I'll respond later; right now I must go and exploit technology that already exists and purchase food and beer. It's warm and humid outside. Were I a young hot het instead of an old cold homo, I'd go breed with a female to produce spring lambs for the purpose of producing more and better technology. There are many devices that do not work very well, wear out too soon, break too easily, are not smart enough (many of them are incorrigibly stupid), and use too many resources to remain plentiful and cheap.

So breed, you bastards, breed. Better technology tomorrow!

People should definitely spend less time on social media, whatever their ideological leaning. Have I ever met an "incel" in real life? I don't know. If I did, I'd refer them on for psychiatric assistance.

I don't like lists of words that are verboten.

It's good to know where words come from, but just because their source isn't kosher, doesn't mean they aren't handy terms. I've been a "social justice warrior" much longer than the phrase has been around. I like the term, both in its ameliorative and denigrating sense. I like "snowflake" too, and the type exists, left-right-and center. Pains in the ass, all of them. POMO is a favorite term too. Cuck? Cuckold has been around for a long time--Old French into Old English.

Today's campus 'marxism" is pretty much exsanguinated; poor Karl.

In 1964 the conservative Republican candidate for POTUS said in his nomination acceptance speech, "I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!" Dangerous Speech! some said. Too extreme.

I was just 17 that summer, and found the Goldwater rhetoric pretty arousing. I had been inoculated with the virus of John Birch Society anti-communism, which Goldwater echoed. I still think his quote is is good, even if it comes from a man whom the liberal democrats portrayed as a nuclear trigger. (Goldwater was actually fairly reasonable, especially later on.)

Are humans part of the biological continuum (nature)? If we are, then it would seem to be the case that we reproduce for the same reason that all other creatures reproduce: we are programmed to engage in behaviors that result in off-spring.

If you lab-raised a group of people from infancy and you carefully avoided teaching this group anything about sex and reproduction of any species--especially their own--would they desire to reproduce? And if, predictably, a male and female in this group had sex and the female became pregnant, would the resulting delivery of the baby be considered a miracle of birth or a nightmare? Left uninformed and unprepared for the delivery, I would think it would be closer to a nightmare than miracle.

What about oxytocin? It seems like oxytocin is more evidence that "nature" intervenes to make sure the baby isn't tossed aside for all the pain and inconvenience it just caused.

Perhaps we don't reproduce for any "reason" at all. Maybe we are naturally more a-natalists, rather than pro-natalists? (Granted, there is plenty of intense propaganda in favor of natalism.)

the child is born to produce and promote the growth of technology. — schopenhauer1

This is the least persuasive of reasons for reproduction that you have come up with. In our long history of mindless reproducing, very very few children have produced any growth in technology. For most of our history (as the species we have been for several hundred thousand years--and before that, millions of years) children duplicated the existing technology--knapping pieces of rock into tools, cooking birch bark to get a strong pitch adhesive, food preparation, etc. We know they duplicated technology (rather than innovating) because the styles of knapping rock change very slowly.

Reproduction is the essence of life: the first life forms (simple one celled animals) reproduced. Life has been doing that for billions of years--not because it is in favor of reproduction. Life has no choice in the matter. It is designed from the molecular level and up (maybe the atomic level and up? Sub atomically and up?) to reproduce.

every snowflake on Mars is unique — Marchesk

I hope we don't run into too many Martians who think they are novel snowflakes.

snow — Marchesk

Nice fluffy 6 sided crystals of H2O = snow. What do the crystals on the south pole of Mars look like? Cubes.

(Btw 'pissed' means 'drunk' not 'angry' in real language.) — Baden

We knew that already because half of Ireland lives in the US.

you get the U.S. — Baden

You Europeans (counting the Brits as Europeans as much as they hate that) are responsible for just about everything bad that happened in the US. Everything from Plymouth Rock onward. By the time the colonies became states and got their various acts together (around 1960) we were pretty much ruined by continental influences. Vietnam? We got sucked in by helping the failed French out. Iraq? The French and the British screwed that whole area up. Israel? Look to the UK, as usual. Child abusing priests? Italian and Irish Catholics.

Americans are pretty much innocent of everything.

And lest we forget, the Brits still haven't returned the statues they swiped off the Parthenon. Last time I looked they were still in the British Museum, along with the Rosetta Stone (France swiped from Egypt, England swiped from France). A Greek delegation visited the Queen to talk about getting the stonework back and she sicced her pack of killer corgis on them and they had to beat a hasty retreat, bleeding ankles and all.

Presumably that advice would have been the same had Sam stolen the ring. Would that advice have been the same had Sam stolen the ring a long time ago? — Jake

Stealing a ring is not the same as finding a ring.

But while were on the subject of theft, somebody should write a book on the ethics of theft, because clearly theft is frequently "Business conducted by other means."

We tend to look down our noses at petty thieves and honor major league thieves (like banks, corporations, etc.). Some theft is OK and some isn't. If one is starving, stealing food is OK. If one is homeless, stealing space (squatting) is OK. Some people believe that taking money away from the rich is a moral imperative, because the rich got it through some sort of swindle in the first place.

Does anybody actually buy office supplies? Isn't that what the supply room is for? There are ethical limits, however. One should not steal carpeting, lighting fixtures, plumbing, windows, doors... basic infrastructure. It's hard to get this stuff in the elevator and out the back door without some nosy person noticing.

Are we ethically bound to return all the stolen property we are in possession of? — Jake

If one has a lot of stolen property laying around, returning the goods to their rightful owner is probably not the first item on their to do list. Nor is it at the top of their list of things to worry about. Personally, I would be more worried about prosecution.

Then too it depends on from whom one stole the property. Stealing goods from a luxury retailer is one thing; stealing stuff from the local mafia boss is something else.

Would that advice have been the same had Sam stolen the ring a long time ago? — Jake

Eventually who stole what from whom becomes a moot point. Time makes ancient good uncouth and elevates many a crime to nobility. Many nations have been built on a foundation of organized theft, and once the theft becomes the narrative of Empire, westward expansion or manifest destiny... who cares? (aside from the losers...)

If we don't like universal relativism ("whatever any culture or any person believes to be right is right") then we have to find a way to locate a moral foundation for universally objective standards of right and wrong. This isn't a new problem, of course. It's rather ancient.

It seems to be the case that we have located foundational moral standards in religion -- and that location was carried out two to three thousand years ago. These foundational moral standards have held fairly well. That certainly doesn't mean that they have always been rigorously followed, of course.

Where did the religious foundations come from? God? Gods? No - they came from the inventors of the gods -- human beings. The invention of religion and the establishment of at least some minimum standards of good and bad behavior, was a major cultural achievement. Once civil institutions arose further elaboration and implementation of rules and regulations occurred. Hammurabi, would be an early example.

Once supranational entities were organized (the Roman Empire or the International Court of Justice are examples) some universal standards of behavior were extended across cultures. Of course, none of these efforts at establishing objective right and wrong standards at the local, regional, national, or supranational have been totally successful--we being the less-than-totally-evolved primates that we are.

Why is a religion so good at commanding people to behave a certain way — Posty McPostface

Religions may or may not have authority and power. If they have authority, it is because the authority is recognized by the people, then commands are effective; people will not only obey, they will affirm the rightness of their obedience.

If the religion lacks authority, but has power, people can be compelled to obey, whether they affirm the rightness of their obedience or not.

Sometimes religions have both authority and power, sometimes one and not the other, and sometimes neither. Where religions have neither authority and power, the religions is likely to be increasingly irrelevant and on the way to extinction (unless the religion can resurrect its authority).

The same situation applies to secular institutions too. Donald Trump has real power--no doubt about it. Presidents have power. Among many Americans Trump has both authority and power, and among others he has only power and no authority whatsoever. I grant Trump no authority, but I recognize he has power -- which is why I find him upsetting. If he was merely the village idiot, he wouldn't be a problem. Instead he is a village idiot with a shady past and nuclear weapons at his disposal. That's quite unsettling.

In many communities, the police have both authority (the people grant them the rightness to command them) and they also have power. Where there are communities who do not grant the police authority, police have to depend on the exercise of power -- usually brute force. If they have neither authority nor power (such as UN Peace Keeper forces), they are pretty much useless.

Freedom from, liberty to.

Tyranny is representation without consent. — Bliss

Could be. Or, "Tyranny is government without representation" as in "No taxation without representation".

When a person votes, he is giving one of two or more candidates permission to represent him (under your formulation). If the candidate to whom he did not give permission to represent him wins, is this voter then subject to tyranny?

To be represented is necessarily to be less free, because being represented by a person implies you act in accordance with that person's will, and that person's will is inevitably not always your own. If you are completely represented by others, then you have no freedom. — Bliss

It seems like if I am governed by people who share none of my concerns, but who force me to worry about their concerns, then I am subjected to tyranny. I guess my definition of tyranny requires more than a little coercion.

I believe we are governed by people who, by and large, do not represent us even if they were voted into office by us people, and whose interests are, in many cases, altogether opposed to mine/ouea. Still, I don't feel I am subjected to tyranny because there is not much coercion. I'm well aware that IF I were to step too far out of line, I might be subjected to very effective coercion.

I keep accidentally typing things that I feel are informative, when in reality they can easily be construed as snide or rude. (For example: assuming that there is a joke when there is not) — Lif3r

digital text communication has been problematic ever since e-mail came along, and continues. The thing that is different about e-mail, text messages, and anonymous boards such as this is speed and casualness. The psychology of writing on a screen is different than writing on paper.

When we depended on hand-written or typed messages on paper (in the ancient world of 40 years ago) we tended to exercise more reserve and we had time to proofread and reflect on what we had written before we put it into an envelope, addressed it, and dropped it in a mail box. The commitment to words and sentences written on paper is deeper than the commitment to text written on a screen.

I have found that my dry, sarcastic humor misfires more often on line than it does in person. People seem to read text on line differently than they 'read' or 'hear' communication in person. On line responses to text seems to be more literal, less subtle. So it is that a rather casual off-the-cuff comment can come across as a body slam.

Sociology, however, is bunk! — Pseudonym

Can we be clearer? "What" about sociology is "bunk"? Is it not a science? A sociologist could state a falsifiable hypothesis: "Rental agents discriminate against black people". The hypothesis can be tested by presenting potential renters to agents where the only significant difference is being a black person. This experiment has been done and it has been found that rental agents discriminate against black people -- when they are visually identified as black and when they are aurally identified as black (speech patterns tested in phone calls to rental agents).

What is not scientific about that sort of sociological experiment?

Much of sociology is descriptive or speculative. Many books, some of them in the category of sociology rather than history or psychology, have assessed the degree of acceptance by Germans of the National Socialist (Nazi) government between 1934 and 1945. The results vary by the methods of determining acceptance, approval, endorsement, etc. We Thought We Were Free by Milton Meyer conducted long interviews with 10 men from one medium sized German city immediately after the war (well, within a year or two). They represented the sort of vocational and class divisions one would have found in Germany during the first half of the 20th Century. Most of the men thought they were had been free, and were enthusiastic about the years during Nazi rule.

There is nothing "scientific" about Mayer's book, or most of the other books written about the Nazi Germany. The various books can be criticized for being poorly researched, being inaccurate, being very well documented, being thorough, and so on -- but they fit into the categories of history, or descriptive social studies.

History isn't a science either -- since we can't run experiments on the past (at least until we steal some really good time machines from an alien civilization). That doesn't mean "history is bunk" as Henry Ford thought.

Of course. You might be right; maybe black holes will turn out to be the lairs of dragons guarding their gold, but probably not. Not every theory has been succeeded by its opposite (except in nutrition where every recommendation is flipped a week later. Fat is good today, bad last week; sugar will kill you this week, just make you fat last week; 1 drink is healthy for you last week; this week, no alcohol whatsoever is safe.)

Once the anatomists in the late 18th century nailed down quite a bit of how the body worked, their findings have held true. The germ theory (Koch's Postulates) have held good for 150 years. On the other hand, the discovery of plate tectonics dumped a batch of theories that turned out to be false. But, I bet you a 6 pack of beer that plate tectonics is still valid at the end of this century.

What happens more often these days is that MORE information is found, showing previous theories to be incomplete. Less often are scientific theories revealed as just plain wrong, or not even wrong.

If all knowledge were ours, would we still be humans? Or would we have evolved, through knowledge into a new kind of being, not by divinity, but by our knowledge, augmenting ourselves into a self-controlled evolution? — Christoffer

All the knowledge that "is" has always been ours, hasn't it? Who else possessed knowledge? Even when we thought that the world was made of fire, water, earth, and air, and that we were the center of the cosmos, all that knowledge was all ours. Our knowledge is much greater now than it was 2500 years ago. It is greater than it was 25 years ago.

It seems like we have already evolved into a 'new kind of being'. We have been 'homo sapiens' for what... 2, 3, 400,000 years, but our evolution either took a turn, or maybe it just finally paid off, somewhere around 10,000 to 30,000 years ago. (It depends on what one uses as a sign of major advance -- cave paintings or agriculture or writing.) The last 300 years (Age of Enlightenment) is perhaps another turning point.

Essentially becoming a cosmological irony, in which we used science to prove that god doesn't exist and explain everything about our universe, but becoming such agents of the universe that we would by any standard measurements be considered gods ourselves. — Christoffer

Godhood is generally a true diagnostic test for first-class hubris. We have quite a ways to go before we will be all-knowing, everywhere present, and omnipotent.

My personal view -- and it is neither original nor mine alone -- is that we invented the gods. Our conception of gods has evolved along with us. We progressed from gods of trees and rocks to sky gods. I think its progress, anyway, moving from the concrete to the abstract. We need not be embarrassed by our cultural creations; the gods are no more embarrassing than Hobbits or Superman.

The First Cause is a problem, because "what came before what came before what came before... is perhaps infinitely recursive. Maybe at the end of an exceeding long chain of causations we will find a willful deity who got the ball rolling.

Quite so. Totally agree.

I don't mean to be negative, or to chastise. — Lif3r

I wasn't being serious. I was joking.

If I were to grade myself on my ethics in this situation, I would give myself a B-) — Sam Sam

Because you got quite a bit of assistance during the exam?

Here is your next more difficult moral challenge?

On the way back from reclaiming a ring that somebody found in a train set at a yard sale, I ran over the neighbor's dog. It was a quick but messy kill. I threw the dog body into a ravine (the usual and customary method of disposing of dead bodies). Now I am perplexed.

A. Should I pretend it never happened?
B. Should I inform my neighbor I ran over her yappy dog.
C. Should I offer to compensate my neighbor for the loss of this dearly loved but exquisitely annoying dog?
D. Should I retrieve the corpse and leave it on her front step so that she would at least be able to give it a dog funeral.
E. Should I run over the neighbor so that she can not annoy me further by getting another, larger, louder, yappier dog?

For the sake of simplicity, I have decided to ignore reality and just forget about it. If she ever mentions it, I'll just say, "Oh, what dog was that? I didn't know you had a dog."

I think the only thing we didn't mention here is to ask the person to describe the ring — Lif3r

It was a round yellowish ring with a glittery thing on it. It must be mine.

Guess not then. — Posty McPostface

Probably not. I'd find it interesting, but I'm not all that interested in 'academic philosophy' anyway.

Why ask?

You already know what you ought do — creativesoul

Ethics would be simple indeed if we we able to mechanically follow ethical rules. We are not able. On the one hand we have ethical rules which are reasonably clear and on the other hand we have desires (emotions) which are often at least as strong as our commitment to ethical behavior.

Probably most people (just guessing) are able to keep their urges/wishes/desires under control--but not always. When the "not always" moment arrives we breach the barriers.

Having breached the barriers that keep us ethical, the next question is "how much do we regret it". If we don't regret it much or at all, we're more likely to behave improperly in the future. If we behave that way long enough, our practical use of "proper" and "improper" will have changed.

Everybody knows it's more fun to play with other people's junk! — VagabondSpectre

In ever so many ways...

People go to yard sales to replace the junk they sold at their own yard sales.

Of course - competition and collaboration are productive when people behave fairly. If they don't, then nothing will help. People have to be honest for business to get done properly.

Yes 2 minds are better than one. Unless it's me, then the other mind is redundant. (joke)

Science, for example, has been the beneficiary of simultaneous competition between research groups and cooperation within those groups. There is a difference between friendly competition (we are both on the same side) and hostile competition (who will be killed first?)

Competition stifles innovation. Collaboration strengthens contemplation. — Lif3r

You will need to explain how competition stifles innovation. My theory is that when a research group knows that others are seeking the same goal, they work harder so that they can claim the prize of success first. Collaboration is just as critical as competition.

I'm not sure that it follows logically that collaboration strengthens contemplation. The two terms seem to belong to different spheres. (In a monastery, collaboration might very well strengthen contemplation, but that would be a rather out-of-the-way example.)

I do believe in a real connection to the divine, that is severed through sin, and can be regained through confession, and change. To me, this is by far the highest good, and in itself sustaining of a person through all measure of trials. Nothing is comparable to the goodness of it, and nothing is comparable to the pain of its absence. — All sight

From the POV of the believer, this is entirely consistent and valid. When one falls away from belief, there is nothing quite like faith to take its place.

But what we can do individually has no counterpart for collective action, unless the individuals in the collectivity are extremely well aligned. In most cases (real life) people belong to collectivities provisionally and without strict alignment.

It is easy to win the battle of survival of the fittest and just go round and kill your competition. The reason we don't all just fight to the death is because cooperation is better for ourselves. — Andrew4Handel

Obviously it isn't so easy to win the battle of survival of the fittest. The competition, after all, is as capable of coming round to kill their competition (i.e., us) as we are them. We cooperate because we are less likely to be stabbed in the back, just when we are busy thinking about something else.

Cooperation is better, and competition needs to be kept to the useful minimum (which still leaves room for sorting out the best without killing off the rest).

Ayn Rand came up last night on the Philosophy Now radio program I hear late on Sunday night ("The radio show that questions everything -- except your intelligence"). The speaker mentioned that Rand's "philosophy" is best explored in the economics of economists like Milton Friedman, one of Rand's acolytes.

People love to hate Ms. Rand, poor thing.

she wasn't a bad stylist. She could actually write decent sounding sentences — Baden

Right. Well, so can I. So why am I not more famous? My lack of fame, compared to Miss Rand's, leaves me peckish; even peevish.

I think you will find that quite a few "rhetoric" classes are offered, but they no longer appear under the heading of "rhetoric". Too too old fashioned. The term now is "writing" or (my term) communication production. There is a course at the U of M writing program in "visual rhetoric" for instance. This isn't entirely new -- "visual literacy" has been a thing since the early 1970s... some 50 years, now.

It's not always delusional to think that. But in the specific case of Hitler (and those like him) it seems to be, doesn't it? — Baden

So, how far should one go with Jesus' instruction in Matthew?

43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you — Jesus

Is it a "stumbling block" or sound and moral advice?

Some countries which have good reputations (Ireland and Sweden, for example) and some which didn't at the time (fascist Spain, for instance) were "neutral" during WWII. They either helped Germany (Sweden traded high grade ore and steel products with Germany) or they did nothing.

A world war might have been avoidable and Hitler might have been throttled had we (the future allied states) declared war on Germany in 1938 at the time of Hitler's annexations of the Sudetenland and Austria, and at the very latest, the invasion of Poland in September of 1939. Of course, that didn't happen and one can list compelling reasons why it didn't. The US didn't declare war until December of 41, by which time Europe was pretty much in Hitler's hands, and more besides.

Similarly, Japan should have been resisted earlier. Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931. How much resistance did Japan meet then?

I am not sure that Jesus' admonition is workable for individuals, outside of an impending Kingdom of God. It isn't workable for nations. When it comes to foreign relations, nations don't have morals, and they don't have friends or enemies. They have "interests". Recognizing the nation's interests early enough is a large part of success. What, exactly, a nation's interests really are at any given moment isn't always obvious.

A nation's domestic interests are not always obvious either. There is so much churn, so much sturm and drang sometimes that it is difficult to separate out groups, mobs, and crowds, never mind deciding about individuals.

The Tin Man might not have had a heart, but he was not "heartless".

I once tried to keep a purse (wallet, keys, phone, etc.) I found on campus. It had $110 bucks in it. I wanted to keep the money, but I felt too guilty about converting a find into a theft. Finally I turned it in (it took a week to get to that point).

On the one hand, I felt that I did the right thing. On the other hand, I really wanted the money. I felt... inadequate for not having enough nerve to just ditch the purse and keep the money. That was 18 years ago. I am still stewing over the decision.

Delaying a week probably cost the woman at least $100 in screwing around getting keys replaced, new IDs, credit cards, license, worrying about what somebody was doing with her stuff (performing black magic in her purse, laying a curse on her ...)

Not true. It did not continue "unabated". Here are the numbers for the last years of the war. I — Baden

ALERT ALERT
major memory error

So... the Moratorium Committee organized the biggest Washington, D.C. demonstration for November 15, 1969 -- that's the one I was thinking of. (Hey, this was 50 years ago... I can't remember everything.)

Looking back at these figures, and at the time (when anti-war sentiment was peak) it didn't seem like it ended so soon. But... we were out of there in 1973.

1968-----536100
1969-----475200
1970-----334600

Social change has happened -- you've seen it, I've seen it. But I don't feel like I can claim with any certainty what it was, exactly, that led to it.

Activists are one force in any change. Take school integration: There was some agitation for integration prior to the 1954 SCOTUS decision, Brown Vs. the Board of Education which ruled that separate was not equal, and segregation was unconstitutional. By the time integration was widespread, far more than activists were involved: the US Department of Justice; Federal Marshals; the National Guard; local police; an army of lawyers, school boards, city councils, state governments, mass media, political parties, etc -- all this on both sides of the issue.

Somewhere along the line, school integration reached regional peaks, and then declined. Many schools are now effectively re-segregated.

The process of de-segregating and then re-segregating covers more than 60 years. There have been so many players involved, it is difficult to identify WHO or WHAT was most instrumental. At least two generations of activists -- pro integration and anti integration -- have been involved. Suburban land developers, building mass housing after WWII, were one of the major players. Mortgage lenders, operating on 1935 guidelines, were a second major group of players. Both would seem far removed from education policy. Despite an immense amount of litigation, community action, and so on -- many schools remain as segregated as schools ever were.

And not least -- segregation or integration is maintained by the individual decisions of millions of parents making family decisions about education.

it assumes that caring about social justice, whether through talking about it and the ways in which to secure it, and/or securing it through direct action, is somehow meaningless... — Maw

If anything makes social justice advocacy and action "meaningless" it is the belief that "the establishment" can be easily toppled, like Joshua marching around Jericho making noise until the walls come tumbling down.

The Establishment has walls that do not crumble from trumpet blasts. The foundations of the very thick, highly reinforced concrete walls are very deep -- right on bed rock. The gates of the establishment are closed to noise makers, social justice activists, do gooders, preachers, the perfectly politically correct (or not) and all sorts of other riff raff. Admission is by invitation only.

"Social Justice Activism will be tolerated in so far as it doesn't interfere with the flow of commerce. You are free in so far as you obey. We consider "irrelevant" what social justice advocates do -- so keep on doing it. Our motto is: "We don't care; we don't have to."

Human beings are (rational) animals — gurugeorge

No one ever went broke under-estimating the average rationality of human beings.

The breakdown of the Black family and the atomization of the Black middle class in the 1960s, and the connection of that breakdown to crime is well documented — gurugeorge

It is well documented, true enough, and it isn't accidental. Black people were generally the recipients of very unfair treatment in housing policy. FHA rules explicitly or practically excluded blacks from its inception in 1935 through at least 1985. By the time this institutional disability was eliminated, housing prices had risen far too high for blacks to be able to buy houses. They were cut out of the major wealth generating device of middle income Americans. The black family has also been subjected to welfare policies which undermined the stability of families. The black population that migrated en masse out of the south in the 20th century were not able to establish an economic base for themselves before the depression, automation, and globalization began to eliminate the kind of jobs that they were generally hired to do.

Like most people of all races, blacks have authored some of their own problems. They have not collectively prioritized education; they have not practiced thrift as effectively as they could (cutting themselves off from internally generated funds); et cetera.

Discourse started getting more difficult, let's see... was it after the Hitler-Stalin Pact when the Communist Party USA identified the sin of "premature anti-fascism"? Or was it in the late 40s and 50s when Joseph McCarthy, Republican Senator from Wisconsin, began a witch hunt for "are you now or have you ever been" communists and homosexuals in the U.S. Government? Or was it during the war on Vietnamese communists that "we had to destroy a village in order to save it"? Or was it when "socialist" became a term of opprobrium equivalent to 'pedophile'. 'subversive' and 'communist'? In the 1980s some socialists were wondering whether they should just stop using the term. Alas... there wasn't any other term as serviceable as "socialist".

And so on and so forth down to the present. The "Overton Window" - the range of ideas tolerated in public discourse - changes over time, certainly.

Race and/or ethnicity, sex and/or gender, any number of identities, and feminism don't seem to have been shut out of the Overton Window. (Like, "Would the love that dare not speak its name please shut up for a while!") Some operatives in the swamp of the right wing may ridicule social justice warrior operatives in the left wing swamp on the other side of the road. If "SJW" is the worst epithet right wingers can come up with... stop worrying.

I don't find SJW as dismissive a handle as you two seem to find it. It seems like a good fit, to me. SJW is no more offensive than "weekend warrior". I've been a "social justice warrior" a number of times. Also a "do gooder". SJW is less derisive than "do gooder". It's better than "guilty white liberal"; it beats "dead white males" -- a category to which I'm close enough to be touchy about.

The efforts of the majority of people committed to the fight for social justice strike me as very similar to the the efforts of anti-war peace activists during Vietnam--efforts that I thought very highly of at the time. We marched to Boston Commons (or wherever the location was) and chanted slogans and sang "we shall over come" and listened to impassioned speeches. Then we went home.

There was an enormous amount of talk among small groups, tons of planning, lots of leaflets and buttons were printed, arguments had with family and friends, and so on. A million people showed up one fall day in Washington, D.C. -- 1 out of every 200 Americans overflowed the mall for that biggest peace demonstration.

And you know what the concrete outcome of all this was? PFFT. Zilch. Zero. Nada. The war lasted another 5 years, unabated. It is as safe to criticize SJWs now as it was to criticize hippie faggot peaceniks in 1970, because there was very little of importance that hinged on their efforts.

I disparage social justice advocates now no more than I disparage peace efforts 50 years ago. But let's be clear: Neither peace advocates nor social justice advocates ever got anywhere close to getting their hands on the levers of social and economic policy. Those levers are never left unattended or unguarded and they are well protected behind locked thick-steel doors.

The benefits of social justice advocacy and peace activism flow primarily to the activists, to the benefactors--not to the beneficiaries. Why? Because the act of protesting is good for the protestor. Literally. It's a healthy exercise in every sense of the word. It just happens to be totally ineffective as a method of getting at those policy levers.

I dislike a lot of what I hear from over-the-air media, on-line media, blogs, etc. I've never read a 4chan page, and I haven't come out for confederate statue fan meets. On the other hand, I haven't come out for antifascist demonstrations, feminist demonstrations, and so forth. My demo days have been over for quite some time. Most of what I hear/see is a somewhat incoherent cacophony from all sides.

Take the current problem of Venezuelans fleeing to Brazil, Ecuador, Peru, and Columbia. On the one hand, of course they are fleeing -- life in Venezuela has become economically untenable for millions. On the other hand, the neighboring states are not rolling in gold. Let an aid agency exec. who spoke this morning stand in for the SJW viewpoint. "People have a right to go wherever they want to live!" he said. "The response in neighboring states is xenophobia."

No, it isn't "xenophobia". It's competition for scare resources. The theory that people should be able to move to and live wherever they wish sounds good in theory, but it entirely dismisses the people in the destination cities. Their right to live where they wish also requires a stable economy and decent pay, and it isn't xenophobia for them to fear the consequences of 500,000 or a million economic refugees suddenly taking up residence.

The argument for refugee rights is incoherent when it is one sided -- and quite often SJW talk is very one-sided. Pay equity for women isn't a simple issue. Claiming that all women are victimized by wage discrimination is sometimes true, but is often not. Men who do not adhere to the desired corporate commitment of time and talent (long and late hours, extremely competitive environments, continuous employment over decades, etc.) are also penalized, just as women are who do not conform to the desired pattern.

I'm well informed about how black people have been and are now discriminated against in a multitude of ways. Still, I don't buy everything that black activists are doing. some of the most critical black problems can only be addressed by the black community. Gun violence, for instance. It's a lifestyle issue that the black community has to resolve. Nobody can do it for them. Stopping traffic on freeways accomplishes nothing useful beyond publicity (and as every school girl knows, there's no such thing as bad publicity). Likewise, the failure of blacks to buy into property isn't entirely the fault of banks. Even illegal immigrants manage to buy houses on their low wages. How do they do it? They scrimp and save, live at the lowest standard of living tolerable for a time, and work hard at whatever work they can get. This method works -- it just means that everyone has to forego most spending until the family has enough saved to make a down payment. Poor Americans, white or black, generally don't see their way clear to making these kind of temporary sacrifices.

I expect the shock jocks on the radio to be one-sided and unsubtle. People working for social justice know more, can be, and should be more nuanced in their thinking and strategy.

Good job as Devil's Advocate. BTW, the Devil's Advocate is a real role in sainthood proceedings in the Catholic Church.

First, Christianity is not exclusively about ideology — Jake

I didn't say that Christianity was about ideology. Some people think it is, though. My "operating system" is Christian theology, basically, even though I disavow belief in the Creed. I might wish that I had grown up among liberal Manhattan atheists, but that just wasn't the case.