"Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds."

Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot

A short and varied list of Americans educated in public high schools before the creation, in 1980, of the Department of Education:

Steve Jobs
Bill Clinton
Hillary Clinton
Ron Paul
Warren Buffett
Toni Morrison
Carl Sagan
Ernest Hemingway
Linus Pauling
Sandra Day O'Connor
John Steinbeck
Bob Dylan
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Milton Friedman
Noam Chomsky
Oprah Winfrey
George Lucas
Jimmy Carter
Paul Newman
Amelia Earhart
Walt Disney
George Carlin
Elvis Presley
Neil Armstrong
Richard Feynman
Aaron Copland

(I could keep going, but I'm sure you get the point.)>> ^ghark:

No public education ... Sounds exciting.

The exchange at the beginning of the video is priceless, by the way:

Young woman: "This is Occupy Wall Street."
Elderly woman: "Occupy Wall Street? This isn't Wall Street! This is Greenwich Village!"

Is the guy who bear-hugged that woman a plain-clothes cop? If not: WTF? And if so: WTF?

I suppose I should "fuck off," given that I wasn't his friend, child, or spouse, given that I wasn't "close to him." Except that I'm not going to fuck off.

Who are you to tell me not to mourn the loss of someone who's served as an inspiration—and dare I say a personal hero—to me and, evidently, to lots of other people? Why does it matter whether or not I knew him personally? I'm not mourning his death because of his abilities as a marketing guru, nor am I mourning his death as a user, per se, of Apple products (though they do enable me to be more creatively productive on a daily basis). I'm mourning his death because he taught me, at a relatively young age, important lessons about disregarding external expectations, about thinking of death as a motivational tool, about the importance of continually reflecting on the direction of my life and my career.

The sentiment you (and lots of others) are expressing—namely that there's a general disingenuousness surrounding the public's mourning of Steve Jobs's death—seems to me to be incredibly presumptuous. And your point about Ralph Steinman, one of the winners of this year's Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, is categorically irrelevant. No doubt Ralph Steinman led an inspirational and remarkable life, one that deserves celebration. But he wasn't a public figure in the way that Steve Jobs was; he didn't have the same platform for public speeches and public interviews that made his thoughts readily available to the public at large. (If you were to make some kind of argument that, as a scientist, he ought to have more of a platform for his ideas, then you might have a valid point. But that's not what you expressed.)>> ^Jinx:
His death should be mourned in private sincerity by those close to him, not as a CEO, but as a friend/dad/husband. The rest of the world can fuck off.

And there goes democracy.>> ^JiggaJonson:

>> ^A10anis:
If 99 out of 100 concur, are they collectively right or collectively wrong?

Neither. A majority doesn't prove or disprove the quality of a position on any particular argument.

I'm asking people to sit down, and decide together to set up some fair and equal structure for identifying and clarifying our responsibilities to one another, and create an incentive structure to help us make sure we are all living up to the commitments morality demands of us.

Perfect! Sounds like you've formed a solid mission statement for a nongovernmental nonprofit.


I don't really see much promotion of altruism in that.

Funny: I see responsibilities mandated by the government as infinitely less altruistic than responsibilities mandated by individual moral imperative.


Oh, and one that I missed from earlier: It's not that I misunderstand Paul's "message," it's that I see through the spin.

Classifying Ron Paul as some kind of spin doctor is comical to me. We're talking about someone who has contributed more in the way of treating the underprivileged and uninsured than most of us ever will. Idealistic and inflexible with respect to individual liberty? Maybe. Disingenuous? Try again.
>> ^NetRunner:
Not at all. I'm asking people to sit down, and decide together to set up some fair and equal structure for identifying and clarifying our responsibilities to one another, and create an incentive structure to help us make sure we are all living up to the commitments morality demands of us ...

Is Ron Paul a philanthropist who goes around promoting everyone contribute more to charitable causes?

I can't speak for anyone else, but he's certainly convinced me to contribute more to certain charitable causes.


Further, he makes it clear that "freedom" means you should not have to contribute anything to anyone who isn't you if you don't feel like it, even if it means letting someone else die.

You envision a world in which people take responsibility for their fellow citizens because they're compelled to do so by the government. Ron Paul envisions a world in which people take responsibility for their fellow citizens because they're driven by their own moral imperative. One (yours) is a world that places little emphasis on the moral (and social and cultural) development of the individual. The other (Ron Paul's) is a world that grants the individual more freedom and, yes, more responsibility.

Before you condemn me for living in a fantasy world, I refer you to my comment above: "The hard part, though, and one of the biggest hurdles that Ron Paul supporters face, is to determine, honestly, whether or not we've advanced enough as a society to handle the responsibilities that his vision entails."

Somewhat tangentially, have you perchance read anything by Peter Singer, maybe One World or "Famine, Affluence, and Morality"? I find it odd that these sorts of debates center so provincially on the United States without acknowledging the moral responsibility we have for people who are far less fortunate than even the most underprivileged Americans.
>> ^NetRunner:
I'm not talking about what Ron Paul believes or says he's doing, I'm talking about what he's actually out there fighting to make happen ...

3. My answer is meant to show that your question is laden with faulty assumptions. (Your initial post is a textbook example of begging the question.) But, again, to humor you, I'll address what would happen without farming subsidies in the United States: (a) Americans would eat more healthfully; (b) no, farming would not become unprofitable (except maybe for the huge corporations who wastefully produce the once-subsidized products, namely corn); (c) the average percentage of income spent on food might go up, though it wouldn't necessarily cut "heavily into the income of poorer people."

By the way: farming is profitable for many farmers, and to suggest that it isn't ("would it become profitable again") is misleading.


2. I'll spell it out for you: I choose not to address it. There are legitimate arguments to be made in favor of labor laws. To suggest that, in their absence, people would be "fired on a whim" is not one of them, and it relegates this conversation to something unworthy of my time.


1. The point of the link was to show, without engaging with your assumption-laden imaginative dystopia, that there are many defensible positions for those who question the wisdom and necessity of antitrust laws.


4. "That text says on the first page (paraphrased): "46 million USAsians have no health insurance: Not a problem: 40 percent of those are young, 20% are wealthy." Yes, fuck the poor and the young, they don't need health insurance."

That's worse than a bad paraphrase; it's intellectual dishonesty. You and I gain nothing from this kind of conversation if we interpret information with that strong a bias. Read it again and see if you can't come up with a more intellectually honest response:


"A common argument advanced in support of greater government intervention in the American healthcare market is that a large and growing fraction of the gross domestic product (GDP) is spent on healthcare, while the results, such as average life expectancy, do not compare favorably to the Western nations that have adopted some form of universal healthcare.

This argument is spurious for two reasons:

A growing fraction of GDP spent on healthcare is not a problem per se. In the early half of the twentieth century, the fraction of GDP spent on healthcare grew significantly as new treatments, medical technology, and drugs became available. Growth in spending of this nature is desirable if it satisfies consumer preferences.

Attributing national-health results to the healthcare system adopted by different countries confuses correlation with causation and ignores the many salient variables that are causal factors affecting aggregate statistics (such as average life expectancy). Factors that are likely to be at least as important as the healthcare system include the dietary and exercise preferences of a population.

Another argument commonly used in healthcare-policy debates is that there are almost 46 million people who have no health insurance at all. Again, this is not a problem in and of itself. According to the National Health Interview Survey, 40 percent of those uninsured are less than 35 years old, while approximately 20 percent earn over $75,000 a year. In other words, a large fraction of those who are uninsured can afford insurance but choose not to buy it or are healthy enough that they don’t really need it (beyond, perhaps, catastrophic coverage). The real problem with the American healthcare system is that prices are continually rising, greatly outpacing the rate of inflation, making healthcare unaffordable to an ever-increasing fraction of the population—particularly those without insurance.

If prices in the healthcare market were falling, as they are in other markets such as computers and electronics, the large number of uninsured would be of little concern. Treatments, drugs, and medical technology would become more affordable over time, allowing patients to pay directly for them. Identifying the cause of rising healthcare costs should be the first priority for anyone who seeks solutions to America’s broken healthcare system."


Again, the full article: http://mises.org/journals/fm/june10.pdf.
>> ^DerHasisttot:
Of course the post is highly speculative ...

I suspect you realize that your post is wildly speculative. I'd rather not spend too long on this, but I'll humor you and point out a few of the fallacies in your imaginative dystopia. In general, though, you seem to be confusing small government and a lack of regulation for lawless amorality. In any event, here we go:


1. "As there will be no more anti-trust laws in the free market, companies will merge until mega-cons rule a specific field of commerce."

If you think antitrust laws are an undying force of good, read this. (Also, don't confuse free-market capitalism with corporatism.)


2. "People can get fired on a whim without regulations."

Too absurd to even address.


3. "People spend their money on the expensive food (no subsidies)."

You're right. Government subsidies on food have been enormously successful in the United States.


4. "Healtcareproviders will be either expensive or underfunded."

Read pages three and four (or the whole thing, for that matter): http://mises.org/journals/fm/june10.pdf.
>> ^DerHasisttot:
Dystopian? Can't happen? Tell me why. Tell me why any of the things would not be as described without regulations and subsidies and social welfare. I await your response.

"He's not really promoting that people need to take more responsibility for others, he's promoting the idea that you shouldn't ever be held responsible for anyone but yourself."

This is the main fallacy of your post. Ron Paul does believe that we have a responsibility towards others. He doesn't believe, though, that it's the government's role to enforce that responsibility. Until you understand that distinction, you'll continue to misunderstand his message.
>> ^NetRunner:
Or...it just points out that implementing his policies would lead to a nightmare dystopia, and that he's not really helping push society in a more compassionate, altruistic direction ...

"If it was up to Ron Paul, Mr. Snyder would have died ... in a church. On the floor of the church. I suspect it would have been significantly more painful than dying in a hospital for two months."

A lie? Yes, in a way. But probably better categorized as gross hyperbole.

The problem with tweezing out individual strands of Ron Paul's convictions and considering them out of context, as this fellow did, is that it divorces them from the social and cultural changes that must necessarily accompany them.

Ron Paul envisions a completely different form of government, and by extension, a completely different form of society. It's true (and Ron Paul would concede the point, I think): asking "our neighbors, our friends, our churches" (as he said in the latest debate) to assume responsibility for the health care of individuals without the means to pay for it would not work unless people became less accustomed to the government handling so many facets of their personal lives. As with many of his positions, his ideas about health care would necessitate a more informed body of citizens, a more socially conscious society, and more empathetic neighbors.

To me, there's nothing more hopeful or more heartening than the world that Ron Paul envisions. The hard part, though, and one of the biggest hurdles that Ron Paul supporters face, is to determine, honestly, whether or not we've advanced enough as a society to handle the responsibilities that his vision entails.

In any event, speaking of lies of omission, why not take the opportunity to remind everyone of one of the greatest scenes in the history of television: http://videosift.com/video/The-First-Duty.>> ^NetRunner:

>> ^Lawdeedaw:
lies through omission, a lot of omission.

Took that channel off. You wanna slap lies on it, at least articulate what the lie is.
Was there a salient, knowable detail he left out that would have repudiated what he said? If so, what was it? And do you have a source to back it up?
Maybe what you're looking for is controversy?

From The Slate Column: "Ron Paul worked in Brazoria County and delivered from 40 to 50 babies a month. His practice refused Medicare and Medicaid payments, and Paul instead worked pro bono, arranged discounted or with custom payment plans for patients in need."

Ron Paul has done something tangible to help people without the means to pay for medical treatment. What has this loudmouth done?

@marbles:

First you need to acknowledge what a conspiracy is. When two or more people agree to commit a crime, fraud, or some other wrongful act, it is a conspiracy. Not in theory, but in reality. Grow up, it happens.

Thanks for the vocabulary lesson, but I used the term conspiracy theory, not conspiracy. Conspiracy theory has a separate and more strongly suggestive definition (this one from Merriam-Webster): "a theory that explains an event or set of circumstances as the result of a secret plot by usually powerful conspirators."

I openly acknowledge that the government of the United States has and does commit conspiracies, as you define the word. (You mentioned Operation Northwoods in a separate comment; a post on Letters of Note from few weeks ago may be of interest to you, too, if you haven't already seen it: http://www.lettersofnote.com/2011/08/possible-actions-to-provoke-harrass-or.html.) The actions described therein, and other such actions, I would aptly describe as conspiracies (were they to be enacted).

Definitions aside, my problem with posts like that of @blastido_factor is that most of their so-called conspiracies are easily debunked. They're old chestnuts. A few minutes' worth of Google searches can disprove them.

It may be helpful to distinguish between what I see as the two main "conspiracies" surrounding 9/11: (1) that 9/11 was, to put it briefly, an "inside job," and (2) that certain members of the government of the United States conspired to use the events of 9/11 as justification for a series of military actions (many of which are ongoing) against people and countries that were, in fact, uninvolved in the 9/11 attacks. The first I find no credible evidence for. The second I consider a more tenable position.


The Pentagon is the most heavily guarded building in the world and somehow over an hour after 4 planes go off course/stop responding to FAA and start slamming into buildings, that somehow one is going to be able to fly into a no-fly zone unimpeded and crash into the Pentagon without help on the inside?

Once again, much of what you mention can be attributed to poor communication between the FAA and the government agencies responsible for responding to the attacks (and, for that matter, between the various levels of government agencies). And again, this is one of the major criticism levied by the various 9/11 investigations. From page forty-five of the 9/11 Commission: "The details of what happened on the morning of September 11 are complex, but they play out a simple theme. NORAD and the FAA were unprepared for the type of attacks launched against the United States on September 11, 2001. They struggled, under difficult circumstances, to improvise a homeland defense against an unprecedented challenge they had never before encountered and had never trained to meet."

Furthermore, it seems to me that one of the biggest mistakes made by a lot of the conspiracy theorists who fall into the first cateory (see above) is that they judge the events of 9/11 in the context of post-9/11 security. National security, on every level, was entirely different before 9/11 than it is now. That's not to say that the possibility of this kind of attack wasn't considered within the intelligence community pre-9/11. We know that it was (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks_advance-knowledge_debate). But was anyone adequately prepared to handle it? No.

In any event, when's the last time you looked at a map of Washington, DC? If you look at a satellite photo, you'll notice that the runways at Ronald Reagan airport are, literally, only a few thousand feet away from the Pentagon. Was a no-fly zone in place over Washington by 9:37 AM? I honestly don't know. But it's misleading to suggest that planes don't routinely fly near the Pentagon. They do.


And how did two giant titanium engines from a 757 disintegrate after hitting the Pentagon's wall? They were able to find the remains of all but one of the 64 passengers on board the flight, but only small amounts of debris from the plane?

In truth, I don't know enough about ballistics to speak for how well a titanium engine would withstand an impact with a reinforced wall at hundreds of miles an hour. But, if you're suggesting that a plane never hit the building, here's a short list of what you're wilfully ignoring: the clipped light poles, the damage to the power generator, the smoke trails, the hundreds of witnesses, the deaths of everyone aboard Flight 77, and the DNA evidence confirming the identities of 184 of the Pentagon's 189 fatalities (64 of which were the passengers on Flight 77).

Regarding the debris: It's misleading to claim that only small amounts of debris were recovered. This from Allyn E. Kilsheimer, the first structural engineer on the scene: "I saw the marks of the plane wing on the face of the building. I picked up parts of the plane with the airline markings on them. I held in my hand the tail section of the plane, and I found the black box ... I held parts of uniforms from crew members in my hands, including body parts." In addition, there are countless photos of plane wreckage both inside and outside the building (http://www.google.com/search?q=pentagon+wreckage).


Black boxes are almost always located after crashes, even if not in useable condition. Each jet had 2 recorders and none were found?

You help prove my point with this one: "almost always located." Again, I'm no expert on the recovery of black boxes, but here's a point to consider: if the black boxes were within the rubble at the WTC site, you're looking to find four containers that (undamaged, nonetheless) are roughly the size of two-liter soda bottles amidst the rubble of two buildings, each with a footprint of 43,000 square feet and a height of 1,300 feet (for a combined volume of 111,000,000 cubic feet, or 3,100,000,000 liters). (You might want to check my math. And granted, that material was enormously compacted when the towers collapsed. But still, it's a large number. And it doesn't include any of the space below ground level or any of the other buildings that collapsed.) Add to that the fact that they could have been damaged beyond recognition by the collapse of the buildings and the subsequent fires. To me, that hardly seems worthy of conspiracy.


Instead we invaded Afghanistan and started waging war against the same people we trained and armed in the 80s, the same people Reagan called freedom fighters. Now we call them terrorists for defending their own sovereignty.

Here, finally, we find some common ground. I couldn't agree more. You'd be hard-pressed to find a more ardent critic of America's foreign policy.

>> ^marbles:
First you need to acknowledge what a conspiracy is ...

>> ^rougy:

"Forensic" also means to closely study the evidence to better determine who committed the crime, something that was not allowed on any of the 9/11 attack sites.
It is possible to remove debris and still inspect it closely. That was not done for any of the WTC sites.
It would be nice to see a link of that Bingham FOI tape you mentioned. A retired military officer, a colonel I believe, questioned the plane theory on the simple fact that there were no wing marks on the Pentagon building. The official video tape released by the Pentagon is an obvious farce.
Whoever was behind 9/11 is still at large, and it wasn't Al Qaeda.


Video from the Doubletree Hotel:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQeTdrQhqyc

Where do you get this idea that no one was allowed to study the evidence at any of the attack sites? What does that even mean? Are you objecting to the fact that civilians like you or I weren't allowed to walk up and start poking around in the rubble? And how can you possibly claim that none of the debris was closely inspected? How do you think one finds the body parts of human beings amongst that much rubble without closely inspecting the debris? 184 of 189 of the people who died in the attack at the Pentagon were positively identified by investigators. Yet you claim these investigators didn't exist?

"An obvious farce"? Really? Again, where is your evidence?