Racist, funny or who cares?Follow

So, you agree that although the two ages are arbitrary, one has more reason then the other. So that means your argument isn't that it's simply arbitrary which you were eluding to earlier. Your argument is that you don't see a difference between North and South Korea sharing a name vs the U.S exclusively using a name that also references to dozens of other countries.

Is that right?

I didn't agree to that. I said that five years old was not arbitrary.

You're struggling very hard to avoid having to enumerate the legitimate reasons why your distinction isn't completely arbitrary.

I'm staying on point and getting to your concern when I get to it as I asked you this first. Funny how you all often accuse me of "bouncing around on points", yet when you do it, it's ok.

How is 5 not arbitrary and 18 is? If 17 is just as arbitrary as 18, then what's the difference between 17 and 16, 16 and 15 so forth and so on? Where does it stop? You keep pretending that there was this national vote on the legal age when in fact it wasn't.

How is it not arbitrary when other countries don't have drinking ages and/or enforce drinking laws?

If the drinking age weren't "arbitrary", then every country would have the same drinking age limit. Unless you believe everyone else is just doing it wrong.

We're talking country names.

I guess you had no real reasons. You only had to say so.

I assumed that's what you meant when you started talking about morals, values, and beliefs. Because laws (except idiotic outdated laws that really should be changed if we value freedom) have nothing to do with those things.



Oh, you meant LAWS. Well, no problem! We have those. Issue solved!!



Yeah, we have that too, numbnuts. Shador over there has the freedom to think that interracial marriage is genocide. It may make him look like a moron, but he can believe it. Society doesn't "accept" that, but no one is telling him he can't do it. Joe Bob has the right to think that black Americans should still be slaves. So long as he doesn't act on that belief, he's good. The asshole who burned the Koran has the right to burn the Koran. I have the right to burn the Bible or the flag. Society as a whole will probably want to stone me, but I can do it. I have the right to think that poligamy and incest are fine so long as everyone participating are consenting adults. But society doesn't accept that notion.

You can't start ******** because we change laws, then say, "Oh, the US won't accept that" and pretend you meant society as a whole. You're conflating two different arguments, and you're wrong on both counts.

Give it up, bud.

Edited, Apr 5th 2011 9:55am by Belkira

Because if they called themselves New Portugal, they wouldn't be allowed to call themselves Portuguese.

For the exception for safety, they just about all do. Even then, you can always tie in "safety" to any law based on morals, values and beliefs. I'm actually shocked that you believe otherwise.



smh..

You know, you don't always have to argue against me for the sake of arguing. My point wasn't the existence of laws, but the last sentence in that quote.



You're being more one-sided than Fox News during an RNC.

Social acceptance is not tied with laws. Just because you have the freedom to do certain things, doesn't mean that people wont look down upon you. What has happened in our society is that we are being pressured to accept certain things and feel certain ways towards whatever is "hot" and if you don't, you're a bigot, racist, sexist, homophobe, heterophobe,etc.

Let's take the burning of the Koran. Do you think other religions would get the same type of treatment? No. Muslims right now is a touchy-subject and we're more concerned on not "offending" them than any other group. The reality is, that guy in Florida shouldn't have even gotten any air time.

Compare that to the building of the Mosque near ground zero. When U.S. citizens complained about the image that would portray, people chastised that thought of being ignorant. YET, when Joe Bubba Smith wants to burn the Koran, then it's "Oh no! Don't do that, it's a negative image". Do you see where I'm going with this?

Protesting against Islamic mosque = Ignorant; Don't do that
Burning Islamic holy book = Ignorant; Don't do that

All over the damn map, from the looks of it.

Still no reasons on the whole country-name thing, huh?

It's incredibly simple: If you think there's legitimate reasons why a nation using the name of a multi-nation region is okay or even a continent with several nations is okay, but it's not okay at a certain point, explain exactly why that is.

If you can't explain it, the logical conclusion is that there is no reason (even in your own mind) and you're only making the distinction to serve your own argument and nothing more.

Edited, Apr 5th 2011 11:39am by Jophiel

That's all about the semantics of "correct", right? I mean, "speaking American" is not correct based on the formal law of the language. On the other hand, it is correct in the sense that it represents its intended meaning (i.e: people would know what you mean when you tell them that you "Speak American".

Joph's clearly arguing the former, which isn't really something that you can disagree with, as best as I can tell.

Yup. You can get away with saying "She speaks Chinese" and have the listener casually understand that someone is speaking a language common to China but anyone would be correct in saying "You mean 'she speaks Mandarin'" (or Cantonese).

People understood what's meant by "He speaks American" but it's still sloppy and improper.

Why not dig down even deeper? Belkira speaks Tennesseean and Joph speaks Illinoisese. I mean, your basis for breaking English down to American is that its it's own dialect, so why not break it down even further?