ChaosE - This may be a matter of semantics and definitions. Depending on how you define the terms, I agree with your point.

And, in moral philosophy, if it is not your _choice_, it is not an ethical choice. Sorry if this is philosophical bullshit, but think about it: your "not killing someone" because you don't have the motivation or means is not a virtuous choice, it is simply not NOT an unethical one. It is the lack of a negative, not the presence of a positive. Virtue is about our choices, not our defaults.

Virtue is like building a muscle. The virtue is demonstrated/evidenced in building my strength (taking the time and focus to work out and be disciplined), not in the fact that I am strong. If I stop working out, my muscle will decay.

This is like virtue. In a strange way, once we have habituated a virtuous choice to routine/automatic mode, it is no longer a virtuous choice. It was virtuous to build the habit, but it is not virtuous when it is automatic.

Again, it is philosophical quibbling/definitions, but it points to a real distinction that matters in our moment by moment experience. As moral philosophers put it, morality is about what you do in the face of difficulty and temptation, not when things are automatic. It is easy to be nice to people when life is going great for you. It is hard to be nice to others when things are stressful and falling apart. THAT is where the rubber of morality meets the road of reality/daily life. That is where virtue shows up (or doesn't).

I am married and monogamy is part of my commitment. If no other woman would deign to sleep with me, my not sleeping with them is no indication of my virtue. It is only in the face of propositions to which I say "no" that I am exercising the virtue of fidelity.

In this sense, the more we are responsible for our own choices, the more those choice CAN be virtuous and BUILD our virtuous character. In contrast, when other people make our choices for us, we neither act virtuously nor build virtuous character.

I am sure this is true in your own life. If you donate time/money/effort to a charitable cause, it impacts you personally and powerfully. When the government takes taxes from your paycheck to pay for social programs, it is impersonal and has virtually zero impact on your character.

Or, that is one way of looking at it - which the video is all about.

0:06 - Is government the antithesis of liberty?

0:47 - One of the things that enhances freedoms are roads. Infrastructure enhances freedom. A social safety net enhances freedom.

2:02 - What should we do with the losers that are picked by the free market?

3:38 - Do we live in a society or don't we? Are we a collective? Everybody's success is predicated on the hard work of all of us; nobody gets there on their own. Why should it be that the people who lose are hung out to dry? For a group that doesn't believe in evolution, it's awfully Darwinian.

5:41 - In a representative democracy, we are the government. We have work to do, and we have a business to run, and we have children to raise.. We elect you as our representatives to look after our interests within a democratic system.

7:41 - Is government inherently evil?

9:03 - Sometimes to protect the greater liberty you have to do things like form an army, or gather a group together to build a wall or levy.

9:47 - As soon as you've built an army, you've now said government isn't always inherently evil because we need it to help us sometimes, so now.. it's that old joke: Would you sleep with me for a million dollars? How about a dollar? Who do you think I am? We already decided who you are, now we're just negotiating.

10:54 - You say: government which governs least governments best. But that were the Articles of Confederation. We tried that for 8 years, it didn't work, and went to the Constitution.

11:16 - You give money to the IRS because you think they're gonna hire a bunch of people, that if your house catches on fire, will come there with water.

11:56 - Why is it that libertarians trust a corporation, in certain matters, more than they trust representatives that are accountable to voters? The idea that I would give up my liberty to an insurance company, as opposed to my representative, seems insane.

13:38 - Why is it that with competition, we have such difficulty with our health care system? ...and there are choices within the educational system.

15:00 - Would you go back to 1890?

16:20 - If we didn't have government, we'd all be in hovercrafts, and nobody would have cancer, and broccoli would be ice-cream?

16:30 - Unregulated markets have been tried. The 80's and the 90's were the robber baron age. These regulations didn't come out of an interest in restricting liberty. What they did is came out of an interest in helping those that had been victimized by a system that they couldn't fight back against.

19:04 - Why do you think workers that worked in the mines unionized?

20:13 - Without the government there are no labor unions, because they would be smashed by Pinkerton agencies or people hired, or even sometimes the government.

20:24 - Would the free market have desegregated restaurants in the South, or would the free market have done away with miscegenation, if it had been allowed to? Would Marten Luther King have been less effective than the free market? Those laws sprung up out of a majority sense of, in that time, that blacks should not... The free market there would not have supported integrated lunch counters.

23:23 - Government is necessary but must be held accountable for its decisions.

In reply to this comment by ant:
>> ^PlayhousePals:

>> ^ant:
>> ^PlayhousePals:
>> ^ant:
>> ^PlayhousePals:
length=18
Must have been a shallow one

Imagine an 8+ sized.

No thanks ... been in a couple nearing 7.0 that's enough for me =o(

Which ones and where? The biggest and closest was near L.A. of 6.1 IIRC. As a callow, I just left my ant nest with my queen ant and was walking to my school bus pickup spot. I didn't feel it at first until my queen told me to stop and things were shaking. I saw windows were shaking/vibrating and stuff. Scary! My first (earth)quake ever in my life!

A 6.5 and a 6.8 ... both in Seattle. My first experience occurred as I was walking through a park on my way to grade school one spring morning. It struck me as odd that there were no birds to be seen [or heard]. A few minutes later I was standing on the playfield, waiting for school to begin, when I noticed a series of rolling waves in the asphalt heading toward me. Then came a deafening rumble as I watched chimney's collapse off several houses across the street. Two story high windows behind me were bowing in and out as the cleaners fell off the scaffolding. I was barely able to keep my footing. Our school was the only one in the neighborhood that remained open that day. It had been rebuilt after it had been destroyed in a 7.1 shaker back in 1949 [before my time]. Scary stuff indeed!


Wow, I remember seeing/hearing the big quake in Seattle a few years ago. Are/Were you still up there and felt that one?


More than a few years ... I think you are referring to the 6.8 on feb 28, 2001. I was asleep ... it jolted awake. Two of my neighbors lost their chimney's in that one. No damage to my house, just some pictures tilted and the contents of one display shelf were thrown across the room. I shoulda clued in that something was up when my cat wouldn't come in to sleep with me [which was highly unusual]. He ended up running to the basement and would not come out from behind the furnace for three days =o(

In my teens? Yes, of course I was just friends with girls.

In my twenties? Hell no, I had female friends but I wanted to sleep with them all. I am a guy after all.

Married in my thirties? Sure, but because I am married, they are all my wife's friends, and they wouldn't sleep with me anyway! Now I just sit back with all the other husbands and stare rather grossly at all the wives and their friends. We never say anything, but we are all thinking about the same exact thing.

"Hey, Macro, mentor and supporter, you know how you and I were such good friends you let me bugger your wife in front of you? Well, I charge you with letting her sleep with me, so now you must die!"

I'm sure I can do a lot of things to change her mind to not sleep with me. *fart*

>> ^Payback:

Game is bullshit. Studies have shown (ya ya I can't find one but I've read them) that a sober woman has decided to, or not, sleep with you within the first 5 seconds and no amount of game will change that.

@blankfist, let me try this again with a little more sleep.

Let me remind you that right now I'm trying to reason with someone who implied I was somehow brainwashed by a biased economics class, and followed it up by saying all liberals are smug, condescending elitists who never listen.

That said, I'm curious. What is it, specifically, that you think liberals need to do differently in order to stave off tea party fascism?

It is a good thing she does not sleep with me, My massive cock would damage those beautiful vocal chords.

I definitely live within 1000ft of the end of a church's property line...

... should probably come up with some pickup lines about how sleeping with me is a felony...

1. My grandmother tried to convince my 17 year old mother to have me aborted, but failed.

2. I flew in a plane for the first time when I was two and remember the air steward taking my unfinished glass of juice, because it was almost time to land.

3. I have been in close contact with dozens of venomous snakes, but never been hurt.

4. I fell in love with Persephone and her story, listening to an audio cassette in my school library at the age of 9.

5. I wasn't satisfied with my parent's explanation for the word 'rape' when I heard it on the news at the age of 6. I could tell they were lying.

6. I was the cultural representative of my school in senior year.

7. I was the first in my family to go to University.

8. I was the first woman in my family to delay marrying until after the age of 17.

9. I climbed Uluru not long after Azaria Chamberlain was taken by a dingo.

10. I used to sail 12ft Thorpes on the Brisbane River. My crew was a beautiful transvestite called Alison.

11. I dreamed of being multi-lingual as a child.

12. I love foreign languages and wish I could have kept up my German and Spanish as well as I have my Japanese.

13. I was a hostess in a Yakuza bar in Osaka for one night only.

14. I love being pregnant, giving birth and being a mother.

15. I wish I had had a lesbian relationship at least once.

16. I let my art lecturer sleep with me once because I believed it was an honour to be in his bed.

17. I drove solo across Australia once, never getting a flat or hitting a roo.

18. I meditate and am learning Chi Gung.

19. I sometimes talk to the dead and they tell me helpful stuff only they and their relatives know.

20. I know that our limited perception of reality is the reason we experience fear, anger and hatred.

21. I keep dream journals for my children. I have recorded their dreams since they first learned to talk about them.

22. My daughter reads my mind and lets me know she can do it, by bringing up whatever subject I am silently thinking about at the time.

23. I know that people I encounter are really me in another form.

24. I don't read/listen to the news/t.v. any more.

25. I will walk across Australia next time.

>> ^calvados:
sexuality comedy terrible


>> ^karkarlee:
Lolol so disturbing


And I like this song.

Night Drive
(Yellowhead highway)

How bright the stars
How dark the night
How long have I been sleeping?
Sleep overtook me on my westward flight
Held me in its keeping
I had a dream; it seemed so real
Its passing left me shaking
I saw you here behind the wheel
On this very road I'm taking

Hurtling westward through the prairie night
Under the spell of the motion
Your eyes were keen and bright in the dashboard light
Dreaming of the western ocean
Dusty towns left far behind
Mountains drawing ever nearer
Your face was then as it was tonight
Ever young
Ever dearer

I know this road
And its every curve
Where the hills commence their climbing
We rested here
If my memory serves
The Northern Lights were shining
You lit a smoke
We shared some wine
We watched the sky in wonder
Your laughter echoes after all this time
In that high and wild blue yonder

I don't know why I write these lines
It's not like I could send you the letter
It's that I love your more after all this time
It's that I wish I'd shown you better
Years have slipped
Beneath my wheels
Dwindling in my rear view mirror
As time has passed
Your life has seemed less real
But these night drives bring you nearer

So tonight I'll wish upon these stars
As they rise upward to guide me
That I'll see you here just as you are
Now, as then, beside me
Scares me how the years have flown
Like the leaves drift in September
They've lost sight of you as your legacy's grown
But this road and I
We remember

Well I was born in the desert came on up from New Orleans
Came up on a tornado sunlight in the sky
I went around all day with the moon sticking in my eye

Hey hey hey all you young girls wherever you're at
I got a brand new Cadillac I got a Ferrari too
Sure 'nuff baby sure 'nuff 'n yes I do

Got the time to teach ya' now, bet you'll learn some too
Got the time to teach ya' now, bet you'll learn some too
Sure 'nuff baby sure 'nuff 'n yes I do

Hey hey hey all you young girls whatever you do
Hey hey hey all you young girls whatever you do
Well come on by and see me I'll make it worth it to you

.....with me and I'll ..with me and you
Sleep with me and I'll sleep with me and you
Stick with me and I'll stick with me and you

*requeue -- Come on Canada, show love!

You'll have to excuse me, I'm not at my best
I've been gone for a month, I've been drunk since I left
These so-called vacations will soon be my death
I'm so sick from the drink I need home for a rest.

We arrived in December and London was cold
We stayed in the bars along Charing Cross Road
We never saw nothin' but brass taps and oak
Kept a shine on the bar with the sleeves of our coats

CHORUS:
You'll have to excuse me, I'm not at my best
I've been gone for a week
I've been drunk since I left
And these so-called vacations
Will soon be my death
I'm so sick from the drink
I need home for a rest
Take me home....

Euston Station the train journey North
In the buffet car we lurched back and forth
Past old crooked dykes through Yorkshire's green fields
We were flung into dance as the train jigged and reeled

- CHORUS -

By the light of the moon, she'd drift through the streets
A rare old perfume, so seductive and sweet
She'd tease us and flirt, as the pubs all closed down
Then walk us on home and deny us a round

You'll have to excuse me, I'm not at my best
I've been gone for a month
I've been drunk since I left
And these so-called vacations
Will soon be my death
I'm so sick from the drink
I need home for a rest
Take me home....

The gas heater's empty, it's damp as a tomb
The spirits we drank are now ghosts in the room
I'm knackered again, come on sleep take me soon
And don't lift up my head 'till the the twelve bells of noon

You'll have to excuse me, I'm not at my best
I've been gone for a month
I've been drunk since I left
And these so-called vacations
Will soon be my death
I'm so sick from the drink
I need home for a rest
Take me home

Are you serious? How can you sue someone because they didn't want to have sex with you?
Hell, I'd be a rich man. All I'd have to do is walk around asking random girls "Will you sleep with me?" And when they say no, I just pull out the lawsuit, fill in the blanks and be on my way.

And this kind of thing would be better off in the Wtf or sexuality talks.