Kortz's page

It's a lifestyle choice! Who are you people to judge?

I mean, who are we to judge?

Which form of government is it where you line up every couple of years, poke at a lighted screen for a few minutes, and then later that night the TV tells you what happened? That's the one I do.

Bitter Thorn wrote:

Ron Paul: Defense Bill Establishes Martial Law In America

And this is why Ron Paul to stupid to be president.

In the US we live enmeshed within vast matrices of all-encompassing laws and codes that are enforced at the discretion of law enforcement officials. Lives and property are routinely destroyed for minor offenses or just the appearance of minor offenses. Children are charged with sex crimes. Elderly cancer patients are taken from their wheel chairs and have their diapers searched at the airport. Peaceful protesters are sprayed with chemicals and beaten. We live in a de facto police state already, whether or not you have felt the boot on your neck; these new developments only make it official.

Ron Paul is wrong about a lot of things, but not this.

I bet if I made a Bard Archivist and named him "Derrida" no one would get it...

I believe what you are describing is anomie.

As an atheist I've always had trouble articulating what a norm building and continuing set of traditions should be. I don't want to have beliefs dictated to me, and don't really want to dictate them to...

Yeah, that's pretty much what I'm trying to get at. I guess I'll put Durkheim on the TBR list.

And I think a lot of people turned to Dungeons and Dragons out of a craving for the stories and myths that transmit values -- or at least the trappings thereof.

So no, the problem isn't multiculturalism. It's only when that "culturalism" consists of opposing religious views (Christian sects vs. Christian sects, Christianity vs. Islam etc.).
So tell me, what are those "values" you are referring to?
And I'm not making this a right vs. left problem.

Ok, thread blew up and might end up being locked, so I'm not going to give this the attention it deserves, but...

The mixing of cultures is inevitable and has been going since different groups of people discovered different ways of doing things. What bothers me is ideological multiculturalsim. A civilization that bends over backwards to tolerate and appease all worldviews doesn't have a coherent one of its own. A society that teaches that values and traditions are arbitrary and all equally valid uproots itself from its own history. And when people feel uprooted and unconnected, they no longer care and they become nihilistic in a basic, existential way.

This is a broad generalization coming, but I'd say that modernism and post-modernism have dealt the West a crippling spiritual blow to both the secular and the religious. And until we deal with that fundamental issue it is all just right vs left ping pong.

These rioters are what you are going to get after raising generations in a relativistic, value-less, multicultural, consumerist environment in which everyone feels entitled to whatever they want just for the great feat of being born. Prevent access to the consumer goods they need to fill the holes in their souls, images of which they are bombarded with constantly, and when economic realities set in and they can't have those things they are going to simmer in rage.

Do bad economic policies need to change? Certainly. But the heart of the problem is that Western civilization is sick and rudderless.

Why should backward and/or medieval immigrants to the West change their practices or worldviews once they get here and see how empty and hollow our societies are?

Europe will be fully part of the Islamic world by the end of this century, and the US will be a strange, little Byzantine Empire.

I think I'll have a margarita!

Edited for spelling but not pessimism.

That's what Sidhe said.

All I wanted was a triple-chicken saber and all I got was this double-chicken saber. Thanks, Paizo!

To say you pity someone their ignorance is a way of saying that you do not fear them intellectually.

But usually if someone feels the need to say that they are not afraid of something, they actually are.

So I would see it as less of a personal attack and more of an admission of weakness.

Well, "fantasy-prone misfit Libertarians" might not be entirely fair. There is a slight chance that the Earth gets hit by a meteor big enough to throw us back into the 18th Century, and when that happens all the Ron Paulists will be heroes.

I think capitalism is a key component of freedom and innovation.

But I also think that the ultra-wealthy and international corporations are bleeding the US dry. So, yeah, we need more of what the religious fundamentalists and fantasy-prone, misfit Libertarians call "socialism."

"I see you have a great terbutje."

*slap*

Kortz wrote:

Ron Paul is like an uncle at the family gathering who says things about the family that no one else is willing to say and that you tend to agree with, but the more he talks you begin to realize that he is a little off his rocker and possibly racist.

I think someone who is the greatest defender of personal rights and liberties and the rights of the individual, should not be called a racist (or possible racist).

You mean Captain America, right? I don't think he's a racist.

Ron Paul on the other hand is an Ayn Rand-worshiping nutball who would like to turn back the clock to the 19th Century. He's a philosophical iceberg. The 10% or so you immediately see makes sense and you are glad he is saying the things that he is saying, but underneath there is 90% untenable bullshiat.

If our greatest defender of liberty is a pie-in-the-sky, anti-choice Libertarian crank, then we are in serious trouble.

Ultimate Combat 3 will have the Dragon-Nose-Hair-Puller archetype.

False dilemma: Adhere strictly to the mechanics or be overpowered.

I always roll for stats because it's more authentic. My method is to roll one hundred complete sets of stats and pick the one that fits my concept. This avoids the cookie-cutter aspect of point buys used by lesser roleplayers.