Attitudes like yours are why I would never enter the Republican Party, not that that is even a remote possibility. :laughing::razz:

 

You know tenguy I try to avoid comparing myself to others for fear of becoming vain and bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser people then myself.

But I'll make an exception this time because when it comes to intelligence I believe you are one of the lesser ones. I've proven you wrong in most of our debates. I've found you to be intellectually and academically dishonest on more than a few occasions.

So let me point out a few more to you. Most people don't really laugh at blond jokes. They're really not all that funny and actually speak to a weak inner prejudice which is fed by putting other people down.

And you may be attracted to the dumb broad type, but in my experience that is not really most men's preference, and of the men who are attracted to them it represents insecurity on their part in the hopes that someone will be dumb enough to have sex with them.

And no it does not appeal to the huddled masses that someone is dumber then they are. It only appeals to the weak minded and insecure.

But now at least we know what makes YOU laugh. Who YOU want to fuck. And what makes YOU feel good.

How intelligent is the correlation you are trying to make here? Not intelligent at all. But one of your usual attempts to try and attribute something you made up in your own head to someone else, and then base your argument on that.

You want to compare 21st Century attitudes to 18th century attitudes.

If you were really more intelligent then me or others you might contend with you would not make such stupid mistakes. Thomas Jefferson DID have a problem with owning slaves and slavery. That's part of our American history. You should read some of it sometime.

I don't think really intelligent people constantly contradict themselves and that's something you do quite often. Many times within the same post, such as this one.

In the first statement you say Jefferson displayed his prejudice. In the next sentence you say he had grave misgivings about slavery and prejudice.

But if you have actually read the essay you posted and still express doubts about Jefferson's intelligence then you just weren't intelligent enough to understand it.

But I know where it really needs to go tenguy. See if you're intelligent enough to know where it really pertains to the discussion at hand.

 

I understand your points made in the OP and for the most part in subsequent posts. You and several others also made a point about racism being a trait of those who are of lesser intellegence, i.e. voting against a man because of his race.

My point was simply to illustrate that racism and bias are not necessarily linked to ones intellegence. They are also traits closely linked to the social environment of ones formative periods and traditions. Most of my life has been spent interacting with people of high intellegence, who held deep prejudices, I do not share them, however it is easy to see how they got them. My tolerance of them was tempered with caution and thesteadfast conviction that all men are equal.

 

Dead on


At least the first part

 

This article from The Economist made for some interesting reading on the subject at hand, I thought....

 

Bullshit tenguy. I not only admit when I'm wrong I usually make a public correction. The difference is that I am careful enough to actually research and know what I'm talking about before I post it.

I can't even count the times you've been proven wrong and then either call it a difference of opinion (when the context is factual) or just ignore your errors and keep harping away.

I've told you several times now you ought to give up on humor because you are God Awful Terrible at it. And I might add if I don't put a laughing or smiling emocon on it you won't recognize humor when its in your face.

People did not change in this instance i.e Jefferson. The times changed. More than 200 years worth of ideas and concepts changed between when Jefferson wrote his essay and the kind of prejudice and racism we are talking about today and on this thread. When Jefferson wrote his essay it was the accepted thinking of the time and based on what was believed to be the best knowledge at the time. Yet he was intelligent enough to be conflicted and still express doubts about slavery even while he tried to justify it as blacks being mentally inferior.

Those things are no longer true and there is no excuse for being ignorant about them in this day and age so yes those who still express and try to cling to those beliefs are in fact less intelligent.

What you did was try and draw the illogical comparison that because voting or not voting for someone on the basis of skin color is in fact an unintelligent way of selecting leaders, that because Jefferson owned slaves and felt blacks were mentally inferior that we were also saying Jefferson was not intelligent. That is simply a false construct on your part for the reasons explained above.

Yes racism in this day and age is both ignorant and unintelligent because we have a much better and broader knowledge base to work from.

Now this is simple ignorance on your part. Jefferson was always conflicted on the issue of slavery and actually blamed King George for it in the Declaraton of Independce. And if you had even more than a simple dogmatic knowledge of history you would know that most of Jefferson's misgivings and objections to slavery were edited out of the Declaration of Independce for fear of alinating the southern Colonies.

Again just your personal ignorance of both Jefferson and US History showing here. Jefferson was always conflicted on the issue of slavery and based his assmuptions on the observations made by one culture that had no understanding of the other culture.

This is your most consistent form of false debate which consists of contradictions, idol speculation that you try to claim as fact, the invention of points not even in discussion and then your conslusion of all the faulty logic just mentioned.

Again you make a false construct trying to take what we have to day and falling back more than 200 years to claim that we must think Jefferson was not intelligent which is something you made up and cannot be drawn from anything I or anyone else has said on this thread.

And I cannot dispute your opinion that Jefferson, were he alive today, would be a closet racist. He based his thinking and his slave ownership on what was the status of his civilization at the time. And yet all of that was not only accepted thinking but believed to be true at the time he was still morally and intellectually conflicted about at a time when it was perfectly acceptable to believe both slavery and blacks being mentally inferior were soild facts.

I don't believe there is anyway armed with our modern knowledge and moral view of salvery that he still would have considered blacks mentally inferior.

Again this is simply something you made up and stubbornly try to cling to which is a clear indication of who really lacks intelligence in these discussions. This is a fools point tenguy.

 

. . . you two really ought to just kiss and get it over with - your sexual tension is killing me!

:laughing:

 

maybe Whitey44 is correct . . . tenguy and stumbler really are one and the same?!??






:laughing:







note: it was not I that brought this particular sock accusation to light

 

That is a despicable accusation. Now which of us thinks that???

 

Reasons and reasons

Actually, there's a rather valid reason for that. History has shown a tendency to vote for the more liberal party (Not Democrats, liberals. There's a difference.) any time we start to hit economic/social complications, and a tendency to vote for Conservatives (Not Republicans, Conservatives. Again, there's a difference.) when things are going ok/good. It basically comes down to finding the baby in the bathwater. When there is a problem, liberals provide a source of change for society. (On that note, I wouldn't be surprised if a few decades from now history labels the Religious Right as the current generation of liberals. They seem to me to be a societal reaction to the extreme elements of the 60s and 70s, where as modern "Liberals" seem to be more focused on finishing off the loose ends brought about by the social changes. But that's another discussion, for another post.) Conservatives, on the other hand, are much less likely to try for major changes. That gives society a chance to digest the changes. Think about it. What are the three major things Bush is known for? The War on Terrorism (police action writ large), No Child Left Behind (a bid for educational improvements, with no real specific focus), and tax breaks. Wasn't very successful, but none of them were very radical either.

So occasionally looking for a President who you'd rather have a beer with, rather than one looking to bring sweeping changes, is a sensible proposition. Nice enough guy, not looking for anything special, but not going to take any major risks either. Bush's biggest fault in my opinion was too much optimism coupled with too much bad advice/information. Still his responsibility, but I'm not ready to declare the guy an idiot as a result. After all, what if it had worked? And, as one person put it, "Stupid people don't fly fighter jets."

Which brings us back to Obama. Ok, he went to Harvard. Did he undergo some radical genetics experiment there? No. That means he's human, and he's going to make mistakes like anyone else. Hopefully, they're small ones rather than large ones, and whatever damage they might cause is outweighed by the good he might do. He might have intelligence, but does he have wisdom and cunning to go along with it? Does he have the courage to admit his mistakes and learn from them? Does he have the humility to ask for help from people who have made it their lives to know better about something? We'll know in 4-8 years. Ask me then.

As for a more "European America", I'm going to hedge my bets on that one. It might be good for us to adopt a slightly more lax attitude when it comes to sex and sexuality, but I'd much rather keep our current economic structure. Yeah, it stumbles every once and a while (like now), but from what I've seen, read, and been told it would be very bad for the entire world to have America go as socialist as Europe, mostly due to food and medicine needs. Also heard some worrying things about Muslims and Sharia law in places like Germany and Britain. Mostly to do with the acceptance of "Civil" Sharia courts to handle internal matters in the Muslim immigrant communities, and questions pertaining to their validity and jurisdictions. I'll see what cites and links I can dig up on those. If anyone else has something they can add, links or personal experiences, also appreciated.

I live, I argue, I learn.

 

Well here we go again tenguy and since you failed so miserably the last time I won't hesitate to do it again. Prove it tenguy. Post some examples of the accusations you are making here tenguy. Should be easy enough. All my posts are part of the public record here on the forum.

Put up or shut up tenguy.

 

Tenguy I didn't tell you to do anything. I said you ought to give up on humor because you're terrible at it. That's not telling you what to do as in giving you a command. Its more of a kindly suggestion to save you further embarrassment.