Talula says...

talula wrote: Sun Jun 02, 2002 5:14 pm Pueros, you mean just like the United States.

No, he means more like TEXAS!

All mistakes aside, everyone doing time should be allowed conjugal visits but be temporarily sterilized. Just imagine what a mess for a child to have parents in the joint trying to raise them.

This old world is screwed up enough. Why perpetuate problems from one generation to the next?

A-1

Denying or attempting to deny men in prison sex is a "pipe dream" with some pretty potent smoking herb.

Men will have sex. Unless they desire not to have sex. Even then they will have to fight their hormone-driven urges to procreate. Most people wind up in prison because the have a terrible moment of loss of control that causes them to do something that they shouldn't. Happens to women, too.

Worse, men will rape weaker men in prison if denied sex completely.

No, I must think that conjugal visits is a great way to reward inmates for good behavior.

I find that correctional systems are all just like the one portrayed in "Shankshaw Redemption" to varying degrees. Rent the video. It is well worth the time that it takes to watch it. It is not logical to think that all criminals are in prison OR that everyone in prison belongs there. We just believe the former and suppose the latter.

It is true. Art DOES imitate life.

A-1

Well, if libido is a problem in prisons, why not just bring back saltpeter? Just add it, or some equivalent, to the food, and sex won't be a problem. (At least for the men)

Just a thought.

IEunuch.

I reply to Radar’s retort in line with his own subdivisions:-

1) As someone who actually lives in one of the countries to which Radar refers and has visited most of the other nations which he mentions, I have to suggest, from personal experience, that he’s incorrect. Additionally, he really backs up his contention with no real evidence. Birth rate in Scandinavia and truckers in France, what have they to do with socialism? Doesn’t the USA have birth rate problems amongst certain ethnic groups & industrial disputes? The development of modern Scandinavian society, in particular, has been a particular success for socialism, as they’re rich successful countries where society has proper regard for the wider good.

2) To equate fascism with socialism really is beyond the pale. Just because a party had the word ‘socialist’ in its title does not mean that that philosophy formed any part of its real creed. Ask those few true German socialists who are still alive, having somehow survived the concentration camps! I also recall many parties in the old so-called communist block having the effrontery to use the word ‘democratic’, not only in party titles but also in the official names of states, e.g. the former German Democratic Republic (DDR – East Germany). However, as for eastern Europe, I’ve already disparaged the Soviet model in my earlier post because it did not display true socialism/communism but corrupt (evil?) authoritarianism.

3) Why is the system 'fundamentally' flawed? Also, all political philosophies are tinkered with, even capitalism. Additionally, where is, or where has there been, a person less free in western European for having had a socialist government?

4) ‘Flames’? I’m afraid that they are induced occasionally, particularly when people propound (often, to me, ‘viciously’, although I wasn’t referring to you) on a subject that they do not really seem to have studied sufficiently in order to do so. I suppose that’s the professional historian in me. I take it from your comments that you have not read ‘Das Capital’ (I have), as otherwise I’m sure that your remarks would be changed. What I think you’re espousing is not your dislike for true communist philosophy, because I suggest, with all due respect, that you don’t really know what that is, but for how it was supposedly implemented in the former Soviet block. However, as I’ve tried to explain earlier, such regimes were not communist, at least not in any sense that Karl Marx or Friedrich Engels would have welcomed. As to your view of true socialism, it’s also incorrect, again based on assumptions relating to how it might have been badly implemented in certain nations. Yes, mistakes were made but times have moved on and the philosophy has moved with them in many places. I also believe that capitalism sometimes went wrong, with the Wall Street Crash coming to mind. Many of Roosevelt’s subsequent Keynsian solutions to the problem were ironically basically socialist.

5) I agree that a government’s powers should be kept to a minimum but only after they extend what they possess to ensuring that all elements of society are properly cared for, not just those interest groups who put them into power.

6) Did I say that I was referring to you? I was making a general point from personal experience. I find that many so-called ardent patriots actually care little for their less well-off, in all senses, not just economic, fellow citizens. To me such attitudes are hypocritically selfish not patriotic.

7) By ‘personal hard times’, I meant issues like illness, unemployment and, perhaps more controversially, bad decisions. We all make the latter but some are so bad that you could end up in gaol. This is the pertinence of this debate to this thread. Why is incarceration insufficient punishment? Why must people also be subjected to additional penance? How much vengeance does society want to extract from miscreants? Should they be denied the right to procreate if they’re serving life? Perhaps, from the socialist tinge to most western European societies, I think that you’d find that the European Court of Human Rights (approximately equivalent in the European Union to the US Supreme Court) would judge that such a prisoner should have the right. Accordingly, many penal systems here permit conjugal visits.

7) Did I mention the USA? Additionally, I suggest that the problem you highlight would certainly not be resolved by reducing regulatory restraints.

8) A truly compassionate society also tries to help those whose troubles are entirely of their own making. You quoted the Bible earlier. Doesn’t that great tome propound something similar, quoting examples?

9) ‘Peace?’ I personally was never at war, just opposing certain views!

PUEROS

BossTamsin (imported) wrote: Tue Jun 04, 2002 11:04 pm Well, if libido is a problem in prisons, why not just bring back saltpeter? Just add it, or some equivalent, to the food, and sex won't be a problem. (At least for the men)

Just a thought.

IEunuch.

Unfortunately, saltpeter is a diuretic. The way it prevents erections is by voiding the bladder, thus keeping the penis flacid. A better idea would be the voluntary use of anti-androgens in exchange for time off.

Pueros,

I don't agree with you on socialist governments, like Germany.

I have a good friend that lived in Germany for years, married a gal there had a child.

Because of the type of government that takes care of everybody and everything two things happen. Personal taxes are high, my friends was about 50%. The second is waste.

My friend’s wife after moving here needed new glasses. She was very upset because in Germany she could get as many different pairs of glasses as she had outfits. Here in the USA she could get one with his insurance. She did not understand and I don't think you do either, In Germany she did pay for all those glasses that were FREE via taxes and with the more free stuff the more tax you pay.

Now this system is great for the real poor it’s not so good for the rich and the middle class is well - do the math. This is only one example of a mindset, that the government owes you a living and will take care of you from cradle to grave vs. a capitalist country where we want less government involvement, not more.

Riverwind

PS. In Germany my friend could only afford an apartment, here he makes about the same money but he has a house with pool, 2 cars & houseboat. They would rather be in Germany they just can’t afford it.

Thanks for your views Riverwind. However, I don't think that you can really equate the current situation in Germany with socialism. The present economic & taxation system there is really a culmination of the policies of the post-war governments, most of which have been CDU under the likes of Adenauer & Kohl, in other words right-wing conservatives.

PUEROS

With the rapid growth rate of the world population, something will have to be done in the future to reverse the growth rate or at least freeze it. This could result in needing a license to have a child, with a limit of 2 children per person or couple. Then, once any person (female or male) was resopnsible for creating 2 children that person would be sterilized.

That would require a large bureaucracy to control.

But that means more civil servant jobs to be held by eunuchs.



OK, I couldn't resist the urge to post :p

Perhaps a birth control licensing system would indeed create a bureauracy. But yesterday America's President, George Bush, announced plans to create an anti-terrorism federal agency consisting of something like 170,000 people. Hmmmm. Apparently bureaucracies are OK in some societies.

Why not take, oh, 100,000 or so of these proposed federal employees and set up that birth control licensing board? With fewer people in the world there would be fewer terrorist (statistically at least), and terrorism-cum-birth-control it would probabaly be more effective thatn the FBI and CIA have been to date anayway. (I'm kidding, in case anyone can't tell. Or am I?)

Or we could not set up ANY federal agencies at all, and use that money to fund free castrations for all that volunteer. Perhaps the BEST use of our American tax dollars ever!

cost of burdizzo: $100

salary of trained burdizzo operator: $50,000

legalized castration: PRICELESS