STP

[video:youtube]z7ILF2JXOEE

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality, 1754 Rousseau doesn't appear to actually use the term, noble savage. If it is virtue that is referred to when speaking of noble as an adjective, there seems to be a recognition that primitive man didn't necessarily have what we could say is a virtuous society. However, that supposed state of innocence goes all the way back to Genesis prior to the later social changes, good and bad, which were largely fostered by urbanization and its consequent inequality. Time and again that sentiment reappears. [video:youtube]P6IDoxi9QsE The message in the other video is more about statism.

Nietzsche said, "There are no facts, only interpretation." There's no statement on morality, whether right or wrong only that information becomes propaganda.

You're absolutely right, there are historical currents, and more people and more ideas than can be identified solely with those three. Why not use broad brush strokes to depict the Revolution? If you had to sum it up then say, it was a revolt again the excesses of the power establishment. So, in a sense, it's similar to other events such as Luther's Reformation. And that, is what the video and the movie are all about: to break the social ideological restraints that confine your normal way of thinking. Dr. Leary was right. The Internet, as it is, permits someone to go beyond the restrictions of the conditioning imposed by prior education, allowing access to enormous amounts of information and ideas. Sometimes it's the novelty of ideas, other times it's another vector or method that allows ideas to get past your mental censors. And McKenna was right too about our culture being our operating system. But I know, we're not talking about the same thing.

Rousseau? Eh? Is this some dig on the French Revolution and the resulting Reign of Terror? The way I see it, the Revolution signaled the end of the Ancien Regime by breaking the stranglehold of the Clergy and Monarchy over the People, and saw the consequent rise of a new order along the lines of Montesquieu. Anarchy? Voltaire distrusted democracy as the idiocy of the masses and rather supported the idea of an enligtened depotism. As far as the Reign of Terror, this seems more the prevalence of emotion over rationalism. But as the National Socialists showed, rationalism applied incorrrectly can also be destructive.

The amended version of the $700(?) billion financial bailout bill contained a commuting reimbursment amounting to $20 per qualified commuting month within a tax year.

Heh, they just need more American culture. No, I take that back. Not American but modern materialist consumer-based universal culture. Yeah. [video:youtube]eysUcfdAszQ

Spatial, physical boundaries? Geopolitical boundaries? Nations will not exist in the future. Is it not the trajectory presented by history and the evolving technocultural progression that we are bound to? [video:youtube]P772Eb63qIY

Yeahhhh, that Northern tradition. [video:youtube]uUiDDWi8k1o [video:youtube]_Z4OvK3Vn44

Thanks for the Canadian perspective. Another bait and switch? Will the US taxpayer indirectly subsidize our automakers forays into the emerging markets? GM opens second India plant Ford Edge headed to Brazil Procurement, manufacturing and assembly are global operations but what really hits home is the effect on the American middle class in terms of wages. Although we decry when the following happens: Air Force dumps Boeing for Northrop, Airbus, a similar effect would have occurred if Boeing would have been awarded the contract since Boeing also is a multinational operation. So if trade protectionism and unionism are not the answer, what is?

[video:youtube]XW8L7O8qGgg

I just wanted to throw this video in here because, you know, I'm just that kind of guy: [video:youtube]Ye0k-qRDSno

Doesn't seem so clear cut as as a Republican vs Democrat thing. On the financial bailout, the House Republicans rejected the bill but the bill was taken up by the Senate, modified and passed, then sent back to the House of Representatives. Here, the House of Representatives passed the auto bailout bill but the Senate Republicans and some Democrats denied its passage. Looks like more work remains to be done. The Bush administration ended up supporting both bills.

Wasn't he portrayed fictionally in one of those Batman movies? No seriously, he sounds like a standup guy and candidate for executive material in the evolving Centrist Party. In the name of expediency (which seems to be invoked on an increasing basis) it seems as if our system of law is yielding to the 'plea bargaining' process whereby one cops the guilty plea in exchange for a lesser sentence. So, really all the police have to do is investigate everyone enough so that evidence of all wrongdoing is accumulated and dumped onto a person. And...get this, there are crimes of conspiracy where you don't actually have to commit an act and you can be charged based on circumstantial evidence. I don't work in the profession but is this justice per his following statement? Now, there is Truth as in physical laws that govern our universe but in as far as human intentions it appears that it operates in a realm of consensual reality where truth is always in a state of becoming rather than being.

dude, laws limiting gun rights have existed since our country's founding - if it really was a slippery slope, wouldn't we be at the bottom of it by now? Until Heller vs District of Columbia it appeared to be heading towards the bottom of the slope with the application of the 2nd amendment linked to the organization of a militia and removed from the individual right to bear arms.

I personally don't have any problems with the special case of courtrooms where guns and volatile emotions can result in violence however, in some cases, if someone had been packing in a "gun free" zone, e.g., Virginia Tech, then maybe the action of one law abiding, armed citizen could have prevented further bloodshed.

Ok, here's my understanding of the issue. A law abiding citizen doesn't require a specific utilitarian reason for justifying and exercising a constitutional right. The right stands on its own. But also, in my understanding, all of the rights in the Bill of Rights must be taken as a whole and not only on their own merits. Together they define a "free" society. The overall movement by gun control supporters down a slippery slope will basically result in the public losing the free exercise of the 2nd amendment as recently defined by SCOTUS (Heller vs. District of Columbia), leaving these items primarily in the hands of the military and other government agents. Perhaps if enough people or their designated representatives can vote on it then maybe you could do as they did with Prohibition and constitutionally do away with the 2nd amendment.

Yah, there's been a flurry of news stories concerning Blagojevich odd behavior. He appears to be a real skunk. And with a year long fed investigation where his telephone was bugged you'd think this would be an open and shut case. Yet he claims he hasn't done anything illegal, maybe inappropriate but law abiding. Maybe he's totally full of shit but is it a crime if he only talks boastingly about influence peddling or is he actually guilty of following through and committing these acts?

Well if the Democrats don't pull off a miracle then both the D's and R's will be scrambling to placate the masses.

In all fairness the game of politics can take down its mightiest players. But some of them appear to resurrect right before your eyes. Might as well call Obama's cabinet, the Clinton cabinet.

So...none of you believe in due process? I find it sorta funny that Blagojevich (Democrat) ran on a platform of reform to succeed Illinois Gov. George Ryan (Republican) who's currently serving time in prison for corruption. Also, do you remember former Democratic New York governor Elliot Spitzer who pursued corruption and fraud with such zeal that it earned him the nickname Elliot Ness? Charges against him were dropped.

What was the original purpose of the bailout bill? In other news... Illinois governor arrested on corruption charges

A person having a teleological view of history taken together with a Vedantic perspective (similar to Campbell's "Thou art that.") would come to accept that consciousness evolved so that the Universe could observe itself not merely to manipulate it but to fulfill the sense expressed in the phrase: Gnothi Seauton(similar to Buddhist idea of the Witness where the idea of boundaries between Subject and Object dissolve).

--Albert Einstein Hahaha, maybe you are right. Maybe so too, Voltaire: "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him."

Seems you're confusing the manifestations of human institutions versus a sense of wonder and awe of the universe. The latter is prerequisite to a religious/spiritual outlook on life.