Interesting, I don't know much about the guy!

(June 11, 2015 at 5:06 am)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: (Hitler, Pasha, Leopold II).

Boru

That would be Leopold II of Belgium I guess?

Well if you allow a coin to be made, then you'll have to also allow slavery.

(June 11, 2015 at 5:08 am)Alex K Wrote: Oh really, Genghis Khan is on the good list?

Again, going by what kind of rulers were his contemporaries. In Asia as well as in Europe.

Hitler, or Stalin for that matter are out of the question of being bad, considering their contemporaries. Apart from the sheer fact that absolute rule wasn't the norm anymore.

(June 11, 2015 at 4:23 am)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote:

(June 11, 2015 at 1:45 am)Brian37 Wrote: Kings are dictators too. I cant ever put "progressive" in the same sentence with "dictator" after 14 years of online debate with theists who worship an unmovable God. Unless you have a government that has the opportunity to remove said leader by vote or by impeachment, it does not matter how kind someone might view that leader. Believers in God also think he is kind. 

The point is that the French didn't mind being under Napoleon.  They're hardly likely to want to commemorate a battle in which a leader who had improved their lives was overthrown by foreigners.

The notion that all dictators are inherently bad simply by being dictators is an absurd one.  And conflating an imaginary God with a human leader of a human state is ludicrous.

Boru 

Again, that's the same as saying "Believers in God don't mind being under his rule". I am quite sure if you kiss Kim Jong Un's ass and he likes you, he will treat you well. 

It isn't about what people mind, it is about the bad logic that leads them to allow them to be ruled like that.


And yes the CONCEPT of the God in that people claiming he is the final absolute power and cannot be removed from his position, is the very definition of a dictator. 

I do not find the claimed attribute of this character "all seeing" as compassionate or moral. That smacks of Orwell's 1984. And "all powerful" as well. That makes humans mere property, toys, lab rats. 

Christopher Hitchens rightfully described such a claimed monster of a being as a "leader of a celestial North Korea".

Don't allow your well intended liberal sense of fairness to ignore the way that character is written. There is simply nothing good about that character. It is like calling an abusive spouse good because they buy you flowers after beating the shit out  of you.

You may not understand this because you're american and you live in a country founded and ruled by liberals since the beginning but most of Europe has gone trough dictatorships whether it's absolutism, fascism or socialism/communism and excluding Hitler who was extremely evil most figures are admired and hated simultaneously but few people actually say "this person is not important anymore because I don't like him".

If dictatorships trouble you so much why are you posting here? atheistforums.org is ran with a dictatorship model - Moderators pick the administrators and moderators pick other moderators. You don't vote for anything and you will be banned if you don't agree with the rules decided without your consent. Quite frankly, it works perfectly.

God is not only a supreme ruler but an absolute one - the power god supposedly has is impossible for any human to achieve. Comparing him with people we know existed is ridiculous. Worse - Evaluating any historical figure with a western liberal concept of morality is ridiculous because everything will be considered wrong.

As for humans being property? Really? You call yourself a liberal, meaning you support a market system where scientifically workers are considered tools to be traded and bought. The biggest oppressive system is living with us right now, and it's not Stalin, Hitler or Napoleon. It's the market.

(June 11, 2015 at 10:08 am)Dystopia Wrote: You may not understand this because you're american and you live in a country founded and ruled by liberals since the beginning but most of Europe has gone trough dictatorships whether it's absolutism, fascism or socialism/communism and excluding Hitler who was extremely evil most figures are admired and hated simultaneously but few people actually say "this person is not important anymore because I don't like him".

If dictatorships trouble you so much why are you posting here? atheistforums.org is ran with a dictatorship model - Moderators pick the administrators and moderators pick other moderators. You don't vote for anything and you will be banned if you don't agree with the rules decided without your consent. Quite frankly, it works perfectly.

No it is not a dictatorship like a country. It is a privately owned entity, no different than setting the rules in your own house. Not even close to being a government dictatorship. With this board no one is being forced to post here whereas when you live under  dictatorship you are forced to live under their rule without your consent. In the context of this board I am by my own choice here. The owners of this site and the moderators don't have a gun to my head forcing me to be here. They cannot hunt me down and punish me if I leave and never post here again.

It is a similar model excluding some variables. My dad lived during a dictatorship and he liked. It all depends on how, when and if you are born - And how you're raised. There's more to any political system than killing and persecuting people - What you complain about still happens in western super-liberal democracies, it is simply more discrete. Evaluating historical figures with western morality is naive. Genghis Khan is important to Mongolians because he didn't give a fuck and built an empire. Some wisdom is needed for that. Stalin may be hated for mass murders but some of my marxist friends are Stalinists - He's a good writer and has a more appealing doctrine in communism, despite what he did in practise. Some Spanish think Franco was an historical figure like any other - Did bad things, good things, he was a product of the time. This happens with just any historical figure.

May I just note that it's quite asinine to introduce god and Hitchens into this discussion. Even more so since it rather makes the case for Napoleon, who was less religious than the ones fighting him. Also the liberating Europe from a dictator is bullshit. These were absolute rulers, who were worried about their own hides, not liberators. And in the case of England, which was a bit more liberal than the others, it was about trade routes and global interests.

(June 11, 2015 at 10:08 am)Dystopia Wrote: You may not understand this because you're american and you live in a country founded and ruled by liberals since the beginning but most of Europe has gone trough dictatorships whether it's absolutism, fascism or socialism/communism and excluding Hitler who was extremely evil most figures are admired and hated simultaneously but few people actually say "this person is not important anymore because I don't like him".

If dictatorships trouble you so much why are you posting here? atheistforums.org is ran with a dictatorship model - Moderators pick the administrators and moderators pick other moderators. You don't vote for anything and you will be banned if you don't agree with the rules decided without your consent. Quite frankly, it works perfectly.

God is not only a supreme ruler but an absolute one - the power god supposedly has is impossible for any human to achieve. Comparing him with people we know existed is ridiculous. Worse - Evaluating any historical figure with a western liberal concept of morality is ridiculous because everything will be considered wrong.

As for humans being property? Really? You call yourself a liberal, meaning you support a market system where scientifically workers are considered tools to be traded and bought. The biggest oppressive system is living with us right now, and it's not Stalin, Hitler or Napoleon. It's the market.

Is there some law that mandates no liberal value the private sector? I always like to ask my fellow liberals how they would go about ridding the world of the private sector on a planet of 7 billion? And you make stupid statements on a website that relies on the private sector to provide them server space and are doing so as well I am sure on a computer manufactured by the private sector.

Let me clue you in, YOU WILL NOT rid the planet of the private sector. Only a moron thinks that utopia can happen. People who either support Che who lead to Cuba, and the opposite, morons who think Ayn Rand's "fuck you I got mine" , do not understand that "capitalism" is not a form of government. There is not one government in the world, friend or foe, that does not invest in the global market.

The Saudi Royal Family owns oil companies and has stock in banks and weapons. Gadaffi was a billionaire who owned stock in GE. China capitalizes off off the sale of cheap goods and sweat shop labor and also allows private businesses to exist.

You are not going to solve the abuse of the 1% of workers with your attitude. Shifting power from one segment of a society only means you have shifted that monopoly. Yes business can be abusive, but so can religion and a political party, but all of them require income to grow and or gain power.