Even so, it should be up to the individuals in question to decide what works for them or not. Bans on behavior because they are associated with certain undesirable traits are why marijuana is banned; it's why they tried to ban alcohol. The generalization that polygamous marriages are driven by dysfunctional responses is another instance in which individuality is supplanted by a generic set of supposed values. Polygamy may not work for most, that's not a justification to ban it for all.

Does Donald Trump have any unironic support? I'm going to view that post to be satire, just like his candidacy, because it makes me feel better about the world we live in.

Yes, if you're disputing something, the onus is on you to provide the basis for your claim. Making vague statements that could be interpreted any number of ways and then refusing to explain them upon request is to be regarded as an automatic admission you don't have a point.

"Constitutional democracy" is the dogmatic belief, not the Constitution itself. The fact that we keep amending it to make it work for us instead of just chucking it out and declaring the idea a failure when it doesn't proves my point further. We are dogmatic in our adherence to constitutional democracy and republicanism. And a shared belief that its a bad idea to harm can come from self knowledge and be dogmatic. They're not mutually exclusive. That's kinda my whole point in saying dogma isn't the problem, fundamentalism is.

I begrudgingly like Rand Paul in a thoroughly unimpressive republican field, and Bernie Sanders on the other side for having a principled point. However, neither of them get my vote in the general election, as it's going to Gary Johnson. I do not find acceptable the manipulative ways both democrats and republicans conspire to keep all third parties out of the debates and off the ballots, so I will not be voting for any of their candidates, as it only precipitates the problem. The candidates aren't the biggest problem, it's the two parties and how seek to control the government at all costs.

How did they invent a right? It appears to me they equally enforced a right that already existed. If the government is going to grant marriages, now they have to grant them to gay couples too. That's extending the right to marriage that already existed for some to all, not creating a new one.

I don't think Turing is a good example to show the superiority of the non-muslim culture or to show our "tolerance and appreciation for a great many odd types of people." Unless by being tolerant and appreciative, you mean prosecuting for being different and forcing a war hero into chemical castration.

Not the moral, feel good story I think you were going for about how much better our society was than an Islamic one at the time.

Do you have a cite for the 1867 Supreme Court case? I have searched for it and cannot find what this is referring to.

Just highlighting these two gems of wisdom that appeared in the same post, because they were made unironically and without intent to entertain.

Another rebuttal with no substance. All your hypotheticals don't cancel reality. If you want to rebut something concrete, ideas with no factual basis aren't useful.

Dictionary.com lists four definitions:

1. an official system of principles or tenets concerning faith, morals, behavior, etc., as of a church.

2. a specific tenet or doctrine authoritatively laid down, as by a church

3. prescribed doctrine proclaimed as unquestionably true by a particular group

4. a settled or established opinion, belief, or principle: the classic dogma of objectivity in scientific observation.

Especially as in the case of the fourth definition, not every definition of dogma requires the negative aspects as you have presented them. The American belief in constitutional democracy and republicanism are both dogmatic, as is the notion of objectivity in scientific observation, as the definition points out. These are things society overwhelming accepts as good things, so the problem is not with dogma, it's fundamentalism. A global dogmatic belief that it is wrong to harm other individuals would be immensely beneficial to humanity, but there are religious fundamentalists to who believe harming others is justified by their religious dogmatic beliefs. The problem there isn't dogma, it's fundamentalism.

I think there's a great danger in defining what symbols mean to other groups of people. I'm not from the south, I can't understand the history and heritage of their symbol. As an outsider, any attempt to 'understand' the symbol is going to be superficial unless I am able to immerse myself in that culture. Having the inability to do that, I'm not going to be so bold as to say that my opinion of what that symbol is supersedes everyone else's. That stance is ridiculous, yet that's very much what is happening. Symbolism is fungible, and allowing a symbol to be defined statically as only one thing doesn't seem like a reasonable position to take.

Two ways to illustrate this:

1) The treatment of the Confederate Flag and the American Flag. The Confederate Flag means slavery, it's a terrible symbol. However, the American Flag - which also oversaw slavery, oppression of different groups of individuals by the government at different periods of time (Native Americans, African-Americans, Japanese-Americans during WWII, gays, mentally handicapped, etc.) - is a  proud symbol of patriotism.

2) John Calhoun's statue is being vandalized as a racist slave owner. Yet many of the reasons he is being vilified now he shares in common with our "greatest" patriotic heros: Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, Monroe all owned slaves and allowed and supported the oppression of an entire race. The difference is perception, not necessarily reality.

Perhaps these stark differences in perception are because the North won the war and gets to be deemed morally right, therefore their symbols are "good" while the losers of the war and their symbols are "bad." Seems to be the only logical explanation to me, because objectively looking at the reasons we deem those symbols to be bad, I'd have to also conclude that our patriotic symbols are bad for the same reason.

Yeah, our system misaligns the interests of the nation with the interests of politicians. The politician's aim is to get reelected, so they enact policies to that end. Those policies are not always in the best interest of the nation, in fact, I'd say they're often not. How do we fix this? Ultimately, you have to take money out of politics, but doing this does infringe freedom. The question is where is the line when this is acceptable?

Since it clearly needs to be asked, in what sense is she not an "average lady?" You've disputed a term without justifying or explaining what you're talking about, then want to know why your throw away comment wasn't addressed? Because there's no substance to address.

Dogma itself isn't a problem. For example, the belief that the Constitution and the values it represents are the cornerstone of American society is a type of dogmatic belief. Dogma itself doesn't pose a problem unless dogma intertwines with fundamentalism, where the violation of dogmatic beliefs calls for unduly harsh punishment.

The first part of this is certainly true in theory, however people have been promising it for a looooooong time and it hasn't proven out in the slightest so far. You can always claim time is on your side, however you have no evidence to support the claim right now. The second part of this is opinion I don't care enough to rebut.

There is terrific irony in his actions of hatred inspiring people to come together. All this focus on the confederate flag though, it almost seems to me to be scapegoating and definitely knee-jerk. I do wonder if all the focus on the flag is robbing us of an opportunity to deal more directly with the problems.

Have you decided to impersonate BADecker because he hasn't graced this thread with his presence yet? You even ended the post with a smiley! All that's missing is a some christian fundamentalism or a diatribe against the courts because "something something common law" and you'd have me convinced!

This two-dimensional financial analysis focuses only on a single metric, and ignores the most important factor: ability to borrow / creditworthiness. Until the US government cannot borrow or has as much trouble borrowing as Russia does, it cannot be said to be in financial trouble. With Russian government bonds yielding over 10%, and the US yielding 2.4%, the world markets have spoken about which country is in more financial trouble.

I don't attribute these problems to anti-intellectualism. Racism isn't an anti-intellectualism problem, it's a fundamentalist and anti-empathy problem. Creating artificial categorizations of people so you can differentiate yourself from them is about antipathy: you don't see a person, you see a Jew, feminist, black, gay, immigrant, Muslim, or whatever other bullshit label you stick on people so you can convince yourself they're different than you. And because you have convinced yourself you're different, you feel no empathy to them because you can't relate to their humanity. And when anti-empathy meets fundamentalism, you get tragedy. This is the great malaise of American society. Anti-intellectualism is certainly a problem, but it is not necessarily this problem.