hey guys and gals, remember that we try to avoid politics on this forum!  :mad:

-mouser (March 17, 2008, 11:29 PM)

Why?
It's alright if libtards vent, why can't I?
I'm pointing out the hypocrisy.
Earlier we had someone bemoaning the moral judgement of the "religious right", like in,"How dare they make a moral judgement!!!!".
Yet in Saudi Arabia they behead women who commit adultery and gay men, in Iran they hang them and kill homosexuals.
Stoning is common for moral crimes among Muslims.
Last I heard Christians ain't doing that, but they are more vilified and feared than sharia law and are paving the way for "big brother".
Give me a freaking break.
And the truth is that for over 2000 years Europeans have been responsible for or acquiescent to way more mass murder than we have in our roughly 250, Europe is where we got the word slave.
The perversion of the Catholic Church and Christianity during the inquisition was a European thing.
So IMO ain't no euroweenie can sit on his high horse and lecture me about freedom and human rights.
So save it for the other kool-aide drinkers fodder.

But we have strayed OT too far, my friend.  :(

-tinjaw (March 17, 2008, 11:36 AM)

I don't see how.
The title of the thread suggests that the fictional novel "1984" has some sort of relevance to reality.
I'm pointing out that it doesn't, except in the fevered mind of the ultra paranoid.
You made some absurd statements about the current administrations "evils" and in some way this is supposed to convince us that we are on the march to "big brother" while ignoring the policies of past administrations and their ineptitude and bad behaviour.
I call BS.
If you're really worried about freedom consider this.
Internment camps for Japanese-Americans during WWII was a policy instituted by Roosevelt, a democrat.
The Korean and Vietnam wars were democrat wars, involuntary forced conscription (the draft) was a democratic policy.
The draft was the greatest governmental seizure and deprivation of freedom of all time, and it and those wars were overseen by increasingly liberal democrats.
If you think "big brother" has you now, wait until after the elections and you have to report to an induction center.
Reading "1984" don't mean you know squat about "big brother", hearing someone call out your birth date in the high tens during a draft lottery does.

I really don't see how anyone capable of independent thought can read that novel and see it as anything more than an over embellished satire.
The idea that humans would be so in thrall to the state that they would tolerate the banishment of all vices to big brother for the greater good is laughable on the face of it.
We won't lose our freedoms to an oppressive police state, we'll lose them over cradle to grave dependency on nanny statism.
When the majority of the people of any country are dependent on the socialist teat for sustenance then the government has to confiscate more from the citizens who produce to shore up the welfare state.
That is what will kill freedom.