Controversy Meme, stolen fron the flist

[preussisch_blau]

Apparently this is a Q&A meme of controversial topics. Whee! I might flock this so I don't get any discussion. I'm sick of discussion. It's very annoying when all the discussion I get is, for the most part "You're so wrong your wrong is wrong and let me tell you why" or "One sentence that explains nothing".

Anyhow. Meme.

1./ Do you have the guts to answer these questions and re-post as The Controversial Survey?
...This has got to be the STUPIDEST question ever. Would I have posted this if I didn't? </snark>

2./ Would you do meth if it was legal?
No.

3./ Abortion: for or against it?
...If you're reading this, and have been reading my journal regularly, and do not know the answer to this question... Just go back and look at some of the discussion posts, among other things. I'll repeat it here for the lazy. Against, against, a thousand times against. Murder is murder, no matter what you call it. You don't want a kid, use some fucking birth control. You can't have a kid or it'll kill you? Well, fine, have the abortion, then get thee the Pill or something so you're protected in case of rape.

4./ Do you think the world would fail with a female president?
The entire world? No. The U.S.A.? Well, it hasn't been doing so hot with 43 (soon to be 44) terms of male presidents, so a female one might be a welcome change. Except I highly doubt a president alone could bring about the fall of the nation. I mean, there's that system of checks and balances for a reason. Oh, wait, I take that back. If Obama wins, he could theoretically bring about the fall of the nation because checks and balances don't work when you've got a Democrat president and an unprecedented, unbeatable majority in the Congress from the same party.

5./ Do you believe in the death penalty?
Murder is murder. So no. I don't believe in the death penalty.

6./ Do you wish marijuana would be legalized already?
I really don't care.

7./ Are you for or against premarital sex?
Is this a serious legal issue? No. Why is this here? For the record, I'm against premarital sex, at least for myself. There's no need to test drive someone for how good they are in bed. In fact, if that's the only thing that would keep you from marrying an otherwise wonderful person, I'm afraid I have no respect for you.

8./ Do you believe in God?
Yes. I also believe in the reality of science, evolution, the existence of the dinosaurs, the world being millions of years old, and quantum physics. Now, anyone here care to call me stupid and brainwashed?

9./ Do you think same sex marriage should be legalized?
I don't think marriage should be a government institution, given that, at least in the U.S.A., the government idea of marriage is too heavily influenced by the Judeo-Christian institution. Separate church and state and leave marriage as the religious institution and come up with something else for the legal one. Oh, and having a church ceremony doesn't automatically entitle you to the legal benefits. You have to have the legal one too, otherwise it doesn't count in the eyes of the law.

10./ Do you think it's wrong that so many Hispanics are illegally moving to the U.S.A.?
Yes. Just because illegal immigration happened in the past, and just because European settlers weren't invited over and given visas and committed horrible acts agains the native people, doesn't change the fact that these people are breaking the law, draining off of tax benefits designed for legal citizens, and killing legal citizens in car accidents and such because they can't get a license and don't follow American traffic laws. Does it suck that it's hard to get here legally? Yeah. Still, I don't want Americans who can't be bothered to go through the process and become actual Americans, but instead sneak in and cling to the culture of their former home and cry "racist" whenever someone expects them to be loyal to the country as a whole and not just their race. This country has no room for hyphenated Americans. Either be an American or don't if you plan on living here. I sure as Hell wouldn't move to Mexico, refuse to learn Mexican Spanish, and demand to be called an American-Mexican. In fact, Americans who go to other countries legally and refuse to learn the local language and culture are considered horrible. Yet it's okay for people to enter America illegally and never learn a spot of American English or any of our culture, and if we say something about it, we're racist! Fuck. That. Shit.

11./ A twelve year old girl has a baby, should she keep it?
Already mentioned my feelings on abortion, so let's just say it was decided that she ought to carry the child to term (by the way, I think this is something that should be left to the discretion of qualified medical professionals and the parents of the girl involved). She should not have to raise the child, as she's still a child herself. The baby should either be raised by the girl's parents or given up for adoption.

13./ Should the war in Iraq be called off?
At this point, when we're very close to being able to sucessfully withdraw and leave behind a stable government? No. We shouldn't just bring everyone home. We need to stay and finish what we began. Right now, in the Anbar province, the Marines have almost finished withdrawing from Fallujah out to their desert base, and are considering leaving the province entirely. Violence is at an all time low since the start of the war. We're almost done, no need to call it off now.

14./ Assisted suicide is illegal: do you agree?
Yes, it should stay illegal. In my college medical ethics class, we learned about cases where countries that had legal assisted suicide had doctors who would, to help empty hospital beds, assist patients who couldn't really decide for themselves to die. I don't like the potential for abuse.

15./ Do you believe in spanking your children?
Yes, I do. It's about the only thing that kept me in line.

16./ Would you burn an American flag for a million dollars?
No, no I wouldn't, and I'd punch anyone in the face who is American and would. Get the fuck out of this country and renounce your citizenship if you hate it that much. I wouldn't burn ANY nation's flag, but that's because I have enough brains to know that a nation's flag is the symbol of that nation and is therefore worthy of respect; the same respect I'd accord to an ambassador or citizen of that nation.

17./ Who do you think would make a better president? McCain or Obama?
Of the two? McCain. If I had my way? Senator Tom Carper.

18. Are you afraid others will judge you from reading some of your answers?
You mean they don't already? Bring it on. *cracks knuckles* I may not believe in legalised murder, but I do believe in ass-kicking.

Comments

[alouette-sparra.livejournal.com]

I don't particularly want an echo chamber. That's just boring. Even if they can't do reasonable intelligent debate, I'd appreciate a bit more than just a sentence or two. I'd appreciate a fucking response when I take the time to dig up some information. I mean, it's just infuriating when someone totally backs away from a good discussion in the face of one set of facts. How can you claim to support something if you're not willing to actually defend that belief?

The really annoying part is, I know my flist is fairly intelligent and very opinionated. I like my friends that way. I WANT to hear THEIR opinions, yours included, because I know you lot can actually form a decent argument and string a sentence together without using an ampersand every time you mean the word and. Yet, you, mon ami, are the only person on my flist who responds with anything resembling regularity. The people who have annoyed me so? One, I vaguely recall as being in the same fandom as me once upon a time. The other? I have no bloody clue how they got to my journal. I suppose if I used that silly Six Degrees of Separation LJ code that someone made, I'd be able to find out, but I don't particularly WANT to.

I'm mostly ticked off because, in all honesty? I can't really go anywhere on LJ other than a select portion of my own flist without being assaulted by rampant woolly liberalism. Hell, make that the INTERNET. I can't turn on the telly and reasonably expect to not have to listen to some Obama ad that's mudslinging McCain (and Obama's supposedly above that!) or look at any news source and not see/read about/listen to some reporter practically orgasming over Obama.

I can't go to a comm that has utterly no connection to politics and not hear snarky comments about McCain or Palin. I can't watch a video on YouTube that even mildly favours the Republican ticket without a bunch of assholes just flaming the place up. I can't express my political views in any form without getting flamed. Hell, I once got a flame over an icon I didn't even use!

So, I expect to be able to express my views in my own journal without people I don't even know showing up without even telling me how they got to my journal in the first place. I expect to be able to say something in my own journal without basically being told I'm stupid and/or clueless. I honestly don't mind dissenting opinions. I wouldn't have left my entries public if I minded people I didn't know showing up. Except, I guess I expect too much of people to introduce themselves before spouting off an opinion that, quite honestly, sounds like it was pulled straight from the Daily Kos or the website of any of the big liberal groups.

If that's their honest to God opinion, then fine. It just... they show little of the finesse that comes from research and logical thinking. They just spout off whatever the latest line is. Which, you know, if I were looking for the latest line, I could just look at a newspaper.

Also, quit it with that polite chickenshit. If you disagree, just say so and say why. If m_buggie were able to get online, I'm sure she'd be able to say quite authoritatively that, while we certainly don't agree on everything, we have yet to resort to mudslinging and insults. It's the product of intelligent discussion.

To tell the truth, I don't mind the non-reactions. I could even get used to the vocal, broken record disagreement (seriously, do people even look to see if what they're commenting about has already been brought up in a different entry?!). I just wish that the people who I KNOW agree with me would comment too. >:| It's pretty annoying when you've been told by someone that they agree with you when you're talking to them privately, yet the moment there's a chance for them to support you publicly they just IM you with some pithy agreement. If you REALLY agree with me, say something to the entry, for fuck's sake.

[skew-whiff.livejournal.com]

Ah, grass is greener - I hear the same 'the whole world is against me' spiel from liberal Americans just as much. There must be some places you can go. Conservative-leaning LJ comms? Blogs? Forums? They're out there.
I presume you must have conservative friends on your f-list, though, but they don't seem to have turned up. That's a pity. It does give one the impression that it's you versus everybody you know. Including, as you said, some people I've never seen before. Perhaps you need to prune your f-list a little, or block some folks who've friended you.

*

As for commentary on what you said, well.

The things I agree with:
- Yeah, I wouldn't do meth either.
- With you on the death penalty thing. Seems hypocritical to punish killing with killing.
- #8 made me grin. I'm not religious, but my family are, and they're also pretty fond of science. I absolutely detest this idea that religion and science are opposed. They're really not.
- With you on the marriage thing, too. It would save a lot of fuss and make some things more equal if they separated the religious and civil aspects. We have civil partnerships for same-sex couples in the UK; I want that to be extended to opposite-sex couples too.
- #13, to my surprise. You can't just run away without tidying up after yourself, and anyway, they are planning to pull out now. Sure, it was a bad idea in the first place in my opinion, but you've got to finish what you started.

Some disagreements, in brief:
- You believe a foetus is a separate human life. I don't. And that, I believe, is pretty much an intractable difference. There's not much middle ground there.
- #7 - I don't see what the big deal is about waiting until marriage. I don't see how a ceremony turns something wrong into something right. But hey, if you want to, no problem. It's a matter of personal choice.
- 'This country has no room for hyphenated Americans?' Really? It's a very big country, and well, I know you address that point already, but I do feel that a country built on immigration shouldn't do an about-face and close its gates to the desperate and needy. What about your tired, your sick, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free? My view on immigration has often been that if you are in such a dire state you will break the damn law to get somewhere else, you're desperate enough to deserve to be allowed to live there.
- I'm pretty damn patriotic, and I'd happily burn a British flag for five pounds, let alone a million. Flags undoubtedly carry symbolic importance and all that, but they're just bits of fabric. I could never understand how you could be too strongly offended by the destruction of a symbol alone. Perhaps that's a cultural thing. We don't make as big a deal of the flag here.

So um, yeah. I'm simplifying a lot here, but that's pretty much my thoughts in a nutshell.

[alouette-sparra.livejournal.com]

The problem is that right now, all the conservative comms and blogs seem to be talking about is the latest crap from the mainstream media and things Obama supporters do against McCain supporters that rarely, if ever, get picked up for national news, when a man yelling "Kill him" about William Ayers at a Palin rally suddenly is all across the nation, being spun as a huge crowd screaming death threats about Obama. I really am quite sick of the latest trash from the liberals, and any liberal who thinks it's them against the conservatives ought to take a look at the internet and realise that, here at least, the conservatives are either a minority or a VERY silent majority for fear of being called 'bots' and 'racists' and 'inhuman'.

I know I have conservative friends. I really wish they'd show up. --;;;; Even if it's just to say, "I agree." Sometimes an "I agree" can go a long way.

To your disagreements, in brief:
-I have my reasons, mostly due to the scientific definition of life, but I doubt any amount of debate would get either of us to concede the point.
-Well, I don't care what other people do, honestly, so long as they respect my boundaries. My main issue is that, from other answers I've seen to this question, some people only really care about sexual compatibility, and I just can't see not marrying/partnering with an otherwise wonderful human being because they aren't quite as good in the sack as you'd prefer. That and, at least with younger teenagers, sex can be seen as the be all and end all of a relationship. But... Just don't expect it of me, and I don't care WHAT you do.
-It wouldn't bother me so much if they, despite moving here illegally, developed loyalty to the nation and obeyed all the laws, but I live in an area with a lot of Hispanic immigrants, legal and illegal, and that just doesn't happen. Whatever happened to immigrants like my great-grandmother, who refused to teach her grandchildren Italian because they were Americans? Of course, I may just be bitter because I spent this past summer trying to get a job, and every place I applied to ended up hiring people who couldn't even understand English. *grumble*
-I think it's more to do with flag protocol and the circumstances under which flags have been burned in the past. I mean, if you were to pay me a million to do a flag burning ceremony (the only proper way to dispose of an old, worn flag), then I'd do it. But if you just wanted me to burn a flag for the shock value... The first non-ceremonial flag burnings that I ever heard of were from my parents talking about Viet-Nam War protestors who had communist sympathies. The ones mentioned on the news are done by anti-American protestors. I don't want to do something like that, and I have a hard time believing anyone who lives here could do such a thing, just because of what I assosciate it with.