Gandelf wrote:But why do people always point the finger at Christianity? Is it because it's "cool" to do so? Is it because people hear other people slag Christianity off and so they don't want to feel out of place? I think people slag of Christianity because they are safe to do so... they know that there are no Christian fundamentalist governments in the world that can pronounce "Jehad" on those who oppose Christianity. If people said the same thing about Islam, then you can bet that an Islamic government somewhere would pronounce a holy war on those who oppose Islam.
Yup, that is what is bad about the whole Danish cartoon thing. If it was about Christians, there wouldn't have been anything said.
I think it is not just Christians, it is all of western culture. Some people don't like the fact that our system is just better than other economic systems and that western values are expanding. Also, there is alot of guilt about poor people in the world as if it is our fault.
Also, if you note whenever they compare Christianity to Islam, they compare modern Islam to the way christianity was centuries ago. It is not a like to like comparison.
The very fact that people can say what they like about Christianity, must surely say something about Christianity, i.e. you are free to become a Christian or not and if you choose not to then you won't have a death-sentence pronounced on you, like other religions.
Well, I think it is mainly Islam.
The problem is that multiculturalism has been taken to far. Respecting other cultures should require than those other cultures respect you back (or at the very least don't call for your destruction
But, they couldn't have, because a large population of Jews exists in the USA. The Nazis were close to developing their own atom bomb, which would undoubtedly have been used on the USA, even if the USA had not got involved in WW2. If the Nazis had dropped an atom bomb on the USA, the American government would have had to surrender, which in turn would have meant that the Nazis would have gone to America.
I think you underestimate Americans, I think they would have fought back, even against nukes. Also, making nukes is hard, especially when they were new and the US is far from Germany, so the Americans could sink ships. ICBMs were not around when nukes were first developed, so to nuke a city you need to get a bomber to drop the bomb. Germans had a headstart with respect to rockets, but faced with nukes, I am sure the US would have catched up.
I think the Germans were around 2-3 years behind the US wrt nukes and wouldn't have had the bomb by 1945. However, if the war ended early, then they could have committed more resources.
Democracy is corrupt. In the UK news we've seen how people have been given peerages because they donated money to the Labour party. Also UK democracy is not really a democracy anyway, because it's based on the "first past the post" principle. What we should have is a proportional representation system, where every party is represented according to the percentage of votes for each political party. As it is now, the Labour party can pass bills easily, because they were "first past the post". That's not deomocracy, it's dictatorship.
Well, levels of democracy are not binary, it ranges from dictatorship (0) to some kind of direct democracy (full). The UK has a long history of democracy and FPTP is alot better than no vote what so ever. PR would improve things, but not as much as switching from a dictatorship to a FPTP system does.
There can never be true democracy anyway (or any true political system), because there will always be politicians who are "in it" for their own benefit and who couldn't care less about the electorate.
It doesn't really matter why politicians are "in it" as long as the electoral system keeps them reasonably in check.
