Thorongil

My point was that Americans' distrust of and resistance to centralized power is nothing new, for it precipitated the war for independence. Afterward, ...

I was specific enough.

Then you didn't get my point.

Excusing your inflammatory hyperbole here, there was no such shift. Something happened called the American War for Independence. It might do you well ...

I guess so. It wasn't directed to me, so I didn't see it.

Or not. Absent the right, they can be changed. It would make little sense to remove the right unless one wished to ban most if not all people from own...

Not following you at all here. This is a distinction without a difference.

Uh, removing the right to bear arms at all is not the same as "removing certain types of arms from certain types of people." Not sure how you can miss...

And Michael is apparently not one of them.

I would count myself as a bit of a Platonist.

Making a political point like this is in incredible poor taste.

I dare say that if this was uttered by a worthless peon such as myself, I would be reprimanded. But seeing as one of the masters cracking the whip has...

Think what you like.

And I objectively wouldn't care if you continued to post like this indefinitely. "But muh rules." Fine, have your rules, and selectively apply them. B...

I've noticed posts of that nature on this forum for years. It's not something I keep a running list of. However, I'm suggesting that, for you to be co...

You're being silly, having now failed to respond to what I said. Lots of people post grammatically illiterate messages here. Do you contact all of the...

So? The rule is silly. I've seen plenty of grammatically illiterate posts on this forum that didn't result in bans. Do you honestly look at individual...

Wow, what an utterly trivial reason to ban someone. I was planning on giving him an update on our last PM discussion sometime soon, but now I can't, a...

In which post? You gave me three reasons.

I see you're being coy about the answer. Any reason for that? Or do you simply not know?

... And why was he?

@"Baden" et al, Why does The Great Whatever appear to be banned?

Judging a woman's appearance? You sexist bigot!

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/11/19/17/APAR84zPt32395fbaf1c22ef4cd-3324930-Botched_Iraqi_suicide_bomber_Sajida_al_Rishawi_opens_her_jacket_-a-13...

Oh god, kill it with fire!

Nah.

More binary banalities. The fact is that Trump sometimes lies and sometimes tells the truth.

A good partner is , , and .

You're too caught up in binary thinking. People can defend him when he's right and criticize him when he's wrong. Human beings are more nuanced than s...

And this is why you'll never understand why he was elected.

You're a racist!

About which he's still not wrong. Many sides were to blame. This controversy has fast become a farce:

... but is working to have at present, such work being hampered by terrorism. Iraq isn't destined to be a failed, terror-filled state, though pulling ...

Oh you were much more than simply "unpatriotic" (which wouldn't have bothered me), and you know it. I expect more from you than to play dumb.

That you would impute such a motive to the US and its coalition allies tells me that a reasonable discussion with you on this topic is impossible. I d...

A fairly accurate description of Iraq under Saddam.

We seem to have circled back around to the thread's topic, all without my prompting. Well done, gentlemen. I have a question on this point: are you op...

Everything could have gone better in hindsight. If we hadn't gone in, however, then Saddam would have continued trying to build a nuclear weapon, whic...

Oh yes we could have. Get the sequence of events right. We decided to pull completely out of Iraq and then ISIS emerged in the power vacuum that we le...

Well, I was only explicating what the Catechism passage says. I myself am undecided on whether the end can ever justify the means. Most of the time, I...

But you could be mistaken about what the good is.

They're not in countries in which we're already militarily engaged on the ground. Rest assured, we have special operations trying to take out these gr...

So, the end justifies the means?

I'm so glad Bannon was canned, since he apparently wanted us to pull completely out of Afghanistan, which would have been disastrous. I'm equally glad...

We're at war with the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, and ISIS, all of which are present, and the latter newly present, in Afghanistan. We are also obliged to prov...

Does not this assume that all Afghans support terrorists? Clearly they don't, so they won't feel animosity toward the US by it bombing terrorists.

I'm just clarifying. Now, to return to your question, you asked if it was possible to have a good intention and produce a terrible result. I agreed, b...

And not the person?

To decide what?

Those links don't exactly help in settling the claim you made. I would want an official church document of some kind. Of course. They would morally ex...