[jlisenbe]

Did God give man free will? (The El Paso shooter even wrote a two-page manifesto to explain his reason for killing, what his choice of morality is.)

So should we honor his decision?

God said, "Thou shalt not kill." The US government doesn't tell us not to kill anyone, not to murder, but if someone does so, the government will identify and punish the murderer. Thus, in this way, we are tacitly told not to kill anyone.

But you are appealing to the authority of God. Is that proper?

If they do, then do we have to honor those moral values? If you choose to. Isn't that up to you?

How about the people who planned and carried out the attacks on 9/11. Do you honor their moral choices? If not, then why not?

I realize this seems to be a game to you, but it's a serious issue.

[Wondergirl]

So should we honor his decision?

I have my own moral compass. The shooter has his own. Did he break the law -- God's as well as the government's?

But you are appealing to the authority of God. Is that proper?

Where? How?

How about the people who planned and carried out the attacks on 9/11. Do you honor their moral choices? If not, then why not?

Their moral choices would not have been mine. I don't fly planes into tall buildings in order to kill people.

I realize this seems to be a game to you, but it's a serious issue.

A game???? How so?

[jlisenbe]

I have my own moral compass. The shooter has his own. Did he break the law -- God's as well as the government's?

But you are appealing to the authority of God. Is that proper?

Where? How?

Read your comment carefully, especially the underlined part. Or even this from an earlier post: "God said, 'Thou shalt not kill.'"

I asked, "How about the people who planned and carried out the attacks on 9/11. Do you honor their moral choices? If not, then why not?"

Your reply was, "Their moral choices would not have been mine. I don't fly planes into tall buildings in order to kill people."

Evasive as always. You refuse to answer either question and just make the most obvious observation on the planet. Trying to reason with you is just too frustrating. You play games instead of being serious. Believe as you will.

[Wondergirl]

Read your comment carefully, especially the underlined part. Or even this from an earlier post: "God said, 'Thou shalt not kill.'"

I asked, "How about the people who planned and carried out the attacks on 9/11. Do you honor their moral choices? If not, then why not?"

Your reply was, "Their moral choices would not have been mine. I don't fly planes into tall buildings in order to kill people."

Evasive as always. You refuse to answer either question and just make the most obvious observation on the planet. Trying to reason with you is just too frustrating. You play games instead of being serious. Believe as you will.

I didn't evade. I answered.

As you quoted me: Your reply was, "Their moral choices would not have been mine. (No) I don't fly planes into tall buildings in order to kill people. (No)

My answers to your questions (Do you honor their moral choices? If not, then why not?") were NO and I DO NOT KILL PEOPLE I DISAGREE WITH. The Bible says, "love one another."

Tell me what and how YOU would answer.

[jlisenbe]

The Bible says, "love one another."

So you are appealing to the authority of the Bible? And please don't reply with "Where? How?"

My answer? I do not honor their moral choice. Their moral views were wrong and I say that by appealing to the God of the Bible. I know of no other appeal that can be effective and that does not end up boiling down to a simple difference of opinions.

You cheated a bit in your reply. " (No) I don't fly planes". The "No" was not in your original reply. It was understood and I'm sure that was your point.

[talaniman]

So you are appealing to the authority of the Bible? And please don't reply with "Where? How?"

My answer? I do not honor their moral choice. Their moral views were wrong and I say that by appealing to the God of the Bible. I know of no other appeal that can be effective and that does not end up boiling down to a simple difference of opinions.

Is that your opinion, or your choice? What would the difference be?

[jlisenbe]

s that your opinion, or your choice? What would the difference be?

I'm not sure what you are asking.

[paraclete]

It becomes confusing when you produce the authority of the Bible without specifically using Scripture. I can say the Bible says and it may not be specifically true hoever it is difficult to refute Scripture

[tomder55]

The street fight over “racism” between Rep. Elijah Cummings of Baltimore and President Trump reminds us that all political traumas eventually fade from memory to become an abstraction. Last weekend, when Rep. Carolyn Maloney of New York proposed a Canyon of Heroes parade honoring 9/11 first responders, it struck me as grandstanding. Then the thought occurred: Why not? That awful day was 18 years ago, and it’s already drifting into the fog of history. Some people visit Civil War battlefields or World War I cemeteries in France and Belgium to revive a palpable sense of that incredible carnage. So one has to wonder: What is it with the constant claims and charges of racism these days? Is it to remind us of the real and violent racism that existed before Martin Luther King Jr. led the civil-rights movement in the 1960s?

Or would it be truer to say that 55 years after Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, racism is being pushed into the realm of abstraction, reduced mainly to use as a weapon of political rhetoric?
If one happened to be alive at the time, the reality of the urban riots in the 1960s sits forever in the mind’s eye as one of America’s most unforgettable traumas. Merely mention “the Watts riot” or “the Hough riots,” and there’s hardly a person living then who doesn’t know you’re talking about the burning, rage and destruction that engulfed African-American neighborhoods in Los Angeles, Cleveland, Newark, Detroit and many other cities. After King’s assassination in 1968, horrific inner-city riots broke out in New York, Washington, Detroit, Baltimore, Chicago, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Kansas City and Trenton, N.J. For much of the U.S. population born since then, those events have about as much immediacy as a World War II documentary.Still, political control of virtually all these cities has remained in the hands of the Democratic Party. Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia and St. Louis have had nothing but Democratic mayors since then.New York has had several Republican mayors, though the chances of another ever winning election are about zero. As elsewhere, the city’s politics is so noncompetitive that most of New York’s Democrats don’t even bother to vote. When Bill de Blasio was first elected in 2013, turnout was 26% of registered voters, a record low.That suits the keepers of America’s sterile status quo in its most rundown neighborhoods just fine. Urban Democrats are now in a destructive co-dependent relationship with public-sector unions. Inner-city residents have become an afterthought.Walking past a public-housing complex in lower Manhattan recently, I noticed the date on the cornerstone: 1963. That is about when these projects were erected all over the U.S. They, like so much urban infrastructure, are falling apart through neglect because city budgets are consumed by labor costs. Public schools in every city mentioned in this column are failing to educate black American children adequately because the teachers unions won’t permit reform.According to recent FBI data, the most violent cities in the U.S. include—still—St. Louis, Detroit, Baltimore, Milwaukee, Cleveland and Oakland, Calif. A 16-year-old gangbanger in Chicago today was born in 2002 or 2003, after 9/11. Stories like his, passing from innocence to ruin before reaching adulthood, have repeated themselves every 20 years in all these Democratic-controlled cities. If that’s not racism caused by political failure, the word has no meaning. Yet the press, or part of it, has been consumed the past week with Trump vs. Cummings and such irrelevant stories as “Cummings has long frustrated the president.”

During the Clinton presidency, a brief period of “moderate” reform surfaced on welfare, schools and, yes, crime, but progressives have repudiated all that, as the liberal traditionalist Joe Biden has learned.And so we return to seeking explanations for the profligate use of the word “racism” today. Here’s one: Liberals and the liberal media have internalized this embarrassing and disgraceful urban failure. They’ve moved past it. They’ve given up.After 55 years of wheel-spinning, it’s all getting abstracted into “racism.” The gentry liberals who drove up housing prices for the poor and middle class walk past the human and physical debris like 18th-century Parisian aristocrats holding perfumed handkerchiefs to their noses. In Queens, they sent Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Congress to keep them entertained on Instagram.Messrs. Cummings and Trump are footnotes in this unhappy saga. The important difference is that the Baltimore congressman no longer has much to add, but Mr. Trump is president. Mr. Trump brought up the subject of Baltimore. Now he should put it and these other cities on his campaign agenda. Let the left scream racism. Everyone else in American knows the reality is deeper than that.https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-tru...c9BrksP6MGYX7s

[paraclete]

You know Tom, I think you over think the problem. There will be many months of crap twitter from Trump as he seeks attention. He doesn't have any Repelican candidates to prove his supremacy over, so upsetting the Demonrats is all he can settle for

[tomder55]

that is not it . the Dems have run the inner city for more than half a century and for all their talk of caring, have done nothing at all to fix it .

[talaniman]

The dems may hold offices of the big cities Tom, but the money is still held and controled by a few. You know the capatalist system as well as anyone I know, and starving the money is to control the land and people. I would hope you would study up on GENTRIFICATION and learn how manipulating the value of neighborhoods down, makes it prime for development later.

https://www.businessinsider.com/what...ecovery-2019-7

All you need to kick start things is a financial crisis, remove the old and bring in the big money. What drives capitalism? Wealth accumulated by cheap labor. Just ask your local chamber of commerce. Certainly not people who can barely afford to invest in themselves let alone their community.

Banks don't allow that now do they?

[jlisenbe]

The dems may hold offices of the big cities Tom, but the money is still held and controled by a few. You know the capatalist system as well as anyone I know, and starving the money is to control the land and people.

It could never be admitted that it might be the fault of the democrat politicians. Giuliani came in as the mayor of New York City and cut the rates of violent crime and murder by much more than 50% in only eight years. No excuses about the evils of capitalism are needed when you have efficient leadership. The incessant appeal to the evils of capitalism get old. Try living in most of the rest of the world for a year. It'll look better then.

[talaniman]

No it won't because I have sick people like you ignoring the suppression, oppression, cruelty and outright murder of defenseless men women and children right here in MY country. You are sick because you are in the same boat as they are, but don't know it so easy to deny it and them too! Tell the dufus and his sycophants to get off their dead arses and do something about these domestic terrorists. If they had been brown or Muslim you would move heaven and earth to stomp on them by now.

If the CURRENT EVENTS don't sicken you then it's you who are sick.

[tomder55]

White supremist terrorism has to be confronted and treated like any other terrorism. Groups and individuals need to be identified and infiltrated before they commit acts of violence . Antifa needs to be treated the same way.

[talaniman]

We completely agree here Tom. They are reporting the Dayton shooter killed his sister and boyfriend so no telling how wild this will get.

[Wondergirl]

White supremist terrorism has to be confronted and treated like any other terrorism. Groups and individuals need to be identified and infiltrated before they commit acts of violence . Antifa needs to be treated the same way.

There are lots of lone rangers out there in InternetLand who have inhaled the white supremacy thinking. One popped up in a Facebook cat group the other day!

[jlisenbe]

No it won't because I have sick people like you ignoring the suppression, oppression, cruelty and outright murder of defenseless men women and children right here in MY country. You are sick because you are in the same boat as they are, but don't know it so easy to deny it and them too!

Yeah. I don't agree with you, so I must be sick. Makes sense! Still, I just think we ought to hold the people in charge responsible for decades of decay and failure. If that's being sick, then I plead guilty. Baltimore was is a state of decay during the Obama admin. Was Mr. Obama and his "sycophants" responsible for that???

Tell the dufus and his sycophants to get off their dead arses and do something about these domestic terrorists. If they had been brown or Muslim you would move heaven and earth to stomp on them by now.

The mass shooting in El Paso is a tragedy and we should do something, though I'm not quite sure what the "something" is that we should do. Still, in Baltimore alone the murder total for last year was the equal of FIFTEEN of the El Paso shootings. Maybe we should do something there. Maybe we should look at what Giuliani did in New York. Maybe we should have some concern for those poor people in Baltimore who have to live in such violent neighborhoods. And just maybe we should do more than grandstanding and calling other people "sick". Your name-calling gets old. Your blame game gets old. Why not try to come up with solutions other than the constant harping on capitalism? Seven of the nineteen high schools in Baltimore did not have a single student score proficient on state math tests. Think about that. Not a single student scored proficient. Maybe we should think about that. I'm sure you'll use your tired old excuse about "the Dufus and his sycophants", but he's not in charge in these failing large cities. You can't blame the police or the capitalists. You can't blame a lack of funding because they spend money like crazy. It's your democrat buddies who are in charge. Things won't change until liberals "man up" and admit to it.

[jlisenbe]

There are white supremacists. There are black supremacists. There are Hispanic supremacists. There are male and female supremacists. When did any of that become news?

[talaniman]

There are white supremacists. There are black supremacists. There are Hispanic supremacists. There are male and female supremacists. When did any of that become news?

When they become mass shooters.