Keith Devens .com

Oh you're such a fool, man........

Don't you see that the US is BOUND to loose the battle in Iraq? Don't you see what you're up against? If not, then I'll tell you: You're up against THOUSANDS of years of muslim traditions, and you're fighting with guns and ammo to try and force implant a pocket of western traditions. It's a mission impossible, and George Walker Bush is the greatest damn fool in recent history to not realize this before he started out on the war...

Well, we'll see what happens. People said democracy wouldn't work in Japan either because they had no traditions of democracy.

Elling: related question. Do you support gay marriage?

(I'll explain how it's related when you answer.)

I don't necessarily support gay church marriages. Because, you know, I'm not a christian myself, so I'm not really entitled to have a vote on whether the church should allow gay couples to be married in the church.

But if you mean just the non-church part of gay marriage... Yeah I'm for it. I think that gay people who choose to live toghether in a life long commitment should have the same rights and benefits in society as normal straight couples. Is that a good enough answer?

Sure, that's a fine answer. The reason I asked is that it's a hallmark of liberal thinking to believe that human nature and society are malleable enough to allow for radical changes. Sowell calls this view an "unconstrained" view of man. Hence, it's consistent for those with an unconstrained view to believe that things like centrally planned economies can work, that it's possible to safely change thousands of years of tradition regarding social structures like marriage, and so on. What seems inconsistent to me is that in this case you hold what seems to be a constrained view in saying that their culture (of totalitarianism? I didn't get that part) is too fixed to change.

Well, yeah.... But different cultures have different traditions when it comes to accepting foreign impulses. When it comes to Japan, which you mentioned, they have a strong historical tradition for studying other countries and for adopting elements of other cultures whenever the elements are thought to be improvements in comparison with their own culture... At least that's what happened when the Japanes adopted the Chinese writing system, when they adopted western industrial methods during the 19th and 20th century, and when they adopted the western democratic model of government. In other words, I think that Japan has a tradition for looking to other countries and other cultures for impulses.

The question then is whether this same tradition exists in Iraq, and I don't think it does. Besides, one important factor in the current Iraq war is that the US already was considered to be the big satan at the time when the invasion started. So, not only are you looking at getting Iraq to adopt central cultural elements from a western country, but you're looking at getting Iraq to adopt central cultural elements from it's traditional enemy number one, the US.

So yeah... I pretty much think it's a mission impossible, and I think it wasn't even very hard to predict that at the outset of the war. If you ask other people who were against the attack on Iraq..... I'm pretty sure that many of them would agree with me in the reasoning I explained above.

As for gay marriages being something that changes a thousand year old culture of only straight marriages..... Sure, it's a change. But it's more like an improvement, kind of. And why is it an improvement? Because it isn't something that's likely to destroy or corrupt the value or usefulness of traditional straight marriages. For instance, it's not like acceptance of gay marriage or partnership is going to cause more people to want to become gay...... So no, I don't think that it's something that will upset the balance of a thousand year old culture..... Not really.....