Political values are very much shaped by one’s moral values, shaped by, in some cases, a very religious rather than a secular or humanist worldview. Can we ever ensure that legislation passed isn’t rooted in one religion’s view of the how the world "should be" in a country like the US where people vary so much in their values and beliefs? If so, how do we draw the line in a way most can agree to?

i really don’t know which is more important.. i think it’s friends… but can someone explain?

What would the argument be for and against this statement?

Please keep in mind that this post is not intended to debate who is right and who is wrong in the war, but rather if Israel’s strategy is effective. Policy effectiveness in other words.

Israel’s end-goal is to end hamas, and with the current trajectory it is on, it just wants to keep killing until hamas has fully collapsed. Here is the problem with this issue though: wouldn’t you be creating ADDITIONAL members of hamas for every person you kill? I’m sure any person would seek whatever means necessary to make you meet your end if you are the cause of their father or mother’s death regardless of if their mom or dad was a Hamas member or not. Does Israel’s strategy really reduce members of hamas? All it is doing is creating additional members in my opinion.

Thanks to all of you who are engaged with this subreddit and contributing to its content.

As the election approaches, this subreddit is being increasingly inundated with posts on (often repeated) several specific controversial topics (especially transgender equality, Israel/Palestine, US immigration, and the candidates, parties and policies related to the US election). Often, these posts are one-sided, which in turn generates lots of rule-breaking responses. In addition, a substantial influx of bot and troll activity has inundated these discussions with uncivil discussions, often long after the post has dropped from the top of feeds. (E.g. we are receiving lots of "appeals" of auto mod removals without even a presence that the comment actually followed the subreddit rules.)

This increasing activity is 1) overwhelming the mod team, 2) getting pretty redundant and 3) might be part of illicit efforts to affect the US election with faked public outrage on various topics.

Therefore, the mod team is considering making posting a fully-moderated activity. This would mean new posts will sit in a queue until being affirmatively approved by the moderators, rather than being immediately posted, and only removed if reported to/discovered by the moderators to be breaking rules after a robust discussion has started.

If we move forward with this change, it will last until the US election is decided, meaning at least until mid-November 2024, and possibly as late as January 2025. We hope that such moderation would limit new questions to only those that fully conform to the letter and spirit of the subreddit rules, thereby also making it clearer to new participants what the expectations are for the subreddit.

We welcome community discussion regarding this intention before we implement it.

So several of Trump’s cabinet members, advisors from his first term and other high ranking Republicans have now come out and said he is unfit to serve as president, refused to endorse him or even in some cases are supporting Harris: Pence, Bush Jr, Bill Barr, Elaine Chao, etc etc. How do his supporters reconcile this fact? Maybe with older figures like Bush Jr they could claim that they are part of the “swamp”, ie the entrenched political class that Trump is against. But what about the others that were hired by him and were part of his cabinet? I’m looking for intellectually honest answers, even if I don’t agree, not for a condemnation of his supporters.

With Trump mentioning tariffs so often and the left saying Trump doesn't know what tariffs do, how do they each effect corporations? If tariffs tax imported goods from other countries, that just increases the price that company charges, how would a federal tax not do the same thing, but also affect the employees that work for those companies? Long story short. Corporate taxes vs foreign tariffs?

There is a proposal to make the "neighborhood" I live in a protected historical district. In classic American fashion, I've seen a few yard signs in favor and a few against. I'm curious as to both sides of this - the benefits, the drawbacks, how this would affect the area in 5 years, 10 years, etc. For context, I live in a large southern metropolitan city. My neighborhood consists of mostly single family dwellings, some multifamily, several parks, and a handful of restaurants and small businesses mixed in (rare for a southern city lol).

I haven’t been able to wrap my head around this. I’m very young so I don’t remember much about Obama but I do remember our cars almost getting repossessed and we almost lost our house several times. I remember while the orange was in office, my mom’s small business was actually profitable. Now she’s in thousands of dollars of debt (poor financial decisions on her part is half of it so salt grains or whatever) but the prices of glass to put her products in tripled and fruits and sugar also went up. (We sold jam) I keep hearing how Biden is doing so good for the economy, but the price of everything doesn’t reflect that. WHO is the economy good for right now? I understand that our president is inheriting the previous presidents problems to clean up. Is this a result of Biden inheriting trumps mess? I just want to be able to afford a house one day.

I am getting tons of flak from my friends about my openness to support Kamala. Seriously, constant arguments that just inevitably end up at immigration and the economy. I have 0 understanding of what DT and KH have planned to improve our economy, and despite what they say the conversations always just boil down to “Dems don’t understand the economy, but Trump does.”

So how did their past policies influence the economy, and what do we have in store for the future should either win?

Scuttlebutt says that this is a terrible time to pursue acting, because the streaming services have made things terrible, leading to strikes, etc. I don’t understand the logic to this argument. Seems like so many more shows and movies are being produced all the time. What am I missing?

Do dems feel like you got duped into Harris as your candidate?

Recently saw a news post about a Transwoman Mridul Wadhwa ( CEO of a Scottish Rape Crisis Centre) who denied services to sexually-violated women when they asked to be seen only by a biological female for counselling. Apparently the post of CEO was only to be filled by a woman, but Wadhwa somehow got appointed. The This CEO also terminated an employee Roz Adams when she asked for guidance on how to respond to victims’ queries about the assigned counsellor’s gender.

When the terminated employee took the matter to court, the verdict delivered found the CEO grossly out of bounds.

Now trans activists are outraging over lack of inclusivity and rampant discrimination towards Trans community.

The other side - “gender critical” community argues that raped victims have a right to seek female only support.

I want to take an informed stance. I want to be as compassionate as possible, and form an opinion accordingly. What do you guys think?

I can see that we have the biological need to have offsprings to inherit our genes and our wealth or cultural values, but we are also rational beings. Why bring someone into existence if nothing has any meaning and he is going to die? And life itself is full of suffering and now we have climate changes and economical crises. Can you explain both sides of having or not having children?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlsen%E2%80%93Niemann_controversy

Explain both sides of the conflict. Turkey invaded Cyprus in 1974 and currently occupies 1/3 of the island

I noticed most people are strongly team Palestine, especially leftists. I am still looking for objective information "who's worse" in the war, since I know Israel commits genocide, but Palestine also holds hostages and attacked first. I have no opinion on the matter yet. Please explain both sides.

Over the last decade I have watched a debate over whether or not an ID restricts voting rights.

Please explain both sides

I'm trying to understand how plastics can be used and associated with food and other things for ages, approved as safe for such uses, and also be prevalent in forms such as "microwave safe" and such while I also hear that eating food that's been stored in plastics, and specifically heated in plastics, is a source of diet-borne microplastics that are going to give me cancer and destroy my body and brain. What are the 2 arguments here? Thanks!

I remember reading about how the earliest written records of the Buddha’s teachings were written centuries after his death, with the teachings passed down orally from teachers to students. For many, this raises the question of how accurate and trustworthy the written records are in completely preserving the Buddha’s teachings, with some ex-buddhists online claiming this leaves it open to being like a game of telephone where ideas can get distorted.

On the other hand, I don’t think that it having been orally passed down necessarily makes its authenticity questionable. I would imagine you’d want to pass down the full, unedited version of a religious teacher’s words if you’ve devoted your life to serious practice, but idk, maybe there’s more to it? Maybe there are factors that lead one orally passed down tradition more likely to be distorted than others? (e.g. passing down teachings between different languages, as opposed to using the same one the entire time)

I'm interested in discussion of the conduct of the military withdrawal operation. I don't consider the decision to withdraw, in itself, a Biden policy, unless someone can demonstrate a realistic way under the US Constitution for Biden to abrogate the withdrawal agreement which was negotiated by the Trump Admin.

Toxic masculinity is supposed to describe how the societal norms of masculinity harm society, including men. One commonly said part is that men are expected to be strong and not show emotion, but at the same time they're also typically over emotional and project their emotions onto others all the time which also causes harm to society.

Just based on my limited knowledge of movie sets, making sure the gun isn’t loaded is the responsibility of the props crew, and there are several checks that are supposed to be involved when using an actual fire arm on set.

Maybe I’m wrong about this, but I thought it was Alec’s job to show up, perform, use the props given to him in that performance.

So I don’t understand why he’s still facing legal hearings because of this incident. I feel like he’s also a victim in the circumstance unless there’s any evidence to support a possibility he may have loaded the gun himself between takes and had a reason for wanting to kill Hutchins.

Twitter, the website insisting it's called X, has just been blocked in Brazil.

Brazil claims that Twitter doesn't have an office in their country which is a requirement for any company that does business there.

Two weeks ago Musk said he was closing operations in Brazil because the country ordered him to censor certain accounts. When Twitter refused they threatened to arrest the employees in the Brazil office.

Who is at fault here?