think it's actually line-height... actual font size is pretty much user-adjustable ain't it? I mean you can change it with the view command on your browser. For the main page it was more a concern of imagining a stranger wandering in and creating a denser reality structure for him her to want to lose himerself in. Or something. Gonna walk the dog.
U sed "not nessa" are the Zionists put in the wrong by a categorical imperative against thievery, land larceny, a national bust-out operation, whatever you want to call it. You can theorize away about the absentee landlords of the Ottoman Empire and the attachment of diverse Arabs to the land of their forefathers, or engage in all manner of historical and political and philosophical and relativistic justification, but the one thing you can't pretend and still be a denizen of relevant sectors of this universe is that the Zionists aren't responsible overall for a fair bit of taking what wasn't theirs.
Now I'm going to drop the semantic stuff because that's a very emotional and even dangerous topic. Let's stick to milder pastime of Middle East politics and history.
A morally insensate statement, as usual and as predicted: As long as there's an "enemy," no need to worry about any "misgivings" about anything at all Thus the need to keep the enemy an enemy at all costs, lest inconvenient tremblings at the thought that God might be just disturb the ever-extended night of conscience.
I maintain that the two usages have different if overlapping implications, but, whatever your position on the semantics, or whatever the semantics of your position, or the semantics of your position on the semantics, or your position on the semantics of your position on the semantics, etc., we agree on the main point, so why this fussing and fighting, I want to know. And since we agree on the main point, you agree with my disagreement with you, that is, that the Zionists and their ideological defenders are too compromised by the issue even to acknowledge it except on the other end of an historical or even mythological recitation that obscures it - also leading to the irony of Mr. Self-Styled Ultra-Rationalist and scourge of the faithful aligning himself with the most faith-insane fringes of the Israeli and American polities. Like Don Miguel, they give the impression of always nearly slack-jawed at the incomprehensible moral calculations of others. My point is that their jaws have been loosened and set a-swing by their own (they possess it, though it's not a legal distinction) self-administration of moral-intellectual opium.
You used "own" in the more general sense - "what's their own," which wouldn't apply directly to precise distinctions between legal "ownership" and mere "occupancy." Your main statement was "What belongs to others is not to be taken from them," a phrasing which seems to invoke a universal moral law - Thou Shalt Not Steal. It has frequently been a method of colonizers to impose an interpretation of ownership alien to the cultures and interests of those to be displaced - a process exceedingly familiar from the history of the New World, of course.
and then we get into the discussion: you didn't originally say "own" - which is a legal notion. Different legal regimes can assert different things about ownership. You said "belong," which is something different, and often quite tragically comes into conflict with "own" (whichever "own" among others) in human affairs.
Yes nessa. Absonessa. Leaving aside a few dreamers, all of the founding Zs were well aware that the project was impossible without the forced displacement of prior owners and occupants. The heroes of the founding of the state were even more clear about what they were doing or would need to do, and sometimes quite rueful about having lacked the will or ability to go even further than they did, but no one can look at the state today and deny that some rather larger numbers of "others" had what once belonged to them taken away (including their lives in many cases).
Any argument that begins "what belongs to others is not to be taken from them" is going to pose a bit of a problem, since, as a categorical statement, it puts Zionism in the wrong. It's far easier for ideological defenders of Israel to ignore the question, simply refrain from getting into a discussion about the nature of "belongs" in relation to spots of ground on planet Earth, and proceed to rote recitation of one-sided histories of the conflict. The ideologue then indicts the "entire world" for irrationality, seemingly unaware that such an indictment is and could only be a projection, based on the suppression of rational discussion at the root of the ideological stance. At least the tragic views of the likes of Morris, Soffer, or Friedman don't require us to pretend incredible and self-serving things about ourselves and others. Since that alternative is mostly devoid of ideals, it's also mostly devoid of hope, however. It leaves us expecting that whoever happens to be the stronger according to a complex and multi-dimensional, continually tested correlation of forces will continue to oppress the weaker. To the extent that this expectation dominates, it will leave outsiders with less and less reason to lend support to anyone except on the basis of the same rationale as it applies to themselves - requiring, according to the familiar formula regarding the homage to virtue, ever more ludicrous and outlandish versions of moral justifications for an increasingly utterly amoral position.
does this adjustment to the line-height bother you?
think it's actually line-height... actual font size is pretty much user-adjustable ain't it? I mean you can change it with the view command on your browser. For the main page it was more a concern of imagining a stranger wandering in and creating a denser reality structure for him her to want to lose himerself in. Or something. Gonna walk the dog.
(and I also wish I could figure out what command would un-lock the font-sizing of these here comment threads, dammit)
U sed "not nessa" are the Zionists put in the wrong by a categorical imperative against thievery, land larceny, a national bust-out operation, whatever you want to call it. You can theorize away about the absentee landlords of the Ottoman Empire and the attachment of diverse Arabs to the land of their forefathers, or engage in all manner of historical and political and philosophical and relativistic justification, but the one thing you can't pretend and still be a denizen of relevant sectors of this universe is that the Zionists aren't responsible overall for a fair bit of taking what wasn't theirs.
Now I'm going to drop the semantic stuff because that's a very emotional and even dangerous topic. Let's stick to milder pastime of Middle East politics and history.
A morally insensate statement, as usual and as predicted: As long as there's an "enemy," no need to worry about any "misgivings" about anything at all Thus the need to keep the enemy an enemy at all costs, lest inconvenient tremblings at the thought that God might be just disturb the ever-extended night of conscience.
I maintain that the two usages have different if overlapping implications, but, whatever your position on the semantics, or whatever the semantics of your position, or the semantics of your position on the semantics, or your position on the semantics of your position on the semantics, etc., we agree on the main point, so why this fussing and fighting, I want to know. And since we agree on the main point, you agree with my disagreement with you, that is, that the Zionists and their ideological defenders are too compromised by the issue even to acknowledge it except on the other end of an historical or even mythological recitation that obscures it - also leading to the irony of Mr. Self-Styled Ultra-Rationalist and scourge of the faithful aligning himself with the most faith-insane fringes of the Israeli and American polities. Like Don Miguel, they give the impression of always nearly slack-jawed at the incomprehensible moral calculations of others. My point is that their jaws have been loosened and set a-swing by their own (they possess it, though it's not a legal distinction) self-administration of moral-intellectual opium.
You used "own" in the more general sense - "what's their own," which wouldn't apply directly to precise distinctions between legal "ownership" and mere "occupancy." Your main statement was "What belongs to others is not to be taken from them," a phrasing which seems to invoke a universal moral law - Thou Shalt Not Steal. It has frequently been a method of colonizers to impose an interpretation of ownership alien to the cultures and interests of those to be displaced - a process exceedingly familiar from the history of the New World, of course.
and then we get into the discussion: you didn't originally say "own" - which is a legal notion. Different legal regimes can assert different things about ownership. You said "belong," which is something different, and often quite tragically comes into conflict with "own" (whichever "own" among others) in human affairs.
Yes nessa. Absonessa. Leaving aside a few dreamers, all of the founding Zs were well aware that the project was impossible without the forced displacement of prior owners and occupants. The heroes of the founding of the state were even more clear about what they were doing or would need to do, and sometimes quite rueful about having lacked the will or ability to go even further than they did, but no one can look at the state today and deny that some rather larger numbers of "others" had what once belonged to them taken away (including their lives in many cases).
Any argument that begins "what belongs to others is not to be taken from them" is going to pose a bit of a problem, since, as a categorical statement, it puts Zionism in the wrong. It's far easier for ideological defenders of Israel to ignore the question, simply refrain from getting into a discussion about the nature of "belongs" in relation to spots of ground on planet Earth, and proceed to rote recitation of one-sided histories of the conflict. The ideologue then indicts the "entire world" for irrationality, seemingly unaware that such an indictment is and could only be a projection, based on the suppression of rational discussion at the root of the ideological stance. At least the tragic views of the likes of Morris, Soffer, or Friedman don't require us to pretend incredible and self-serving things about ourselves and others. Since that alternative is mostly devoid of ideals, it's also mostly devoid of hope, however. It leaves us expecting that whoever happens to be the stronger according to a complex and multi-dimensional, continually tested correlation of forces will continue to oppress the weaker. To the extent that this expectation dominates, it will leave outsiders with less and less reason to lend support to anyone except on the basis of the same rationale as it applies to themselves - requiring, according to the familiar formula regarding the homage to virtue, ever more ludicrous and outlandish versions of moral justifications for an increasingly utterly amoral position.
BTW - have Maddow on now, did the world get rocked? At one point in the show, if so?