They are pledging to the ideals the country represents, aka-democracy, freedom, liberty, justice. Explain how thats communist again? I'll be honest, you're not just an atheist, but you sound pretty nihilistic.

You seem to not like religion, and you seem to be against the values of sovereign states or anyone having any common values. So what in the hell ties your existence to any other human being on the planet?

And what exactly makes your value system (you seem to have no distinguishable value system that you can claim) better than the ones that have created this country?

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Trump is the president now. I expect him to make smart decisions on our behalf. Vastly increasing the military budget is a terrible decision. Also, Rumsfeld was in the midst of advising Bush on how to downsize the military when 9/11 hit. It's not like I wanted Bush or Obama to upsize the military budget.

Its difficult to make judgement from the outside when you're not the one seeing the intelligence reports everyday, and for all the value your side places on other countries and other cultures I'm sure you're well aware of how much the U.S. military is counted on to protect them as much as us, right? You love European style of governing? Well they sure as shite have major help with the U.S. military backing them.

I'm all for cutting the military budget, but there's definitely a lot civilian citizens aren't privy to that leads to these decisions. At the end of the day, the military protects our soil, and if we lose our own soil then pretty much every argument about government spending becomes useless now does it? I'd say we've done a damn good job considering how many countries hate the U.S. and hate western civilization.

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Great! Let's start spending all industry into free gains with the magic of federal taxpayer money! Communism much?

Explain how this is communism? You do realize the defense industry is responsible for a lot of civilian technology, right? WW2 created a ton of innovative technology that propelled the U.S. into the greatest innovators on the planet.

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I'd be most comfortable if police powers in this country were dialed back (e.g. civil asset forfeiture) and the bad police were actually held to account by the good police.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Trump talks about the police and you choose to bring up only the worst aspects of law enforcement. Not everyone is as cynical and pessimistic.

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Sure, believe whatever you want. When did I say anything different than that?

You said you didn't like the appeal to religion, why is that a negative if that is Trump's choice of a belief system? Whether its genuine or not isn't he afforded the freedom to express his personal belief system?

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The role of "Christian values" in supporting slavery for hundreds of years is UNDENIABLE also. I'm not sure what your point is.

Are you saying slavery is rooted in the Christian belief system? You're incredibly misinformed on history if you actually believe this. Was slavery not around before Christianity? Is Christianity the only religion that had their believers also engage in slavery?

Maybe you should take a history lesson in the motivations of the greatest and most notable abolitionists during slavery. You ever heard of Quakers btw? You have a lot of research to do.

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This is a silly question and I'm not turning this thread into a debate on the metaphysics of morality. If your assertion is that only religious families have a "motivation" to stay intact/together, then I think most people will recognize that as a ridiculous premise.

I'm not saying they do, but you have a worldview that religion is negative, and if you would like to see religion disappear then I am interested in what sort of system of morality you'd advocate to replace religiously based morality. And then why should anyone believe in that system?

As far as I'm concerned atheists are typically only critics and they seem to never advocate for alternative beliefs. Either give people something else alternate to religious based morality or stop crying about how people proclaim their faith, however they may choose to do it. Faith-based morality is very common-place and its done a damn good job up to this point.