What I find disturbing about this, is that key players of th us government have stated very clearly in the past that their goal is keeping down rival nations. They even have a website. I'm sorry to keep bringing this up, but noone has acknowledged its existence so far.

Indeed, the United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.
(Rebuilding America's Defenses, PNAC, 2000)

Check out the date.

Rebuilding America's Defenses' became the roadmap for foreign policy decisions made in the White House and the Pentagon; PNAC had the Vice President's office in one building, and the Defense Secretary's office in the other. Attacking Iraq was central to that roadmap from the beginning. When former Counterterrorism Czar Richard Clarke accused the Bush administration of focusing on Iraq to the detriment of addressing legitimate threats, he was essentially denouncing them for using the attacks of September 11 as an excuse to execute the PNAC blueprint.
(http://www.energybulletin.net/1543.html)

The stock in trade of Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root is the construction of permanent military bases. The Reuters reporter I spoke to had been to several KBR-built permanent American military bases in his six month tour of Iraq. "That's where the oil industry money is going," he told me. "Billions of dollars. Not to infrastructure, not to rebuilding the country, and not to helping the Iraqi people. It's going to KBR, to build those bases for the military.

According to the Center for Public Integrity, Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root has made $11,475,541,371 in Iraq as of July 1. So that's one PNAC goal checked off the list.
(ibid)

You have no idea how many of these connections there are - quantified and documented of course. Tragically, most of this is on - their - own - website (http://www.newamericancentury.org/). It's really true: to hide something from someone, shove it in their face.

If there's a real world explanation(economy, imperialism, information, influence) for a real world phenomenon, and a romantic explanation, it's *always* the real world one.

Someone acknowledge that you have read this.

Even if both liberals and conservatives have an equal proportion of stupid people, liberals have a much higher proportion of intellectuals, which will bump it up overall.

But the reason why the uneducated tend to be conservative is because being conservative is easy, and so it's going to be the 'default' stance. Opposing change and maintaing the status quo, that doesn't require any thought.
Being liberal, supporting new ideas, new initiatives, that requires effort, that requires you to actually 'do' something. Yes, there are a lot of people who are 'liberals' for all the wrong reasons. But they are putting in effort, even though it's misplaced and misguided effort. You can't really support change 'by default'.

Just because some one is an intellectual doesn't mean they are smart.

Sooo..if I understand correctly, you are trying to bring up a point that the whole Middle East deal is done just for one corporation's economic gain?

Edit: Also, I never said that ALL liberals drive SUVs. My dad's gf is probably further right than I am and she has an...Expedition (nice vehicle BTW).

I would say it comes from the urge to call anything you don't like stupid. I notice a lot of this among six year olds. It's like calling Hitler stupid. He wasn't stupid, he was just evil. People often attribute stupidity to things that they don't like, when too lazy to think of other, more fitting adjectives.

Or maybe it's just because people are stupid.

Either that or you have a warped perspective of the world, and need to sit down and listen before you speak. Because everytime you call someone stupid it's JUST because you don't like their views. Right.

Or in the present with regards to France.



What the hell do Jeeps/SUVs have to do with the global environment?

I think this discussion should start with first defining what it means to be intelligent. I think that almost all the definitions you guys can come up with will be completely arbitrary and relative to your own abilities. If you're a math kid, intelligence is measured by mathematical ability. It's stupid.

Jon`C, you don't know what communism is if you're making such ignorant remarks. The Canadian "Liberals" are people-pleasers, the kind of people that will sell the clothes off their kids' backs so they could get elected. They don't represent any point of view. Parties can go **** themselves. Pretty much all of you who hold democracy in such high regard have no idea. You've never seen democracy, and when it comes down to it you wouldn't be able to face up to it.

I've seen people on both sides do that. Then, I've only seen liberals do that with a logical reason.



Calling him evil, simply because what he did was wrong from your perspective is just as childish. Moral relativism, anyone?

Your posts never make any sense, and always show your stupidity. I think I speak for everyone when I say figure out what the hell you're talking about, and THEN post.

BTW--you do not have any higher knowledge of democracy than we do. In fact, the adults here have more knowledge of democracy in action than the minors. So you have NO room to talk about it, just because you've got some fancy idea in your head of what it 'really' is.

Genocide has been internationally acclaimed as an evil act, as per the U.N.

So yeah, moral relativism can suck it.

So because the U.N. says it, it is absolute law and beyond any reasoning?

There's no such thing as an "evil" person. The person is a product of his era, genes, environment, personal experience, etc... We can condemn the **** out of the holocaust, and we should, but "Hitler is evil" is stupid. Infantile. It's exactly this demonizing that'll allow things like this to happen again in the future.

*Someone* please acknowledge my post. Just an ok, or a smiley will do. Don't even have to answer it, or comment on it.

No, it's just a very good definition of what almost every country in the world thinks is evil. Something as universal as that, I would dare say is a universal definition.

Tenshu--Hitler was the cause of the Holocaust. The cause of something evil. Therefore, we can extrapolate that he's evil.

Anyone who says otherwise is really just ****ting in my hand and calling it a sandwich. Note: it's not working.

there :p

Thanks bro! I can go to sleep now

Stalin purged more than...30 million of his own kind because he was paranoid

Hitler killed 11 million Jews, Gypsies, outcasts, etc because they bothered him.

Hussein gassed one million Kurds in his nation.

But noooo, these people aren't evil. They're just misguided souls. Hitler wasn't evil. He was just really really pissed off. Stalin wasn't evil, he just had a mental disorder that's all.

Do you, Tenshu, consider these acts evil yes or no?

No, it's been deemd an illegal act. Like lots of other things.



Because they're incredibly inefficient and emit far more pollutants than normal cars. If people actually need Jeeps and big cars, for farm work or offroading, that's fine, but the vast majority don't and are polluting unnecessarily.

Hehe, you can always trust google ads for a laugh:

And yet they refuse to call Sudan genocide, partially because China sits on the security council wielding its veto for oil. That's still moral relativism... its ok to do anything as long as its in the interest of some good, noble or not.

This is just wild, unfounded speculation here, but could this not be because non-religious folk tend to get married less? There can sometimes be a lot of pressure on us religious folk to get married, which can result in hasty decisions that are regretted later. The non-religious, on the other hand, tend to have fewer qualms about simply living with someone unmarried.

Plus, the using red-state/blue-state as an indicator for that kind of thing is not really sound. Not everyone who lives in a Republican state voted Republican. You'd need to find statistics talking about individuals, not states.

Though I'm pretty sure there's a proper statistical survey showing something similar. I'm too lazy to go check, though.



What the heck? Since when is Shakespeare a "homosexual author"? Furthermore, has anybody ever, in the history of the world, called for a ban on Shakespeare? If there were such a person, he would clearly be from the "Stupid Faction" of religion, not the ones with actual cognitive abilities.

You're falling into the trap of judging an entire population sector by their stupidest members.



The point isn't "our side has more smart people than yours", it's "both sides have a large number of smart people with well thought out reasons for their beliefs." Many liberals seem to think that all conservatives are either slack-jawed yokels or corrupt businessmen, and many conservatives seem to think that all liberals are either pot-smoking hippies or from Hollywood. We're trying to dispell that inaccurate view.



You live in the US, right? Because here in Canada (or Europe), the opposite is true. The ignorant tend to adopt the views of their surrounding culture. In the US, that tends to be conservatism. In Canada (especially Ontario and the East), the default is liberalism.

Really, I would say that maintaining the status quo and resisting change is just as difficult as trying to make changes. Is defence easier than offence? Is parrying a blow easier than striking a blow?



I agree. That cheerleader who gets bad grades in every class could actually be a genius, it's just that she applies her intelligence to things like interpersonal relationships and social advancement (not to mention cheerleading). Intelligence, properly, is the ability to learn and analyse new things, not a measure of how much or what kind of knowledge you currently possess.



If moral relativism is true, then why do you care what Obi believes? He's just as right as you are, because everything's relative.

Oh, and Tenshu, I also read your post, but I didn't address it because I'd rather not talk about the Iraq war for the ten billionth time. This thread about the relative intelligence of liberals and conservatives is much more interesting to me.

Moral relativism is not opinionlessness. Moral relativists still make judgements and still have opinions, they just do so without universal 'absolutes'.

none of that "everyone has a right to an opinion" crap.

To be fair, Nazism was all about the greater good of the Germanic people, and the non-Germanic minority was expendable. It was utilitarianism at its extreme. On the surface of things, you can pretty much blame Hitler and claim he was evil. The fact of the matter is that people who get hold of power are not completely stupid and know the cost of maintaining power. It seems to me that Hitler was just as much a puppet as the German people are made out to be. The Holocaust was not simply the result of mere whims of a madman. It was easy to marginalize the Jews because anti-Semitism was (and still is) quite rampant. There was no blood-loyalty or race or religion when innocents were slaughtered. This was an act of maintaining control over the majority. These same attitudes that so many "free" people revere are not freedom. Without empathy you can't have freedom.

First off, yes - I was being serious about the SUV/Battleship comment.

Second, yes - Conservatism stands for very strong family and religious values. That doesn't mean religious fundamentalism, so quit putting words in my mouth.

Third, I'm not an American. I'm a Canadian, and I'm a conservative largely because I've witnessed, first hand, the horrible damage a liberal government can do to a country if there are no powers keeping it in check. If you think keeping the Democrats in power for 30 years is a good idea you're sadly mistaken.

Fourth, the Iraqi War is idealogical. Not imperialistic, and it's not a war for oil.

Fifth - The Canadian Liberal party is currently involved in something called Adscam. They've been bribing advertising agencies, laundering money out of the treasury to serve their own ends, and generally been cheating on every single election. So excuse me if I'm rather hostile toward the scum-sucking money pfilphering bottom feeder leech leftist jackasses.

That and many other things.

Also, Flexor, you weren't actually talking about the subject, you were talking about practicing biological scientists being less intelligent than physicists.

I'd like to see you even write one article, come up with one experiment, anything in biology that doesn't require an intense amount of thinking. Pioneering in any field is not just hard, it requires a great deal of intelligence to imagine solutions to a complex problem. Are you trying to say that it's easier to do that in biology and chemistry than in physics?

Because your posts really demonstrate you are stuck thinking that biology = Latin names, you should apologize for ranting on something of which you know nothing about.

The basic point you tried to make that started the whole discussion is that biological scientists rely on strict memorization, and thus do not have the "high intellegence" of a practicioner of physics. That is a very incorrect assumption, one that you fail to back up, yet you still have that feverent belief in a completely unfounded claim; this is disapointing and shows what type of mindset you have in making other claims.

I doubt you will read all this, but hey, I wrote it to get some steam off, and that did the trick! :p

I never said that.



Something being easy or not is relative. Regardless, my point was that, no matter how much effort may be put into a work of biology, none of that hard work requires a high level of intelligence to achieve - simply a high level of education.



I've asked you time and time again to provide me with one single example of the contrary and you've failed to provide it.

You could have refuted intelligently, but instead, you flamed me and others in every single one of your posts (until an admin had to intervene). I didn't reply to any of them until now. Instead, I prefered to bathe in the delicious irony as you proved my point further with every one of your immature overreactions.

Someone is a LAIR

In response to this:



You said:



Hmm, Flexor, hmm. What does that say to you? IS talks about scientists not being Christian, you reply "Microbiology, or biology in general isn't really a science that requires a high degree of intelligence". One can, by simple deduction, say that you are also talking about scientists. Why shouldn't one think that? Now, let's move on, shall we...



I really don't know how to respond to this; instead, I'll give an example:

There are certain cells called "pyramidal cells" in the brain. These cells are connected to other cells that modulate this cell's function. But how do you explore these cells? How do you seperate the pyramidal cells from their regulators? What knowledge can you memorize to find out an answer to a question that has not be answered before?

Simply, one has to imagine and one has to think. All I said is that to make discoveries, education and memorization apply, but intellegence is needed. You need to figure something out. No textbook can tell you the answer to of how to find out what causes sleep or of how memories are created and stored. No textbook, without the work of biologists could have told you how we metabolize sugar, or how to treat complex diseases.



I've drawn plenty of examples, based on the following logic that in order to innovate intellegence (a very broad term in the first place) is needed. Biologists innovate, and you seem to deny that they have this vaunted "high intellegence". Also, even non-research biology requires not just strict memorization, such as wolfy pointed out. But since that disagrees with you, you seem to ignore that all together.

You have no proof or reason behind your own posts, and others have pointed out flaws before as well. I really don't know what your beef is, but I really don't care to know.

Oh and also, you and others? Who, apart from 0, who called biology a paracistc science, did I flame. I dunno, that seems pretty inflamatory to me. You both show very base knowledge, yet make all these sweeping claims. It is annoying, and I don't see why one shouldn't call it stupid. I don't stongly comment on things I know nothing about. You know nothing about biology, and I'm not going to give you a lecture trying to defend a whole branch of science. I already gave some very good reasons. Unless you want me to lie and say biology consists of a great deal of forumlas, I can't give you something that you will respect.

And that isn't saying all biologists are stupid - what I said is that you don't need to be intelligent to be a biologist. I'm sorry if you can't read properly. That's pretty sad, for a biologist!

In any case, I shouldn't have gotten involved in this debate to begin with. There's a very good reason why I stopped trying to argue with people like you - you simply aren't intelligent or mature enough to have a civil discussion. Your posts have pretty much proven my point. Those of you who didn't already see it never will, so there is no use in keeping this up.

Wait, wait, wait! Moral relativism has nothing to do with "greater good" or anyone's "good" at all. It's just you arbitrarily laying down your own moral code. It may benefit others and it may not. It's entirely up to you. And according to moral relativism, none of those choices are "better" or "worse". They are equal because there is no absolute standard to measure them with. If there is no absolute standard, "better" and "worse" become meaningless.

Oooo, burnnneeedd... not.

My point is that to be a any sort of real scientific biologist you do need intellegence. It is their job, like physicsits, to think and innovate. That does require intellegence, no matter if you accept it or not. However, I'm going to stop now, because it seems that you seem to be in your own happy litte world where you are right. You have proven time and time again that you are a very dense, stubborn man. And that does not exactly equate with intellegence. Whatever man, go and sing that song to yourself; at the end of the day, you will be thinking whatever you want, because hey, you are the best, and nothing you say is wrong. And sadly, most of the world is like you, no matter what tag they have. Consevative or Liberal, they are a huge group of blockheaded individuals who don't bother giving a thought to the opposing side.

Hey, I tied it into the main topic! And it all comes full circle.

Mommy, daddy, stop fighting please

I'm sorry son, mommy and daddy don't love eachother anymore. You have to make a choice now. Live with me, or live with the cold hearted beast of a mother. I have candy, lots of candy!

'Sides, Flexor got his last word in, and I got mine. There is no reason for it to carry on.

That and I have candy, and he is jealous of it.

Mommy, stop beating daddy.

Perhaps I have a different view of what moral relativism is than you do. How do you define "moral relativism"?

Discussions go so much smoother when we're both talking about the same thing.

None of my other interesting points get responses, though? They were even on-topic!

>.>

Yeah, I agree

But aren't we all allowed to be morons once in a while? It's just dabbling in a bit of the ol' sin.

Of course not... I don't think at all there is something thing as the evil-good dichotomy. We can be utterly disgusted by people's actions (and again - we should), but labelling people evil is just lazy thinking. Hitler is a product of his history, etc... so are you. He's not a different class of human. But I actually don't think our stance is all that different on the subject.



That's not true at all. Take pre-marital sex for example. Some people on here repeatedly called a girl a slut because she had sex with a board member after a date or so.

Their ethics: premarital sex is evil.
My ethics, and his and hers obviously: premarital sex being evil is not the standard stance. The institute of Church tries to place the control it has over its members above humanity, and tries to make it seem like a divine, natural, universal law. Premarital sex being considered evil is entirely a product of your culture.

Of course you think the first stance is the 'good' stance. It's more realistic however to accept that your stance is just culturally imposed onto you, and there's no objective criterium to judge if someone's allowed to or not. I'm a firm believer of social contract theory, which is far less accountable for historical crime than these 'absolute morals' of yours.

By the way: my apologies to all if I sounded a little pissed. I just went on a study spree and lack of social contact always makes me unstable. Mea culpa

No? You're telling me that the U.S. never took part in Kipling's "white man's burden" like all other industrialised caucasian nations?

I'm not terribly concerned about what's being discussed here -- Krig's the only guy I find worthy enough to try and tackle



While I don't dispute the conclusion you've made, your premise that you use is not logically sound. 50% of a population will ALWAYS be below average in intelligence (or any factor for that matter). You relocate 20 of the best world geniuses on Mars, and half of that population will be below average. Does that make them stupid? Nevermind the details of living on Mars :p What makes people intelligent or wise is a little harder to pin down.



Bias, perhaps. Don't make the mistake of thinking that mainstream media is... well, the Media (translation: system of evil operated by the AntiChrist and operated by mindless, opportunistic self-serving worm-like people). People work in communications with dreams just like you and I, with hopes of spreading truth or what have you. Nevermind that I don't watch much news and agree with you that they show too much sensational garbage <_<



I just wanted to throw in something I find interesting. History shows us that the stances taken by those considered liberal in other times (and cultures) would become conservative later, and visa versa. The two examples that come to me off the top of my head (though certainly not the best) are the 'democratic/nationalistic' movement of France during/after the French Revolution over Europe (liberal to Europe to conservative to America) and the 'New Age' movement (conservative to... well, I don't know really -- a mix? -- to liberal in America).

I just brought this up because it's important to remember that conservative and liberal views have not always been the same, and are not always the same depending on where you are (as Krig pointed out in a previous post). Whether a current stance is liberal or conservative should not be a deciding factor in whether that stance is "right" or "smart" or what-have-you.



I know you were asking Mort, but I felt I should answer this.

Relativism (moral/cultural) is to absolute (moral/ethno-centric) what the Coherence Theory of Truth is to the Correspondance Theory of Truth. It's not quite the same, of course, but I think it's close enough to make the analogy. Like Mort said, relativism doesn't mean everyone is right (which seems closer to the Deflationary Theory of Truth), and even some who claim to support relativism get this wrong, like how some fail to see the difference between agnostic and atheist. It can, however, get complicated, but that's the nature of examining truth for you