seem to believe you have the authority of God on your side in all earthly matters.
That's heretical!
(I throw that word around at you, GM, for funsies, because this is the only space where I ever really see its use, and you seem to use it somewhat frequently to refer to those whose views on Christianity disagree with your own)...
And you've finally clarified, a bit, your position when you say that we shouldn't expect non-Christians to act as Christ would...
The fault here still, however, is that you get your realms mixed up, and a lot of your theories on government implicitly make the assumption that all will act like little Christs...
Oh, and of course your belief that Christians Can act like Christ. We can follow him, but not be him (including perfect). Biggy differencey me thinkey.
One of the crimes for which Henry Wirz was hanged after the war was his enforcement of the dead line. Union prisoners at Andersonville were not allowed within fifteen feet of the stockade wall because the prison only had one regiment of soldiers to man the forty sentry posts ranged along the stockade wall. Prisoners outnumbered guards by a ratio of between 20 and 50 to 1, and there were legitimate fears that the prisoners could attack the sentry posts, demolish the stockade wall and go on their merry way, particularly once Sherman had taken Atlanta. Weapons taken from the sentries might well have sufficed to sustain efforts to seek and obtain the protection of Sherman's forces. When supplies of food rations at the prison were arriving at a rate slower than the rate new prisoners were arriving and guards began selling local produce to prisoners willing to risk crossing into the dead zone, something had to be done to make it clear that crossing that line was indeed a risk. The prisoner who died for crossing that line was Caleb Coplan from Ohio.
Brett,
I see none of my points refuted and a lot of your glib smuggery.
G.M. - I don't see that you have a point.
'We should get rid of all punishment crimes that aren't worth the death penalty."
You are the radical one on this topic, and so you need a lot more to support this viewpoint than just 'it wouldn't be a computer like in the episode, so it's not EXACTLY the world I'm envisioning, dummy!'
You need to spell out where you would draw the lines, and who would get to decide where the lines would be drawn, for there to be anything more to talk about.
otherwise, I'm just wilting at spinmills.
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