StarshipTitanic wrote:At any rate, the pissing match about the meaning of a phrase is a red herring.
I'm not required to use YOUR definition.
Yes, you are, when you're debating a point that I made using the phrase. If I say "Pyrrhic victory" meaning a victory where the cost exceedes the benefit, you don't get to change my argument by using a different definition of Pyrrhic victory. And all this is still a red herring--you know full Goddamn well what I meant now and have for the last several posts, and you have yet to refute it.
And just how am I supposed to demonstrate something in a "what if" thread? I already said why I thought it could work and how, now I'm supposed to prove it to be fact?
In other words, you have no real idea of what your plan will accomplish other than moving paper around and wasting money. Concession accepted.
...so? You say he will, I say that his effect could actually prove useful to my cause.
How? You have no real argument for why this will happen, just vague assertions that it will. In my case, there's a clear historical pattern of reformers pushing to hard and too fast and generating a backlash that actually damages their cause. You have no such precedent, and in fact history says that the reaction may last for decades and could take a major outside event to reverse. Woodrow Wilson is a textbook case--he pushed too hard for internationalism to the point of entering WWI, and was rewarded with an isolationist backlash that kept us out of European affairs for 21 years. You may recall from history class what major world event ended that isolationist period.
You included useless crap like memos in the documents to be altered when they are clearly not what I meant.
You said "official documents". I've got news for you pal--memos are official when the right people write them. Thanks to Federal regulatory bureaucracies, a note from some assistant undersecretary nobody's ever heard of can effectively change the law. If you only meant actual coded laws and regulations, it's up to you to specify that. Telepathy, sadly, is not among my many talents.
Of course laws written by nonsecular people centuries ago would be edited.
Name some treaties that mention God in them that are still in force today, I'm curious.
I don't have a mental file of the exact wording of every treaty we've ever signed. It could well be that there aren't any--however, under your plan, somebody would have to go through every one, line by line, to make sure. And so far as I know, the vast majority aren't computerized, so no easy way out like using search algorhithms, unless you scan them all into a database first, which will cost a ton of money (though, THAT project would be far more useful than yours).
Even if you limit yourself to documents produced within, say, the last five years, that's still millions of pages to go through for no effective gain.
Napkins and post-it notes are not official documents
Do you have the slightest idea how much paper the Federal bureaucracy generates? I mean millions of pages of official documents, even by your narrow definition of official. Have fun.
The last book felt a little rushed, though)
