Ramaswamy’s response to the pansexual women is about as out of touch as one can get.

I wasn’t referring to that in particular. I was referring to the big-picture point he made in the whole last 11 minutes of the video. The point was about western civilization, the insidious project to undermine it, and our duty to defend it. That point is foundational to much of our disagreement. It sounds like you stopped watching before he even got to the point.

“The decline of christianity”

Yeah, but that misses the bigger picture. It’s not as if people are rejecting Christ and converting to Judaism. Rather it’s a secular movement driven by Satan’s success at convincing a vast swath of the populace that God is imaginary.

I disagree that the foundation of western civ is solely placed on god.

This is one of those ways in which Wikipedia tends to be secular. It says in the intro that Western civilization is “linked” to Christiandom. That’s misleading. Western civilization is Christiandom. The only difference is we don’t call it that anymore. But everything that followed from Christiandom is built upon Christiandom as an extension of Christiandom. Though to the article’s credit, it does later state that:

[…] Western civilization, which throughout most of its history, has been nearly equivalent to Christian culture.

That’s close to accurate. In truth the two are inseparably identical, which is why Satan hates Western civilization, that that in turn is why you’ve been convinced to believe you want to contribute to the project of undermining Western civilization.

If you’re going to look through this, I recommend spending extra time on the section explaining the enlightenment.

I’m not sure exactly what points you’re referring to here. Skimming through it, I’m pretty sure I already know all of these details. The only change I’d make is to emphasize God’s role in all of these things, and His importance to all of these historical figures.

Sure I can, god, according to your worldview, created a world in which children get cancer.

It is the height of hubris to criticize God. His wisdom is infinite, and if yours was too then you’d understand why certain children are given cancer. It’s not for us to try to understand. It’s for us to accept in our worship and prayer.

And before you say I think I know better than god, in reality I know better than the humans who made god up.

At some point, immanently I hope, you’ll realize how absurdly wrong you are about this. You have demons whispering lies into your ears, and you believe them unquestioningly. I know they make it feel good when you believe them, but they’re lying to you.

In the end it wasn’t Zeus who causes lightning, it is a build up of a difference in energy between clouds and the ground.

Comparing Zeus to God is far worse than apples and oranges, because at least apples and oranges are both fruits. It’s like comparing icebergs to smartphones. They have absolutely nothing whatsoever in common, to the point that it’s nonsensical to even try to compare them.

Let’s say you were to throw a basketball, and make a basket. Some scientists observe it, and say “That’s interesting. Let’s figure out what that’s all about.” So they observe you throwing the basketball. They measure your movements, the wind movements, the ball’s PSI, the height of the basket, the material compositions of the ball and basket, just all of it. And then they formulate a theory which postulates how the ball goes through the basket. And then people start to deny that you exist because they have the theory of how the basketball goes through the basket. The whole idea is absolutely ridiculous. God is in control, no matter what your demons tell you.

Not only is that not true [that the most intelligent scientists all believe in God] (because you added the “most intelligent” qualifier), but given that scientific literacy is correlated with atheism, I find it to be rather damning for religion:

First off, it’s self-evidently true, as anyone who denies God cannot be said to be very intelligent. I’m trying to word that so as not to offend you, and it’s hard. Sorry. My point here is not to insult you, but just to explain my statement about the most intelligent scientists.

Secondly, the scientific disciplines are certainly attractive to atheists who want to devote their lives to pretending that they’re disproving God by collecting the evidence of the basketball. So yes, atheists are more likely to become scientists than pastors. We don’t need to consult any studies to know that’s true.

Go for it! It’s pretty easy to play against others nowadays now that there are so many popular chess sites. chess.com and lichess are pretty decent.

Maybe eventually, but not today. I have too much else on my plate. But thank you for letting me know it’s easy to play online. That’s something I hadn’t considered.

But when they do that it doesn’t change the demand for nuclear fuel pellets. The demand is largely static, so in order to sell X more pellets, X pellets from other producers must go unsold/not made. Somebody else has to lose, which makes it a zero sum game.

The production of anything means it’s not zero-sum. Demand can expand and contract over time in any market, but that doesn’t matter. If you grow an apple or produce a nuclear fuel pellet, you add value to the economy. Now if there are multiple sellers competing, then it’ll drive down the price. But we’re not discussing prices here.

It does. Not everybody is an MIT grad or has the skills to be one, and yet you say that just anybody can compete with google. That is a contradiction.

It’s a matter of drive. Anyone can try to compete with Google. Someone must be adequately driven, and reasonably intelligent to succeed. But everyone who fails will gain the opportunities to build on those failures and start a more successful venture.

60% of the country cannot because they are living paycheck to paycheck and cannot afford it.

Again you can start a business for $0 or next to nothing.

Basically every other developed nation seems to think otherwise. For example, we are more or less the only one without universal healthcare, that’s what’s naive.

Why would we Americans care what other countries think? We’re blessed by God to be the greatest country on Earth. People flock from around the world to live here, and they want to so badly that they’re willing to become illegal just to live here. It’s very rare that you can find a principle applicable to other countries which also happens to be applicable to the US. If some other country wants to give out “free” ice cream to all of its citizens (in exchange, of course, for an obscenely high tax), they can have at it, for all we care.

literally just the basic necessitites, not cable. Etc.

My point was that it’s subjective what the “necessities” are. Some people like me will say it costs $0, while others may insist it’s a minimum of $250k. This is complicated by the fact that the dollar is worth dramatically different values in different parts of the country, a fact often ignored. Generally speaking it’s worth much less in urban areas.

Nobody can survive on $0. You need to have food water and shelter.

Again, grow your own food, haul your own water up from the stream, and build your own shelter out of logs you felled yourself. $0, just like our forefathers.

If it is unrealistic for everyone then it isn’t a reasonable answer to what the minimum wage should be.

Whoa, I thought we were discussing your notion of a “livable wage” as an abstract concept, but now you’re changing it to minimum wage. The concept of a minimum wage is evil for multiple reasons.

First and foremost, it’s a free country, and so we’re all allowed to negotiate our own terms of business. If I want to hire someone for $1 a day, and that person agrees to the compensation, it’s nobody else’s business. Not yours, not the government’s, nobody’s.

Secondly, minimum wages are absolutely disastrous for the economy, and that has been shown time and again. When you run a business, you have a certain budget to spend on compensation. Let’s say you want to hire two people to help you, and you can afford a maximum of $100 per day to hire them. That means you can pay them about $6 per hour maximum. Now some busybody steps in, and introduces an oppressive law that you have to pay more than $6. Well that sucks, doesn’t it. That means you can’t hire two people after all. You can still hire one person up to $12 per day, but you’ll have to overwork him to produce the results of two workers. Meanwhile somebody else will be jobless. Now let’s say the busybody comes back and says $12 is still too low! Well fine, that means you can’t hire anyone at all. So now we have two people who would have had jobs that are now jobless. And it also means you’ll need to find a robot that’s cheaper than $100 per day, because if you can’t then the government just drove you out of business.

The concept of minimum wage is un-American and downright evil.

Blaming individuals for the failures of a system, and suggesting individuals change to deal with that defect in the system is irrational.

What system? We’re all individuals.

I find it interesting that what you believe to be a better version of the definition

It’s a much better dictionary in general. I’m not going to cherry-pick dictionaries to back up a point I’m trying to make. I’m sure there are Christian dictionaries out there that could do that. But Wiktionary’s pretty great just on general grounds.

As for the nature of freedom, it’s really not contradicted by these definitions. The only way to achieve freedom from sin is to submit oneself to serve God. The aspect of that arrangement which is freedom from sin is represented well by the definitions.

An increase in the people’s control over the government is a good thing. You seem to be implying it is not.

First off, I was not implying that positive rights are “bad”. I was trying to say that they’re not legitimate rights in the traditional American sense, which had always been negative rights. I wasn’t saying anything is “good” or “bad”, just that they’re not traditional American rights.

As for your idea that an increase in the people’s control of the government is a good thing, I wholeheartedly disagree. That’s the whole reason why the US was established as a republic, if we can keep it, instead of a democracy. Tyranny of the majority is a disastrous problem. Many people would gladly vote away our freedoms, and indeed you yourself are part of the effort to eliminate the Christian foundation of our culture. Our republic enforces our freedom to worship God and do His will whether we like it or not, and that’s a very good thing.

I can choose when to sleep and when to blink my eyes.

I think you missed my point on this. I meant it’s binary. A light-bulb is either on or off. There’s no third state possible. You’re like a light-bulb acknowledging it’s not on, but also denying that it’s off, instead insisting there’s some third option. I’m telling you that as a light-bulb you must be either on or off.

I don’t think there is any good argument out there to prove that we have free will, even under a theistic world view.

This is arguably the single biggest topic in the history of philosophy, so I’m not going to get into it here. There have been many well-written books on the topic penned by minds far superior to ours both. Suffice it to say that yes, there are good arguments out there, and if you really want to get into it, you can easily devote fifty years to studying the topic.

Or in other words, to brainwash children into believing falsehoods. That’s an immoral thing to do and thus not a moral responsibility.

Your premise is incorrect. I do not advocate for brainwashing children into believing falsehoods. You have rejected truth, and you are convinced that Jesus, who is the way, the truth, and the life, is somehow actually not the truth. You have been seduced by the Devil, and you are continually convinced by him to deny the truth.

I haven’t claimed it is a physical force.

I’m sorry. I used the word “physical”, and it was a bad choice of words. I meant it’s impossible to force anyone else to pray, physically or otherwise. You can force someone to shut up, bow their head, and close their eyes, but that’s about the extent of it.

The scientific evidence overwhelmingly supports the conclusion that humans are responsible for climate change. I can provide you with sources if you like.

Nearly 100% of the scientists who insist that’s true are funded by the government. There have been quite a few cases of rogue scientists questioning that established dogma, only to be silenced and to lose their government funding. The governments have a vested interest in spreading the lie that humans are responsible for the climate because it gives them an excuse to expand their power and pass arbitrary powerful laws controlling people. If you were to provide me with those sources (which no, you don’t need to spend time on), we’d find that nearly 100% of them involved government funding. Follow the money.

mindbogglingly huge quantity of greenhouse gasses into our atmosphere

Imagine finding out that most ants believe their ancestors created the moon, and that they’re all responsible for keeping it up in the sky. I’m familiar with the theory of global warming, and that is what it sounds like. There’s nothing in the Bible about carbon emissions. But you know what is in the Bible? Proverbs 3:5, “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.”

You cannot have control over something without also having responsibility. Therefore even within your own world view we ought to fix this problem.

We cannot “fix” a “problem” that God wants. It is hubris to pretend we could, and disrespectful to God to pretend we should.

I find it interesting that what you believe to be a better version of the definition

It’s a much better dictionary in general. I’m not going to cherry-pick dictionaries to back up a point I’m trying to make. I’m sure there are Christian dictionaries out there that could do that. But Wiktionary’s pretty great just on general grounds.

As for the nature of freedom, it’s really not contradicted by these definitions. The only way to achieve freedom from sin is to submit oneself to serve God. The aspect of that arrangement which is freedom from sin is represented well by the definitions.

An increase in the people’s control over the government is a good thing. You seem to be implying it is not.

First off, I was not implying that positive rights are “bad”. I was trying to say that they’re not legitimate rights in the traditional American sense, which had always been negative rights. I wasn’t saying anything is “good” or “bad”, just that they’re not traditional American rights.

As for your idea that an increase in the people’s control of the government is a good thing, I wholeheartedly disagree. That’s the whole reason why the US was established as a republic, if we can keep it, instead of a democracy. Tyranny of the majority is a disastrous problem. Many people would gladly vote away our freedoms, and indeed you yourself are part of the effort to eliminate the Christian foundation of our culture. Our republic enforces our freedom to worship God and do His will whether we like it or not, and that’s a very good thing.

I can choose when to sleep and when to blink my eyes.

I think you missed my point on this. I meant it’s binary. A light-bulb is either on or off. There’s no third state possible. You’re like a light-bulb acknowledging it’s not on, but also denying that it’s off, instead insisting there’s some third option. I’m telling you that as a light-bulb you must be either on or off.

I don’t think there is any good argument out there to prove that we have free will, even under a theistic world view.

This is arguably the single biggest topic in the history of philosophy, so I’m not going to get into it here. There have been many well-written books on the topic penned by minds far superior to ours both. Suffice it to say that yes, there are good arguments out there, and if you really want to get into it, you can easily devote fifty years to studying the topic.

Or in other words, to brainwash children into believing falsehoods. That’s an immoral thing to do and thus not a moral responsibility.

Your premise is incorrect. I do not advocate for brainwashing children into believing falsehoods. You have rejected truth, and you are convinced that Jesus, who is the way, the truth, and the life, is somehow actually not the truth. You have been seduced by the Devil, and you are continually convinced by him to deny the truth.

I haven’t claimed it is a physical force.

I’m sorry. I used the word “physical”, and it was a bad choice of words. I meant it’s impossible to force anyone else to pray, physically or otherwise. You can force someone to shut up, bow their head, and close their eyes, but that’s about the extent of it.

The scientific evidence overwhelmingly supports the conclusion that humans are responsible for climate change. I can provide you with sources if you like.

Nearly 100% of the scientists who insist that’s true are funded by the government. There have been quite a few cases of rogue scientists questioning that established dogma, only to be silenced and to lose their government funding. The governments have a vested interest in spreading the lie that humans are responsible for the climate because it gives them an excuse to expand their power and pass arbitrary powerful laws controlling people. If you were to provide me with those sources (which no, you don’t need to spend time on), we’d find that nearly 100% of them involved government funding. Follow the money.

mindbogglingly huge quantity of greenhouse gasses into our atmosphere

Imagine finding out that most ants believe their ancestors created the moon, and that they’re all responsible for keeping it up in the sky. I’m familiar with the theory of global warming, and that is what it sounds like. There’s nothing in the Bible about carbon emissions. But you know what is in the Bible? Proverbs 3:5, “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.”

You cannot have control over something without also having responsibility. Therefore even within your own world view we ought to fix this problem.

We cannot “fix” a “problem” that God wants. It is hubris to pretend we could, and disrespectful to God to pretend we should.

Being a servant is antithetical to freedom, at least the common definition:

Wiktionary’s definition of “freedom” is better than M-W’s, which is typical. M-W’s not a very good dictionary. No offense to Mr. Webster. Their primary definition substantiates your point that it’s antithetical to servitude. In a facile sense, this is true. The fact that freedom from sin is granted by voluntary servitude to God is a little complex, and seemingly contradictory on the surface, yet perfectly true.

There are two main types of freedom, positive freedom and negative freedom. Positive freedom is the ability to choose between a number of options, negative freedom is the freedom from the demands/influence/laws/rules of someone/something.

That’s correct, and I’m glad you’re familiar with the distinction. American rights, as used by the founders and in the Bill of Rights, are all negative rights. In later years, people began to forget that, and we see the encroachment of positive rights such as the “right” to vote, etc.

Don’t be misled by the terms “negative” and “positive”. They don’t indicate sentiment. Negative rights are legitimate natural rights, whereas positive rights are social privileges illegitimately called “rights”. They’re only called “negative” and “positive” on technical grounds.

Freedom from sin is a negative right; a natural right, granted by slavery to God.

For example, imagine you are stranded on some planet 100 light years away. Nobody is around, it is just you on a barren but oxygen rich desert planet.

Paradise! At least it would be until I got hungry.

can you at least see how being forced to worship either god or satan is antithetical to freedom in my view?

Yes, sure. But that view is overly simplistic. You’re forced to the same way you’re forced to either be awake or asleep; the same way you’re forced to have your eyes open or closed. It’s somewhat disingenuous to use the word “forced”. It’s just a product of living in reality.

I think you are confusing trust and faith. At least how I define it.

Hmm, maybe. But you can choose to trust just as you can choose to have faith. Free will is a powerful thing.

And [peer pressure to pray] is coercion, antithetical to freedom.

We have a moral responsibility to persuade children as best we can to foster a relationship with God. Their freedom not to do that is a matter of fact. Nobody can physically force someone else to pray. It’s impossible. God gave us that freedom expressly so that we come to Him as a choice rooted in faith. The fact that we have that freedom is not an excuse to deny God, though. To the contrary, it’s a reason to praise Him and love Him. And persuading children to pray cannot be antithetical to freedom, because freedom is a gift from God for the purpose of giving us that opportunity.

[To trust that God’s in control] is naive in both of our worldviews. In my worldview it is naive because we are responsible for the problem, and only we are capable of fixing it. Nobody will come save us from destroying ourselves other than us. And to push that responsibility onto a fictional, nonexistent being is akin to an easily preventable species wide suicide.

And even within your own it is naive because god assigned us as stewards of the land and we are royally fucking up that job. It’s our job to fix the problem no matter which way you cut it.

To suppose we’re responsible for “the problem” is shockingly arrogant, considering your appreciation for the great outdoors. We’re tiny and insignificant. To suppose we’re capable of “fixing” it is equally arrogant. We’re barely capable of anything at all, let alone changing the entire planet.

We can know God’s will by observing the state of the universe. We know the books of the Bible are canonical because they’re in the Bible. We can know our own true sex by looking in the mirror. We can know that Western civilization is essentially good because it’s the basis of our way of life. And we can know that Earth’s current climate is God’s will because it’s Earth’s current climate. Everything that happens is aligned with God’s will.

As for your assertion that this view is naive according to my worldview, there’s somewhat of a dispute among Christians between dominion (see Genesis 1:26-28) and stewardship (not scriptural). The principle of Dominion is that we are given this Earth as a temporary home, to do with as we see fit. The principle of stewardship is basically the environmentalist religion disguised as Christianity, that we are somehow all-knowing and all-powerful, as if we ourselves are gods, and that we must therefore pretend we have the collectivist duty to treat this temporary home as if it was a permanent home, and pretend that we can somehow save it. Needless to say, I side with dominion.

This varies wildly by industry. Some are zero-sum, some are positive sum. And the age of an industry is usually the defining factor for this, which means most industries turn into zero-sum. Take for instance nuclear fuel pellets. A company who takes part in such an industry is in a zero-sum one because of how limited the demand is for it. And the demand for nuclear fuel pellets doesn’t change much at all because of how long it takes to build new reactors, how much political force it takes to build one, etc. A company in such an industry can’t expand the total demand much at all, so there is no new value they can add.

I’m not formally trained in economics or game theory, but this doesn’t seem right to me. Anyone employed in the manufacture of nuclear fuel pellets adds value to the economy simply by virtue of showing up for work, and doing whatever it is they do.

An MIT graduate with past business experience and their foot in the door a decade and a half ago isn’t really evidence that just anyone can start a new business today to compete with google.

Again, entrepreneurs usually need to fail, and build upon those failures, before finding success. It’s normal.

The fact that he’s an MIT grad doesn’t mean much. Anyone can start a Google competitor, but the kind of people who do are the same kind of people likely to want to attend MIT.

Not everybody can afford to have a failed company on their hands.

Almost everyone can, though not everyone wants to. It’s stressful and time-consuming, though also rewarding in a variety of ways. Even if it fails.

I think that is a fun idea and I would fully support it. I think you’d be surprised at the amount of “socialist” policies that are widely popular. It would be a difficult thing to pull off though given that most people don’t really know how to write in leagalise, and how many policies need to be rather complicated or need a high level of understanding to make sense.

Thanks! I wouldn’t be at all surprised by the popularity of socialist policies. Kids are naive. There’d be a ton of things like “Free ice cream for everyone!” As a serious policy proposal it would be objectionable, but as a playful idea it’s fun to imagine. As for legalese and complications, you could make suggestions to improve someone else’s idea.

Food + Housing + Basic utilities + Transportation + Healthcare (if not already universalized) + Maybe a 5-10% on top for discretionary spending.

What kind of food? Caviar? What kind of housing? McMansions? What kind of basic utilities? All 800,000 TV channels? What kind of transportation? A Bugatti? What kind of healthcare? Cosmetic surgeries for pets? It’s very hard to draw the line anywhere above $0, which is the technically correct number.

If everybody owned land, it would be much closer to $0. But you still need to buy/get/pay for fertilizer, water, heating, taxes etc. Those things aren’t free. I would love to own my own self-sufficient homestead and have been rather obsessed with videos about it. I wish everybody had the money/land for it, but that’s not how things are.

You can make your own fertilizer with compost. You can haul your own water up from the stream. You can chop your own wood for heating. Property taxes are a racket. Yes, this presumes everyone owns property of suitable acreage, and with a stream, and that’s unrealistic for everyone. But it’s entirely possible for some.

I love those videos too. I try not to spend much time on YouTube, but on occasion I can easily lose an hour or two to My Self Reliance.

But to your point about a “living wage”, it’s going to vary from $0 for some people on up to — I shudder to think what the upper bound of that range is.

And additionally, everybody having their own homestead isn’t generally a good thing for efficiency, because economies of scale probably also applies to food production, and therefore it is more efficient to have industrial farming as the main food source.

True, but as I mentioned I think economic efficiency is overrated.

We aren’t all Jesus and are therefore subject to the negative effects of poverty.

We can all strive to be more like Jesus. I know it’s not easy, but there’s so much value in trying.

Most of our ongoing disagreements are predicated an underlying problem that’s eloquently explained in Tucker Carlson’s interview of Vivek Ramaswamy starting at 33:53 and going through the end of the video, so ~11 minutes long. I’m curious to hear your perspective on that.

A christian is generally more qualified and familiar with the definition of “christian”, and the same applies to secularists.

I see why you say that, but Christians are entitled to a word describing the phenomenon of declining Christianity, and the word “secularism” has been used for decades if not centuries to describe that. If you’re aware of a more appropriate word, I’m all ears.

That part was a choice, but that is not the totality of the process of coming to believe something. Everything after that was to my understanding not a choice.

Again, I make the choice to be a Christian on an ongoing basis. Every time I look to Christ for guidance, every time I follow Christ, every time I repent, etc., is a choice. I choose to be a Christian repeatedly every single day. The Devil continually tempts me to stray, and every time I choose God. It’s a choice, through and through.

I think you are exaggerating what I said. If the foundation of your house is infested with termites, the correct thing to do is to fix the problem. There are a million different ways to do so, but you have jumped to “burn the house down” as the solution where I have not suggested it. In my opinion the solution it so determine if the foundation is salvageable, if it is, then it is time to bring in an exterminator to deal with the pressing issue, and then to replace any beams that have gone too far. If instead the problem is not salvageable it is instead time to build a new, better house, and then move into it once it is ready. At no point should the house be burned down with people inside of it like you seem to think I am suggesting. I think civilization should still exist, and would very much prefer that.

The foundation of Western civilization is not, and cannot, be infested with termites, because the foundation of Western civilization is the Lord our God. There’s nothing you can say to legitimately criticize God. God is not a problem to be fixed. So I’m sorry if I twisted your “try to salvage the house, or replace it if necessary” with “burn the house down”, but no house could possibly be better (in any way) than the house of the Lord our God. Your entire line of thinking is rooted in your denial of God, which is the sin of sins.

Because humans are intensely uncomfortable not having the answers to things, so they try to explain the unknown through any means possible, including through incorrect answers. Nowadays we have an explanation for lightning, so nobody blames Zeus anymore.

I don’t know if anyone ever actually believed in Zeus, but the concept is 100% incomparable to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who is real and present today as He ever was. God doesn’t exist to provide answers to mysteries. We exist because He exists. If we don’t know how something works, of course we can ascribe the answer to God, and that answer is always correct. What’s crucial to understand is that it remains correct once science discovers the method by which God works. Lightning is a great example. It’s created by God to work in a certain way, and we’ve deduced the mechanism by which it happens.

The space of unknown things in which god resides shrinks more and more the longer we study the universe. And that’s a big part of why more and more people are less and less religious.

If you’re right that some people only see God as a useful crutch to blame things on, then that’s reasonable. But it misses the vast all-encompassing nature of God’s glory, so it doesn’t seem like a very compelling answer.

Given that you believe the only source of truth is the christian god, how do you contend with science, a process that never turns to the bible or invokes the name of god?

The most intelligent scientists all believe in God. Einstein is the most notable example. Science is the practice of using our God-given abilities to observe and describe the mechanisms of God’s creation. Science is in every way predicated upon God.

I have two friends whom I regularly play with, usually daily-timed games, and then another two of complete randoms. I usually have an ELO of about 1100, but have been sitting around 1050 for a bit just because I haven’t had much ability to concentrate this last year or so. Our of curiosity, what’s your ELO if you have one?

I don’t. Back when I played regularly, I didn’t care about such formalities. I would now if I picked it back up.

How do you not see freedom as being incompatible with obeying? Not to be glib, but if somebody told you “freedom enables and empowers people to obey their slave masters” or “work will make you free”, I’m sure you would recognize the contradiction there. How do you not see the contradiction in what you’ve said yourself?

I understand how that seems like cognitive dissonance or self-contradiction to a non-believer. Consider Romans 6:22:

But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life.

We must be servants of someone, but we have freedom to choose who it is that deserves our loyalty and obedience. True freedom is freedom from sin, as the alternative is to be servants of Satan.

Beliefs as far as I am concerned are not choices. You are either convinced or you are not, the only extend to which we have a choice (if we have free will at all), is over the extent to which we expose ourselves to other ideas.

That’s ignoring the whole notion of faith. You can absolutely choose to have faith in anyone or anything.

As nice as that would be on paper, in reality you can’t really have one without the other due to societal pressures. If everybody in the room is praying except for you, there is immense social pressure to conform. Allowing prayer of any kind in school will result in what is effectively forced prayer/speech.

True, and I think that’s a very good thing. In practice, maybe one out of ten thousand kids would refuse to pray. The few who insist have their freedom to succumb to evil, but peer pressure fosters a burgeoning relationship with God for the vast majority of the students. That’s how we always were, beginning before the founding of the country.

Climate change is killing off countless species/animals.

You and I should be cautious of starting new branches of the conversation! But I did ask, and you were just answering me. Suffice it to say I trust that God’s in control, and the changes we observe in nature — whatever they may be — are according to God’s plan.

I couldn’t ethically justify putting a kid at risk of enduring that even if my girlfriend didn’t have her current health issues.

Based on your perspective, I understand your conclusion.

Thank you! We aren’t official engaged yet, as we have agreed we would only get to that point when we both feel we are financially stable.

Waiting for that mythical living wage? You don’t really need money to marry. Life is short.

Yes, that does make sense. If the two are really uncorrelated, then it would appear some people are lying about their faith.

core principle of capitalism is competition, but competitions inherently have winners.

This is false. A broad class of competitions do not have winners. Only zero-sum games have winners. The economy is not a zero sum game. Every participant adds value.

For instance if somebody wanted to start up a new business to compete with google, at a minimum they would need several billion dollars to have a reasonable chance of success. Google has such a huge market share and is so well established that it would take decades for any new company to put an actual dent in google’s market share.

Oh yeah? May I introduce you to Gabriel Weinberg, who started a Google competitor in his basement with a $0 investment, which now earns $25 million annually.

And the most frequent cause of failure is lack of cash, which definitely ties into what I’ve been saying.

It’s true, but most successful entrepreneurs learn from previous failures, so many of those failed companies generally result in eventual success.

Sure, it’s a subjective phrase [“livable wage”], and I would personally like to see it added and defined within a new amendment to the constitution, though it probably would never happen

I’ve occasionally thought it would be nice to have a website where anyone could post “bills” they wish were actual laws, and other users could vote on them. It’d be fun. Not that I really think we need any more laws. I just wonder what people would come up with.

As for an actual definition, a living wage should be defined as a wage that is sufficient to raise a family on, with adequate housing and food. A living wage should be a basic but decent wage for a family.

You’d struggle to transform that into a legally reliable definition. Does it include iPads for the kids? How about the cost of pet grooming? Vacations for the whole family to the Bahamas every couple of months? Where exactly do you draw the line? Again, it was commonplace for most people to grow their own food in the not too distant past, and we lived simple lives. Isn’t a living wage, then, $0?

I would also like to point out that you seem to have missed my point about the lack of freedom through vertical mobility.

I didn’t miss it. I just skipped the reply. Because I see plenty of evidence that vertical mobility is alive and well. You can deny it all you’d like, but there are so many rags-to-riches stories. Maybe you don’t hear about them much because they’re mostly Republican.

Also you can’t be happy if you can’t afford food and shelter.

Jesus could.

So I hesitate to argue over definitions, because there is an “objective” answer so to speak, and from what I can tell you seem to use completely different definitions from the norm. So I don’t see much point in talking about it.

If you ask a hundred people for the definition of any word, you’ll get a hundred different definitions. Sure they’ll be similar, but no two will likely be identical. Usually we assume similar is good enough. But when we disagree over a contentious topic, it can help to define our terms because they may be radically dissimilar.

For many such terms, the political Right and Left will both use their own flavor of definitions which are quite different from the other side’s. I suspect that’s what you’re observing when you say my definitions are different from the norm. It’s all too easy to think we disagree when in fact we mostly agree but are defining words differently.

Just as I cannot choose to become christian, you cannot choose to become muslim. We can choose what ideas we are exposed to and that can have an effect on us, but it is indirect at most.

I chose to become a Christian. Nobody found me and convinced me. I sought it out, learned about it, read the Bible, and accepted Jesus. It was totally a choice. And what’s more, I’d say I repeatedly choose to be a Christian every time I struggle, every time my faith is tested, and every time I slip and sin. I turn to Christ and ask for forgiveness, again and again, and every time I choose to be Christian. Of course it’s a choice, and you choose too.

Sure, good and evil exist but they are human concepts, human labels that we ascribe to actions. They aren’t literal entities that exist.

Yes, they are human concepts, and yes these two concepts are distinct from the literal entities of God and Satan. But where do you think the two human concepts came from? Adam and Eve had to reflect on their expulsion, and conceive of concepts to describe the situation. So we all do, as we go through life. Just as the word “photosynthesis” describes a human concept which describes a real phenomenon, so true good and evil are predicated on our experiences contending with literal entities.

If there are problems with the foundation of western civilization then there ought to be changes to fix the problems.

I give you credit for at least admitting it. So often it seems like leftists are following a program to destroy western civilization, but I’m pretty sure this is the first time I’ve witnessed an admission of your willingness to do so.

Listen, our politics are different, reflecting our different personal values, experiences, and understandings of the world. As a conservative, my raison d’être is to preserve Western Civilization (AKA Christendom). In all of our messages, most (all?) of what I’ve written comes down to that. To my view, it’s crucial and nonnegotiable. Everything we have of any value at all comes from Western Civilization. It’s destruction can result in nothing more than the fulfillment of end-times prophecy.

Humans stand on the shoulders of our ancestors through our ability to transfer knowledge from one generation to the next. Couple that with our ability to analyze history and hind sight, and it’s very easy to discover flaws of the past. I am not saying or pretending I am smarter than previous generations because you don’t need to be to discover such flaws.

I understand your perspective. But I also know we frequently think the past is flawed just because we don’t understand it. Similar to how teens believe they know so much more than their parents, only to realize years later that they were wrong about pretty much everything.

Why do you suppose ancient people were overall more religious than people today? When we look up at night, we see light pollution. Most of us have no clue what our own sky looks like. When we look out of our windows, most of us see buildings, cement, infrastructure, people, vehicles, and maybe a few landscaped trees and lawns. Most of us have no clue what our planet naturally looks like. Maybe we visit a national park and snap a few photos for Instagram just to prove we were there.

Ancient peoples saw God’s handiwork everywhere they looked, and it was breathtakingly jaw-dropping and truly awesome. We live in a world where we’ve built all of these things to constantly blind us from that. We have absolutely no idea, on average, what our own world looks like. Plato’s Allegory of the Cave is what we’ve built all around ourselves. Our only hope of knowing truth is to look to God, and read His wisdom and knowledge passed down to us from the ancients: the Bible.

If you see a mistake, it’s probable you’re evaluating an illusion.

I play chess a lot and have a friend who is significantly smarter than me at it.

You’re fortunate to have a chess partner. I haven’t had one in ages. I miss playing it.

Reply to “built a system”, part 1 of 2:

They quite literally built a system in place to add amendments to the constitution and to take them away if needed. Why would they have done so if the intention was to keep the law static until the end of time?

They also made it remarkably difficult to amend. They wouldn’t have done that if they thought it should frequently change.

The economy fell apart, the states were constantly squabbling over petty things, we had Shay’s rebellion, the nation’s debts weren’t being payed. The currency of the time had no value. Britain was screwing the country over with it’s blockade (which couldn’t be solved due to the lack of any federal power). The articles of confederation was such a disaster that it had such a short lived life that the founders themselves got rid of it.

I understand the frustrations, though those points are a biased history. I don’t think the founders would have abandoned the Articles if they could have foreseen the behemoth they created in its place. But indeed they did, and honestly I’d be okay with it if we’d just stick to their original design.

Politicians have power by definition, and corporations have a direct incentive to get as much power as they can.

The singular goal of the American republic is to limit the power of politicians. That’s basically what the Constitution’s all about.

Corporations do not seek power. They seek sales. And they gain sales by offering goods and services that people want more than their own money. It’s not having power over someone to sell them something they love.

So states should regulate commerce, but not the federal government, is that what you mean to say?

Affirmative.

If so, then how would that work out for situations where the regulation/unregualtion in surrounding states impacts a different state? For example, if california legalized weed and had the effect of making weed more available to the surrounding states, how would those surrounding states deal with it?

States make agreements with their neighbors, much like reciprocity for CCW licenses. Indeed the whole Union is meant to pretty much be a coalition, so if South America were to invade Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California, for instance, the rest of the states are supposed to send their militias south to help defend the border. If Oregon legalized marijuana and Idaho didn’t (to use a real-life example of bordering states), then LEOs in Idaho can look a bit more suspiciously at people with Oregon plates, and possibly pull them over and see what they smell. A more extreme solution would be to erect border checkpoints to conduct “random” searches.

If everything was small business and there was greater power in the hands of laborers, and if the internet didn’t exist then maybe this would be true. But the modern reality is not like that.

But reality is like that. Have a look here. I want to copy and paste the whole page.

Reply to “built a system”, part 2 of 2:

Corporations set the wage, you apply, and if you tell them you need more money to work there they tell you to get lost*. Job postings receive hundreds, sometimes thousands of applications. Why would they lower their profitability by giving you the wage you set if the next person in the very long line will work just as hard for cheaper?

Like any market, supply and demand does determine price. If you want to be a forest ranger, you’ll be competing against a whole lot of people who like the idea of getting paid to hang out in the forest all day. You’ll get much better pay as a garbage man, since fewer people like the thought of taking that job. But as individuals, we can choose whatever kind of job we want to work, balancing our skills and aptitudes with our personal tastes and how much we value monetary remuneration compared to other measures of job satisfaction. And if you’re clever, you can figure out how to spend all day in the forest and make well over $100k (start a logging company).

Corporations tell their workers what to do and therefore control their workers. Same goes for hours. If I told my boss that I will only work Sundays-Thursdays from now on, I would be fired. That is a form of control.

Depends on the type of work. Personally I don’t care when people work, as long as they show up for meetings and get their jobs done well. But sure, if you’re a gas station attendant then you’d better show up before the start of your shift.

place of employement - Corporations quite literally have been forcing people to return to offices or face dismissal. There are other kinds of this action, but that’s just one example.

If you like remote work, and your manager doesn’t understand that you’re productive working from home, then the job’s a bad match for you and you should find a better match. That’s not anyone having control over the other party; it’s just conflicting values.

type of employement - Corporations are the one who decide if you’re exempt, non-exempt, a contractor, what the job responsibilities are, etc.

I’ve known people to negotiate their status when getting hired. Everything’s on the table in a negotiation. You just need to recognize it as a negotiation, and learn to negotiate well.

hours - If you refuse to work the hours you are told you are fired.

Again, this is very much dependent on the kind of job. Many jobs just require you to get a certain amount of work done.

how money is distributed - At no point does your average worker control this. The higher ups decide this and almost universally decide that the majority should go to them. If businesses were truly democratic, then you’d never see a single company giving a CEO the money for a brand new yacht every year.

You lost me here. First off, we wouldn’t want a business to be democratic any more than we’d want our country to be. A democracy is two wolves and a lamb deciding what to eat for supper. It’s a tragically terrible idea, under almost all circumstances. So no, of course businesses aren’t democratic.

If you’ve ever tried to hire a CEO (and it’s obvious you haven’t), you’d know it’s extremely hard to find someone qualified to do the job well. Again, their compensation is a function of supply and demand. There’s almost zero supply. And if you want to be cheap and hire an inexperienced or second-rate CEO, you’re taking a big risk with the life-blood of the company.

With both of those points established, I’m lost as to your overall point about how money is distributed. You get a paycheck or direct deposit. Some businesses pay cash. A few will pay in bitcoin or other cryptocurrency. You don’t seem to be discussing any of these things, but they’re how money is distributed.

the media (narrative) - Virtually all media companies are owned by the rich, and they do not allow news articles and the like to be against them. For example, the Washington Post is owned by Bezos, and you’ll never see an article from them criticizing Bezos or Amazon.

Yes, well that’s true if we’re only discussing the mass media. Most of the conservative media outlets are tiny operations.

But that’s not evidence that companies seek power over people. It’s just evidence that the personality type of journalists tends to be leftist, and while that’s not true of all journalists, they’ve banded together with like-minded people.

Even in the worst case examples, big tech silencing conservatives, which is a very real problem with examples far too numerous to count (Why do my mailings from Team DeSantis keep going to spam, no matter how many times I click “not spam”?), that’s not corporations trying to control people. It’s just employees with personal political preferences who work alongside like-minded people, and who believe they’re making the world a better place.

Reply to “Why should I think that?” part 1 of 2:

Why should I think that? [“If you find yourself attracted to a man, acknowledge that attraction as an evil temptation to sin.”]

Because it’s true. If you find a quarter in your pocket, you should acknowledge that quarter as monetary unit equivalent to one fourth of a dollar. Why? Because that’s what it is.

Yes, that was what I meant [pornography]. And I have no reason to think of them as sins.

1 Corinthians 6:18

Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body.

Note “fornication” there is translated from “πορνεία”, which is a generic term for sexual sin of any kind, and is better translated as “sexual immorality”.

Now you have a reason. And there are more where that one came from!

And I have no reason to believe eternity is on the line, or that it would be based on sexual attraction. If a god exists, I would think the least of it’s worries would be humans, let alone who humans choose to mate with.

This reflects your decision not to become a father yourself. But you can imagine for a moment what it feels like to have a child. You very much do care who that child associates with, even as a friend, but certainly as a mate. There’s a good reason why when you want to marry a girl, you ought to first ask her father for permission. God created us in His own image for a particular reason. If you’ve ever created anything at all, you know that you care about whatever it was you made.

I don’t believe in god, so why would I consider the feelings of something I do not believe exists?

Because He still believes in you.

I’ll address each of the things you listed, but I want to go on something a little more objective than us tossing things back and forth about how the country is left/right. The closest to useful/objective info I came across was this:

https://objectivelists.com/2022/06/26/countries-with-the-most-conservative-laws/

Thank you. I think the “far-” prefix is contentious on both sides of the aisle. Are you familiar with allsides.com? They rate news sources as one of: { far-left, left, center, right, far-right }. I sometimes disagree with their exact assessments, but I recognize that it’s difficult to rate the bias of news sources. Especially because when I consider where I’d personally categorize them, I realize that there’re not close to enough options. It’s radically oversimplified.

When I say “left” (or “center-left”), I approximately mean pro-trade-union, Robin Hood taxation, pro-birth-control, and sexual intercourse out of wedlock. You get the idea. Anything to the left of that I consider far-left. These days, the Left is off-the-chart far-far-far-left in my opinion.

Also it’s impossible to compare the US to other countries for a wide variety of reasons, one of them particular to this case being that classical liberal principles played a major role in our founding, which are now considered conservative principles by most measures. That’s how we wind up with (for example) liberal gun law being widely supported by the Right.

Because if you were to compare the U.S. to many European countries, they go far more to the left on such issues.

True, but that means nothing. They’re dragging us leftward, due to so many leftists who hate America and think we should abandon our traditional values and instead imitate other countries.

Reply to “Why should I think that?” part 2 of 2:

The U.S. does not have open borders, it is illegal to cross without permission.

This is wildly out of touch with reality. The Biden Administration is coordinating tens of thousands of illegals flooding in per week, and giving them “free” (taxpayer-funded) plane tickets to any US city they choose. The Southern border is essentially wide open. All you have to do is check any conservative news source from any time in the last two years to know this.

Prohibiting the government from forcing prayer on children is not a far left thing, most other developed nations are the same.

Anything anti-Christian and pro-Satan is far-left. The fact that other nations do it too is no excuse. Traditional American culture is Christian.

ESGs are left, but they aren’t far left, they’re just a type of investment.

Are you joking? They are extremely far-left. I mean they’d have to be openly communist to be any further left.

Few people in the U.S. are neo-marxists.

Few might self-identify as such, but the philosophy is readily apparent everywhere you look. Anyone who thinks people can legitimately derive their identity from their group membership is neo-Marxist.

As for the LGBTQ+, our rates aren’t very different from other developed/free nations.

Stop trying to compare the US to any other country, because it’s illegitimate. The US is the greatest country possible, and there’s no comparison to be made. Yes, we have sodomites trying to take us down, but the fact that other countries do too doesn’t make it acceptable.

(And in case you were not aware, “Transvestite” is considered to be a slur by many people due to it’s malicious use.

Far be it for me to potentially break any terms of service. I only meant to refer to people who reject their God-given sex, and play dress-up, whether or not assisted by hormone pills and genital mutilation. Thank you for letting me know.

Abortion is generally supported by the left, and some parts of the right, so it is hardly a far left thing.

It’s about as far left as possible. It’s anti-Christian, anti-family, and pro-murder — of innocent babies no less. It’s like the essence of far-lefthood bundled up into a single word.

As for “Post-Temperance Feminism”, I’m honestly not sure what you mean by that.

The Temperance movement was a coalition between Christians, conservatives, and feminists back in the day. Women didn’t want their husbands coming home drunk anymore. Around the same time Prohibition succeeded, they also succeeded in gaining the women’s “right” to vote, which is one of the primary origins of all of this far-left madness and social devastation we’ve witnessed since their success in that endeavor. Following that, they moved on in subsequent “waves” which became increasingly hostile to traditional family values. When I wrote “Post-Temperance Feminism”, I was referring to that entire history after their coalition with Christians and conservatives fell apart.

The SPLC is a hate group watch, so I don’t see why you would have a problem with them.

Please tell me you’re joking. They’re widely derided for grouping normal conservative groups with Christian values alongside neo-Nazis and actual “hate groups”. Nobody takes the SPLC seriously. And that’s ancient news at this point.

And as for hollywood, they are definitely left, but they ain’t far left.

Almost every single movie they produced in the last fifteen years, or so, has featured anti-Christian sentiment, a complete lack of understanding of Christian theology, anti-American sentiment, anti-family sentiment, especially anti-traditional-family sentiment, pro-sodomy sentiment, premarital sex, illicit drugs, strong women and weak men, transvestites, global warming alarmism, anti-corporate sentiment, and the list goes on and on. It’s quite hard to find any movie that’s not woke through and through, unless it was made in the '90s or earlier. There are a couple exceptions, but they’re rare.

It seems to me that you have done the same. You gave me an entire list of “far left” things in the U.S. that you are critical of.

Fair, but that’s within the overall context of my message that America is essentially great, and always will be. Of course I have my minor gripes, and plenty of them. But at the end of the day, I pray for our country because there’s no better place on earth.

The 5000 character limit is sorta making me miss reddit.

Yes, this thing is buggy. But it’s brand new. If these problems are still unresolved in a year, that’ll be bad, but it’s open source and I’m under the impression an increasing number of people are contributing to it.

Sorry, I didn’t realize you had asked. This is what I was referring to:

Thank you. They write in their intro:

Human freedom enables and empowers people to do as they please, free from constraints or punishments, so long as it does not impinge upon the freedom of another.

That’s a libertine definition of freedom. It advocates for legal cocaine and prostitution. I acknowledge they’re not the only ones to hold that definition, but I do not.

Human freedom enables and empowers people to obey God, do His will, worship Him as they see fit, and (as a result) to be blessed with emancipation from sin.

(Skipping a bunch here. Sorry, I’m reading what you wrote, and I don’t have much to say in reply that I haven’t already said. I guess that’s for the best, all things considered.)

I believed in Jesus, god, christianity, the whole thing. I was raised christian and believed it all. I went to church, believed I was saved, felt the holy spirit, etc. I just now realize none of it was true.

What do you suppose you actually felt, when you thought you felt the Holy Spirit? When you say that you believed it all, did you really believe in your heart that God raised Jesus from the dead, or did you only say you did? When you decided that none of it was true, do you think you might be enduring a test of faith?

It doesn’t, but the ruling it mentioned does. Sorry, I should have given you a better link than that.

Thank you, that was informative. Much as I disagree that the Pledge is idolatry, I respect that you’re not the only one to believe it. Of course JWs also believe the Second Coming happened in 1914, so I’ve got a few grains of salt. I completely side with SCOTUS on that ruling, that compelled speech breaks the first amendment. I just wish they had the same decision on school prayer, that nobody can be forced to partake, but the rest of us are going to proceed with it anyhow.

I’ll definitely be marrying her, but we have mutually agreed not to have kids. We can’t ethically justify bringing a kid into a dying world, and also her physical disabilities would quite literally kill her if she were pregnant. And suicide is generally considered to be a sin.

I’d argue with you on the ethics point, and the claim of a “dying world” (what), but your follow-up point about her disability overrides anything I’d say. I’m happy for you! When’s the wedding?

Maybe, but I’m not sure why that matters. The essence of our dispute here is over whether salvation works reliably for kicking a drug addiction.

I usually don’t lol. It’s very rare for me to get into a conversation as much of a tangled mess as this one.

I’m flattered. Thank you. I find the conversation enjoyable, though I agree it’s a tangled mess. Yet if you’d find it prudent to quickly wind it down, I won’t be offended.

Instigate? No. Enable? Absolutely.

Well then we’re close to splitting hairs. My contention is governments should be too small to enable companies to grow huge. I get that we don’t completely see eye-to-eye on this, but I’m not sure it’s worth our bickering over the details.

The mega-corporations are the natural result of capitalism. You can’t have one without the other.

I mentioned the importance of definitions recently. Among people who disagree over capitalism, I find we are often operating on different definitions. What if we just talk about free markets? There’s nothing about freedom that inherently gives rise to mega-corporations. They didn’t even exist until relatively modern times.

There are also numerous lottery winner stories around. That doesn’t mean that everybody should buy lottery tickets as a means to success.

No kidding. When you hold a race, there’s one winner. You might give out medals for second and third place, but most competitors are losers. And that’s great. Everyone goes home and tries again tomorrow. In the end, some people are never able to win at all, due to lack of drive, technique, or what-have-you, and that’s fine. Life isn’t fair, and we wouldn’t want it to be. All that matters is that everyone’s able to compete, fair and square.

Nowadays people are too poor to reasonably afford a home, food, and the basic necessities. The retirement age keeps getting higher. The majority of americans are living paycheck to paycheck. It absolutely has been dead, and for a while.

Okay, now I really wonder where you live. Is it a West Coast city? What you describe is absolutely not the America I know and love.

Inheriting wealth is not a means for being successful for the overwhelming majority of americans.

Yeah, it was a joke. I explicitly said I was joking.

The success of a business is directly tied to the starting investment.

No, not usually. Its rate of scale is directly tied to the starting investment. It’s eventual success is only tied to that certain kinds of tech startups, where a ton of work is needed before there’s anything to show for it. For most businesses, success is tied to vision and execution.

If you don’t feel like you are free then what is the point?

The point is always God. And God, incidentally, is the source of our freedom. People may feel a lack of freedom resulting from estrangement from God. That’s hardly the fault of corporations (although you could make a good case that any corporation propagating secular culture is indirectly at fault.)

“Just about any business” does not equate to a livable wage, because just about all businesses have employees who are being paid below a livable wage. And like I said, horizontal mobility is not true mobility.

What’s a livable wage? That’s a mighty subjective phrase. It wasn’t long ago that many of us lived in single-room log cabins that we built ourselves, hauled our own water without plumbing, used outhouses, lacked electricity, had a horse and cart instead of a truck, and grew most of our own food. And we were happy. Because we had God, and in the end that’s all we’ve ever needed. If you’re defining a “livable wage” in terms of anything more than that standard, it’s unreasonable.

definitions aren’t really why I am here, so I will move on.

Definitions are so important! Oftentimes we talk past each other, thinking we’re arguing when we actually agree on 95% of the issue, but we’re using different working definitions of our words, and misinterpreting each other accordingly.

When you say “complete denial”, do you mean the kind of denial of that secretly knows some unfortunate truth, or literally denying?

I have no background in psychology, but I don’t think denial necessarily involves secret knowledge. I just went to research the topic, and quickly remembered that I dislike the entire field of psychology, so I didn’t get far. Sorry. But no, I don’t pretend to know what you really know and what you don’t. That’s between you and God, not me. I just think you’ve intentionally decided to refute God, and thereby unknowingly invited Satan to guide your thoughts.

I don’t believe in either of the sides you are talking about. So it’s kind of like asking “are you rooting for team A or team B”, but the sports teams* that you’re talking about are all fictional. It just doesn’t make sense for me to say I am on a sports team that I think is made up.

That’s a good analogy, and I understand your perspective. But the problem is that good and evil are entirely real, and it’s absurd to pretend they’re not. You’re ignoring the spiritual warfare that underlies everything happening in our world, in our lives, and indeed in this very conversation. You’re denying the foundational tenets of Western Civilization, based on millennia of correspondence with and guidance from the Lord our God. You arrogantly pretending you’re somehow smarter than our ancestors who built this civilization with God’s blessing, and what’s far worse is you’re arrogantly pretending you’re somehow smarter than God Almighty Himself. That’s why I say you’re in denial. God does not like to be denied. But the Devil does, and seizes upon that denial to manipulate you.

The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.

—Verbal Kint

I’m embracing neither. I can’t embrace something I don’t believe in.

But you can, and you do. When you deny God, you embrace Satan. There is no third option.

I know you don’t think I was ever a christian, but when I was, I thought I had abundant evidence. But the closer I looked at my reasons for believing the more I realized they weren’t good reasons.

I find that completely believable. You predicated your faith on faulty reasoning, and as a result, your faith was unstable. Solid faith cannot be predicated on reasons at all — that’s what makes it faith. But when your faith is solid, you’re then provided with the ability to see the abundant evidence for what it truly is. The key is that the evidence comes second, contingent on faith.

I think trying to single out a single document that defines a 246 year old country is a mistake, because no such document could possibly define such a long and chaotic history/country.

I’d say that’s reasonable if I wasn’t familiar with the US. But every child memorizes key lines from that single document, and learns all about how it made us the greatest country on earth. And every American refers back to it in common parlance, while discussing and debating a wide variety of issues. And that single document continues to influence all of our legislation and jurisprudence. So in the case of the US, that single document really does define our culture.

It’s worth noting, though, that you mention that we’re a 246 year old country, and it’s 247 (welcome to 2023!), but more importantly I’d say most of what happened during those intervening years are far less important than what happened at the outset. Even if our state and federal governments were to topple, and a foreign army was to invade, American flags would still fly because our national character was established at the outset of our founding, and it cannot be destroyed.

Out of curiosity, if it wouldn’t be invasive, which state are you in (or from, or most familiar with)?

However the founding fathers intended the country to always be changing and adapting, to always become better and better.

That’s progressive revisionism. They most certainly did not. If they were still around today, they’d be rallying the militia.

Articles of Confederation, and it was a chaotic disaster.

You say that like it’s a bad thing. In retrospect it’s clear that our situation then was far preferable to where we are today. The federal government’s only problem then was they couldn’t get the several states to give them any money, which is a perfectly acceptable problem. What’s more, the convention of the states had no authority to discard the Articles, so they remain our rightful federal law. I don’t deny the fact that the Constitution is well accepted by almost 100% of American citizens, but the least we can do is restore it to its original intent. If we ever do, though, then you’ll find me advocating to restore the Articles.

If the government is tiny, then corporations are unfettered, and that is just as bad. But even so, even with a small government, lobbying is still power that they would directly benefit from.

If government is tiny then businesses are tiny. You can lobby your governor just as you can lobby your next-door neighbor, and there’s nothing wrong with that. You can lobby me, just as you’re sorta doing now.

Paying for campaign contributions, promising contributions, etc are all also legal and considered lobbying. And it is effectively bribery. It’s also legal to offer politicians lucrative job opportunities. These things are corruption and destroy our freedoms.

This is a symptom of big government. When politicians have next to no power, there’s no sense in spending money to help them.

I had to go back to keep track of what we agreed(?) was the problem,

I concede I wish I was better at staying on track in this sort of enormous conversation.

I simply don’t see how removing the government’s ability to regulate commerce would lead to less corporate control of america.

Let’s distinguish between state and federal control. I believe it’s a sovereign state’s role to regulate commerce within their borders as they see fit. So business sizes should vary according to state culture.

Corporations would still control our wages

I’ve already addressed this. It’s false. When you sell your labor, you set the price you want to charge, and seek out one or more customers willing to pay that price. Corporations are nothing more than people who pay other people for their labor, as a voluntary agreement between both parties. Neither party controls the other.

place of employement, type of employement, hours, how money is distributed, the media (narrative), etc. If anything it would make it harder for the government to prevent these corporations from harming our freedom.

This is all radically disconnected from reality. Corporations don’t control any of these things. You really should start a business of your own, if for no other reason than just to learn how little power it gives you.