What's Up?

Brattleboro, Vermont, USA
     "Then you're a conservative."
     "No, a conservative wouldn't support the right to take drugs. I'm more a libertarian except the idiots don't believe in a national defense [proactive]."
     "Did I hear you say someone was an idiot?"
     "Yes."
     "You can't say anyone is an idiot because that means you are smarter than they are."
     "I am, at least in national defense."
     "You don't mean any drug, like heroin, do you?"
     "I do. If you're free to kill an unborn baby, you're free to take anything you want, including poison."
     "That's absurd."
     Dear Reader, do you see the hypocrisy? I can't call people dumb, but she can because she's right. She's the authority, not me. Authoritarianism, not reason, is the basis for collectivism and political correctness.
     Here's another this week: "I found it obscene that this lovely, very submissive eleven year old child was in the pulpit reading something from the Bible about the Jews getting discouraged about wandering in the desert for forty years and having the courage to complain about it. And then what does God do? He sends poisonous sea snakes to bite and kill many of the Jews.
     "Well, you don't have the context."
     "Context is everything," I agreed.
     "If you had read on, you would have learned that God had erected a monument, and if you looked at that monument, you would have been saved."
     This woman described herself as a Christian Counselor who worked with people every day. We discussed evidence versus faith for religion, and next time I will say,"You know, if you were born in Somalia, you'd be a Sharia Muslim for the very same reasons you have become a Christian in Vermont: Faith. And you'd be defending an evil religion that wants to kill the infidel, clothe women in tents, cut off their genitals, and keep everyone in mind-control on pain of death. You'd support all that evil because of your faith, just as you're doing with Christianity now. That's what happens when you don't use the reason we have evolved to have. You believe in magic. And you should think about that when you counsel people because they are at a fragile point in their lives, and what you say to them has a big impact. You owe it to them to be reasonable."
     Peter Nickerson, Philosophy Major
"The measure of a man,
  Is not what he says,
  But what he does,
  And what he allows others,
  To do in his presence."
   - USA Navy Seal Instructor