Nsoper19

Surely this depends on the religion of the state in question? Here in the UK our state religion is the Church of England and so there are many schools which contain symbolism relevent to that. (For what it's worth there are Catholic as well).
But in the same way I would think it normal to have Islamic schools in say Pakistan or Iran which contain their religious symbols.

Which vaccines and when? I don't get a flu vaccine but my father who is old does. Also when my wife had our children she had extra vaccines becuase of new suseptability due to pregnancy.
Who gets to decide which vaccines are mandatory and for who and when?
Also the person who refused the vaccine may not claim it is "about them" but rather that there is bigger reasons to them, such as ethical, religious or economic reasons why they would refuse it. These things are very complicated and not black and white (despite what Pfizer might have you believe 😄)

What makes you confident that the trauma of growing up in a homophobic/racist home wasn't a social influence that made you a transexual? Very often trauma causes one to back-project in unpredicatble ways.

Just wonder if anyone would change their mind since Biden has been president after the withdrawal from Afghanistan and his botched handling of the war in Ukraine so far? Particularly in the area of international relations and global geopolitics I think is where we saw Trump's strengths. Ironically all the things that Trump did to make himself unpopular in the USA and western world is what other political leaders respected about him. I certainly think Putin would be having second thoughts about Ukraine right now. Trump managed to sit down and negotiate with Kim, unlike any other president. Also the development with the Abraham accords which earned him a Nobel peace prize nomination.

Yeah but at the end of the day most women are better listeners aren't they? The reasons could be environmental, biological or even magical for all I care - the point is the statement is true whatever the reasons behind it.

No need to generalise a bunch of people like that, remember it's about the opinions here and not the people. Of course the mod won't stick up for the website's own rules on this one because they agree with you.

Of course there are consequences. Pretty much every action in this universe has a consequence.
If I leave my house unlocked with loads of valuable goods on display, one potential consequence will be that my stuff is stolen. Doesn't make it right, but that is a natural consequence.

Errr.. no. There is no mention of rape or anything like that in the opinion. You seem to be arguing for a different opinion from the one stated.
Human beings will respond differently to the way a person dresses. A uniform will provoke a different response from casual clothes and also revealing clothes will as well. That is just a fact.

Not sure why you label your comment as an "against" ? Seems like your reasoning very much show support for the opinion here?

Hmm I don't read it that way? The opinion only suggests they need to accept this is true and not to change anything as such? Maybe just semantic differences

There may well be a genetic/hard-wired element to being gay but to say people are born that way is a step too far. Many things influence gayness, such as abandonment or abuse from Fathers for men or the same from partners for women.
Another factor to consider is that our attraction is very much culturally based. For instance marrying one's first cousin in Pakistan is pretty normal. The thought of it turns my western stomach and would for nearly every person in my culture but clearly it doesn't for them. The thought of marrying a man also fills be with the same disgust, but not for many people.
Likewise in some cultures tiny feet or huge lips are considered beautiful and attractive. These things show that attraction is always culturally conditioned and so I see no reason to believe that being homosexual does not also have an environmental factor to it.

I would push back on much of that, but one part in particular. "People being gay or lesbian has always existed within society (even if laws prohibited the acts). This clearly shows that sexuality is not a choice but something that people are born being. " This absolutely does not show that sexuality is a not a choice or that people are born being gay. It could be evidence of that but isn't that by itself. Just because something is outlawed doesn't mean it doesn't happen and doesn't mean that people can't be influenced by it. The same is true for many illegal activities. Paedophilia is illegal but it still carries on in all societies to a greater or lesser extent. By your same logic, if peados are born that way, should we celebrate it?

Most of your points here are conjectures which don't have any basis in reality when compared to other nations which do have a state church.
The UK where I live is constitutionally a Christian country with the CofE as the state church. However religion has far less importance on a day-to-day basis than it does in the USA which is quite explicitly a secular state by constitution.
Do you believe that the UK (and pretty much all of Europe) are more xenophobic and racist because we have a state church? Do you believe that European countries have fewer rights for women and homosexuals?

And to critique your opening statement, in what way does joining church and state make a country more hostile to anyone, especially if that religion has "love thy neighbour" as its golden rule?

I think really what you are pushing back on is some of the more unsavoury aspects of Christian religion within the US and your fear that they would have more power. However, this is actually a very different question to the one posed in the opinion.

I would challenge the underlying assumption that increased automation necessitates UBI. In the past we have seen labour reductions which are actually more drastic, (e.g. 1 excavator can do the work of 100 men with spades) and it has never before meant that a person's labour becomes worthless, instead it will be moved elsewhere.

Theodore Dalrymple is a very famous psychiatrist and doctor who has worked in the prison system. He reckons that there is essentially no such thing as rehabilitation, though many people grow out of criminality. So someone who commits a crime at 20 may well grow out of that crime by the time he is 40. However someone who commits a crime aged 40 or 50 will probably never overcome that criminal tendency.

Taken over a longer timeframe I don't think it is clear that male suicide is rising. The change from one year to the next really can't be used to justify the fact they are rising. Since the 1980s there has been a general downward trend in the rate of suicide for both men and women, with of course statistical noise along the way. To quote some other figures, the male suicide rate in the UK was often about 20 deaths per 100k in the 80s.
Interestingly the pandemic actually lowered the suicide rate in the UK in 2020. 2021 figures are not out yet.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/suicidesintheunitedkingdom/2020registrations

Yes I agree, intersex is a disorder rather than another sex as such. It is a totally true statement to say that human beings have two legs. But of course there are plenty who have less than two and some who even have three.

This is a really tricky one. Personally I think that a privately owned website should be able to ban/allow whoever they want. The problem is that as a society people are no longer treating twitter, Facebook etc as "just a website" but are basing their whole lives around it. In that sense they effectively become a utility like gas or water which it would not be fair to deprive someone the right of.

The whole history of both the UK and the USA is one of colonialism. The British Isles have been colonised umpteen times in their history. The Celts colonised it from the Beaker people, the Romans Colonised it, then the Anglo-Saxons, then the Vikings, then the Normans etc.
The USA was founded by colonists who sought to break free and have since then begun to colonise other parts of the world such as in the Caribbean and Pacific.
I don't even know how one could teach their histories and not include the concept of colonialism?

Lol I remember being picked for a basketball team when I'd never even been on a court before! I didn't find it offensive, just hilarious. The joke was on all of us when I was by far the worst player on the team. I'm sure I got stereotyped but it was all a laugh and so I would say that was neutral or even positive haha.

And black novelists should be able to write about white experience. Or Chinese experience. Or Hispanic experience. Or Aborigine experience etc.

What is a better utopia? People taxed at risk of prison to pay for the disadvantaged (as well as all the bureaucrats) or people generously donating to their fellow man to make sure everyone gets by?
Now obviously the second could be argued to be harder to achieve but I can't see how anyone could actually believe the first way is a better world to live in.

But surely altruism through charity would be better and cheaper? I think that really your argument here is one of pessimism, that charity alone is not capable of helping the disadvantaged?
I suppose what in your mind is a better utopia? The state taxing everyone "fairly" and distributing wealth to those who need it or people taking care of one another without state intervention and doing so in an organised way (i.e. a charity)?

I still don't really understand what this CRT is all about? Every time I try to work out what it is the goalposts seem to change. Sounds a lot like reverse racism to me, but when I point that out the argument seems to shift? So I just can't pin down exactly what it even is? Then it's hard to have an opinion on it lol. Perhaps you can give a brief summary of what you understand it to mean?

Spanking difficult and spoilt children is and always has been a fantastic form of discipline. It was one of the best things my parents ever did for me. As children get older and understand more they can be reasoned with to a greater extent but when they are very young they often need to learn the hard way.

I was hit as a child and that is very normal in African families. I certainly did fear my father - but in a good way. I both feared and loved him, and as an adult respected his authority. I never believed that it was acceptable to use force as such, but that authority can in some cases be exercised in a physical way when a child is not able to reason in a rational way. Much like the way the state can use force for discipline/punishment when someone has committed a serious offence. When legitimate authority is not accepted then it can be established through force.

Good point. Let's cull all carnivores from the earth.

Yeah but it would save the planet? Let's kill all pet dogs, cats, wild lions and tigers etc.

Have you ever owned a home or any property for that matter? If it had no ongoing maintenance costs then that is extremely unusual. The utility the Landlord provides to the economy is bearing the responsibility for the maintenance of the property and the risk of damage or loss.
The tenant is effectively paying to not have to worry about any of that. They don't need to sort out the boiler certificate, the buildings insurance, the service charges etc. etc. The tenant is paying for the convenience of not having the hassle of these things.
If you actually work out the effective hourly rate of being a landlord then you'll find in many cases it's actually less than minimum wage. At least it is for many people. Obviously it's an investment which compounds over time and then becomes lucrative but that carries a big risk, again this is what the tenant is paying to avoid - risk.

For a long time people stood up for the rights of people like me with implementing the phrase "speaking truth to power". Cancel culture is literally the opposite - Speaking power to truth. Silencing truth.

That's Sir Tony Blair to you lol.

I don't even see how it was established with good intentions? Anybody other than a 5 year old can see it leads to the situation you described. No, affirmative action does not have any good intentions, it has evil or at the very best cowardly intentions. Designed to put down those who work hardest and achieve the most based on their ethnicity? If it were applied anywhere else it would be called apartheid and wickedness.

"Sex is a normal and healthy part of life which everyone should experience" - that is true but paying for it is not normal or healthy. Sex should be within a loving, committed marriage and not bought and sold as a commodity.

I would dispute pretty much everything you say there. Melanin levels in the skin are one thing but genetics play a role in so many other things. For instance many diseases are far more prevalent in some ethnic groups. Take sickle-cell anaemia for instance. How would that not have at least some social outworking in the real world?

Or basically any country for that matter. In my homeland of Tanzania people will sometimes just murder a whole bunch of folks from a village of a different race, just because. White western people are by far the least racist in the world. Immigration stats demonstrate that.

Yes the Japanese are extremely hospitable but not accepting of foreigners. And it works very well for them. Most Asian cultures are like that in my experience.

Maybe in your context but not in many parts of the world. Many black politicians in South Africa and Zimbabwe have made statements almost exactly like what you said and they absolutely do have structural and institutional power.

Many other people other than Breitbart also think this.

The idea here is that politics is really an expression of and not a driving factor of the culture around. Hence if you want to gain political control you must first change the culture. I think that is the basic thesis.

Bullfighting is an old tradition for many cultures, particularly in Spain. It is racist for people from other cultures to judge them externally.

Not sure don't know anything about that tribe.

It's almost as though God is bigger and more complex than a human...?

Sorry pal, too many false axioms in your argument to even begin a response ;-)

You assumed my argument before I even said anything and then straw-manned. So I'm not going to respond to a straw man response to an argument I never made :-)

That's not what I was saying, just that if God exists he is bigger and more complex than a human. That's all. Then you started going off on one lol.

By fossil fuel industry it means oil/gas companies and coal mining? Seems unfair to punish them for supplying a product which has demand? If they didn't dig it up someone else would have.

Just like those Insulate Britain activists, the ring-leader of which admitted to living in an non-insulated house? There are always peaceful and moderate actions that can be taken instead of violence for the sake of global warming.

This sort of thinking is just lapped up but trouble-makers who are looking for drama/trouble and are then given a 'righteous' cause.

What about after the child is born? So if the child has brain damage and becomes disabled and the mother can no longer look after him/her, is it ok to end their life?

Well no, not obviously. There is leap you have made there that doesn't seem justified from your argument? What is different about a child outside of a womb?
The same kid with Down's could be ethically terminated 10 mins before he/she passes through the birth canal but once he/she pops out then that is no longer ok?

What is the "obvious" difference that I am not seeing?

So basically the opinion is correct? If a man and woman are kept in a sealed off environment then perhaps they would be mostly equal, but since no-such person exists it is fair to say that men and women have different abilities since according to your theory they all have been exposed to "gender socialisation".

Homosexuals have higher rates of anxiety + depression, shorter lives, higher rates of domestic abuse, the list goes on and on. Like all these things they lie on a bell curve so there are plenty of decent gay couples but statistically hetero ones are happier, healthier and do more for society around them. Natural procreation is the simplest way a couple can give back to society and any parent will tell you that parenthood forces you to become more selfless in your outlook on life. All good things.

Yes absolutely. Ultimately it is pretty selfish to treat one's marriage as primarily a vehicle for self fulfillment and not as a means to help and improve society.

Should we flood Congo, India, Nigeria etc with homosexuals to stop over-population? Those countries are seriously having issues with out of control births.

Has a black person ever protested against Othello to you in reallife? I think it is a good thing for people to imagine a complex and conflicted character who is also black. Otherwise we only get a plastic, 2D Mary-Sue black character who is bland and boring. Not a good look for blacks if you ask me.

In my opinion the fact that Shakespeare took the time to craft such a dense and human character as Othello is a masterpiece in itself, then to consider a foreign Moorish man as the vehicle to display such a character is centuries ahead of its time when England was 99.999999% white anglo-saxon. The fact that White-English society has kept and preserved this play and tradition for so long shows how valuable it is and that they value a foreigner's perspective.

Actually Shakespeare's political/religious perspective was outdated within a century of his work, long before any questions of race or gender became fashionable, yet it endures? Why? Because he cuts behind all of that and deals with humanity in all its grittiness and splendour like no-one else has. Othello was character in his own time but is believable and human precisely because of that and so he endures and long should he!

Perhaps you could elaborate further on your last point? About having children? Seemed a bit out of the blue compared to the rest of what you said but interesting.

Nearly every religion and culture other than the Western culture of Fast-food instant gratification has some form of fasting built in. Muslims for example have incorporated fasting into their religion and cycle of life for centuries. Seems pretty sustainable to me.

I would say that this is mostly true. Personally I believe that 'left' and 'right' wing are meaningless, but for argument's sake I shall use the nebulous and popular understanding of them. Also I'm interpreting 'media' as mainly referring to News Media thought my points apply elsewhere as well.

In the UK the majority of newspapers are 'right-wing' both in number and print volume. Newspapers account for a tiny fraction of all media today however.
TV, Radio and Internet sources are overwhelmingly woke and left-biased. For instance if I Google 'newspaper', Google gives the first newspaper result as the The Guardian which is so lefty that it sounds more like a Student Union activist pamphlet than a news publication. It's the 11th most circulated newspaper in the UK yet google puts it first. I wonder why? lol
The BBC buys 135 copies of the Guardian a day and is their 2nd most bought newspaper despite it being the public's 11th favourite?

Sky, BBC, Channel 4 etc haven't shown anything with even remotely conservative views for about 20 years now. Notice how almost every news report is "calling on" government to get larger and take more control of citizens lives.

If there is a news report about any issue the proposed solution will always be more state intervention and control. 'Scientists call on government to implement X' or 'Economists call on government to stop Y'. None of which is news as such it is just being a mouthpiece for invariably left-wing opinions.
Someone proposing abortions or same-sex relationships is praised and fawned over without challenge despite the detriment to society they are advancing.
Family values, hard-work and self-responsibility are treated with suspicion at best or outright hostility.
The way Jordan Peterson was treated by Cathy Newman on Channel 4 has now become almost the quintessential display of this. The fact this woman still has a career in TV shows how entrenched this mindset is.

There are a few sources of balanced or conservative opinion but they are few and far between. For now that is.

Great points made here. The key thing to understand is that it is impossible to accurately guess an individual's race from their ACT scores or vice versa.

Are not all these age distinctions becoming a self-fulfilling prophesy? They don't seem to be simple observations anymore but norms dictated through soft power that even go down to the micro-level about what sort of new-world fruit one has on toast for breakfast?
It simply seems that human beings cannot help but divide themselves into tribal groups and since race/religion aren't allowed anymore the generational divides are being cemented.
Perhaps we shouldn't label differences so much and focus on what unites us more?

Surely the logic could work the opposite way too? That a person who has a greater chance of survival doesn't need the hospital care as much as someone who has a lesser chance of survival? The chances of death from covid are so low that I'm not sure your reasoning is still valid.
Also what about those who cannot take a vaccine for personal or religious reasons? Should they be denied the best care possible?

MMT is the biggest and best scam ever conceived.

I don't even understand what this means? There is no such thing as "period poverty", except perhaps for men who are so deprived of periods that they never get one?
There is such a thing as poverty. People in poverty cannot afford certain products - including period products.
What exactly is gained by creating a new category for "period poverty" other than trying to leverage people's fear of being called sexist?
The issue here is poverty full stop.
Giving away free tampons etc will just move the problem and then it will be a problem of poverty attached to something else. I've already heard people talk about "digital poverty" lol.

Well they are Semitic, which is the same ethno-linguistic group as Arabs. Melanin is of very little relevance.

Clapping for Tom Moore or the NHS was only ever about scoring virtue points in our very warped modern status marketplace.
So I don't think it was a distraction from the true predicament of the NHS but also don't think it was anything to do with Sir Tom or any NHS 'heroes'.

The things you mention are mostly commodities or services - not rights. By your logic I could say that we don't all have equal Ferrari rights until we all have one on our driveways.

Yes this is true racism. Prejudice against the entire human race.

His work in international diplomacy also deserves mention. The Abraham accords for instance. Any other US president who oversaw that would have one a Nobel peace prize. He got nominated but didn't win.
Also the trump peace plan in Israel/Palestine was a fantastic step forward.

How can we make sure that British Railways isn't a total failure like the last time? Low productivity and totally unreliable?

Absolutely dynamite argument there pal.
It's also interesting to see how HS2 is being conducted by government. It is extremely unpopular across the boardyet still the government ploughs on with it.

I think it's quite likely that the USA will split up. Half the country thinks the other half want to cage immigrants and kill black people, the other half thinks the first half want to murder unborn defenceless children.
So far every time these camps have come into conflict it has gotten more heated, divisive and hostile.
As of yet there does not seem to be any mechanism which can halt this amping up in fervour, it appears to be a ratchet effect.
So unless something very drastic happens soon I can see it breaking up. Whether it should or not is very tricky so say lol.

Those things are all true, but would you want China/Russia to be the biggest power in the world?

Dr who is so bad now its practically unwatchable. Its now just a megaphone for bbc social propaganda. I've stopped watching it for years now because of how bad it has become. Being political is one thing but it's soooooo rigidly adhering to one very specific political point of view and sneers or ignores any other.

Why do people have a right to take tax payers money for their own desires of a child?
Most people who use IVF do so out of sluggishness not health. They waited too long to have a baby and then want the state to pay for it. Just adopt a kid or plan ahead.

How is it outdated thinking? The majority of women who use ivf do so because they are too old. That is simply a fact. Women's fertility drops hugely after about the age of 30. If they had kids younger then they probably would conceive naturally. This has nothing to do with being outdated and nothing to do with men. It has everything to do with natural biology.
If a woman wants to roll the dice with her fertility that is her choice but why should the state then pay when she loses that gamble?

It's OK I'm big boy and can look out for myself ; -)

I'm loving your back sass more and more

Unfortunately you are conflating a modern slur with the technical definition of fascism. Go and read Mussolini's Doctrines of Fascism. It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with ethnicity, rather the nation state. Of course it can be used as a vehicle for racial purity but that doesn't mean that is what it is. At its heart fascism is about total control going to a state which seeks the interest of the state and nation above all else. The big state part is pretty 'left-wing' and the nationalism could be considered more 'right-wing'.

It's not just individual words though, there are whole systems of thought that cannot be easily communicated in certain languages. Many forms of poetry simply cannot be translated either.
There is a reason why certain languages have never created advanced civilisations and why some have never produced beautiful art.
I think because of those things the language one uses very much dictates one's cognition and certainly the categories that can be used.

Parenting is a team 'sport'. A persons's orientation may or may not affect their ability to parent. However one's gender certainly does change one's ability to parent and hence a hetero 'team' is different from a homo 'team'. So then there is actually a difference.

I'm also British and I think we should be proud of our country's great history. We are both a product of it. We may not have contributed directly but who we are is shaped by it. No man is an island and so every member of British society helped to bring about the inventions and developments you speak of. We are now doing our part for the future generations as well.

The British empire was the best thing that ever happened to my homeland ( Tanzania). They did far more for the infrastructure and institutions than any previous government (or lack thereof). And they helped end the Islamic slave trade in the area which was literally stealing Swahili children from their mothers to become slaves.
If you are ashamed of British history, just be glad you aren't from any other culture because you'd only have more to be ashamed of.

I'm really struggling to think of another culture that has less to be ashamed of than the British. Perhaps there is one, out there somewhere but I can't think of them. Britain since its inception in 1707 has done more good as a culture and civilization than any other I would say. They have also done bad things - they are human like everyone else. But today people still flock from all around the world to Britain because they dream of the advanced, just and equitable society that Britain is in comparison to pretty much the entire rest of the world.

I'm not in favour or against this as such but I find it weird to have loads of flags and statues for the losing side everywhere in America. The fact that the confederate states all rejoined the Union makes it strange to me that they still want the statues of the guys who lead them to losing the war?
I live in the UK and after our civil war we don't tend to keep reliving it again and again through flags or statues.

So should the child minders and after-school clubs work for free? Out of the kindness of their hearts?

Milton Friedman didn't suggest UBI as such, he suggested negative taxation. This was more to bypass the federal government's horrendously cumbersome and inefficient way of dealing with welfare and social security and not designed as a means to ensure basic income for all people. He idealised no basic income at all but suggested negative taxation as better alternative to the hodge-podge system the US had in the 1970s-80s.

Fair enough, however I don't think it would be fair to call it as such since he would never call it that. He has elsewhere critiqued the idea of UBI arguing that there would be inflation caused by over-supply of money.
I'm not aware of Friedman ever being actually advanced as a proponent of UBI by any of his followers, rather only by his opponents as a sort of gotcha.

And taking a very healthy cut along the way, going on buerocrats salaries, expenses etc.

You rightly show how it was an awful tragedy, but nothing to demonstrate that it was a "credible coup attempt".
The storming of the capital had little in common with successful coups that have taken place over other governments. The key thing which enables a coup in pretty much all instances is military control. The nutcases who stormed the Capitol didn't have control over the US Army and hence there was really no credible threat.
They could have caused more damage than they did but they were never close to gaining executive control of the USA

It was a riot/protest that got seriously out of hand. How would storming the capitol even be a coup? It's the legislative branch of government not executive. They would need to take control of the white house and pentagon to be a meaningful coup, with the backing of the military. It doesn't resemble a coup in any real sense. Calling it an insurection is giving those idiots far to much credit. It wasn't successful or credible. People dying makes it tragic but not a coup.
You got a lot of beef with Trump supporters and that's fine, but it doesn't make it a coup.

Take a look at this list of coups and see what they all have in common. Notice also how the Capitol riot is absent.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_coups_and_coup_attempts

But appropriating a culture is appreciating it. Indian culture has been appropriating British/US/Western culture for decades now and is far better off for it. They wear western clothes, aspire to use western technology and so on. This is a good thing. In the same way, when a westerner appropriates their culture this can be a good thing.

Bravo sir!

So should we just ban adverts of everything that is unhealthy? Driving a car seriously increases one's risk of death, so does horse riding or scuba diving. Should these be banned from adverts too?
All the things you say are valid reasons to consider eating less processed meat but you haven't justified the authoritarian step of banning adverts and stifling an industry worth billions. Many people's livelihoods would be destroyed.

Greatness is not the same as best. Greatness usually includes intangible characteristics that cannot be quantified. That said, LeBron isn't the greatest of all time under any definition. Very close though.

Yes it does miss the point. Homosexuality is wrong whether it's natural or learned behaviour. So in that sense it misses the point. But this opinion is still an interesting thing to explore anyway.

But why shouldn't there be a place for less valuable labor? What if a certain job is just not worth $15 an hour? Why should the Federal Government be effectively outlawing it? What if someone wants to do that labor at that price but is not expecting to live off that wage? (Examples include teenagers, retired people, training roles and people in rehabilitation).

Also what evidence do you have that a higher minimum wage would be better? Many of the richest countries in the world have no minimum wage.

But why should it be free? Should food be free? Should water?
I don't think anyone is arguing there should be no availability of birth control but who should pay for it?
The NHS isn't free it's just paid for by taxation and borrowing.
How many people genuinely can't afford birth control? Should not someone's health and procreation be put more firmly within their own responsibility rather than yet another thing which big daddy government takes care of?

One might argue that the "Roman Empire" needs to include Rome? So when Rome fell to the Vandals could it be argued that Rome fell but a new empire was formed from Constantinople?

But should a TV licence be needed to watch ITV, Channel 4 etc? There are two points here that need to be separated. Firstly, how should the BBC be funded and secondly should a TV licence be required for watching TV in the UK? Perhaps this opinion could be split to represent both ideas?

Yeah but you are basically trying to prove exception is the rule.
Basically all feminists are reacting against religions in one form or another. The fact that there are some small outliers in that doesn't change the overall picture.

Star Wars Episode 2 should be erased from history.

What about a homeless man busking to make a living?

All electricity is carbon free. Electricity is a flow of electrons. No carbon necessary.

You are saying "1950s gender stereotypes" like it has a categorical definition? If you instead mean the normal sex roles of the majority of human beings throughout all history and across the world today then I think I understand what you mean.
In that case then yes they are most obviously natural.

Er nope. There are and have been many women in power for a long time.
Gender roles are natural because they are based in nature. Men are naturally stronger for instance. That then suits them for particular roles better and that is a good thing.
Nothing to do with colonialism either- how is that even relevant?

Your premise is a faulty one. The winner of any election in the US is the person who has the most votes. Only electoral college votes are true votes. Each state decides in their own way how to decide which candidate to back. This is because the USA is a union of states. The electoral college is designed to give power to each state and not just to the largest ones. The president's job is to preside over the constitution under which each state must abide so the electoral college ensures that each state gets a fair say.

Hate speech isn't a thing though is it? Hateful speech is a thing but not "hate speech". Hate is a verb not an adjective so I dont really understand this opinion?

A lot of commentators here don't seem to understand how a normal distribution works.
Men are consistently better than women at STEM subjects at the very top tail of the distribution.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-06292-0/figures/1
But they are also more common at the very bottom tail too.
So actually males are both better and worse than females at STEM.

Yes absolutely that was my point all along.

yes there is a more significant difference in non-stem but still a difference in STEM. Male students are more likely to be placed in either top or bottom tails of the distribution.

Well said friend.
One other thing to add is the age of the test subjects. Male and female brains develop differently during adolescence so that could have an effect. It would be interesting to see a similar test from adults with fully formed brains.

This opinion begs the question by calling it a "climate crisis" which is a totally arbitrary and alarmist way to view our changing climate.

State schools should issue uniforms. I for one would never send my children to a school without a uniform. One of the most important lessons any child can learn is that they are a part of something bigger than themselves.
It seems to me increasingly that many people make it to adulthood without realising this fact. Everyone has their part to play in society, clubs, churches, organisations, corporations, charities, neighbourhoods and even nations. The uniform teaches this at a young age and should be encouraged.

But surely school isn't about your style? That is the whole point. You can show whatever style you want the other 16 hours a day when not in school or at weekends surely?
The uniform is there to give a sense of common purpose between students and also show respect to the teachers and those in authority?

But then the federal government can screw up as well? Who do you trust more? The blackouts last winter were a totally freak occurance.

But there is no burning house is there? Metaphorically or otherwise. The stupidity of the phrase black lives matter is not that they are suggesting that not all lives matter but they are suggesting that there are people who believe that black lives don't matter, which is simply not true. Not in the western world for sure.

The economy is the health of the British people. With no economy there are no doctors, no drugs, no NHS etc.

Yeah but AWS/Apple/Google only do this to a competitor who threatens them directly. For instance, ISIS and the Taliban aren't banned from their platforms but Parler is? It's very obvious what's going here.

Yes you do pay for them. The toilets are either paid for by taxation if they are public or paid for by consumers if a private business.
Someone still has to buy the toilet paper and put it out there.

Nazi experiments still form the basis of our understanding of hypothermia do they not? the Nazis stuck a bunch of people in freezing cold water and watched them freeze to death. No even close to controlled experiment of its kind has been done since and so this is still used for estimates of how long a person can survive in freezing water.

Lots of gays choose to convert to being straight through therapy so it is clearly not fixed.

The real minimum wage is always zero. Developed countries without a minimum wage usually have higher average wages anyway.

So should the doctors work for free? And should the pharmaceutical companies give out drugs for free? Should the nurses not get paid either? I don't see how your idea would be possible?

homosexuals are at most 5% of the population so have almost nothing to do with "most influential".

We should never have invented fire because it has caused countless acts of arson over the centuries.

AAVE isn't really a dialect, rather it is simply a sign of poor education. Barack Obama was extra-ordinarily articulate and educated and he showed the a man can succeed in America regardless of his melanin levels.
Approving of someone's poor use of language will only facilitate their failure and it is racist to suggest that Blacks need to only meet a lower standard of English.

I strongly disagree with this opinion, but there is a decent likelihood that it will go.
Modern-day royals could probably actually have more influence, fame and money by not being royals, just like Prince Harry.

The Queen despite being the most pleasant and wholesome woman on earth has been a pretty ineffectual monarch. She has deliberately been "hands-off" the whole time. This was very much in contrast to previous monarchs who despite being apolitical were very much involved in running the country still. Since she has been so uninvolved for decades she now is essentially superfluous but at the cost of having a much larger, less-accountable state which now micromanages ever people's Tweets.

Of course it is a privilege. Just like driving an electric car or being able to afford "carbon-neutral organic beer". It is one of the new badges of social status within certain groups.
Just like how Nike trainers used to be a badge of status, the new "cool" is being conscientious about whatever the current trendy social issue is.

Is there any harm or trauma caused by someone trying to change gender?

In the wake of the Jeffrey Epstein case this sort of thing does become more plausible.
I'm personally of the opinion that wacky theories like this are deliberate smoke screens for something else that is going on.
Also I would critique one thing you said "nothing surrounding QAnon has been proven, which solidifies its status as a conspiracy theory,"
For something to be a conspiracy it doesn't mean it is untrue, only that it has been covered up. Various conspiracy theories have been later shown to be either partially or totally correct. What makes something a conspiracy is the fact that it is being hidden, not whether it is true or not.

The Simpsons is still widely accepted today. For the situation around Apu, basically no-one in the real world had a problem with him, only a tiny minority of attention seekers. The "times" don't dictate that a cartoon can't have an Indian character. However the Simpsons has been a load of trash for about 20 years now so maybe just let it die?

No case needs to be made for that which is self-evident. Grass is green, water is wet and Queen Elizabeth is the pride of Britain. God save the Queen and rule Britannia!

But an exponential growth of humans also means an exponential growth of scientists and inventors who can find solutions to these problems?
People have been predicting the end of humanity due to overpopulation for centuries and it has not happened yet.

Correct, all it does is encourages the wealthy to invest abroad for their children. You can only tax the same dollar/pound/yen so many times before people start to divest.

IQ tests are not meaningless though they have flaws. But they are be far one of the best ways of quantifying intelligence between different people and one of the best predictors of one's outcomes in life.

But that is still essentially a conjecture or argument from silence? Dark matter and energy are our essentially our best guess for what is going on right?

I understand all that but still can see why one could hold the opinion that it doesn't exist.
Personally I believe in dark matter but I'm totally open to the possibility that it is all just an illusion of something else or that our scientific model needs adjusting.
However I like your point that there are plenty of objects in the universe that have mass and cannot be "seen", so in a sense are dark matter.

But in most countries that it already governed by law?

The US federal government is now immensely larger and more controlling than it was when any of the southern states joined the union. A union of 50 different states is incredibly ambitious and nothing else like it really exists.
I can totally see why many states would want to leave at this point. Particularly as the federal government seems to be failing to uphold certain parts of the constitution.

He was of course a closet homosexual.

The East African Federation is a nascent nation state formed of the union of Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda.
These countries all share certain key features:

• They are all either former British colonies or have had significant British influence in the past.
• They all use English as an official language but Swahili as a common language.
• There is a Christian majority in all these countries with a significant Muslim minority. Tensions and hostilities between Muslims and Christians in this area have been growing as well as outside threats such as Al-Shabaab. The EAF could be a means to consolidate and defend Christian liberty in region.

Could this be for Africa what the USA has been for North America?

Even Uncle Ben's rice is racist these days so perhaps feminism is too? Despite being Tanzanian in origin I get called a racist all the time by people on the internet until they see my picture.
So who knows anymore? Who makes the rules? No idea.

I totally agree. In the same way we look back in horror at the slave trade I think we will look back at the porn trade in the same way. That human beings are looked at as objects for pleasure like meat. It's so degrading when sex is a wonderful thing.

As a black man people of my race commit more crimes per capita than any other in the UK, USA and many other countries.
That doesn't mean we should be all considered criminals.
Incels may well commit more acts of terror than your average man on average but categorising a whole group of people in that way is extremely prejudiced and could be bigoted.

VAR was brought in for the sake of TV but also betting companies. It makes dodgy decisions less likely and hence outcomes more predictable. This also ties into the fact that football is now a business and not a sport, certainly in the Premier League. VAR helps mitigate risk which is good for business.
When watching a match on TV during the VAR decisions there is commentary and replays being shown so it isn't as boring. When watching in a stadium it is a most bizarre experience.

I've been a victim of racism a few times, and more so recently since anti-racism became so fashionable.
I think this sort of thing actually encourages a few trouble makers to be racist. It's the same as the sign that says "don't walk on the grass". Most people comply but a few morons always just see it as a challenge and so overall I think the sign makes the problem worse.
Same with all this anti-racism rhetoric.

I've been a victim of racism a few times, and more so recently since anti-racism became so fashionable.
I think this sort of thing actually encourages a few trouble makers to be racist. It's the same as the sign that says "don't walk on the grass". Most people comply but a few morons always just see it as a challenge and so overall I think the sign makes the problem worse.
Same with all this anti-racism rhetoric.

Your exegesis of some of those passages is off by a country mile, but here is one that is much easier:
"Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins."
1 John 4:7-10
"God is love" clear as day.

Please explain what I said that was wrong? I'm autistic so sometimes can have a hard time relating to people. I find your tone rather patronising and condescending to say the least.

Dismissive could be argued but it wasn't an insult or belittling in the slightest.

IQ tests actually show Ashkenazi Jewish and Mongoloid/Oriental superiority.
Whites actually score band on average.

In the UK, Sex education was brought in to reduce the rate of illegitimate births. In 1963 it was trialled in Norwich because that city had a rate of 7.7% when the rest of the country had 5.5%. It was then phased in across the country. Now that figure is about 50%, so ostensibly it has actually significantly raised the rates of illegitimate births which was the reason it was introduced in the first place. It clearly didn't work for the original intended purpose.

Yes that is my understanding. That the UK government wanted few children born outside of wedlock. Of course perhaps the government at the time couldn't or didn't conceive (pun intended) of the idea that social norms of childbearing would change so drastically.
Peter Hitchens has a written extensively on the subject.
The article below is written now 11 years ago however, and before the effects of the Teenage Pregnancy Strategy were obivous.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1254248/PETER-HITCHENS-More-sex-education-means-teenage-pregnancies--always.html

But it's a voluntary transaction between two nation states? In that sense it is trade like any other trade.
Nobody is colonising anyone?

All very good points.
For me the most convincing argument for the Apollo program being genuine is the amount of money spent on it. $156 Billion in modern dollars or approximately 411x more that the most expensive Hollywood film ever made. If they just faked a video they could have done it much more cheaply than building a whole Saturn rocket, blasting it in to space and having the astronauts land 8 days later in the Columbia module in the ocean.

In my country it became illegal to burn certain types of coal last year. Nothing to do with morals but it is a regulation that is now there. Morals and law obviously have a lot of overlap but to suggest they are the same is totally crazy to me. When a speed limit on a road changes do people become more or less moral? You see the point?

I think there is an underlying assumption on your part that something is moral only because the state legislates it as such? Otherwise I can't see how your argument makes sense?

Wow that was a very condescending thing to say. Nobody actually believes that morality and law are identical. Nobody does.

It is condescending because it assumes that I haven't read what you wrote - when I did. The fact that you made so many palpably false statements without evidence was what made it confusing but then suggested that the reason I didn't understand was that I didn't read them well enough.
You said that "morals and the law were identical" which I contend is obviously wrong. My question to you was whether you believe that something is moral only when it becomes law. If they are "identical" then this must be the case.

What is a body-count? Sounds like she is an assassin?

Pretty much all universities receive state funding do they not? In which case they should probably uphold the freedom of speech that the nation does. So then I don't think the University should be barring speakers unless there is a lawful reason to do so.

Interesting how you only look at British colonisation? What about all the times Britain itself has been colonised? By the Romans, by the Anglo-Saxons, by the vikings, by the Normans?

The British were just the best at colonialism in recent times. That is really the only difference between them and basically any other nation you care to mention.
The Bantu people colonised southern Africa, the Mughals colonised the Indian subcontinent, the Maoris colonised New Zealand, I could go on and on.

Seems like you are trying to push an agenda here? Also conflating Columbus and British colonisation is anachronistic and misleading.

Some people cannot take the vaccine for moral or religious reasons.

For instance many vaccines are not vegan and they have all be tested on animals. They are also not compatible with some religions such as Rastafarianism.

People's right to follow their conscience on this matter is extremely important and it is actually irresponsible to deprive them of this right.

I wonder what people make of the fact that Johnson has the most ethnically diverse cabinet in history?
People who have never met the man and only ever heard him through another biased channel think they know better than the colleague he works with every day?
Are Priti Patel, Sajid Javid, Rishi Sunak, Kwasi Kwarteng, Alok Sharma, Nadhim Zahawi all just self-hating people of colour or maybe they know that he isn't racist?

He certainly doesn't cover his back from accusations of racism like most modern people do but does he actually think that other races are inferior and yet employs them all to run the country?

Makes no sense to me.

Good points made here and they are all valid I think.

The fact is, nearly all MPs could actually be earning more money elsewhere. A lot of them are business owners or have very extensive legal or financial careers. This is what has given them the connections and experience to become MPs.

So buy paying them less then you attract the "power hungry" types of people. Counter-intuitive as it sounds I expect you actually get more selfless MPs if you were to pay them a higher wage.

So the fact that blacks commit more crime is evidence that the system is racist and not that blacks commit more crime? Like they have no agency at all? But the system is racist?

Not sure what the relevance is to discrimination? Are women sexually assaulted because of discrimination or for some other reason? Can you justify your argument further?

Interesting how all the comments so far assume that if there is gender discrimination it takes the form of men discriminating against women. There will always be discrimination between genders and this is no bad thing.
When the Titanic sank what was the instruction given? Women and children first. Men were discriminated against in that instance and rightly so. There will always be occasions when discrimination is not just normal but right.

Abortion is quite obviously murder but I understand why people chose not to believe it. Carrying around the guilt from murder would be too much for me to handle so I can see why people would rather refuse to accept what is quite obviously going on. Millions of murderers across the world would have to face up the fact that they chose convenience over the life of an innocent child and they can't face up to it.

Ignore the ParliaMod. He/she always stick up for the liberal/lefty world view and gives a hard time to anyone else. Everything you said was spot on and totally factual. Keep going lad.

But what about compassion on the unborn? If someone has become a victim of rape, why make another victim?

What role does the Father have in this? The child is just as much his as is hers.

Terror attacks are now basically treated like bad weather events in Europe.

Before making any changes to the HofL it has to be conceded on all sides that it is an extremely good system that has propelled little tiny UK onto the world scene for centuries. It is a very stable system and we have an extraordinarily strong legal system and institutions.
None of this is to say that we can't improve on it, but it is a very good system.

Should the Japanese, Israelis, Chinese, Liberians etc. also be denied their ethno-states?
Like it or not, ethno-states are usually very stable and prosperous.

I'm generally in favour of the basic point here, that ethnic groups should be allowed to determine their own nation states.
However I don't know what is meant by "white" here? One might be Anglo-Saxon, that is a race. Slavs are also white but are a different race, as are Serbs as are Finns.
There seems to always be a bit of a double standard with this sort of thing where basically white people must be really tolerant and embrace multi-cultural-ism but nobody else in the world needs to?

I don't think the statement needs to mean that "all women with no exceptions" have maternal instincts. Just that they normally do.
"Birds have feathers" is a true statement regardless of whether a person somewhere has plucked a chicken this morning or of a bird somewhere with a disease causing it to malt.

Also to what extent can maternal instincts go beyond having biological children? Personally I have been cared for by women as a child who were not my mother and my wife is an extremely maternal women who has never had a child.

The thing I still find it hard to believe is that Biden got as many votes as he did. More votes than any other candidate in history when he basically didn't even campaign. He managed to get absolutely enormous numbers of votes that weren't there in 2016 and basically all in Dem controlled cities in the most crucial swing states.
I can't prove this was done fraudulently anymore than anyone else but the fact that the media who did so much to cover for him (mainly around the stuff with his son) seemed pretty coy about the fact he got sooooooo many votes. If the candidate who I backed got that many in total I'd have been gloating for weeks.
The way the media reported the whole thing totally stank of "nothing to see here folks, let's just move on".
There was definitely some funny business going on but who knows if it was enough to actually swing things.

You are assuming there that all the 'experts' have nothing to gain from a Biden presidency?

But on the other hand it also totally debases sex to a basically a commodity, like watching a film or eating a steak.
Because of that it then leads to far higher rates of abuse and violence because no trust has been built between the two individuals.
Demonising ONS doesn't necessarily make them happen in secret, but rather incentivises sex to be in a loving, committed and trusting relationship, i.e. a marriage.

Better than a lot of modern art in my opinion. A lot of the landscapes look like Bob Ross to me. You can tell I have no education in art lol.

Jesus is God. Jesus is a man. Ergo God is male.

Not in many religions. In Judeo-Christian theology, gender transcends the physical. The physical is then merely an outworking of the gender and not cause so to speak.
In that framework it makes total sense to say that God is male.

What happens on a lesbian date lol?

I'd have both

So today the Sheffield Council in the UK announced that they wouldn't allow comedian Roy 'Chubby' Brown from performing at one of their venues. They said that his jokes did not conform to their values and that he was racist, sexist, homophobist... all the "ists" and "isms". So this is a local government not the state, but does this violate freedom of speech? The venue is tax-payer funded and the councillors are elected by the people. Does this equate to the state denying someone freedom of expression?

The test does not necessarily have to be one of aptitude. For example one proposed 'test' is that in order to vote one has to read through a 1 page leaflet for each candidate and then sign something at the end to say they read them. This could easily be done electronically. Then the 'test' is more about filtering out time-wasters or malicious voters and only someone who has invested 10 mins or so can vote. This is a very low bar that can still potentially improve the demos.

If women don't like it then they shouldn't marry. The whole point of marriage is that the woman becomes part of the man's family and leaves her father's family. The father gives her away at the wedding and the husband takes her into his family. Hence the name change. It's hassle changing one's name, my wife can testify to that, but it is a necessary part of being joined in one family.

As an English person I sometimes think we should hand them over to themselves. Let them go independent, run their country into the ground, watch all their social and economic issues multiply and eventually rescue them by letting them rejoin Britain and we can have a big collective, nationwide "I told you so".

The whole of Ireland should be united but under the Crown, not as a republic. Britain should take back what is rightfully hers and claim the whole island for her Majesty the Queen. Our Queen is the rightful Monarch of Ireland descended from Henry VIII. I'm not suggesting it needs to be ruled from Westminster by our PM but it does belong to the Crown.

Of course intelligence is gendered. The mean between either sex is essentially the same but the distribution varies.

This wiki page has links to some studies that suggest as much.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variability_hypothesis

Your analysis misunderstands the dynamics of large populations. You are correct that neither gender is more intelligent but that misunderstands the original statement. Intelligence (like pretty much everything biological) takes the form of a Bell curve when it is plotted. The shape of these Bell curves is not identical and hence intelligence is most definitely gendered.
https://pennswordtwo.com/media/cache/main_image/custom/domain_1/image_files/sitemgr_photo_8915.jpg
The link is to a graph showing what I mean.

Overall the vast majority of people are in the 'overlap' region where male and female IQ are comparable. If you take any man and any woman at random, statistically they will probably have about the same IQ and be somewhere near the mean. Average people are on average - average, who'd have thought lol?

But the crucial difference is at the extreme ends of the graph. So there are a higher proportion of super-high and super-low IQ males. We're talking roughly the top and bottom 5% or less.
So this is why there are more Nobel prize winners and Nasdaq CEOs who are men compared to women, but also why prison populations are overwhelmingly male and why young men kill themselves through reckless stupidity far more often due to more men being super-low IQ.

The basic reason for these differences are (again like pretty much everything biological) due to the nature of reproduction. For a woman to pass on her genes she needs to mate and then carry a child through at least 9 months of pregnancy and then roughly 2 years of breastfeeding. A man on the other hand can knock up a woman and drop dead 2 minutes later, his job is basically over from an evolutionary stand-point. So given this dynamic it makes a lot of sense for women to be of average IQ, not too stupid to endanger their child but not to smart so as to stick out from the herd.
Men can actually pass on their genes more effectively through reckless stupidity in some cases or through extreme high IQ and hence our species has evolved this way.

Who is the "Us" in this statement? And what is the metric being used? Basically every race is superior to another in one way, shape or form. So Han Chinese and Ashkenazi Jews have the highest IQs compared to other races whilst both of those races are pretty inferior when it comes to athletic achievement of any kind.

What does this statement even mean? Human beings have always done awful things to one-another, the "West" is no exception.
But to suggest that rape is part of the culture is absurd. Statistically it is African countries who have the highest rates of rape so would those in favour of this opinion also claim that it is a bigger part of African culture?
Western culture has had a disgust of rape for centuries from both Roman and Christian ethics. Rapists are sent to prison and vilified for their actions. Western culture could in fact be highlighted as one where zero-tolerance and punishment of rape is pretty much guaranteed.

Girls do better in school based education across pretty much all countries, systems, languages etc. It's basically a universal thing that girls do better than boys at school and get better grades. So from that I think it can be argued that it benefits girls more because statistically it absolutely does. Don't really see how there can be an argument against that?

Networking is a skill that will open doors for anyone. Private schools teach this and state schools basically don't. Eton etc. cost more but you get a much better chance of 'succeeding' in life mainly due to the connections you get but it is still then what you make of it.
Public schools train men for leadership and statesmanship not just GCSE's. All the weird rules and traditions shape and mould the students into being future leaders of nations as well as corporations. State schools aren't trying to do that but are free.
You get what you pay for and that is not a bad thing.

So the US has free education up the High School. I guess the question here then becomes should free education continue to Undergrad, postgrad even PhD? Should money be the determining factor in this? Now whilst it is painfully obvious that too many people attend college in the US, but I'm not sure that cost is the right way to bring that number down. Maybe tougher entrance requirements but make it free? Or more ability-based grants so that the brightest and most studious don't pay fees?

This question very much depends on where it is being applied. So the UK is constitutionally a Christian country and so it makes sense that there are so many Church of England schools. Likewise in many Islamic countries. The USA is by definition a secular state so faith schools getting government funding seems odd to me.

I disagree, watch Biden in congress back in the 80s and 90s. For instance see him questioning Clarence Thomas back in 91. He was an incredibly articulate and charismatic speaker in those days. Now he is a bumbling mess.

As former prime minister David Cameron said, "Islam is a religion of peace". So it can only be a good thing that peaceful, religious men have taken control of the country. Maybe even a Nobel peace prize would be appropriate in the circumstances?
We all know that Islam is peaceful, that is the main thing here.

Listening to a British army general on the radio, he basically said that the soldiers stop getting paid and so that's why so many didn't fight against the taliban. Now whether that was the army at fault or perhaps civil servants in government I'm not sure but can't really blame the soldiers being asked to risk their lives for free.