I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it.
Voltaire

speaking of voltaire, my favorate saying of his (of which i have many)

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.
Voltaire

So, if I'm some kind of Necromancer, you'll agree with me?

You're totally allowed to have other opinions, just, you know, have 'em for good rational reasons.

Well that's an understandable root of your opinion. Problem is, how does randomly asking hispanics for ID prevent that happening? Just because a specific immigrant did that, doesn't mean most immigrants are anything like that. Just because some immigrants get caught, doesn't mean somebody won't get murdered. After all, far more murderers are American citizens than illegal immigrants.

It's the exact same thing with New York and the understandable, but irrational and extremely unhelpful distrust of all Muslims. It's called a fallacy. The fact that an immigrant committed a murder doesn't mean murders are only committed by immigrants. The fact that random racial profiling might catch some immigrants, doesn't mean it will catch a murderer.

Edited by user 27 August 2010 03:44:01(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Yes, but how many interactions with immigrants have you and your family actually had beyond that one? How many more interactions have you had with non-immigrants? How many of those were negative?

Thank you.

Racial profiling is illegal.

Racial profiling is not the same as stopping illegal immigration.

I can't some people are comparing the two. It's moronic.

No fool, ALL races act like idiots. Or to be more exact, some members of the human race are capable of acts of idiocy. There have been exactly zero scientific studies showing that one race is more prone to idiocy than another. To state otherwise is either extreme stupidity, or intentional racism.

Incidentally, moving to another country in order to feed your family isn't acting like an idiot, it's acting in the best interest of your family. Legal or illegal.

Sure. Life sucks for everyone on the bottom rung. That's why socialism is great. FAIRNESS

(If you are a Republican you may need to look that word up in a dictionary)

Hey Yanko McFuckwit, go read up on your political philosophy huh? Socialism is not to be confused with Marxism. They share some characteristics, but then so do social liberalism and libertarianism and you'd have to be a right spazzy to mix up the two. But I'll give you a pass for growing up in a country with an irrational, pathological fear of anything to do with equality.

Stalin was, nominally at least a Marxist. To be more accurate, he was a Marxist-Leninist, and then took the totalitarianism of Lenin and ramped it up to 11. Marxism is an offshoot of socialism. So one can say that all Marxists are socialists, but not all socialists are Marxists. Do you see?

But incidentally, for all the faults in the Soviet Union (and there were many, from a massive, stagnant buearucracy to the gulags), there's a reason that a lot of old Russians still long for the days of the USSR. Sure, they may have had to spend hours in queues to get basics like bread, but what are they meant to do now in a free market? Especially a "free market" as corrupt as Russias. And at least in the USSR they always had jobs. There was no unemployment problem. There must be a reason by the Communist Party of the Russian Federation is the second largest political party in Russia. (Actually there are many, and some of that has to do with the Kremlin's machinations, keeping out genuine opposition in the Russian media. As with all things to do with politics, the reality is full of the sort of subtle complications that Fox News tends to loathe)

Let me quote that ever reliable Wikipedia to help you understand the basic most fundamental tenent of socialism: "Socialism is an economic and political theory advocating public or common ownership and cooperative management of the means of production and allocation of resources." See? Doesn't even need to be state ownership. Just needs to be a form of ownership thats first interest is not profit. I tend to prefer worker co-operatives to state ownership, at least for small-to-medium sized employers.

Ultimately the question of socialism comes down to this: are you happy seeing 90% of the wealth concentrated in the hands of 10% (if not 1%) of the population? If you are then obviously liberalism is for you, if not then you favour socialism. Of course, it's quite possible to combine the two to varying degrees, its not an absolute question.

hmm, this has been quite rather insightful, so i thank you for that. btw, i'm from belarus originally, and my parents tend to long for the olden days, of simplicity and jobs for everyone, but we were kinda amongst the rich within the belarus (which is like slightly upper middle class in America), so i guess we were happier for reforms