3 Cheers for our good ally Israel! Est. 1200 BC

[Horn6721]

Individual level Family level. So Mohammed telling his radical brother Hussein to not shoot up a synagogue shows moderate muslims working for peace in the same way radicals like the Squad are calling for Israel to cease fire
I know what the muslim communtiy has done on a small group and community level here in Dallas. Not much and nothing on a public scale asking for muslims to stay peaceful.

Contrast that with the muslim polticians calling for an Israeli cease fire. Where are the muslim politicians condemning Hamas BREAKING the cease fire?

 

[Sangre Naranjada]

So you can speak to Dallas, and to what you've seen from politicians.

 

[Horn6721]

You asked ,"How do you know what Muslims have done on an individual level? On a family level? On a small group level? On a community level?"
Obviously I can't speak to family but as you asked I Can speak to Dallas community and city. And if I somehow missed it the Muslim community has not made a public effort.
Anyone remember the Holy Land Foundation? Anyone remember the moderate Muslim community denouncing it?
And you realize I know it is a public effort that I am asking for from the moderate Muslims. Something to offset the enormous radical public effort that has been going on for years and is now exploding.
Of course there are moderate muslims. They just need to step up.

 

[mchammer]

 

[Monahorns]

On an individual level, perhaps, but on a national level land is held by the nation that can and is willing to protect it. The world has been governed that way forever, especially outside the West. It's not nice, but it's the truth. Native Americans don't hold the land in the US because they lost it through conquest. The Jews hold Israel through conquest. They also lost it through conquest centuries and millennia ago on several occasions. It happens, and it's the rule throughout history - not the exception.

First off, I think we agree on a lot of the underlying facts and principles. Interesting that arrive at different conclusions about what actions should be taken.

My problem with some of the conclusions above are why you believe ethics or morality differs based on the number of humans acting. My thoughts on property rights is a classical argument based on natural law/natural rights. This is what America appealed to in the Declaration Of Independence so I don't think they only apply to individuals. It doesn't make logical sense to say a group of people should do something that one person shouldn't. Moral action is moral action. The rest of your paragraph follows the is-ought fallacy. I agree that people throughout history take over land by force and hold it. That is a statement of what "is". But it doesn't describe what "ought" to be. What ought to happen is for people treat each other ethically and morally. Otherwise, there is no right or wrong there is just power. That is a leftist belief. There is no objective reality. There is only the facts of what one group of people can impose on another one by violence. It justifies theft and robbery. It also justifies every war and even slavery.

As an act of benevolence, should the conquering people make concessions to the conquered people to promote peace and reconciliation? Oftentimes, yes. I'm for letting Native Americans be largely independent on their reservations, helping them out from time to time, and having good relations with them. However, if Native Americans were installing violent leaders who wanted to retake the continental United States and were murdering US citizens to do it, that would be the end of my benevolence. I'd want the killers dead, and I'd want everyone who supports them dead or beaten into submission and then reeducated.

Now you go back to talking about what ought to happen as opposed to what is. Even before acts of benevolence, the victims are owed some level of space to live their lives. Now we go back to natural rights. It isn't practical to undo conquests of land. It isn't even moral to do so as time goes by. However, if the US government was continuing to violate Indian rights while they are on the reservations they have a right of self defense. That doesn't mean attacking innocent US civilians. But it does mean that both groups have a right even if only one side has the power to protect those rights. Then support goes back to my previous discussion of what supporting actions can legitimately equate to crimes.

Rhetorically, you're not for tolerating it, but practically, you are.

This is rather silly, saying I don't agree with 20:1 ratios of retribution, killing your own civilian hostages, and indiscriminately killing children means I practically tolerate terrorism. As if the only way to respond is to do all those things. In fact this kind of response produces more of the thing you claim you don't tolerate, whereas my preference is from counter-insurgency types of ideas.

Israel is a productive nation that trades with the US and the Western world. We benefit from them economically, politically, and militarily. It largely respects Western values and usually has our back in the UN and in other global contexts. I would be far more indifferent to them if they did not. If they were destroyed and the Palestinians took control of the area, it would basically turn into Libya or Somalia.

Of course. I believe in the goodness of free trade, but I think you are missing all the ways that the state of Israel is a burden to us. Economically, the US gives them billions of dollars a year. That is negative. Politically, they lobby the US government to do prioritize doing things for Israel over America. Militarily, we give them money and set up bases in the ME to protect their interests. What has their military actually done to help Americans? I don't know of anything.

And American Muslims are not like Muslims in Middle East or even in Europe. American Muslims are largely of the aristocratic classes of the Islamic world who came to the US for economic opportunity. They got visas, flew to the US on a plane, went to college, and became professionals - all of which took money and connections. They go to mosque, but they largely "play ball" and respect Western values. The Muslims in the Middle East (and to a lesser but still significant extent, Europe) are uneducated and broke-*** poor. They're like American Muslims like an illiterate lettuce picker in Tijuana is like a Mexico City brain surgeon.

Can't trust those poor people I guess. None of them want to make better lives for themselves, own a business, and raise their kids. We can only trust those Western educated, wealthy Muslims like Osama Bin Laden. Oh wait...

 

[Chop]

There's some very theoretical concepts of property floating around this thread.

The way it actually works is that the sovereign exerts sovereignty over the land. Individuals (and entities) may own land within the sovereign's jurisdiction, but are subject to the sovereign's laws. Go take a look at the property records in your county. It was like this at the time of our Nation's founding, before our founding, and afterwards up to the present.

The people of this Nation are the sovereign and express their wishes through their duly elected officials (assuming fair elections, and no election fraud). The Constitution (of the US and of most States) prevents the sovereign (the people by and through their government) from taking an individual's property without due process of law.

Whether or not the owner--the person/entity shown as the owner in the county property records--ever worked the land, improved it, or did anything else good or bad, is not germane to property ownership. He either has title to the property, or he doesn't.

The closest thing to some of these ethereal theories that I can think of is adverse possession. If a farmer takes over (without permission) 50 acres of a million acre spread owned by some absentee landowner, farms it and improves on it for X number of years, that 50 acres actually becomes his property. Although many would look at adverse possession as a form of theft.

 

[guy4321]

Me too. I'd wager that Harvard has a lot of Jewish wealthy donors so they'd take that side. I was wrong!

 

[Monahorns]

There's some very theoretical concepts of property floating around this thread.

The way it actually works is that the sovereign exerts sovereignty over the land. Individuals (and entities) may own land within the sovereign's jurisdiction, but are subject to the sovereign's laws. Go take a look at the property records in your county. It was like this at the time of our Nation's founding, before our founding, and afterwards up to the present.

The people of this Nation are the sovereign and express their wishes through their duly elected officials (assuming fair elections, and no election fraud). The Constitution (of the US and of most States) prevents the sovereign (the people by and through their government) from taking an individual's property without due process of law.

Whether or not the owner--the person/entity shown as the owner in the county property records--ever worked the land, improved it, or did anything else good or bad, is not germane to property ownership. He either has title to the property, or he doesn't.

The closest thing to some of these ethereal theories that I can think of is adverse possession. If a farmer takes over (without permission) 50 acres of a million acre spread owned by some absentee landowner, farms it and improves on it for X number of years, that 50 acres actually becomes his property. Although many would look at adverse possession as a form of theft.

I'm sorry but this is just more "is-ought" language. It is this type of thinking that has caused "conservatives" to "lose" to the Left for more than 100 years. It also shows that conservatives in 2023 are basically Progressives. The founders appealed to natural law and natural rights in the documents they wrote. But the description of property rights above is straight out of a positive law viewpoint where whoever is the most violent is morally right, all because they then get to write the rules.

The usage of the is-ought fallacy like this is an attack on objective truth and morals itself. It removes them from the analysis of what a desirable political and economic system would look like. It is the same approach as the Cultural Marxists and Critical Theorists. They all know that when objective value is removed that removes moral arguments against their use of force. Then what is right is what the powerful force everyone else to do or they will suffer jail, fines, or death. It is a defense of tyranny. It is the logical foundation of the Soviet government as well since they believed that logic itself operated differently for the proletariat versus the bourgeoisie. It is why I have been saying how important natural law and natural rights are for a couple of years now. Either base your society on reason and logic or base it on unrestrained exercise of power. Those are the choices.

 

[Chop]

I'm sorry but this is just more "is-ought" language. It is this type of thinking that has caused "conservatives" to "lose" to the Left for more than 100 years. It also shows that conservatives in 2023 are basically Progressives. The founders appealed to natural law and natural rights in the documents they wrote. But the description of property rights above is straight out of a positive law viewpoint where whoever is the most violent is morally right, all because they then get to write the rules.

The usage of the is-ought fallacy like this is an attack on objective truth and morals itself. It removes them from the analysis of what a desirable political and economic system would look like. It is the same approach as the Cultural Marxists and Critical Theorists. They all know that when objective value is removed that removes moral arguments against their use of force. Then what is right is what the powerful force everyone else to do or they will suffer jail, fines, or death. It is a defense of tyranny. It is the logical foundation of the Soviet government as well since they believed that logic itself operated differently for the proletariat versus the bourgeoisie. It is why I have been saying how important natural law and natural rights are for a couple of years now. Either base your society on reason and logic or base it on unrestrained exercise of power. Those are the choices.

You're off on this one.

Some of the better-known segment of our Founding Fathers (including Thomas Jefferson) wanted the Declaration of independence to reference, as inalienable rights: life, liberty, and property. In other words, your right to own property was to be considered inalienable. The real property owned by Jefferson, Washington, Monroe, and the other Founding Fathers was not owned because they so virtuously toiled themselves on the land until they owned it. Definitely not.

In your system (which has existed nowhere in the free world), you couldn't even have large landowners because one person can only do so much farming by himself. Your system is more akin to some sort of Marxism where one's "right" to own land depends on him having diligently worked and improved the land. Yours is the sorts theory behind some fatally flawed Latin American "land reforms" that have been disastrous. Your philosophy of who gets to own the land smacks of Castro, Guevarra, and Maduro.

Here is the actual theory behind property ownership in a free nation: In a free country, a willing buyer and willing seller can exchange real property for whatever consideration they agree to, without regard to how virtuous the buyer is. It doesn't matter how virtuous the property buyer is. He may have made the money by selling Bible commentaries, or by legally prostituting himself in a Nevada brothel. This is the sort of property system our Founding Fathers believed in, and that they themselves held some truly massive landholdings under.

Mother Theresa was such a wonderful person. But she doesn't deserve to own the King Ranch because she was so virtuous. Speaking of which, Richard King was one tough hombre, and he had to fight to build and keep his massive land holdings in South Texas.

 

[Chop]

Now don't get me wrong, I find many of these ethereal theoretical arguments about property fascinating.

 

[Monahorns]

My previous descriptions on a natural law, natural rights theory of ownership was incomplete as I was commenting on the the Israel/Palestine situation. Much of what you say below is from the same theory.

Some of the better-known segment of our Founding Fathers (including Thomas Jefferson) wanted the Declaration of independence to reference, as inalienable rights: life, liberty, and property. In other words, your right to own property was to be considered inalienable. The real property owned by Jefferson, Washington, Monroe, and the other Founding Fathers was not owned because they so virtuously toiled themselves on the land until they owned it. Definitely not.

This is a good example. Inalienable rights means they can't justly be taken away from someone. It is an appeal to natural law framework. In fact your statement about life, liberty, and property is straight out of John Locke's writings about natural rights. Those are things humans have rights to. He changed the last part to the pursuit of happiness as a nod to a classical natural law idea. Your last sentence also does not contradict anything I have said previously. Mixing labor with land or homesteading is a way to gain rights to unused land. However, once legitimate ownership is established those ownership rights can be passed down to children in an inheritance or sold to anyone else. Then the new owners have the same right. This is all part of Locke's theory that I was explaining before.

In your system (which has existed nowhere in the free world), you couldn't even have large landowners because one person can only do so much farming by himself. Your system is more akin to some sort of Marxism where one's "right" to own land depends on him having diligently worked and improved the land. Yours is the sorts theory behind some fatally flawed Latin American "land reforms" that have been disastrous. Your philosophy of who gets to own the land smacks of Castro, Guevarra, and Maduro.

I think you misunderstood where I was coming from because in the natural rights framework you can have large landowners. The theory doesn't require one man to work all the land for all time. Once ownership is established the owner can do whatever he wants with it. So anyone with enough money can go buy a huge plot of land and rightly own it. Then they can hire others to further develop it in any way the owner wants. I agree with you that governments should not take property from owners and give it to workers. That would be an infringement on the owner's property rights. A farm hand or factory worker doesn't gain ownership by working on the farm or assembly line. They have entered into an economic agreement with the owner. There is no right of ownership for the worker. Leftists take property from owners because they have an incorrect theory called the labor theory of value. The implication in their mind is that the owner is exploiting the workers labor because the goods sold earn a profit. It's all false thinking.

Here is the actual theory behind property ownership in a free nation: In a free country, a willing buyer and willing seller can exchange real property for whatever consideration they agree to, without regard to how virtuous the buyer is. It doesn't matter how virtuous the property buyer is. He may have made the money by selling Bible commentaries, or by legally prostituting himself in a Nevada brothel. This is the sort of property system our Founding Fathers believed in, and that they themselves held some truly massive landholdings under.

I agree with this whole paragraph. It doesn't contradict what I said previously. I was only talking about truly unowned land before.

Now don't get me wrong, I find many of these ethereal theoretical arguments about property fascinating.

You and others may consider these theories to be ethereal. But Locke, and those before and after him, were trying to ground their ideas of rights and property in how things work in the real world. They were trying to formulate something that not only could explain what we see in the real world, but determine what is just and unjust action. It starts with homesteading but then moves into property rights and how that title to ownership can be transferred in an ethical manner. You have described that process above.

 

[Chop]

Sure, homesteading set forth 'working the land for x years' sort of requirements. But the homesteader received title to his land from the sovereign. In the Midwest and Southwest, the sovereign won the land through a combination of purchase from France and right of conquest.

Along the East Coast, the sovereign acquired the land through some version of the discovery principle, or discovery + settle it. This was based more on religion.

One of the Popes purported to divide the Americas between Spain and Portugal. Ownership of every square inch of Texas can be traced back to this event and the discoveries. Mexico then took it from Spain by right of conquest. Texas then took it from Mexico by right of conquest. And Texas joined the U.S. Of course, nobody other than the Comanches, ever really held and controlled most of the Western half of Texas until the late 1800s. It was mere "paper ownership" until the late 1800s.

Back to the East Coast---England had their own Church that did not recognize the authority of the Pope, so the Kings/Queens of England claimed the land in the 13 colonies by discovery and granted charters to various rich and powerful British lords to settle it. Those big guys (including Penn, Carroll of Md, etc.), in turn, sold off their land piece by piece to newcomers. I think the Dutch and Swedish interlopers basically did the same thing in NY, NJ, and Del. Chartering the settlement of New England with the Puritans was a smart strategic move by the Stewart Kings to get rid of a bunch of the most radical religious dissenters of the time, and at the same time put some people on land claimed by England. (many of the Stewart Monarchs were so "High Anglican Church" they were almost Catholic--they were often accused of being actual Catholics, some of them were...).

As for France and Quebec, of the big Catholic nations in Europe, France was the one most commonly at odds with the Pope, so they didn't always fall in line (and their Kings were sometimes ex-communicated). Louis couldn't care less whether some Pope said Spain owned it, France claimed it and took it.

Now, today, adverse possession still seems to spring from the theoretical framework you're describing.

 

[mchammer]

Thread:

 

[Monahorns]

Gross. Leftists are such idiots. They don't live real lives. They base their life on videos on the internet. If they lived in Gaza October 7th would cost them their life or the lives of their families. They live in peace in the US talking trash about war. It's sickening.

 

[mchammer]

Read thread:

 

[Monahorns]

Read thread:

It is ironic. It's also expected that young leftists don't know anything other than the latest news cycle.

But not sure I would consider Sykes as a positive figure. The Sykes-Picot agreement has caused so many problems for the ME, Europe, and the US.

The real hero of that area and time was T. E. Lawrence. He was livid at the results of Sykes-Picot and considered the outcome a betrayal of the English against war allies.

 

[Chop]

Read thread:

How did Lawrence of Arabia fit in?

 

[Chop]

Legend says that Balthazar was King of Arabia.

If so, there are some interesting implications re: Arabs and Jews. (one of Jesus’ titles is King of the Jews)

 

[Monahorns]

How did Lawrence of Arabia fit in?

He was in that same area during WW1 working with Bedouin tribes. He convinced them to fight against the Ottomans on the side of the Allies. He had negotiated agreements for them in the case that the empire fell. Once it fell England didn't live up to the agreements and employed the Sykes-Picot agreement instead. Lawrence felt personally betrayed by England by it all.

 

[Monahorns]

This is why I don't think Israel is a goo ally to the US. They are all about getting the US to do what they want but never do anything to help us.

 

[Mr. Deez]

A voice of reason in the European Parliament. And yes, she's kinda hot. And hearing the phrase "bat **** crazy" with a thick Swedish accent is kinda cool.

 

[Chop]

We have many allies.

Some of our best allies: Israel, Japan, UK, France, Australia, S. Korea (although they could be a lot more appreciative of us--same with the French).

 

[Chop]

A voice of reason in the European Parliament. And yes, she's kinda hot. And hearing the phrase "bat **** crazy" with a thick Swedish accent is kinda cool.

I really like the Irish, but their politics and government is so backasswards.

This goes back a long ways. Even Eamon DeValera himself was pro-Nazi / pro-Germany. So much so that he, and his government, blacklisted the good Irish lads who volunteered with Allied nations in WWII to fight against the Nazis. The UK ended up giving some of these good souls a new home after Ireland rejected them for going against the Nazis. The anti-semitism seems to run deep there in their government.

Ireland and the Nazis: a troubled history

De Valera, Hitler & the visit of condolence May 1945

 

[Chop]

I really like the Irish, but their politics and government is so backasswards.

This goes back a long ways. Even Eamon DeValera himself was pro-Nazi / pro-Germany. So much so that he, and his government, blacklisted the good Irish lads who volunteered with Allied nations in WWII to fight against the Nazis. The UK ended up giving some of these good souls a new home after Ireland rejected them for going against the Nazis. The anti-semitism seems to run deep there in their government.

Ireland and the Nazis: a troubled history

De Valera, Hitler & the visit of condolence May 1945

If England went to war against Pol Pot at the height of the Cambodian genocide, the Irish government would probably support Pol Pot.

 

[Monahorns]

I really like the Irish, but their politics and government is so backasswards.

This goes back a long ways. Even Eamon DeValera himself was pro-Nazi / pro-Germany. So much so that he, and his government, blacklisted the good Irish lads who volunteered with Allied nations in WWII to fight against the Nazis. The UK ended up giving some of these good souls a new home after Ireland rejected them for going against the Nazis. The anti-semitism seems to run deep there in their government.

Ireland and the Nazis: a troubled history

De Valera, Hitler & the visit of condolence May 1945

Of course Ireland was for Germany back then. They hated England. They weren't going to be fighting for or with England. You had similar groups throughout Europe in WW2. It wasn't necessarily a love for Nazism. They had other issues they were dealing with.

 

[Mr. Deez]

I really like the Irish, but their politics and government is so backasswards.

This goes back a long ways. Even Eamon DeValera himself was pro-Nazi / pro-Germany. So much so that he, and his government, blacklisted the good Irish lads who volunteered with Allied nations in WWII to fight against the Nazis. The UK ended up giving some of these good souls a new home after Ireland rejected them for going against the Nazis. The anti-semitism seems to run deep there in their government.

Ireland and the Nazis: a troubled history

De Valera, Hitler & the visit of condolence May 1945

They're like the Scots. They are culturally western, but they're pretty woke, and they have no appreciation of freedom.

 

[Chop]

They're like the Scots. They are culturally western, but they're pretty woke, and they have no appreciation of freedom.

But individually, the Irish seem to me to rank with the world’s best people.

 

[Monahorns]

They're like the Scots. They are culturally western, but they're pretty woke, and they have no appreciation of freedom.

That wasn't true of them during WW2 though. At least the Irish were very socially conservative until just recently. They were brought into the modern economy, had a boom, and then those international relations ruined them.

 

[Monahorns]

I was just wondering something. Who killed the most journalists, killed the most non-combatants, and destroyed the most hospitals? Russia or Israel? Russia started a war in February 2022. Israel started on October 8, 2023. I don't know the numbers but that would be an interesting comparison either way.

 

[Mr. Deez]

That wasn't true of them during WW2 though. At least the Irish were very socially conservative until just recently. They were brought into the modern economy, had a boom, and then those international relations ruined them.

I'm pretty sure all of these countries were socially conservative during WWII. I don't remember reading about many "Trans for Hitler" or "Queers for the Rising Sun" groups during WWII.

Honestly, it's a multifaceted phenomenon. International relations and expanded trade almost always bring in more libertine tendencies. It's why port cities like San Francisco, Hamburg, and Amsterdam have long been cesspools of debauchery. We ridicule SF now, but it wasn't much better when I was kid living in the Bay Area in the early '80s. The big difference is that those cities aren't as big of cultural outliers as they used to be. Cities like Dallas, Houston, and Chicago haven't necessarily turned into San Francisco (yet), but they are much more culturally similar to it than they were in the early '80s. Same in Europe. Frankfurt, Munich, and Köln are more culturally similar to Hamburg than they used to be.

In addition, the church has lost a lot of credibility. That's especially true here in Europe where the church is in the sack with the government. Politics drives a lot of what they do, and they're very light on the gospel. There just isn't a lot of Bible in those churches or their message, particularly on current affairs. Without the Word of God, it's much easier for the church and its people to be led astray and sometimes into flagrant idiocy. Bible-believing Christians have left and joined private churches. Those who weren't solid Christians in the first place realized that the established churches are a waste of time and money and walked away. With no spiritual guidance, their children were receptive to woke politics from schools and media and adopted it as their new religion. You can walk into one of these beautiful churches that can hold massive congregations, and on a typical Sunday morning, they'll be 90 percent empty. It's sad. They had a big platform, and they squandered it for cheap, short-term political expedience.