My dad posted this article on Facebook, and I ended up sort of wall-of-texting at him. In the interests of not having to type this again in case I need it, I'm saving it here ( Read more... )

I think one reason some kinds of people prefer individual acts of charity to large systematic changes with charitable aims and impacts (such as tax-funded social programs) is that if everybody is giving to a comparable degree, they don't get to feel special anymore ( Read more... )

There's something I understand better now than I used to back when I was self-identifying as a theist. I, too, was really upset that atheists were so prejudiced and bigoted and just pigeonholed any religious people they knew and assumed that if you aren't an atheist, you're an enemy. Or something ( Read more... )

Obligatory mention of the attacks in Oslo.

Obviously the groups he was a member of and who were his (apparent) ideological guiding posts are appalled, you guys, just aghast and amazed that someone went out and did what they all seem to want done.

Sound familiar to you? Sounds familiar to me. Remember, kids. Every politically-motivated right-wing ( Read more... )

A lot of people I know hold the (in my opinion, rather unnecessarily extreme) position that nobody needs to own guns, and that things would be better if nobody did. These people are usually the sorts of well-meaning leftists that I agree with on damn near everything else ( Read more... )

Evidently complaining about racism, homophobia, and misogyny is just as bad as complaining about black people, gays, and women. Solution: refuse to have a problem with anything ever. Safe! (Bonus points for silencing minorities who don't realize yet that anger makes them bad people. TOP SCORE ( Read more... )

I think I might be a libertarian-socialist ( Read more... )

I'm reading discussions about the idea of a communist "vanguard" for the working class, and trying to sort out my feelings about the whole thing ( Read more... )

I hear a lot of oddball stuff at the door from people who don't believe that what Citizens Action Coalition does matters. We generally go for the consumer rights angle with these people, since talking to them about the air they breathe doesn't work (it just reminds them that Rush Limbaugh doesn't believe in global warming), talking to them about ( Read more... )

File this under "why I hear someone identifying as Christian and don't immediately think great things of them."
The Anti-Homosexuality Bill under consideration in Uganda was sparked by a conference in Kampala earlier this year at which fundamentalist Christians from the U.S. identified homosexuality as a threat to "family values ( Read more... )