A man cannot be loyal to an idea. Loyalty is for people and institutions. Consider the difference between being loyal to Abraham Lincoln and being loyal to “the things for which [he] stood.” One means you’re on his team, the other means you’re on his team only as long as you agree with him, in which case it isn’t loyalty at all.

That is just nonsense. He is claiming to consider the difference between loyalty to a person and loyalty to an ideal, but then evaluates the loyalty to the ideal as if it were loyalty to the person associated with the ideal and concludes it’s no good. That sort of fallacious logic makes me want to send the author a book.

There is really too much other questionable reasoning in that article to step through, but I want to touch on one other point it mentions. The author agrees with a quote from his friend that “To me, the movement matters. Are you in or are you out?” I won’t pretend that the statement is 100% clear to me, but we often hear complaints whose underlying sentiment is that people aren’t going far enough in sacrificing themselves or their ideals to advance this or that movement. I just want to say that movements exist to help people, not the other way around. If a given “movement” isn’t advancing the ideal you support, then to hell with that movement. And (with reference to political tribal loyalty), by “movement” I mean “party”.

Dubai planning another behemoth, world’s-tallest skyscraper.

Coincidentally, they are already building (and have almost finished) the world’s-tallest skyscraper.

I present the Burj Dubai:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burj_Dubai

I keed, I keed.

:D

I started bitching about tribal politics during the Bore/Douche elections and the more I looked around, the more I realized that the average dolt has nothing else but feeling that his team or his town or his party or his whatever is better.