Money and liberty are orthogonal... one says nothing about the other.

Most of our problems come hand in hand with there being too many of us... global warming comes screaming to hand.

One should not assume that realizing that money is not liberty means that the speaker does not have money... such assumptions just reinforce the same (invalid) assumption. The two are indeed separable, and that is a higher goal than just becoming a money grubber... respect those who are happy and doing good in the world, be they rich in money or not.

A faulty line of logic... government IS the people. When government does not rule, then the large corporations rule (facism), which is really to say that the few powerful and wealthy are in control via their backroom deals... and the small person ends up paying for this.

What WW fails to point out is that the measure of those actions is an indication of if liberty and justice have been achieved or not... we don't achieve liberty by being the school yard bully who starts using the knife in as a youth and soon graduates to the gun they wave around until they kill someone out of their own insecurities... and this is all a "nation of riflemen" would be, a collection of little "me me me" school yard bullies. The mature action is one of compassion and helping of those in need, of protecting the liberties of all members of the group.

Great insight...

The "open forum debate" of science is the peer review process and open sharing of results and conclusions. Again the Radical Religious Right forgets that it was that RRR that silenced their own scientists on many purely scientific questions, replacing science with political and religious policy. Given the RRR's atmosphere, it is small wonder that America no longer leads the world in math & science.

LOL, amazing how conservatives think that turn-outs of single digits of folks are "significant events"... as well as how good they are at closing their eyes to the facts that these events are being reported upon... reported upon with truth and light rather than the lies and exaggerations that those "conservatives" seem to so desire. Yes, this quote is a good one, just because of how conservatives use their "liberal media" (i.e. Fox)... "Fair & Balanced" only for those with close minds and eyes!

Replacing government with big business only makes the rich "free", while reducing the freedoms of the commoners. Society is best served when the government exercises a strong control factor over the baser of humanity's behaviors which put down people for personal gain and power.

And yet the great experiment of privativing so many government functions that King George W undertook has shown us that private industry is just concerned with "this quarter's profits" and not with the greater good of society.

And yet, he put us further in debt by excessive optional government spending and giving too much power to the top of private industry, both in exact opposition to his claim of "bottom up".

Today's problems have much more to do with the environment that King George W & the Tea Partiers have created than with any member of the Obama administration. The attacks this year have more to do with the policies of the previous 8 years (or even the previous 20) than with the immediate policies of today. If folks preach fear and "handcuffs and gagging" as their holy grail, then folks should not be surprised or offended when that is what they get.

Nice thoughts, but personal experience tells me just the opposite... life made much more sense thru the eyes of a child than those of a young adult, and that pattern continues.

Meaningless babble...

Very metaphysical quote today... having nothing to do with health care, but since Mike thinks it does, lets remind the readers that the list includes "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"... yet 45,000 people die each year due to a lack of health care, and many more are bound by the chains of illness which impinges upon their liberty and prevents their pursuit of happiness... how we treat those less fortunate than us in life defines our moral and ethical stance, and thus we see the moral bankruptcy of opposing universal health care (and many other social programs)... Its not just right, it IS what the Christian God tells us to do.

The US had an armed rebellion to obtain liberty for white land owning males... while at the same time preserving the institutionalized lack of liberty (slavery, being female, being poor, etc). Arms did not solve the slaves problems, rather peaceful protest... the 21st century is not the same world as the 18th century, and the same techniques that gave partial solutions then are not appropriate for now.

Nice thought, but not at all clear that democracy is at all necessary... one of the most destabilizing forces in the world in the last decade (King George W) was democratically "elected" in by a nation that claims to hold freedom as a core value.

Nice sentiment, but also true without "the net", and thus seems off the mark for what appears to be the central theme of the quote.

Everything changes, even the dead rot...

Good thought in that relativity is indeed a major factor, but so is an absolute measure, thus a better measure would/should combine factors of both not just one or the other.

Religion is about community, and it is one of the things that define human as human... and, as Waffler so aptly points out, while fish don't ride bikes, they can greatly benefit from them (i.e. organized big tent religion is the source of much unneeded evil, but congregationally driven local religion is both valuable and can be positive). So, it appears that both are necessary and dispite the implied assumption that they are not... ;-)

Again, it really matters how you define "what is is"... in this case, what is "purpose". It clearly is not what society defines as various "god" figures. Waffler seems to be onto it here, we impose purpose out of our need to find one... it is not that the universe exists due to its purpose, but that we impose purpose upon that which already exists.

The key to understanding this quote is to realize that most "organized religions" and so called "religious people" actually have nothing to do with the "religious principles" he refers to. Atheism is in no way in conflict with most "religious principles". It is sorta like having to understand "what is is"...

How marvelously UU of him, bringing real clarity to the question of if the US is a "Christian nation" (i.e. that it is not, that a person's religion is of no matter to either the government or another person). Happy Generic Holidays to those who celebrate some holiday at this time of year!

Small minds however are often incapable of digesting the knowledge they find... poor jim...