Ambassadar

lordkrohn1626, I would also like a response to my post concerning your statements instead of cherry picking what you want to respond to and what you don't wish to respond to. Here you go to save you the effort of scrolling up two posts... In your original post I responded to you didn't make a single point except to throw out your opinions and contempt on a certain group of people. What about using some hard data or facts to make a point instead of using mere opinion.

Do you realize how offensive a post this is? Do you also realize how arrogant you sound in it? You have built yourself up in your mind to think if someone believes something different than you they must automatically be an idiot. I'm just going off what you said in your post. Feel free to correct the perception you gave me. I would also like to ask what is your purpose for posting this? It is utterly pointless unless you just like discriminating against large segments of the population because you merely disagree with them. Is that the type person you are?

I love the Smithsonian... especially the Museum of American History. I had already seen the Huntsville Space and Rocket Center combined with the Museum at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida so that made the Air and Space Museum not bad but nothing great in comparison. If you haven't been to those though u will probably think it's pretty cool. My memory is a little rusty but I think I preferred the Chicago Museums of Science to the Smithsonian as well. I was little when I was in Chicago though so maybe that is the reason they seemed better. Either way the Smithsonian rocks as a whole.

Yeah I agree. I was shaking my head when he said that was Communism and I am a Christian myself. According to this all laws are "oppressive." Bill wanted to go kill Mike because Mike really made him angry. Unfortunately someone made a law that said Bill will go to jail for life if he kills Mike so he can't express his emotions and feelings the way he sees fit because someone thinks murder is wrong. Therefore the law oppresses Bills opinion and what Bill can do as they think their opinion is better than his. If something is "bad" then laws say it shouldn't be done. These laws are made by the government. The government is voted into office by a majority vote. I know a lot of people that aren't Christians that are against homosexual marriage and homosexual adoption. They think this is a bad thing for a variety of reasons. Don't get mad at Christianity over this, get mad at the government. I agree with you on this. If a person is just going to get offended on either side by someone disagreeing with them they need to sit the debate out on the sidelines. Please define what you mean by hurting the progression of society and the people you oppress please. I assume you mean the abortion and homosexual issues when you say this. The problem is... what if you are wrong? What if being raised in a homosexual family is not healthy for children? What if abortion really is murdering babies? If that is the case then Christians would actually be upholding society. If you cannot prove the opposite then you don't need to be making sweeping judgmental comments like this. I don't understand the point of this statement. Statements like this are just designed to tick off the other side. This isn't showing Christian love saying stuff like this. What are your motives for posting? When you start throwing out insults like this you need to re-examine your motives for discussion if you are a Christian.

This is a terrible thing. I have an observation I am curious about though. Why is it a lot of other threads everyone talks about how humanity is good at heart etc etc and in threads like this everyone talks about how bad humanity is. The reason I say this is because I see some of the same people making both comments depending on the context of the thread. Just curious if someone could answer that for me.

Wow... Did you fly into Caracas originally? I have a good friend from Aruba that I have actually visited down there and we had kicked around going to Venezuela to see Angel Falls but from the sound of things Caracas is nuts. He was saying I would have to buy really crummy clothes so I wouldn't get attacked. I was like umm... no thanks... I'd love to do the hike but I don't feel like dying... I whitewater rafted down the lower portion of the Grand Canyon... Sadly that is the tamer section. All the trips down the good part were reserved. We did some side hikes. It was cool but you don't get a feel for how deep in the canyon you are because you can't see the top. I personally thought the feel of the narrows was cooler experience. Plus summertime in the Grand Canyon is HOT! You jump in the Colorado River to cool off and then realize you are COLD! I actually goofed around on some quicksand and got stuck on the bank of the Colorado hehe. I was about 14 at the time and my dad had to come pull me out.

All Christianity stands for is oppression? Are you really sure you want to make this argument? I agree the guy you were debating wasn't making the best worded arguments but come on... don't ya think you are taking that statement a bit far?

Read Galatians. Then you can own people in a debate that say you have to perform acts to go to heaven. Back in the day people were going around saying you had to be circumcised which was a Jewish custom as well as accept Jesus to go to heaven. Paul lays the smack down on them in it and clarifies no work like being circumcised amounts to anything. It is purely about faith. People are always trying to make Christianity all works based and legalistic but if you go to the source you will see it isn't that way. It is purely repenting of your sin and accepting Jesus as your Lord and Savior.... that's it.

I'm not debating specific examples. I am debating the idea of is it acceptable or not to ever discriminate in any form against a race, culture, lifestyle, etc. Is it ever ok to view a group in a different view than you view all the others? So would you say that Japanese culture during WWII was pretty messed up and barbaric? Like you said... it's documented... \ Correct... because their culture changed. That is my point. So all those thousands and thousands of Japanese soldiers that performed atrocities are not at fault for their actions? They aren't a reflection of the culture they were raised in? What about the reflection on their culture how these atrocities were cheered on the homefront? If their culture wasn't ok with these things they wouldn't have put up with it and cheered it. Aren't the actions of a culture and the condoning of these actions by the rest of the culture a good way to determine what that culture is and what it values at it's core?

I wish there was the option to order whatever channels you wanted and not have to pay for the rest. That would solve a lot of issues. Each channel would be on a per channel subscription basis so if no one ordered it there would be no viewers and thus no advertisement money available so crummy channels would be allowed to pass away and I wouldn't have to waste my time flipping past them. In this scenario if you wanted a channel that was all cussing all the time 24 hours a day then if the market could support it then you could have it and no one that didn't want it would have to pay money to support it... heh

I did. I quoted the Braveheart speech because what he said to those men is directly applicable to the people being killed in this situation. That is why I would support arming the people being murdered. They need the chance to win their freedom the same way the Western Culture nations had to fight to win their own freedoms.

So you don't look down on the culture the Japanese had in WWII(I am not talking race for this example... just culture)? The culture that thought it was ok to slaughter hundreds of thousands of helpless Chinese in Nanking and raped just about every woman in that city down to infants. The culture that published exploits of their widespread murder of civilians to the jubilation of their public. You don't think it is right to view a culture like that differently? What about cultures that think it is ok to beat their women and keep them in submission? I can come up with any number of examples of brutal cultures from present or from history. Would you not call the acts of the Japanese culture in WWII brutal?

You are just playing semantics Grim. Word it this way if it makes you feel better about it... At what percentage does it become okay to "view differently" or "feel differently" about an entire race, culture, or religion for the actions of it's members? 10%? 20%? 50%? 75%? 100%?

I love hiking. My all time favorite hikes I have done... The Crypt in Waterton Lakes ntl park in Canada. The high point is after you walk across a thin trail traversing an avalanche slide on the edge of a cliff you climb up into a small tunnel blasted through the side of the mountain with dynamite. After crawling through it you come out the other side to a sheer drop of at least a thousand feet and a waterfall from a glacial lake tumbling down into the valley below... AWESOME!! Oh yeah... walked right up on a bear this hike as well... Angels Landing in Zion National Park in Utah. The final destination is arriving at a thin rock outcropping that sticks out into the valley. Basically you feel like you are standing in midair because on three different sides of you you are just a few feet away from the edge of a 2000 foot sheer cliff so your vision doesn't see any land under you if you stand near the edge. Really beautiful and a really weird sensation to have. It's also a good quick kick in the rear physically because the entire hike you are climbing half a mile vertically in the space of just a few miles of walking. The Narrows in Zion. 12 mile hike IN a river with water up to your knees. The river flows between two 2000 foot high vertical cliffs. There is a side canyon we headed up where you climb waterfalls with the water blasting down on you to get further up the canyon. Very awesome... Klingman's Dome(I think) in Smoky Mountain National Park in Tennessee/North Carolina. We hiked this in January in jeans and tennis shoes. Everyone else on the trail had ice picks and crampons and looked like they should be on everest. The trail was covered in an inch or two of ice near the edge of cliffs. We were slipping all over the place but it was a great challenge. Hike ends in a beautiful exposed view of the Appalachians on the edge of a cliff and the wind whipping past looking out at the country covered in snow. If you have ever seen the movie Last of the Mohicans it looked like some of the mountain views in that. Offtrailing with crazy Englishmen in Arches Ntl Park in Utah. Some English extreme trailing tour guide guy asked my brother and I if we wanted to come along because all that was with him was one other crazy English guy that had rafted the Zambezi River(Big chance of dying and if you fall out crocs and hippos attack you) and three shy asian girls. All he asked before we joined is "are either of you afraid of heights?" Nope... and that was the most understated question ever. I think he needed more guys for the crazy stuff. Anyways he leads us all through the backcountry and we make human ladders to get up some impassible routes. Then we make a human ladder to get down a gorge where I am the last guy to come down and have to jump the gorge onto a rock outcrop that is 5 feet wide with a 40 foot drop if I land short and a 60 foot drop to rocks if I land long. Crazy... probably wouldn't do the last part again... but definitely a great hike. Arches is where they filmed the boy scout scene of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade to give you a point of reference of what this place was like. The last I will mention was a couple of months ago I hadn't backpacked(we were carrying about 40 lbs I think) in ages and did 26 miles including climbing a 2200 foot high mountain in less than 28 hours. The doc said I developed severe foot tendinitis from it. Part of me was like whoa, cool, didn't know you could do that in a day lol. I thought it took months of overusing something to pull off tendinitis. I could barely stand when we got done because my body wasn't used to it. I literally got out of the car when we got home and stepped out and was collapsing and had to grab the side of the car to keep from falling I was so exhausted. Note to self: build your body up in the future before undertaking stuff like this. :P

At what percentage does it become okay to judge an entire race, culture, or religion for the actions of it's members? 10%? 20%? 50%? 75%? 100%?

What if only 95% of them wanted you dead?

So far for this thread the two potential "bad" people you described were white people and Christians... Why is it ok to say bad stuff about those two classes of people but to do so against other classes is considered bad form? Political correctness is loaded with tons of discriminating... not necessarily all being good forms of it. That is the point I was trying to make. Sometimes discriminating is a good and healthy thing because something is potentially dangerous and we need to be able to label it as that for our benefit and safety. Bad forms of discrimination are based off disliking people for no logical reason. That is wrong.

This discussion is outside the realm of just the United States. Only focusing on one country like that is taking a narrow minded approach. It doesn't matter what country it is. The points remain the same. Another thing is why would you say it would never happen in the US as long as our government didn't collapse? Are you saying something here is better than something in other countries? Isn't that a discriminating remark towards other cultures since it implies dominance of culture in the US? What if it was a culture, race, or religion trying to kill you?

Who are "they"? How do you define "they"? Why would you hide from "they"? Do you have to use generalized characteristics to determine who "they" are? Do you treat "they" differently (hide from them) based off these characteristics? Isn't that discriminating?

What about the Forbidden City(The imperial palace) in China? When I was there our guide said it took something like 1 million skilled workers like 5-8 years to build. I forget the exact number. What was amazing about it is from a distance it looks elaborate and ornamented but even when you get up close there are intricate carvings and paintings over everything. Even the steps the empower used are giant stone carvings. It is pretty amazing. The scale is MASSIVE. I haven't been to Europe yet but I have a feeling part of me is going to be thinking pfft... when I see the largest European Castles after seeing the fortifications in China.

In the 1880s Argentine President Julio Roca launched a campaign to exterminate the native population of the Pampas and the Patagonia regions, leading to the deaths of some 20,000 indigenous people. In late Ming Dynasty, the rebel leader Zhang Xianzhong who had occupied Sichuan was alleged to kill the majority of habitants in this province. The aftermath was a massive resettlement called Huguang fill Sichuan that lasted for nearly 100 years. Antero Leitzinger wrote in an article called "The Circassian Genocide", initially published in the Turkistan News, that a genocide committed against the Circassian nation by Czarist Russia in the 1800s has been almost entirely forgotten, and that it was the largest genocide of the nineteenth century. "The Armenian Genocide was conceived and carried out by the Ottoman Empire from 1915 to 1923, resulting in the deportation of nearly 2,000,000 Armenians, of whom 1,500,000 men, women, and children were killed, 500,000 survivors were expelled from their homes, and which succeeded in the elimination of the over 2,500-year presence of Armenians in their historic homeland." Genocide against Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia. The Croatian Ustasha regime committed genocide against Serbs, Jews and Roma (Gypsies) during World War II. They also mass murdered other political opponents. The Jews during the Holocaust. During the Tokugawa shogunate, tens of thousands of Christians were murdered. During the time of Japanese colonization in World War II, millions (20-30 million people) of prisoners of war and citizens were killed. However, the greatest Japanese war crime was the Nanking Massacre, in which Imperial Japanese Army soldiers engaged in an orgy of rape, torture, beheading, burning, stealing, and beating of the Chinese city-dwellers over the next couple months. Most death tolls range between 200,000 to 250,000 dead, while some go as high as 400,000. Between April and September 1972 between 100,000 and 150,000 Burundian Hutus were massacred. The Khmer Rouge, or more formally, the Communist Party of Kampuchea, led by Pol Pot, Ta Mok and other leaders, organized the mass killing of ideologically suspect groups, ethnic minorities like the ethnic Vietnamese, Chinese (or Sino-Khmers), Chams and Thais, former civil servants, former government soldiers, Buddhist monks, secular intellectuals and professionals, and former city dwellers. Khmer Rouge cadres defeated in factional struggles were also liquidated in purges. The number of the victims is estimated at approximately 1.7 million Cambodians between 1975-1979, including deaths from slave labour. Saddam killing his own citizens the Kurds... The Soviets killing the Afghanis... The Indonesians killing the inhabitants of East Timor... Stalin and other Soviet leaders killing millions of Russians... Mao killing millions of Chinese in the great leap foward... Estimates are in the upper 40 millions... Rwanda... Congo... Uganda... The list goes on and on... About half of these genocides is the state exterminating it's own citizens. I fail to see your point. The point I am getting at is say you are a Tutsi in Rwanda in 1994 during the genocide. Was it wrong to treat Hutus differently because they are trying to murder you? Is it wrong to do all you can to avoid them? Is it wrong to make generalized assumptions about their culture? Should you just treat a group of 15-35 year old male Hutus as normal plain ol' people or should you pre-judge their intentions based on their race, appearance and culture and go hide for your life? Is there a time when it is wise and also correct to make discriminatory judgments in your mind about people that follow a certain culture, race or beliefs?

What Combat Weaponry Are You? My Results: M-240 Machinegun You won't back down from any situation and are extremely reliable. You are very versatile and can scrap with the best.

What if the reason you are discriminating in the first place is because they are trying to harm you? For example... Suppose you are part of a group of people being exterminated in a genocide... Would it be wrong to view the people(whether it is race/political party/religion/whatever) killing everyone you know differently? Would it be wrong not to want to be around them? Would it be wrong to view them differently? Would it be wrong to go out of your way to avoid them?

Discrimination: 3 a : the act, practice, or an instance of discriminating categorically rather than individually ~from Webster's dictionary I have a question to add to the discussion... Is it always bad to discriminate?

I actually have a 3d puzzle of that castle I put together when I was little. It is definitely beautiful.