10A

Part 2 of 2:

The nature of domestic terrorist attacks differs quite a bit between left vs right as well.

While that's interesting, you'd need to be far outside the traditional political spectrum to think anything negative about the American flag.

Please understand that I suggest deportation because it's by far and away the most compassionate approach, as what's truly deserved is far more violent and lethal, but we can rise above that.

It’s considerably more than that.

Thank you for the links. It's clear we've allowed the problem to fester for too long. We'll see those numbers quickly return to a natural 100% "love it" if we enforce "love it or leave it".

it’s still religious and forcing it upon children is forcing religion.

Um, no. We all have a natural relationship with God, and that has nothing to do with any specific religion. We can raise our children in our faith tradition, while educating them about how other denominations disagree on various topics, and allowing them to ultimately choose their own style of worship and details of belief.

It’s logically impossible to have one without the other. If the state has the ability to force you to partake in religion then we have no freedom of religion. They are one in the same.

The state doesn't have that ability, and neither does anyone else. But if someone is opposed to God, then they're opposed to American values, and they should be treated as such.

That's not forcing anyone to partake in religion; it's just acknowledging that we're a Christian country at heart, and we always have been, founded on Christian values, and we're not going to enforce any particular flavor of Christianity, nor are we even going to enforce that people practice Christianity at all, but you certainly must favor God because otherwise you favor Satan.

By reciting the pledge you are promising loyalty to the state

That's wholly incorrect. We tend to harbor plenty of objections to our politicians, on both sides of the aisle. We fly our flags anyway because they're our flags, not the politicians' flags. Politicians are our employees.

It’s meant to be a patriotic, unifying/rallying cry. But it comes off as incredibly dystopian and creepy.

It's meant to stand for the American people and American values. If you find that dystopian or creepy, I have to wonder if you know your neighbors very well. Honest question: do you?

I’m here because I like talking with people I disagree with

I think you're looking for some kind of political debate forum. I can't speak for the moderator or anyone else here, but coming from reddit I expect this to be a place for conservatives to come together and build upon a shared perspective of the world.

None of the above monopoly strategies involve government regulation.

Completely false. Walmart and Amazon are both Delaware corporations, which means they're governed by Delaware's particular corporate law. Both are publicly held, which additionally obligates them to follow the strict rules of the SEC, including quarterly earnings reports. Moreover federal international trade agreements and laws regarding imports and exports, including tax laws, deeply impact both Walmart and Amazon. A proper reply would be book-length, but suffice it to say every single decision made at Walmart and Amazon are deeply entwined with government regulations.

We cannot have freedom if corporations control everything, which they basically do.

Corporations are people. They are literally people. Have you never worked in a corporation? They're not some kind of mythical beast. They're just every-day Americans working for a living.

Not everybody can start their own company. That takes thousands of dollars, a lot of luck, and a lot of business skills.

Hogwash. You can do it with less than $1 and entrepreneurial spirit. There are so many rags-to-riches stories that define our blessed country, and more appear every day. It sounds like you're just not trying hard enough. Maybe you don't want it bad enough. And if so that's fine, but don't pretend it's impossible.

If a slave can choose their slave owner, but is still a slave, then they are still a slave.

You have absolutely no clue what slavery is. That's bizarre. Normal commercial life in a free market is about as far away from slavery as possible. You can become a billionaire or a beach bum, or anything in between. It's completely up to you, and nobody's going to come around and whip you to death if you don't get back to work.

when they are stepping on your neck

What on earth are you talking about? You sound like you've never had a real job, but you've spent years reading Marx. This is delusional.

I assumed you were talking about Robinson v California being a mistake, and that we should indeed punish addicts for being addicts. Perhaps I have misunderstood.

The two relevant cases are Engel v. Vitale (1962) and Abington School District v. Schempp (1963).

Secularism is the lifeblood of our country and modern, developed nations. Without it we would have a whole extra level of oppression to deal with on top of the existing stuff.

Wow, no. What? Secularism is the lifeblood of depraved satanists who are diligently working to destroy everything we hold dear. Through Christ alone can we receive freedom from sin, and indeed the entire purpose of American freedom is to worship God and do His will. Oppression happens when we lack that freedom. You have it precisely backwards.

Do you have any scientific evidence to verify this?

Well, a web search turned up this as the first result:

[…], we conclude that the value of faith-oriented approaches to substance abuse prevention and recovery is indisputable. And, by extension, we also conclude that the decline in religious affiliation in the USA is not only a concern for religious organizations but constitutes a national health concern.

I haven't read that whole study, and I don't know their methodology, so they may well cite an efficacy below 100%. Personally I arrive at 100% by deduction: those who are saved evidence their salvation by being shielded from temptation to abuse drugs, while anyone lacking that evidence is clearly not yet saved.

Whatever the methodology, though, claiming that "their success rate is no better than chance" is a lie based on a downright anti-Christian bias.

I would suspect it is instead because proselytizing to people who are not in a healthy state of mind and are vulnerable is not an ethical solution, and so medical professionals generally avoid it.

It is the sick who need a physician. Medical professionals (like most other people) generally avoid proselytizing to everyone under all professional circumstances.

It's a confluence of many factors, some of which I already listed, and instead of accepting and seeking knowledge, you rejected my explanation. I'm done replying to you here. Take care.

I know what nationalism is, thank you. I also know what American Exceptionalism is, and it's a well established doctrine, well rooted in fact. I might have failed to explain it well, or maybe you just didn't want to question your preconceived beliefs. Either way, American Exceptionalism is the real deal, and no amount of bickering over it could change my mind. Thank you, though, for sharing your perspective with me.

Here's the thing: I'm tired and headed to sleep. This has been a long and meandering conversation full of disagreements, with no real point. It's a bit exhausting. You're asking me about a topic that has been written about extensively in multiple books and articles. You can look up "American Exceptionalism" if you really want researched facts with academic citations. I was just giving you my honest thoughts, as a rather sleepy individual. I'm sorry those thoughts weren't up to snuff for you.

This interaction is done. You're obviously not a fan of the US, and if you don't live here anyway then you have every right not to be. It's no skin off my back. I wish you all the best. See ya around.

Ha, it's not fascist to click downvote. You wrote something I believed to be false, so I downvoted. If it really hurts your feelings I can take it back. I do enjoy mutually respectful debate. I don't think a downvote is all that disrespectful, and I also don't think we're having much of a debate. (What's the topic exactly?)

By what metric?

By a ton of metrics, but a few that come to mind off the top of my head:

• We're predominantly Christian, and that's not an official religion like in some other countries, but actual self-reported religious affiliation.
• People flock here from all over the world for our freedom, and always have since our inception.
• Our Constitution was the first to establish that God-given rights are the basis for a free people's self-governance, and that constitution has been imitated worldwide, though never paralleled.
• Our culture of self-defense makes us impossible to invade, because most people are armed and more than ready to take down attackers.
• We invented almost every useful technology that has been invented since our inception, including this here internet and the electrical generators that power it.
• We invented country music. 'Nuff said.

I understand that some citizens of various other countries see themselves as part of an interconnected global world, where countries are fungible. And to be fair, a few Americans think that too. But in reality the US is far removed from all other countries, and we're blessed with being the greatest country possible, so a foreign perspective really doesn't impact us at all.

So you're right to say I'm uninformed — indeed we all are, somewhat, depending on the holes in our areas of focus — but you're wrong to say my conclusions are not based on facts. Because my conclusions are entirely factual within the context of the US.

If I'm incorrect outside of that context, well okay, I'll take your word on that. But so? It just seems like such an irrelevant point to make.

That can be true or false. I neither know nor care. I'm sorry to be dismissive, and I don't mean to be rude. You're just trying to make a point that seems irrelevant to me. I'm sure it's meaningful to you, but it's not to me.

Perhaps — I have no idea about the rest of the world — but Fox serves an American audience, so that's the context in which it's appropriate to evaluate it.

As a conservative, when I look at the Fox News website, I typically think all of the following: A) these stories are notably well-balanced compared to the other mass media outlets, B) man, they publish some really stupid articles on this site, C) Why do the articles all have huge videos that are completely unrelated to the articles on top of them?, and D) Yikes, the comment section sure does feature some openly racist remarks sometimes.

But outside of Fox, in the US, there are generally two types of news organizations: large-and-leftist and tiny-and-conservative.

Agreed on that — I don't support force either. Ultimately it's up to Ernest.

I suspected as much.

So what are you doing in a conservative place? Did you come here just to pick a fight? I do enjoy our dialog, but the thing is called "conservative", so I expect everyone here to be some variant of conservative.

or else they become monopolies

Entirely false. Monopolies are always created with government assistance, erecting barriers to entry for competing startups.

slaves to corporations

Do you really believe that? We're all free to start our own companies, as I and most of my friends and family have at some point in our lives. That's the whole point of being an American. If you don't like your job, you're free to get another, and once you have some experience you can go into business for yourself. Nobody's a slave to a corporation. That's patently absurd.

Punishing drug addicts for being drug addicts does nothing to help them

Yeah but where did I ever suggest we should do that?

Correlation does not imply causation.

True. It's a multifaceted set of problems for sure. I do think the elimination of school prayer was a root cause, but that hunch is impossible to prove.

Secularism is not the problem here.

Secularism is always a problem, wherever it exists.

In the context of drug (including alcohol) abuse, the only method of treatment we have that's 100% effective is salvation. The only reason it's not universally offered as a known cure is because so many people are afraid to advocate for Christianity. But it works, and it works astonishingly well.