Free Republic

Beyond that, I believe young people should focus on investing OUTSIDE a retirement plan, and on investing in themselves by learning valuable skills that will pay off better in the long run than traditional retirement savings.

Just getting fit and in shape is an investment with plenty of dividends for long-term (if only because it'll minimize your healthcare expenses as you get older).

There’s no point in providing these (completely correct) details to a bad-faith poster of agitprop.

Given that Russia is apparently in the Top 10 countries based on Purchasing Power Parity per capita?

I would say so, relatively speaking.

Not as good as America, but comparatively better off economically than every other European country (except Germany).

What’s absurd is that the usual suspects in the West are harping about this law being a result of Russian influence...even though it’s basically a variant of the FARA law that America has regarding foreign agents.

If they’re so hellbent on demonizing this law as being ‘anti-democracy’, I would consider it prima facie evidence that every single NGO in Georgia is nothing more than a vector for foreigners to meddle with the Georgian government.

Ok this stuff is not really worth getting into but the ‘it’ refers to the technology the Russians seem to be better at. They need it because like the Stasi they need to control communications more.

???

So when it comes to electronic warfare (which is only going to become more prominent with the passage of time), after an article displays how our weapons-jamming technology is notably inferior to a country that is a geopolitical rival (and an outright enemy according to some on this forum), what kind of take is it to say "they need [weapons jamming technology] more than we do"?

Of course America needs more effective electronic warfare technology and methods; and if you believe the American military needs to be on the cutting edge against her peers, the default answer should be "America needs [insert technology] more than [her allies/rivals/enemies] do".

(Also, I hope you didn't just insinuate that we live in a society without information control. The military effectiveness of one's electronic warfare technology is an entirely separate question from political control of domestic communications.)

It’s not that difficult. In response to the article, you wrote “They need it more than we do.”

Who did you mean by “they”?

What did you mean by “it”?

You wrote those words, so I presume you know what you meant.

I don’t know, that’s why I’m asking. (Because you’ve already indicated DesertRhino’s interpretation of your statement is incorrect.)

Then let’s break it down. Per post #2: “They need it more than we do.”

Who did you mean by “they”?

What does “it” refer to?

So among the various problems with our apparent strategy vis-a-vis Russia/Ukraine, another seems to be that by doubling down on the proxy war, we've taught the Russians how to beat our entire bag of tricks by now, with little incentive for our ossified military-industrial establishment to make counter-adaptations absent direct conflict with a peer.

Brilliant! /s

The world, since 1945 has seen the greatest period of peace and prosperity in human history.

You do realize that there were a lot of wars in the 20th and 21st centuries after the conclusion of WW2, right? We were just fortunate enough to be born in America, the dominant power surrounded by two oceans; but if you were unlucky enough to be in one of the countries that served as a proxy for the Cold War between America and the USSR, it wasn't all that peaceful. (And this isn't even including all of the various civil wars and wars of independence that raged throughout Africa, Asia, and South America in that timeframe.)

Take America out of the equation and we’re back to continuous war, but with nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.

There have been closed to 300 armed conflicts since 1945 (and quite a lot of them had fatality counts in the millions); the world has *been* in a continuous war. But some wars will need to find someone other than America to bankroll their belligerent(s). (Also, fun fact: America had its own offensive biological weapons program started by FDR, and ran nearly three decades until it got shuttered by Nixon. Our chemical weapons program lasted much longer, from 1917 to 1990. And I'm sure I don't need to remind you that the only nation to use nuclear weapons in war at this point is the United States.)

The reason for the Russian invasion is once there were no more mean, late night tweets, the Russians realized the guard dog had retired.

I think people realized that the guard dog had retired when we fumbled the ball in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Russian invasion is a taste of what the world is going to look like.

You mean a regional war between a larger power and a smaller power that's kept going because other nations want the smaller power to bleed out the larger power? That's utterly common as far as military history goes, and it hasn't stopped since WW2. (The great irony is that if it hadn't been for the interference of the USA and the UK to keep Zelensky from suing for peace, Ukraine and Russia would have likely settled on a ceasefire mere months after the invasion began.)

These won’t just be in some remote place, but divide the US and all those powers will be backing the extreme political movements on both new Americas.

You do realize America already went to war with itself before, right? Back in the 19th century? You might have heard about it.

There will be no keeping them out and they’ll provoke us to fight each other.

Notwithstanding that there are a lot of Americans itching to fight each other *without* outside interference, have you completely ignored the vast swathes of foreigners who have just waltzed into our country over the past few decades? We haven't even *tried* "keeping them out"; our government can't invite them fast enough!

Our government and the more deluded radicals amongst the American populace are far more of a threat to me than whatever Russia or China are doing.

I seem to recall the world trucking along before America came around.

At this juncture, I suppose it’s all we can do.

Radical secularism fails on objective, scientific grounds because it champions causes as reasonable and science based but which are unnatural and nonsustaining.

The inherent lack of logic of a belief system is irrelevant to the damage it can do to societies. Sin darkens the intellect; that a philosophical system fails by objective standards does not prevent adherents from believing it. (Also, I'm not sure why you're citing natural law; if radical secularism and Islam both ignore the natural law, why cite it as a point of failure for secularism and not for Islam? They both ignore the natural law, and justify their existence outside of its confines.)

As a case in point, the most murderous regimes in the 20th century have not been headed by Islamic tyrants, but by secular Communists so committed to their atheistic system that they think nothing of its contradictions or its limitations with regards to human nature: they would rather try to rewrite human nature with blood than admit they were wrong.

And besides: America has not been reduced to her current state because of Islam. Radical secularists - more pitiful than Muslims, being fools who proclaim that there is no God at all - have rendered a once virtuous nation into a cesspool of derangement.

There's simply no comparison.

By any meaningful definition, Islam is a religion: a false religion, but still a religion.

That many adherents engage in terroristic acts is part and parcel of Islam's justifications for violence against non-Muslims.

Yet, from a civilizational and societal standpoint, if I had to pick between Islam and Secularism as an opposing force, I would pick Islam every single time as the preferred opponent.

Radical secularism, if not rejected, saps society of not only the vitality to defend its own existence, but of the rationality needed to even make meaningful distinctions between religions at all.

Case in point: the people talking about the United States Congress when this article is about the Idaho legislature.

I can see it becoming Russia, Russia, Russia like deja vu all over again.

"All over again"?

The Zeepers — who can't get enough of labelling Russia the source of all evil in the world — have never left.

But it is obvious and incontestable that homo/perversion is not natural or sustainable and is, in addition to being immoral - a mental illness.

Yet it will still result in the destruction of society. See what happened to the Romans of antiquity.

But, giving muslims credit for their opposition to the homo/pervert behaviors is like thanking a robber for stealing some drug dealers drugs.

This seems to be a criticism angled from the wrong species, as the Islamic opposition to LGBTQ+ is rooted in a transcendent moral order (allegedly, as the god they profess to worship is a false one).

It is precisely because liberal secularism has hollowed out the ethics and religion of Christianity in the West that Islam has even been able to take root at all, because Christians are verboten by the secular social order from even opposing Islam on theological, moral, or even rational grounds at all (because of 'muh racism' and 'muh oppression').

As far as fundamental worldviews are concerned, Islam does not concern me nearly as much, because they can be opposed on the same playing field.

Liberal secularism, however, is a foundation which poisons the soul and reduces religion to nonsense in the eyes of the culture.

Lol! The Jews have been there twice as long, more millennia, even before the pedophile Mohammed took a 9-year-old as his bride and founded Islam, and went on a killing spree. Your koran was fabricated hundreds of years after the New Testament was written. Jews have a historic claim to the land, long before any mooselimbs walked into the lands. Jews have been there for thousands of years. Long before the nomadic arabs came trespassing.

If you want to go even further back, the Hebrews took the land which became the Kingdom of Israel by right of conquest against the Canaanites. They were then conquered in turn by various polities like the Assyrians and the Babylonians before being allowed to return by the Persians...and then they were conquered by the Romans. Some decades after the crucifixion of Jesus, the Romans put Jerusalem to the torch, definitively crushing the Jewish presence in that city and reducing the Hebrews to a diaspora.

Then there was a Christian majority in Palestine before various revolts by the Samaritans, as well as a brief period of conquest by the Sasanians before the Eastern Roman Empire re-established their hegemony.

Then the Mohammedans came rolling into town.

TL;DR: the Jews were not the first to occupy the Land of Israel; not by a long shot.

And if you want to invoke the words of Almighty God as a reason for why their title to the land is of superior weight, maybe the Jews should have considered all of that before delivering up the Son of God—the promised Messiah—to be executed by the Romans.

Ignore the last line in parentheses for my prior post; I misread the year when looking up the dates in question. Israel’s admission to the UN was three days prior to the first anniversary of Israel’s declaration of independence. (Mea culpa.)

The overall point is unchanged: recognition of one’s sovereignty as a nation does not necessarily hold because of the outcome of a given war. The general criteria are: a settled population, a defined territory, a government, and the ability to enter into relations with other states.

(Somewhat ironic, given that much of the trouble in the Middle East is precisely over the question of what counts as a “settled population”.)

Much of TransJordan was promised to Israel by the Balfour Declaration but usurped by the arabs.

I mean, it's not like the British talked out of both sides of their mouths when also promising the Arabs a state if they revolted against the Ottomans...oh wait.

(Their promises to the Arabs came before the Balfour Declaration, just for the record.)

The war made Israel a legal nation, recognized under law.

That is not how recognition of sovereignty works. (Also, just for the record, Israel actually didn't declare independence until after they were admitted to the UN.)