Towelie v2.0

Originally posted by peehoo Hm, I'm sorry I really don't get this but am kinda interested in your points and understanding. Now i live in Europe and maybe we understand things a bit diferent here, so I would be grateful if you would explain who has the right to consider themselves Christian and why. Maybe also put it in some kind of historical and theological perspectve, because right now I really don't understand who has the exclusive rights to claim themselves "Christian" or where do those rights come from?! Why are Catholics not Christian? ( I'm not sure you are saying that, if you're not than just ignore this last question...) The way I've always felt about it is that you have your denominational Christianities (Catholicism, Methodist, Lutheran, etc) who are carried down from some ancient point in time such as The Council of Nicea (in other words, "officially dubbed"), and then you have your anti-norm's like non-denominational Bible reading types ("Born Agains") who are generally without a system of appointed leadership, and then you have your cults such as Mormonism, Jehova's Witnesses, Christian Science, etc., who were founded in more recent times and based on the theologies of one or more people. The only thing the above examples have in common is that they've all heard of Jesus Christ. That's about as much commonality as they all have.

Originally posted by potaetoes not too far off - but mass production/mass consumerism began before WWII with Ford's production models and Keynes's welfare state and mass consumerism ideas, commonly referred to as the "Fordist/Keynesian Paradigm" the bretton woods agreements after WWII established the western economic stranglehold on most of the world. the war certainly played a role, but in itself wasn't responsible for things being how they are. it essentially created the opportunity to implement the ideas that were already around. they would have been implemented some other way, in some other fashion, eventually. edit: forgot to say... yes, it will be the demise of our economic superiority, eventually. it's a boom-bust cycle, and with every subsequent boom and bust, the peaks and valleys get more extreme. eventually there will be a suicidal boom, and/or a bust that proves devastating enough that the system will essentially collapse, disintegrate, and be consumed by a different system. china is following a similar path that we did, only with a different mechanism for implementing it, and they're learning from our mistakes. in all likelihood they will achieve greater economic stability and a longer turn in the driver's seat than we have enjoyed. when the big players start evacuating the US economy, keep your eyes open. it's no coincidence that gates and buffett are beginning to orchestrate their withdrawals. Nice commentary.

Originally posted by favata5 Could someone please explain to me why legislation couldnt get passed to ban flag burning but its ok in some states for Homosexuals to be married and in most schools children cant say God?? What the hell has happened?? Makes me wish I could turn the clocks back to the ol fashioned times..you know when God mattered,and men worked while the women stayed home and took care of the domestic jazz,and children had a monny and a daddy! Today its just getting twisted it used to be Adam and Eve in the Bible,,whats next Adam and Steve???? The US got fat. It began with WWII when women became self sufficient from working in factories whilst the menfolk went off to war. After the war when the mens came back, they found their old ladies banging the strays next door. Married men tried to regain their households, but their wives had a shameless tatste of independence and the kids were fatherless and w/o structure for too long. America found itself in a newly boosted economy, and focus shifted away from traditional family life to modern materialism. Power and money were easily attainable in the new system, and drugs shifted the consciousness of abandoned American youth toward something instantly gratifying. The Age Of Aquarious finally gave young people the kind of escapism which allowed them to be completely free of traditional rules of society. A freedom which matured into the Rock N Roll excesses of the 1980's. In the wake of a newly realized disseases such as Herpes and Aids, along with an economy sucked dry by a previous generation of post-hippies and with morality at an all-time low, the youth of America gave way once again to complacency within existing social structures, and manifested itself as perhaps the most hopeless and apathetic generation in America to date; the 1990's. Music, particularly Rock N Roll of various types, was once the church of American Youth; full of energey, raw emotion, phylosphy, religion and the like, the groups they followed were unique identifiers of individuality. In the 90's, however, the lax sounds of women and acoustic ballads marked the finality of the golden years of America. We've crested the glass mountain, now heading down the other side. We've become spoiled, complacent, apathetic, without individual voice, and above all, self-serving. Morality, common courtesy, faith in God and our fellow man - the value of the spoken word - have been replaced with television, SUV's, cell phones, the Internet and chat rooms. Personal character growth has been replaced with the sense that individual opinion doesn't matter, that there's no power in numbers, and that children are the true rulers of the households of parents too busy to guide them. History most certainly repeats, and America will eventually prove to be its own demise. We're like the fattened calf heading for the slaughter. (I might be off with a few things there).