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To: LeGrande
Is this the tradition you so vehemently support?

Nice strawman fallacy. You should be ashamed of yourself.

It is the product of that tradition, the present U.S. and its constitutional Republic that I support. I am beginning to think you are being purposely dense. As I said before, you cannot pretend that the individual rights you value sprung full-garbed like Athena from the brain of the gods. The present ideas of individualism and freedom are the products of that long tradition.

But you want to pretend that, now that tradition has gotten us this far, your rationalism can take over and do it "better." No thanks; down that path lies Mao and Stalin.

Your strawman, that somehow supporting the present products of tradition means desiring a return to monarchy, is both disingenuous and fallacious. But I'll throw you a bone. I state unequivocally that the modern concepts of freedom and individualism could not have been developed had not Europe gone through those primitive ideas and cultures in the past. In other words, my argument (using a biological metaphor) is that, while I don't particularly want to breed Archeopteryx today, they were a necessary transitional species from reptile to bird. You are arguing that birds simply appeared out of the ground, and that somehow we can kill them all and replace them with a "better" species if we want to.

Sorry, but your view is fundamentally flawed, because it assumes that you can retain all of the features and benefits of our liberal (in the original meaning) traditions while replacing the traditions themselves with something else you just "designed" in your own mind. And that is ludicrous on its face...

93 posted on 03/14/2005 8:45:56 PM PST by Charles H. (The_r0nin) (Still teaching... or a reasonable facsimile thereof...)
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To: Charles H. (The_r0nin)
I will spell it out for you :)

Tradition is a fluid and ever changing concept. Some cultures sacred values are crap to others. Our traditions and values have changed dramatically over the years and not all of them have been positive. Some of our traditions and "rights" are killing us, literally, abortion, low birth rates, socialism, etc. to name a few. Basing your morals on tradition makes even less sense than trying to understand why we have the traditions and morals in the first place.

Instead of attacking each other because of ignorance, maybe we should try and figure out solutions before we follow Europes path into doom. Our number one problem is how to increase our birthrate. For some reason prosperity is almost always linked to a declining birth rate, we need to figure out how to break that link.

It could be that the muslim culture will beat out our culture simply by out breeding us. Then what will our precious values and morals amount to?
94 posted on 03/15/2005 7:09:13 AM PST by LeGrande
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