MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
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User ID: 896
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
6d ago
You mean that in a country with universal conscription, everyone is a combatant until officially discharged in their 60s? Well, that would certainly be convenient for the attacker.
Yes - off-duty soldiers are combatants. You have the option of placing part of your population ("civilians") hors de combat in an somewhat permanent way such that they benefit from the principle of distinction, but Israel chooses not to do this because they gain a military advantage from having the whole military-age population (including, unusually, women) available to fight at short notice - particularly as Hamas doesn't abide by the Geneva Conventions anyway. The rules don't exist to make war fair - they exist to prevent acts of wanton destruction with a humanitarian cost that grossly exceeds the military benefit gained. Back when the first ius in bello treaties were being negotiated by people who were comfortable that some wars were morally justified (I am most familiar with the negotiations leading to the 1899 and 1907 Hague conventions because Barbara Tuchman writes about them in A Distant Mirror) everyone in the room understood that if you tried to ban sound military tactics the ban wouldn't stick. And attacking enemy soldiers while they are partying would be a sound military tactic, if Hamas was actually trying to win the war in a non-perfidious way.
By that standard, are we conceding that Israelis shooting anyone on the Palestinian side of the fence who could possibly hold a rifle or an explosive device is shooting combatants?
I would say it is closer to the truth that whenever Israel attacks Palestinians they are in a legal grey area because Hamas perfidiously* mix civilian and military targets in a way which makes it impossible for Israel to comply with the principle of distinction. The bastards hide military targets in hospitals, for crissake. The rules on precisely how you can lawfully attack a perfidious enemy are underspecified for the obvious reasons.
* I am using the term primarily in its technical legal sense as defined by the Geneva Conventions, although I think Hamas are perfidious in the ordinary English sense of the word as well.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
6d ago
As a working definition, I would say a church is a megachurch if
- it is not affiliated to a denomination
- more than 1000 people watch the same sermons in real-time (either in person or by videolink)
But the interesting thing about megachurch Christianity as practiced in Red America is the distinctive theology and Church polity it produces.
The theology is de facto based around the "born-again" experience and the personal relationship between individual believers and Jesus (if you are being polite) or about being gay for Jesus (if you are being rude from a male perspective) or about Jesus wanting to be your perfect romance-novel boyfriend (if you are being rude from a female perspective).
The Church polity is based around the effectively total-within-their-Church authority of individual charismatic lead pastors who are openly permitted to keep a significant percentage of the collection plate for their personal consumption.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
6d ago
People who self-identify as unhyphenated Americans are disproportionately likely to be Appalachian hillbillies, which means they are probably more likely to be descended from transHajnal Europeans (namely the Scots Irish) than other Euro-American subgroups.
They weren't intended as definitions - they were intended to be an empirical observation about how large American non-denominational churches (my two-bullet definition of "megachurch") tend to differ from other churches. Megachurch theology is usually different from traditional denominational Protestant theology in ways which are controversial, and I tried to describe both sides of the controversy, probably badly. I agree that I was being perjorative about the practice of allowing pastors to get super-rich off congregant donations - essentially all other Christian traditions think that a pastor earning more than a doctor is per se problematic.
FWIW, I think the word "megachurch" is perjorative in that it is mostly used by people who disapprove of the underlying phenomenon (Blue Tribers who object because megachurches are Red-coded, and denominational Christians who object because they often promote heresy)
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