I read about the Oneida Community. I wouldn't use it as a great example of free love living. It really was a means for men to have free sexual access with any woman they wanted. I read a diary entry of a woman there, that was unaware of her sexual rights, who would submit to any man sexually, due to her ignorance. She raised her concern with an elder and he advised her that she had a right to refuse sexual contact. This was after years of living on the commune, and it was the first time anyone clarified her rights. Seems like one of those Jim Jones-type cults rather than a true free love commune.
The hysteria over pedophilia is astonishing. Not that you are even pedophile. Rachel was 14, a biological adult. Technically you may be an ephebophile, or attracted to young pubescent girls. But those are all social constructs. Adolescence is just an artificial construct to repress young adults. There are theories that the age of consent laws are unconscious attempts to seperate sexually attractive females from the mating game, thus giving older women more opportunities to reproduce. In many countries, even wealthy western ones, your relationship with Rachel wouldn't even been a crime. Muslims revere a man, Muhammad, who consummated his marriage with a child at the age of 9. I think that may be abusive, but no one even blinks an eye.
I just read I, Robot. Isaac Asimov is my favorite SF writer. I'm sure you appreciated the ending with the machines deciding that humanity would better be an agrarian or perhaps hunter-gatherer society. Not that it is determined whether the machines truly decide this but is seems to fit well. Humans are meant to live in societies of perhaps a 150, that it is how we evolved. The massive social change of the last 10,000 years does not undo millions of years of evolution. Or perhaps I am engaging the naturalist fallacy. The brain is very plastic and flexible, so perhaps all kinds of functional societies are possible.
Perhaps you are more of a paleoconservative, in lines with Ron Paul. He's one my favorite politicians. He's a non-intervensionist and pro-state's rights and against the burgeoning federal government and executive branch. His positions are abused by the Tea Party, and he hasn't distanced himself from those idiots.
The Tea Party is the most ridiculous party in some time. Basically a populist-neoconservative group. They say "cut taxes", but "keep your hands off my medicare." They don't realize this country is going to collapse within the century if there is no Medicare reform or a single-payer system. It's one or the other. Then there's their soldier worship, too. Just a really ignorant group, IMO.
Do you really suspect that 9/11 was an inside job? I'd have to disagree on that. Even the infamous Noam Chomsky, the classic anti-american, disagrees with the "truther" position. He does not claim that the Bush Administration was not capable of such an atrocity, theoretically, but disagrees that the administration was competent enough to organize such a huge false flag operation. Nixon wasn't even able to cover up a simple burglary. Not that this sort of thing would be unprecendented. The sinking of the USS Maine was likely a false flag operation to initiate the Spanish-American War. It's more likely it's similar to the case of Pearl Harbor. Roosevelt may have allowed it to happen, so as to destroy any noninterventionist sentiments and to enter WWII. I suppose no one will really know.
RSS
Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.
KJV Leviticus 18:29
For whosoever shall commit any of these abominations, even the souls that commit them shall be cut off from among their people.
I'm afraid these Ugandans are well within their scripture. Any ancient text will be full of ignorant statements.
- William Ralph Inge
The Tea Party is the most ridiculous party in some time. Basically a populist-neoconservative group. They say "cut taxes", but "keep your hands off my medicare." They don't realize this country is going to collapse within the century if there is no Medicare reform or a single-payer system. It's one or the other. Then there's their soldier worship, too. Just a really ignorant group, IMO.