@Logan, Memphis, TN: Aristotle was the first "scientist" to perceive a basic unit of all physical matter, in 360 BC. It took more than 2,000 years for other scientists to develop a means to see this unit, despite the fact some of them had already defined its properties, mapped its behavior and split it, creating the (to-date) most widely acknowledged destructive weapon of mass destruction (though my personal belief is that AIDS is). I am speaking, of course, about the atom. I point this out so that you may consider that (a) such things as immutable truths do exist, whether we can "see" them or not; (b) not everything that can be known about the human experience of these truths can be known through our present scientific tools, whatever they may be at any given time, no matter how "scientific" any particular inquiry may seem; (c) immutable truths, from whatever reductive source they may come, are sometimes difficult to discern and we must always, therefore, be open to new ways of looking at them (their effects v. their properties); (d) as a corollary to the previous proposition, you may wish to consider that just because your keen intellect rejects the fallacious mean-old-man-in-the-sky god of fundamentalists, it may not necessarily reject the "existence" of the G_d of Moses and Jesus (and many of us living today), which is one such immutable truth (if G_d didn't exist, to what are we referring when we say that G_d doesn't exist?). As to virtue, millennia of recorded thought and history has told us what it is -- as well as the 7 vices. At the heart of all of these affirmative and negative covenants is respect -- respect for self, respect for others, respect for our relationships. This is not subject to bias; everyone requires respect. I can see how, if you came of age in the 1990s, you have been deluded into thinking -- through some tenets of "multicultural" education, which hold that so-called "values" such as corporal punishment are African-American because African-Americans lives depended on their having been (some would say, complicit in) cooperative with their slavers -- that virtues are biased (as if African-Americans neither require not desire such a thing as respect), and that the founding fathers were just a bunch of rich, white elitists who only wanted power for themselves. That has been the propaganda for more years than it should have been. To the founding fathers, all citizens -- whether property owning or not -- had the rights enshrined in the constitution. True -- they left the issue of slavery (which affected vast numbers of people who were not kidnapped from Africa also) for future generations to decide, just as they left the issue of suffrage of all women, no matter the color of their skin. To our progenitors' credit, they abolished these inhumane institutions. But that doesn't change the fact the founding fathers gave us a pretty terrific system of government that, were we to elect the virtuous men they told us we must, would be the envy of the world once again. They were concerned with the rights of the citizenry at the time they founded this (now dead) constitutional republic, and they clearly foresaw a time in our history when that citizenry would be constituted of many different types of PEOPLE. That's why the first amendment grants life, liberty, etc. to PEOPLE and not white men. In any case, Ana, from Maryland, makes the point less diplomatically but just as eloquently that if you believe you haven't anything of value to add to a discussion that may have ramifications far beyond the blogosphere, as you apparently do, then play with your brain on your own time. This is intended to be a community. www.dontfearyourfreedom.blogspot.com

@Bruce 'Bama and Mike, Norfolk: Surprise! You're disagreement with each other is a red herring -- both the police and fire personnel are commanded by the Pentagon, thanks to laws passed by then commanders-in-chief, Ronald Reagan (that's commander-in-chief of the Pentagon), Bush, Sr., Bill Clinton, Bush Jr. As such, neither group can be stereotyped by personality characteristics or political preferences. They are all minions of the fascists who have controlled our country for quite some time. Ergo, the commander of the unit of firemen who rushed into the Twin Towers just before it "fell" though it is SOP for commanders NOT to order their subordinates into buildings about to collapse (which, of course, this fire chief would not have known since the Twin Towers were built to be IMPACT RESISTANT, but notwithstanding this fact) was taking orders, whether he knew it or not, from the Pentagon. You don't have to take my word for it (www.dontfearyourfreedom.blogspot.com). you can look it all up yourselves. You live in a military dictatorship, where none of us has any freedom (and I will be stalked and shot at and my home invaded and my property stolen and vandalized because I have no 1st amendment rights for saying as much, so -- no; I don't have FREEDOM OF SPEECH, or any other freedom your fellow soldiers thought they were dying to preserve here).