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All logical arguments are arguments over definitions. If we say, Thy shalt not kill, it sounds pretty straight forward, but "kill" is a very broad term. The command doesn't work very well in practice. This requires subcategories of killing. Some killings are justified, some are not. Some are...

I put this in the same file along with Nazi plans to bomb New York in WW2. Every culture or society will have elements that are divorced from reality and it always makes good reading. Anyone with plans to revive the Atlantic slave trade would face the British Empire and the Royal Navy, where...

That was for the importation of slaves from Africa(or anywhere else). From that point forward, the slave population increase was only through the birth of enslaved people inside the borders of the United States. The slave trade thrived as this natural limit on slave inventory drove prices...

Slavery would not exist today for the simple fact it was uneconomical. Just as there is no such thing as a free lunch, there's no such thing as free labor. To compound this problem, the slaver's incentive is to spend as little as possible on slave maintenance, while the slave's incentive is to...

It is a "Monkey's Paw" scenario. You gain a benefit with little effort on your part, in exchange for a loss to someone else. Someone playing Thanos may find it morally unrecoverable that someone would propose erasing so many people from existence for undefined reasons.

Why should I question everything?

The simplest philosophical propositions always break down on the definitions. "Murder" is an excellent example. Humans are social creatures and we cannot survive alone. Every society since there has been such a thing has a basic tenet usually stated as "Thy shall not kill." What it really...

Eschatology, the study of end times, predates Christianity. Any belief system which has a creation story is very likely to have a destruction story as well. There are always people who think they have cracked the code and can predict when everything goes south. The one thing all these...

Would this require the water to rise and then recede, or the land to sink and then rise again?

Living in an area where floods are common, I can state that it doesn't have to rain on your head to find yourself up to your waist in water. There are two things which can't be disputed. First, floods happen, second, people who have a boat fair better in a flood. There is no Deluvian Myth...

I find I've lost all patience to indulge in this kind of debate. It's become the apex first world problem. I'm old enough to have known people who survived Polio. I remember my Polio vaccine. A sugar cube with a red dot, one per customer. I'm too old to have benefitted from the Measles, Mumps...

Pimps exist because prostitution is illegal. Anyone who makes their living by breaking the law, whether it's a prostitute or a drug dealer, does not enjoy the social protection available to the rest of us. If a client refuses to pay for a haircut, or worse threatens harm, the hair care...

Get elected and get back to me.

Every market can be divided into strata and segments. You can get 6 ounces of steak for about $9 at Western Sizzlin or you can pay $90 at Ruth's Chris. Either way, you get a meal. The street walkers you saw are more of the unlicensed tamales sold out of the trunk of a car market segment...

The former Governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal, made his bones in the GOP as a policy wonk. He was cast in the model of old time Republicans, back in the day when the GOP pitch was, "We know what we're doing. Put us in charge and you can relax. We've got this covered." He was a Rhodes Scholar...

A contract is an agreement between two people to exchange something of value for a consideration. At the time of the contract, both parties agree the object of exchange and the consideration to be equal. An unrequested gift is not a contract and not any kind of agreement.

It will come down to the particular details of New York law. I'm sure this situation comes up often, just not for such a large amount of money. The State collects fines and penalties, but isn't supposed to see the money as a reward or compensation. The goal is to take it away from the...

The attack was probably planned to be executed before the election, but the US warnings made them pause and reevaluate their security.

Beyond the obvious technical problems of putting a satellite into orbit, along with receiving useful data from it, Germany couldn't have afforded such a project. The first US satellite capable of capturing images from space was in 1959. This piece of space age technology took pictures until...

This is a subject which lends itself to facetious comments, along the lines of an egg is now a chicken and so forth, but the idea that an embryo is a person will create an entirely new tree of common law. Since it's conceded by just about everyone that a child is not responsible for itself, it...