Speaking out against child mutilation is now a hate crime.

Yes, but what makes freedom of speech any more unalienable than other rights?

 

No, I'm saying that all cultures should direct their own behavior to the standard of the Bible. It is the inspired word of God after all.

 

Yes, and so is every other holy scripture as well.

 

That seems reasonable, especially from an American perspective, but that perspective suffers from a cultural bias. Are there cultures and societies that prefer to function without the benefit of free thought, speech, and right to property? If so, these priveleges would indeed become deniable and as such would fail to be absolute.

Wolfsbane, at this point I can't help but think that JJ's remarks are facetious.

 

Then you don't know me very well. It sounds facetious, I know, but that actually is what I believe: There is an absolute truth, the Bible is the inspired word of God, Christ is the only path to salvation, everyone else is wrong and damned to hell. Christianity in a nutshell.

 

It seems an entirely different matter if one voluntarily gives up liberties as opposed to being denied those liberties by somebody else.

Say for example instead of the monastery where each resident has decided to forgo possessing anything, there is a society of thieves who routinely steal from one another, each denying the other to his right to property at one time or another. Maybe this society values acquisition over security. Assuming this society can sustain itself on such a system, the right to property is not an absolute necessity across all cultures as this culture of thieves provides a counter example.

I'm not saying that there are no absolutes across cultures, just that the absolutes may not be what we've come to take for granted from our cultures.

I didn't mean to imply that you were American, just that your ideals of freedom are echoed by the "Land of the Free."


In a nutshell indeed.

 

This entire thread is rapidly disappearing right up its own arse. :roll:

Now, back to the original topic (sort of), are there any gentlemen here who have the operation in question in their teens or even adulthood? What changes were immediately apparent, and what changes were gradual. If you could go back, would you still have the operation or would you stop yourself?

 

For extra irony, DE should have banned you for that post.

 

Unfortunately, as clever as that would have been, I'm afraid the point would've been lost on him (Davis) completely.

 

Hm? Did the Inuit cultures of Alaska "collapse" without a concept of personal property? No, they more ceased to exist as they had been because their land was colonized by people with guns and steel. (Not passing judgement; cultures of higher technology and disease resistance meeting weaker cultures are going to trigger a degree of evolution in action, that's how it goes).

And yes, "no personal property" was a coercive commandment among the Inuit.
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I don't consider the freedom of speech a sacred right, personally, but that's because I consider memes to be every bit as much "force" as weapons, if a more indirect form. You can ban alcohol, for instance, by campaigning against it through speech and media, and that ban will then be enacted by force of cops with guns. So, if someone is advocating the removal of a liberty that I hold dear, they are attempting to use force against me and, ethically speaking, I should respond in the most effective way.

If anything, freedom of speech and liberalism are simply a truce. I would like to see a significant majority of the human race muzzled or killed, because their values are inimical to mine in some fashion and they're not above using political force to oppose me, but the odds are that if it comes to people solving their agreements at gunpoint, I won't win. Same with the vast majority of the world, so let's all agree to a certain degree of leaving each other the hell alone. Nothing "natural" or "God-given" about it, and I don't have to sign on to the part where I'll defend anyone's right to advocate infringing on my liberty. (I can respect the ACLU defending neo-Nazi groups that want to hold hate rallies, but I don't support them.)

 

I'm positively too lazy to provide a story now as to why/how/etc I was there, but I did spend 3 weeks in Uganda, and it was amazing how different things there were, even in a country that was as "free" as it was.