The problem is less failure to abstain from evil than insistence on abstention from many things that are good until people are so repressed they lose sight of the difference. Forbid innumerable things people KNOW are good (under good circumstances) and they begin questioning whether forbidden bad things truly are bad, or just yet another error in judgement.

The celibate priesthood is a great example because it is so utterly arbitrary and has done so much damage. OFFERING things to anyone means doing so voluntarily; MANDATING the "offer" as a CONDITION of priesthood when there was NO such precedent is asking for trouble. It is why there were so many "celibate" popes with not only wives and children but multiple bastards by adultery, and a host of other sins into the bargain: In for a penny, in for a pound; they can only go to Hell once. And, of course, disqualifying everyone with normal sexual apetites drastically increases the percentage of the remaining pool that is closeted deviants. Lots of Catholics have large families, because humans like sex and the Church declared spermicide murder—but men (of any or no religion) who prefer sex with prepubescent boys sire few children.

Oh, certainly—but when the bible DOES say something is NOT true, I take its word over any man declaring otherwise. When the bible says the end of the world will feature professed-but-false Christian churches who forbid marriage and certain foods, I take it at its word. So when I see professed Christian churches stating such prohibitions I also take the bibles word over theirs. Particularly when the fruit on those particular branches of their tree has such broad pernicious effect.

Because whatever they amalgamate it with, the bibles specific and definite instructions ARE incumbent on all professed Christians, which included you last I checked. If I saw you advocating murder I would presume your Christianity means adherence to its prohibition on murder, and therefore cite it, regardless of whether anyone in the discussion previously referenced any religion.

Right; Republicans replaced an adulterous party leader with a pedophiliac one, but HIS replacement is surely OK. Even though we cannot see to go more than a few months without another Republicans exposure as a pedophile or male prostitute solicitor, when they are not extolling rape as Gods will. I missed the quote, but noting behavior is private and personal in no way excuses it. There is a difference between saying, "that is moral," and saying, "that is none of your business."

I did not cite "heretics" as condemnation of your religious beliefs, but Republicans as condemnation of your Republican Partys hypocrisy in gross defiance of your religious beliefs despite their pretenses of piety. The Duggars problem is that their religion demands total dissociation and isolation from all "heretics" for the sake of dissociating their personal mores from ANYONE elses. That sacrifices all edifying and corrective power of the Holy Spirit through fellowship, so once someone goes astray they just keep right on goin' further and further into depravity. Not that I advocate premarital sex with anyone, but adolescence sends ignorant and immature people into sexual overdrive, with fairly uniform results: Had the Duggars not forbidden their 14-year-old son unsupervised contact with all girls but his sister, he probably would still have become sexually active, but probably not incestuously. Maybe if they had not practically marooned them at a rural "Blue Lagoon" he would not have anyway.

Just because a cult is telegenic and/or politically convenient does not make it any less a cult. Look what happened when the not-so pure Puritans took their authoritarian fundamentalists to live in the woods together.

Yup, but it also states nothing can be created and that the amount of disorder in a closed system always increases, which in practice means that whatever amount of energy is used for work in a subsystem, a certain amount bleeds into the rest of the system without doing ANY (practical) work, so one always gets less energy out of anything than they put into it.

No, just very bland before mixed with more flavorful things and roasted, and very dense before grinding. The seed is almost like a (hard) chiclet, and chewing a few produces a doughy clump similar to chewing gum (but not quite elastic enough for bubbles.) CONSUMING much that was is unwise, because starches absorb fluid in the stomach and swell, so eating large quantities of very compact starches can cause discomfort.

Nope, "only" doing WORK on it by grinding it, mixing it with other things (which also required work to produce, as does the mixing) and placing it in a HEATED oven while the yeast causes a CHEMICAL REACTION. People who perform all that work are entitled to full compensation for each gram of matter, joule of energy and second of time they provided from their finite supply—and NOT AN UPQUARK MORE! That is not just a law of natural science, but a pretty basic law of economics, even if many of economics acolytes often conveniently ignore one of its most fundamental principles.

THAT is absurd; a baker does many things to turn raw materials into bread, as just demonstrated, and is consquently entitled to compensation for the full value of each of them. What he is NOT entitled to is any ADDITIONAL compensation absent any added value. The technical term for compensation in excess of value supplied is "profit:" The wealth one receives for any value in excess of that expended to produce it.

Um, the fact some of it is PROFIT: Unless he receives more value than he put in, he does not PROFIT, only break even (at best; Thermodynamics says he cannot even do that unless those buying his bread do so with payment of greater value, because some of the energy with which he baked the bread was WASTED and did not bake anything.)

PEOPLE may value everything differently; physics does not. For example, at standard temperature and pressure, burning a mole of octane produces precisely 5.43±0.1 megajoules: I know, because it is so "objective" I just looked it up in maybe 20 seconds (expect an invoice presently.... ) Saying a customer prefers a loaf that cost a baker 50¢ of work to $1 that cost the customer THAT much work is a long way of saying, "There's a sucker born every minute," (or perhaps just "you can't cheat an honest man.") But frauds frequent success makes it no more scientifically sound than morally.

Given your the tone of your references to Ron Paul, this debate would probably be needless were it about, say, the Fed, or the World Bank, or the IMF. If a pension fund buys 5000 20% interest mortgages from Morgan Chase for 5% more than the mortgages "earned" chase last year, then goes bankrupt along with all the borrowers six months later, that is gross perfidy, but selling ones local store to someone for 5% more than last years profits is "just smart business." What is natural and just at the local microeconomic level inexplicably morphs into something perverted and wrong at the macroeconomic level. Ever stop and wonder if maybe it is ALWAYS perverted and wrong at EVERY level...?

The incident with the money changers is the only instance of Christ committing VIOLENCE in the entire NT; maybe that means something. And that something is probably not "Had they simply defrauded worshippers just outside the door He would not have minded." And anointing Christ EN ROUTE TO CRUCIFIXION was hardly a "luxury." How many times did Jesus work miracles to feed thousands of hungry people? As opposed to saying something like "feed yourself; I'm busy adorning myself in rainbows." But if something more explicit is needed: Again, read less Ayn Rand Paul Ryan and more St. James. Or Amos; most of the Prophets, really. Or listen to the Pope; his divine authority is good enough for everything else, right?

Yeah, the Nazis were so liberal every CONSERVATIVE in the entire Western world fell over themselves offering endorsements and even material aid for most of the '30s. As late as 1935, even Mr. "We shall fight on the beaches" himself penned glowing praise of the Nazis, declaring their revanchmism no more than their due, and his SOLE substantive argument for them was that they menaced and must inevitably attack the Soviets. "Conservatives" prefer local to national so much the first US conservatives created the Federalist Party, even if those who like to accuse others of "revisionist" history now claim Jeffersons leftist party as their leader and revile Hamilton as an imperialist. The only other time in the nations entire history that conservatives did not instead revile JEFFERSON was when they were invoking states rights to justify slavery (because half the Tenth Amendment TOTALLY refutes its OTHER half along with the Ninth, not to mention the Fifth.)

Conservatives like to switch sides as it serves their interest, which is why they went back and forth between supporting first the Nazis against the Soviets, then the reverse, and so on until (and through) WW II. Worked out great: Not only did we end up in the worlds bloodiest war, but came out of it by airlifting the Nazis secret police to the US to design the CIA for us, and with 20 years the president who had just fired the CIA director for trying to manipulate him into WW III was shot (but said former CIA director declared we caught the lone assassin, so all is well. )

I did not call J.D. Rockefeller a conservative, merely repeat what every leftist AND CONSERVATIVE has consistently said since the day he still fouled the Earth. Cite ONE leftist with ANYTHING good to say about the man; I can cite DOZENS of card-carrying conservatives who both praise him and condemn leftists as godless communists for doing anything else. If one lies down with dogs, he should not blame the dogcatcher when he wakes up with fleas.

In a democracy (and, to a lesser extent, republic) "We the People" ARE both nation AND government. Certainly unaccountable unrepresentative government is as abhorrent as during the Revolution, so any and all patriots can and should demand it resume the public service which is the sole basis of all its legitimacy. But SELF-GOVERNING citizens declaring hatred of their government is not patriotism, but self-loathing—unless their hatred is not truly of GOVERNMENT, but electoral defeat, in which case demanding the majority submit to the minoritys privileges moves closer to treason.

Ah, Ron Paul: The man declared eternal war on government by JOINING IT MOST OF HIS ADULT LIFE, and ceaselessly crusades against/as government because it is immoral, greedy, oppressive and the only reason he can buy groceries without a boat. I drove past his old congressional office many times: The FEDERALLY BUILT and maintained interstate linking the island to the mainland practically ends at his door, and is a far better than the county road little more than a pig trail that is the SOLE other route (and still governent built/maintained.) Had I not grown up down the street from Ron Pauls district, his self-indulgent ivory tower rhetoric would still expose his constituency as nothing but a beach bum resort. He and they should thank God and government they are anything but corpses yet beneath the 10' of ocean with which the 1900 Hurricane flushed them from cemeteries while obliterating all but about three buildings on the whole island.

All of which could easily have been prevented by a sea wall designed 20 years earlier, but rejected because the Libertarian citizenry wisely and presciently refused to burden themselves and permanently cripple their city with an expensive public works boondoggle. Instead they DROWNED themselves and permanently crippled the formerly booming financial and shipping center, then issued bonds to build the sea wall five years too late. Worked great for my hometown: It went from a sleepy little town 40 miles inland to the nations 4th largest city in just 80 years as population, wealth and influence incessantly skyrocketed (literally; the first word man spoke from the moons surface was and will forever be "Houston") until the end of OPECs embargo finally slowed things in the '80s. People think of New Orleans, but the Bayou City is the true Gulf Coast marvel because the Hurricane eternally stunted Galveston and because our citizens had sense to dredge the Ship Channel to the sea in the Republics early days, then the sense after 1900 to vote 16:1 for further dredging despite a cost of $1.25 million—and $1.25 million MORE graciously provided by the oppressive federal government; four years later President Wilson arrived to formally open the Port of Houston, which has been the Gulfs largest for decades.

All because a bunch of resort residents and loner beach bums were too cheap to SAVE THEIR OWN LIVES through their government and secure their previous place as a leading Gulf port. Still a great place for Libertarians though; there's a private steamboat service that travels to international waters for gamblers, and if anyone who (is a serial-killing billionaire with their own boat) can sail out with someone they dislike, return alone and bloody, then be acquitted when pieces of the other guys come in on the next tide. It is truly a rich anar—er, LIBERTARIAN paradise, really: Anyone can do whatever they like (except offend a wealthier neighbor;) no wonder Paul fits in so well.

Of course, Ron Paul only hates FEDERAL government, because he is so deeply committed to states rights; that is totally not a smokescreen for robber barons incrementally dismantling government at ALL levels. Even if all that is so: Guess who hits citizens with taxes and fees many times those of the federal government; did you pay more federal income tax last year, or state income, sales and property tax? For things like roads (massively subsidized by federal taxes, though that was very uncertain last month,) police (often receiving federal funds and equipment,) fire departments and (sometimes) water.

All the feds due with their much smaller chunk of individuals wealth is trivial things like prevent Mexico and anyone else invading, looting, occupying and enslaving the whole nation. And prevent terrorists celebrating the Millennium with fireworks at LAX. And Hoover Dam keeping the lights on in Vegas for the past 80 years. And the TVA doing the same in the Appalachians (which is dirt poor private utility companies actually tried to block the TVA because making electricity so cheap peasants could afford it might threaten their gouging.) Or the LCRA doing the same in Central Texas. And countless others whose names I do not know. I believe it was Patrick Henry who derided the Constitutions states rights principles on the grounds it simply replaced one tyrant with 50; that is Ron Paul in a nutshell if he is sincere (if not, he is just another anarchist, something the left DID monopolize until a few decades ago.)

Ron Paul and Alex Jones: Two people with more dollars than sense who make me long for the days I only had to deal with deranged LOCALS gushing about them. Paul is so committed (which is actually a good idea...) he can never even decide his PARTY, though the ONE time in decades of government office that he did not hop on the GOP ticket by election day was when he was briefly OUT of government and conned the Libs into being exploited for his self-promotion under the guise of getting back INTO his hated federal government.

As for foreign AID: I never said anything against foreign aid, but "free" trade treaties are not even nominally that; they are supposed to be mutually beneficial, and their actual gains go in the pockets of people exclusively born right in the good ol' US of A—they just LIVE on the French Riviera while their money lives in the British Caymans because the Swiss finally turned them into the IRS. No, the idle opulently rich illegally beggaring "We the People" just to further bloat their bank accounts is not "patriotic." As noted, Hoover Dam, the TVA and other major WPA infrastructure projects were massive successes that restarted the Depressionary economy by putting money in the hands of working people obligated to spend (i.e. circulate) it on food and shelter rather than stuff it in a mattress and weight for the investment market to recover, and those projects have repaid our grandparents' investment ten or a hundred times over in the 80 years of use the whole nation has gotten from them—but no major construction projects endure 80 years without maintenance, nor remain adequate without expansion. Look what happened to the Statue of Liberty in just one century, and not from use for anything like powering cities, but just standing in the ocean rain.

Ignoring all those increasingly urgent national needs to deport send HOSTILE nations all the national manufacturing capability needed to repair/replace it is beyond treason, but I never said anything about foreign AID, and do not object to trade agreements with FRIENDLY nations abiding by product, worker and environmental standards as good as or better than ours. The Canadian part of NAFTA bothers me not at all (I admit feeling slightly bad about the slight extent our lower wages do to them what Mexicos do to us, but that extent is SO slight it does not bother me much.) I have no problem with Japans place in the Trans-Pacific Partnership either; again, the only "risk" there is that our looser product, labor and environmental standards give US an unfair advantage. China, however, is a whole other matter, and not just because of their increasing antagonism and nationalism or habit of honoring capitalisms profit motive by selling nukes to North Korea and Pakistan (though those ARE excellent objections.)

Oh, right; I keep forgetting that Hong Kong capitalists wetting themselves over "Red" Chinas eminent return cannot spend any cash trying to gain a friend in the WH without it proving the president a PLA spy. Remind me again which partys McCarthy protege went groveling to Mao from the WH before handing Maos VC friends Americas SOLE lost war. That was the day everything changed for China; we and the Soviets each thought we could play China off against the other, but that is pretty much what China has done to both of us ever since. We came out of the '80s with a suddenly mushrooming federal debt that had quadrupled in just a decade, the Soviets never MADE it out, and China came out of it straight into the WTO.

EVERYONE forced NAFTA and the WTO through, Sparky: Reagan and Bush came up with it, but did not have the influence over labor to quell their outrage (especially after Reagan permamently crippled US unions.) Much the same way Bush Jr. came up with but could not pass the Trans-Pacific Partnership; thank heaven what remains of US unions finally figured out that sticking a (D) after a robber baron lackeys name does not make him any less a Republican. Look at the bright side: At least intolerant robber barons still have some place to go (i.e. the GOP,) but now that Democrats have gone from DINO to Libertarian in All BUT Name, the left is out in the cold, because New Left=No Left and Third Way=No Way.

Okay, I must grudgingly concede that one: Your TONE and DICTION are intolerant as Hell, because inflammatory and deeply demeaning, but the only policy demand I recall was not letting legal guardians of the legally incompetent indulge their wards' desire to commit life-altering and irrevocable acts.

On the other hand, others (not all of them leftists) have addressed the distinction between gender and sex, only one of which is defined by genetics, which in turn make that one inalterable, so there is nothing to debate on that score.

I have not read much about it but, in all fairness, did read that his dad DID turn him into the local sheriff, who declined to press charges and instead put the kid in a treatment program. Just another reminder of local governments vast moral superiority to federal government, amirite? I doubt the Duggars celebrity would impress the FBI or SCOTUS, but "We Can't Count As High As Our Number of Kids" is pretty much the biggest thing to happen in the sheriffs jurisdiction since "Deliverance."

Oh, gosh, any number of things. Not letting a couple of cultists go off in the woods and raise a litter like something out of "Lord of the Flies," much less GLORIFYING, enriching and enabling them for doing so. Not letting parents insist on indoctrinating kids into cults from birth and/or deny kids contact with all non-cultist society. Seriously, the Duggars are much more akin to Koresh than to the Weavers. Mama Weaver somehow received some groups Parent of the Year award not long after proudly explaining to a dubious interviewer that no, she and her husband CANNOT keep track of, care for and home school all their kids all the time, so each of the youngest kids is paired in the buddy system with a teenager who raises them in lieu of ACTUAL parents. Which might explain how a 14-year-old cutoff from all mores except his parents fanatic repression wound up molesting his sister (just a thought.)

I have never seen anyone suggest it is OK for adolescents to explore their sexuality with strangers. Many people (including me) deny that premarital sex (adolescent or not) is OK, but many of us are also realistic enough to know it will nearly always HAPPEN however we feel about it and however harshly we condemn it, so the only sensible response is to follow "abstinence is the best course" with "but if you insist on blowing that off this is the imperfect-but-second-best way to prevent STDs and pregnancy."

In this case the point is moot because the Duggars brand of fanaticism is so adamant that exploring sexuality is NEVER OK outside of marriage that they NEVER allow unmarried people (even adults) to be around those of the opposite sex unchaperoned by parents. Which, again, likely contributed to the problem: Their horny 14-year-old son was not allowed to be alone with ANY girl—EXCEPT his sisters, because SOMEONE must raise them while mom and dad are on TV or making the next one. Who knows; maybe the 14-year-old who raised THAT 14-year-old did a bad job. One thing about it: If mom and dad firmly indoctrinate the understanding extramarital sex with ANYONE would make him worse than the Antichrist, we are back to the problem with forbidding all sexually healthy people the priesthood: In for a penny, in for a pound; once ALL premarital sex is defined as the ne plus ultra (or, rather, opposite) of evil, it is impossible for ANYTHING else to be worse. Premarital sex is so awful doing it with a prepubescent sister is... well, not gilding the lily; again, whatever the opposite of that is.

I have only read the Wikipedia article, but it claims they come as close to total social isolation as possible short of blinding. The kids are only allowed to watch literally one or two preapproved TV shows and DVDs; they are not getting boobs and crothes shoved in their face 24-7 (or, y'know, EVER; most of them have probably never seen ANY genitals but their own.) Not raised on isolated compounds? They are raised in a sprawling house in the woods of a rural region, not allowed to attend public school, only allowed to watch only the few TV shows and DVDs their parents approve, and denied unchaperoned contact with anyone outside the family. Their parents do not lock them in the basement (as far as I know...) but come pretty close. Which, again, probably combined with the parents fanatical teachings to produce some seriously messed up kids. About 19 of them, many raised by each other rather than adults.

No, but when virtually NO ONE chooses to listen to your teaching its foolish to assume they WILL, so teach them no contingencies. When even kids of dedicated true believers who incessantly indoctrinate them with the belief STILL violate it, that strongly indicates most EVERY kid does, and expecting otherwise—refusing to even ADDRESS it "because that encourages" what virtually all do REGARDLESS—is a delusion bordering on child neglect. No one wanted Palin to kick out her pregnant teen daughter; I strongly doubt you saw ANYONE advocate that except perhaps facetiously. She reportedly supports sex education, so I wish she had taught THAT better, but I have never seen anyone seriously advocate putting a teen on the street with a newborn, except people essentially arguing "the kid deserves that for sinning" (I have never been clear on why, exactly, the infant deserves that.) Much as some people say women who have abortions deserve to die when it is banned and becomes incredibly dangerous.

No, they are criticized because the fundie GOP right has held them out for years as paragons of virtuous "Christian family values"—because they held THEMSELVES apart from all of SOCIETY as morally superior to its depravity—and now it turns out their morally superior isolation and religious indoctrination produced an incestuos pedophile. Did society fail to live up to their morally superior standards, or did they fail to live up to EVEN the far lesser ones of society?

To be COMPLETELY fair, I truly do not know enough about the cases to know whether the Duggars kid did anything the rest of society DOES consider wrong, with the notable exception of when he involved his sister. I do not know the status of the all important issue of consent, and while it is true minors are not legally competent to consent, in part because adults often have the wisdom to manipulate them, laws in most jurisdictions acknowledge that is not the case when BOTH parties are minors. The general legal rule is consensual sex with someone <4 years younger is not statutory rape, and the Duggar kid was reportedly 14 when this stuff happened, so consensual sex with a 12-year-old would not legally be pedophilia, rape or any other crime in most jurisdictions; ANY sexual contact with an 8-year-old, however, would be. And, of course, "no means no" even between people born on the same day.

In terms of the abstinent moral highground though we are back to my original point: No stone casting for the GOP until it gets in own house in order. Or the point I made to rt about the distinction between natural science and theology: Secularists accept no obligation to play by Christianitys rules, but professed Christians explicitly accept that oblgation, and should therefre honor it before castigating its breach by those who never accepted it in the first place. I remain at a loss to understand how you turned ANY act of a self-professed "conservative Christian Republican" into an indictment of LIBERALS, secular or otherwise. Did the liberal media brainwash him through his TV or something, and if so wtf did they not program him to vote for liberals?