Central African Republic - Muslims murder 1,000 Christians

bailey bud wrote: You can't really reduce this down to Muslims murdering Christians.

The violence in Central Africa is a two-way street.

What you have is wide-spread violence --- with religious affiliation acting as a proxy for who dies.

Muslims represent a small 15% of the country (my bet - most of them could not even tell you what the fundamentals of the faith are).

The bigger issue is that you have a country with 2 percent of its land being useful for anything --- with 50 percent of the economy being agriculture. That's a sure-fire formula for disaster.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/03/world/afr ... eheadings/

Thank you BB for your insightful comment. That's the sort of debate I was expecting from Super Malta but as this thread went along, I realized that he must suffer from diminished intellectual capacities.

But I will suggest the same thing to you. It doesn't matter who is doing the killing, or who is to blame, I see this incident as appalling. It is still sectarian violence.

God bless.

Question - is it a trend -- or is there simply more publicity?

For the most part - the persons involved in the violence are not consummate Christians or Muslims --- it's simply a label their particular tribes have taken on. (Christians, for example - are for the most part animists that blend Christian beliefs with their own).

What bothers me is not violence against Christians ---- what bothers me is violence.

It strikes me as being no better or worse if the violence is against Muslims or Christians.

By reducing this conflict (a genuinely evil one) down to Muslim vs. Christian --- we're not really solving the problem ---- since that only appears to be what's going on.

What's going on? Frankly, I think it's Paredoken autous.

Incidentally, as Christians, we're taught to expect - and even embrace violence against us (contemporary Christianity seems to have abandoned these teachings, resorting to fake righteous indignation and allegedly just violence, rather than faith and hope).

FredHayek wrote: BB could be economlc reasons like some people believe about Rwanda. Kill your neighbors and seize their property.

Theyre libritarians..Thats what you argue for and thats why I tell you that you wouldn't last 5 minutes in that system..I'd be a war lord, a king in the nieghborhood, and you'd be dead..You don't want to go back to the dark ages where only the strong survive Fred, mainly because your not strong. You're a follower

"Libertarians fail to realize that there has never been--and never will be--a government that functions according to their principles because it runs entirely contrary to human nature.

As any libertarian understands when it comes to statist authoritarians, power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. When you decentralize and remove the modern welfare state, leaving only essentially a glorified police force in charge to protect private property and personal safety, one of two things happens:

1) The central police force turns into a right-wing military dictatorship invested in stamping out all leftist thinking, then appropriating the country's wealth for themselves and their friends
or

2) All central authority and protection break down completely as power localizes into the hands of local criminals and feudal/tribal warlords with little compunction about abusing and terrorizing the local population (e.g., feudal France, Afghanistan, Somalia, western Pakistan, etc.) As I said before:


Feudalism is the inevitable historical consequence of the decline of a centralized cosmopolitan state. That's because the exercise of power by those in a position to wield it does not end with the elimination of federal authority: rather, it simply shifts to those of a more localized, more tyrannical, and less democratically accountable bent.

Modern Liberalism, in this view, is supposed to be contrasted with Classical Liberalism, supposedly derived from Enlightenment principles in which liberties are derived from God, rather than from any manmade social order.

The only problem with this worldview and corresponding narrative (beyond its incompatibility with the theocratic rubes from which the economic libertarians derive their votes in elections) is that it betrays a deep-seated ignorance of history.

Feudalism as an economic system was operant in Europe during the Middle Ages and late Dark Ages. It evolved after the fall of the centralized statist bureaucracy of the Roman Empire, but before the centralized state bureaucracies of the Renaissance and later (depending on the country.) Versions of similar systems have existed throughout the civilized world, but the universal constant of feudalism is that it grows and thrives in the absence of centralized state power. During the early stages of European feudalism, the putative "King" was less a king in the modern sense than a primus inter pares, a "first among equals." The King was simply the greatest and most respected of the barons, and did not survive long as King without giving the barons their due and independence. This was true of the Tsars in Russia as well, where European feudalism survived the longest, and who were constantly under the threat of revolt from their supposedly subservient nobles, should the Tsar attempt to usurp too much authority. Far from enforcing a feudal system, Leninism was a revolt against feudalism.

Feudalism depends on decentralization, rigid local hierarchies, a martial culture of honor, an agrarian economic system, a strong religious caste system to keep everyone in their place, distrust of outside trade influences, and the lack of a middle-class tax base that would demand social services and a representation in government affairs.

Does this sound familiar? It should. With the exception of the adaptation of race-based slavery, it's exactly the economic and cultural system of the antebellum South, which has been appropriately labeled as feudal in its origins--even proudly so by Southern white supremacists like this guy.

"States' rights" is a longing for the decentralization of the feudal era, when local barons were free to do as they pleased, and to implement local laws and customs as they saw fit at the expense of universal rights for their citizens. The willing imposition of theocracy comes from a longing for a more feudal era when everyone "knew their place and had some respect for their betters," bless their little hearts. The longing for a more consistent heartland monoculture also derives from stratified feudal anti-cosmopolitanism. Economically, modern Republicanism is a free-trade globetrotting plutocrat's paradise. But culturally, modern conservatism is nothing short of a longing for the pre-Enlightenment days of the Middle Ages, or at least for the antebellum days of the American South, when Enlightenment principles were forced upon it by those damned Yankees.

The conservative argument that liberals believe that rights derive from the government, rather than from God, is specious at best. Both liberals and conservatives hold that human rights are Universal ("from God" for the theologically inclined), but must be protected by laws derived from and enforced by reason against those who would encroach upon them. The difference is that conservatism has a much narrower view of universal human rights. Conservatives believe that the only real universal rights are those of property and personal freedom from unlawful harm or imprisonment; everything else is up to the individual. A liberal has a much broader view of human rights: health, education, the opportunity for social advancement, and the freedom from the tyranny of prejudiced majorities. Too much breadth in the definition of human rights, and statist tyrannies result; too little breadth, and people suffer Gilded Age libertarian dystopias of iniquity. But this ageless debate between liberals and conservatives over the breadth of human rights has precisely nothing to do with feudalism and serfdom, properly understood.

Feudalism cannot exist in a modern, multicultural welfare state. They are like oil and water. By attempting to dismantle the modern centralized welfare state, conservatives inexorably are marching this country toward a new feudalism. Feudalism is the inevitable historical consequence of the decline of a centralized cosmopolitan state. That's because the exercise of power by those in a position to wield it does not end with the elimination of federal authority: rather, it simply shifts to those of a more localized, more tyrannical, and less democratically accountable bent.

That the modern conservative associates feudalism with the welfare state says much more about the intellectual bankruptcy, moral degeneracy and risible lack of historical awareness and education on the part of conservatives, than about the welfare state itself.

Pretty much every time a conservative pseudo-intellectual opens his mouth, anyone with a brain cringes in embarrassment. The discussion of feudalism and serfdom is no exception to the rule."

But once again you think I want an extreme, going back to feudalism. Maybe all I really want is the ability to keep my old health insurance that worked very well for me. Instead of the wealth redistribution that only benefits those who qualify for subsidies.

Its not working for ya..Its full of insurance industry loopholes that allows them to take premiums for years, then dump you or deny claims when you get sick..Its a racket and if your too ignorant to protect yourself, Obama will do it for you. And WEALTH DISTRIBUTION!!! Its been going on for 50 years and ITS ALL GOING TO THE TOP 1%. LITERALLY ALL THE GAINS IN THE LAST 50 YEARS HAS GONE TO THE TOP.....And thats not you, me or anybody here

AND ITS GETTING WORSE- How many more times does someone have to point this out to you?

Time to vote for the Green Party VL, the last true liberals!

FredHayek wrote: Time to vote for the Green Party VL, the last true liberals!

Do you ever discuss the topic?

Right now its wealth distribution- You brought it up, remember?

Fred? Should 80% of Americans have less money or more? And don't give me that this is just the way it shakes down in a capitalist economic system...Because if it does, we need a new system.

"Imagine a country where the majority of the population reaps the majority of the benefits for their hard work, creative ingenuity, and collaborative efforts. Imagine a country where corporate losses aren't socialized, while gains are captured by an exclusive minority. Imagine a country run as a democracy, from the bottom up, not a plutocracy from the top down."


[youtube:3stls5aa][/youtube:3stls5aa]

Fred..Youre in the botton 40% and youre argueing for less...Nothing could be more sensless lol

Wake The F- up!

You think I am in the bottom 40%? OK, whatever.

You are such an economic illiterate, also, illiterate illiterate, you don't understand that the massive wealth distribution you seek would fundamentally change the economy.
Want to see 90% taxes on the rich? The rich will leave. Want to raise wages? Businesses will have to close. It it no longer the 50's, we are competing with the developing world which is more than willing to undercut us on the costs of production. So unless you want to close the borders and hurt our export market, better get used to the new world order.

FredHayek wrote: You think I am in the bottom 40%? OK, whatever.

You live in Jefferson, Colorado..I've seen every clap trap/pre fab POS house around there