What produces RUTHLESS DICTATORS?

They were/are supposed to run before December 1, World AIDS Day, not now.

So, like, who is Okie gonna rant at now . . . how long until he has everyone on ignore?

Smallest creative advertising agency? I've no sense for the subset of the advertising world involved in creativity, but if you say it's small, then it is. I don't get a clear sense on how effective those ads will be - i.e. are they likely to prevent any new infections?

There are always ican and Foxfyre, yaknow....

Oh cool . . . a circle-jerk . . .

I already told you, let's dispatch him to Europe, that small creative advertising agency will hire him on the spot!

"Shocks" just to get attraction to the subject/topic - like this agency and the group do - aren't bad: you see the reactions even here, on this very thread.

The campaign really reminded me of this one... same idea, slightly new twist....

In 1990, I've started a campaign here in our county: in various pubs, christmas trees were decorated with condoms, and other sex and AIDS related gimmicks. My colleague from county's public health service wasn't allowed to join me ... and I've learnt a lot about the tradition of decorating christmas trees (officially, I'd named it a "pre-christmas fir tree decoration action" ).

Yes, when I posted it, I said I roughly agreed, it fit the general theory of what I think, although I would probably not agree with every detail. For example, I think I said that instead of placing it parallel with or similar to communism that I would place fascism somewhere between communism and socialism, or between socialism and liberalism. After all, fascism seems to me to be a hybrid of communism and perhaps moderation, using facets of socialism and capitalism to form its own brand. I certainly do not see how it could be an extreme form of conservatism, which I agree would be more like libertarian. We know that fascism is nothing like libertarian at all, it has elements of socialism, liberalism, and communism, so it has to reside somewhere on the left side.

I also agree with the "Less Free - More Free" aspect of the spectrum, simply by virtue of the fact that conservatives believe in individual rights and responsibilities, in other words we stand for individual liberty, which is more free, which is in fact totally opposite of having a dictator. Any time you institute group thinking for anything, to include the economy, religion, whatever, you end up taking individual liberty away so that everyone can act as a group, and it takes government to enforce that system.

That's funny, because the Netherlands is very liberal, and yet the people there have more freedoms than we do in the U.S.

That is a judgement that you make, but it may not be true if you average all the freedoms up and come up with an average. Perhaps the Netherlands falls somewhere near the "Liberalism" point on the spectrum given, while the U.S. falls somewhere between "Liberalism" and "Conservatism." Netherlands is liberal, but they are not purely socialistic or communistic I would not think, not even close, so yes they do have quite a bit of freedom, as we do still here. Comparing us would take a detailed study of all the factors. Perhaps you view open drug use and that sort of thing indicates greater freedom, but does the government also place more restrictions in the economic world, such as what is the personal tax rates, ability to keep what you earn, there are a multitude of things that affect freedom.

Here interesting links on the economic freedom in the Netherlands, which the Heritage Foundation ranks at 77.0 vs 80.7 in the U.S.:
http://www.heritage.org/Index/Country/Netherlands
http://www.heritage.org/Index/Country/UnitedStates

Another comment, perhaps the Netherlands is actually more Libertarian on some social issues, such as drug use. One would have to average all the areas of freedoms and come up with an assessment of where a country falls on the spectrum.

And The People's Republic of China Special Administration Region Hong Kong is first, with a 'freedom score' of 90.

Of course, Libertarian - that why the party is called Partij van de Arbeid (PvdA), literally "Party of Labour").

Ahahahaha!

So you do think that there's a difference between economic freedom and freedom in social issues?

Jesus, that's hilarious. The Heritage Foundation . . . now there's an unbiased source . . .













. . . NOT!

So you do think?

There are areas or categories that have degrees of freedom, and I don't think that all of those areas always are affected to the same extent by various political systems or governments, but I do think that they tend to be affected in the same general way by various governments although perhaps not to the same extent. For example, in communist countries, economic freedom, religious freedom, freedom of speech, and other freedoms are all impacted, although perhaps not all to the same extent.

Rather than drawing a spectrum for each category, I think it makes more sense to draw one spectrum and sort of take all freedoms in aggregate. I think the spectrums are not at cross purposed to each other, they tend to be somewhat parallel anyway, and I also think that some categories or areas are of much greater importance. For example, economic freedom covers a very large portion of what defines a political system, I think.

When you speak of freedom in social issues, it really depends upon what you are labeling freedom. For example, with drug use, if European countries hand out free needles or free drugs, that is not freedom but it is subsidization of destructive behavior. That is a bit different than Libertarian that believes certain drugs should be legal, but that does not translate into believing that the government should subsidize it. Nor does freedom necessarily mean we have to teach stuff in school,using taxpayer dollars.