i don't view the messianic religions much differently than a greek scholar would have between constantine and justinian. and, that's not a throwaway statement.

unfortunately, the christians had a habit of burning books that had opinions they didn't like in it, so we've lost a lot of the best critiques. one of the most powerful neo-platonist critiques of christianity came from a well-regarded scholar named porphyry and was called against the christians. we know this was an influential text because it was widely quoted, but we don't have an extant version of it.

remember: at the end of the nightmare, western europe had to translate from arab into latin because we didn't just lose the greek and sometimes latin originals, but we didn't even know how to read greek :\. that's a remarkable thing, isn't it? the greatest empire in the world lost the ability to read it's own language, and most of the texts written in it.

is there any wonder that porphyry wrote the book he did?

the modern equivalents are in hitchens and dawkins, who i've read less of than you might guess. hitchens more so.

i read a lot of isaac asimov when i was very young. that's the real source, here.

my solidarity lies with those that wish to overturn traditional ways of life and assert concepts of self-ownership and individuality, not with those that wish to maintain collectivist or tribalist identities in subsistence farming or hunter & gathering societies.

unless you want to talk about communal land ownership, i have absolutely no interest in indigenous culture at all, and would be just as happy to see it extinct. my interests are solely in a secular & empirical society with strong support for individual rights.

nor is this viewpoint uncommon amongst north americans of mixed ancestry.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/does-donald-trump-cheat-at-golf-a-washington-post-investigation/2015/09/02/f8a940b2-50c4-11e5-9812-92d5948a40f8_story.html

so, they've got punks showing up waving anarchist flags that think they're fighting against nazis.

these supposed nazis are apparently mostly veterans, no doubt largely on ssris due to ptsd, that are organizing to "defend free speech" against some communist conspiracy that doesn't exist. and, they don't understand the concept of free speech, either.

there's probably some broad abstraction of truth, here, in the vaguest terms possible. and, in that sense i'll pick the communists over the nazis.

but, these people are equally delusional. and, the more astute observation is that this schizophrenic reality in the era of fake news has really permeated the totality of society.

when people can organize into large opposing camps and actually come to physical blows, and nobody on either side has any concept of reality, that portends some scary ramifications in our ability to react to serious threats - and also in our ability to reject false flag attacks.

the proper analyst here is not noam chomsky, it's john cleese.

no.

stop.

there are costs to unjust laws.

and, these people deserve the compensation they have coming to them.

yeah, well, there's going to have to be a lot of litigation to ensure that anybody that was fined or jailed in the past receives the proper compensation, in terms of mass reparations.

i'm not joking. this is going to cost billions. and, the longer they put it off, the more it's going to cost.

had they legalized it in the 70s, they wouldn't be paying out at all.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/marijuana-legal-liberals-charges-possession-1.4070427

i'd be the most bizarre parent.

i'd probably write my kids essays, then make participating in dessert contingent upon answering a series of strategically worded questions, designed to ensure they've not just read but properly understood them.