>> ^imstellar28:
1. By the way, why are you defaming someone who died almost 40 years ago? If she was alive today, would you have the courage to say what you're saying if you met her?
2. I'm not imposing anything on anyone, how could I? My philosophy explictly forbids violence, while your philosophy explicitly requires it.
3. Altruism is an ideal which rarely manifests itself in reality. People pretend they are altruistic because they think it is a virtue. It is not. Those who pretend to be good are frauds, and worse than those who are bad but honest. You don't appear to be "altruistic"--you just want to force others to be "altruistic". Selfishness is a good thing. You wouldn't be breathing if your genes (and your ancestors they drove) weren't selfish.
4. I am not concerned with my demeanor because you (and others) will think I am crazed just because of the beliefs I hold, regardless of the manner in which I convey them. Case in point, you consider Ayn Rand to have a psychological imbalance when I am aware of no public instances when she has failed to be articulate and polite. She disagrees with your opinion, and writes entire books explaining why you are wrong, and all you can muster is "she is mentally ill"

This entire argument comes down to the answer to a single question "Do you believe it is moral to initiate violence against another human being" . My answer is no.
Socialism is not possible without the initiation of violence. If thats what you want, fine, but don't pretend you have the moral high ground because you are robbing houses in order to donate to a cancer fund. You aren't altruistic, noble, moral, or good--you are just another tyrant who uses violence as a means to their ends.


1. Debate technique, pure and simple. Pushing your buttons, since you were trying to push mine (and many others'). I'm not sure what I'd say to Rand if I had a chance to meet her, but I think I'd phrase it as a question, whatever it was. "Don't you think it's possible your philosophy is a major psychological reaction to your childhood?", possibly.

2. Perhaps it's a bit of a strawman argument on my part. When you say "fuck democracy" in the context of a general rant about some extreme ideology, it makes me think about people like Timothy McVeigh, not Patrick Henry. To get to where you want to go, you either need to get 1000 times more persuasive and use "majority oppression" to get your ideology implemented, or start a revolution the old-fashioned way, with guns. Otherwise you're just being a pissant.

3. Where does the altruistic desire come from, if not from our genes? That said, you claim that my pushing for more government projects to aid the poor & middle class is not altruistic? Why? Because you see all government action as "force" or "slavery"? It's not my problem you're crazy. That said, I think I'd benefit directly from things like a middle-class tax cut, and government healthcare plans, and indirectly from aid given to the poor. Maybe I'm just appropriately selfish, and insufficiently fundamentalist about market economics for you.

4. Psychological imbalance doesn't necessarily mean she rants and raves and calls people's beliefs shitburgers, or the people themselves cows, though it can manifest itself that way too. I'll confess to being rather psychologically imbalanced myself -- take a look at those posts people have shared about their "Personal top 10" channels. Mine's very different from other people's, and skewed hard towards politics. It doesn't mean I'm incapable of being polite, or stringing together coherent sentences, it just means I'm not very balanced in what I'm interested in. I hope I'll get a little more balanced once this damnned election is finally done, though.

As to your closing argument, you're assuming your premise. It's not about initiation of violence, it's about enforcing a contract.

You are (I assume) a citizen of the United States. You may have been made one automatically by birth, but you can rescind that at any time, and leave. In short, you participate in our government by voluntary contract, and enforcing contracts seems to be a government action you libertarians like, even if violence is necessary.

Socialism is perfectly fine, in your view, if it's done by voluntary contract, right? Or do you espouse a belief that government should regulate economic activity to exclude socialistic communes...like city governments?

I don't use violence any more than you do, I also just speak my mind, and work within the existing system to try to make the things I want happen. You want to destroy the system itself, and that's pretty violent in my mind.

>> ^imstellar28:
NetRunner,
I'm not imposing anything on anyone, how could I? My philosophy explictly forbids violence, while your philosophy explicitly requires it.


Oh dear, I must have missed the last, what is it now, 5 years of war against a country that didn't do anything to your capitalist democratic society.

Your philosophy is deluded...

ps. Australia is a left of center democratic-socialist nation. The only wars we get involved in were WW1&2, Vietnam (at America's behest), Iraq/Kuwait (at America's behest), Afghanistan (at America's behest).

This is the thing I love about the anti-socialist movement in the US, you are all still terrified of the red fucking menace coming out from under the beds that you've convinced yourself that anything vaguely associated with the left/communism = bad.


3. Altruism is an ideal which rarely manifests itself in reality. People pretend they are altruistic because they think it is a virtue. It is not. Those who pretend to be good are frauds, and worse than those who are bad but honest. You don't appear to be "altruistic"--you just want to force others to be "altruistic". Selfishness is a good thing. You wouldn't be breathing if your genes (and your ancestors they drove) weren't selfish.


Yes yes, black is white, up is down, we get it. Everything "noble" about humans is evil, yadda yadda.

Does anyone still actually believe in this crock of shit?


4. I am not concerned with my demeanor because you (and others) will think I am crazed just because of the beliefs I hold, regardless of the manner in which I convey them. Case in point, you consider Ayn Rand to have a psychological imbalance when I am aware of no public instances when she has failed to be articulate and polite. She disagrees with your opinion, and writes entire books explaining why you are wrong, and all you can muster is "she is mentally ill"


No, I don't think your crazed because of your beliefs, I think you're crazed because you can't manage to be "articulate and polite"...


This entire argument comes down to the answer to a single question "Do you believe it is moral to initiate violence against another human being" . My answer is no.


So you're telling me African's were brought to America by socialists? That the Native American's were dispossessed of their land and murdered by socialists? That the planet is being raped of it's natural resources to supply the all consuming might of the socialist nation of the USA..?

You are wrong. That is all... =)



Socialism is not possible without the initiation of violence. If thats what you want, fine, but don't pretend you have the moral high ground because you are robbing houses in order to donate to a cancer fund. You aren't altruistic, noble, moral, or good--you are just another tyrant who uses violence as a means to their ends.


el oh el.

You're like the morons who believed the world was flat. You haven't lived under socialism, you have no idea whether it works in theory, and you're terrified of it because, like it or not, it's coming.

Oh hang on, the US has had socialism for years.. =P Subsidies and tariff protections for US wheat and sugar, oil subsidies so you can fuel up at under 4USD per gallon while in Britan, for example, they pay over 10USD a gallon. Any "incentive", grant or other shot of public money squirted in to private concerns = socialism.

So roll over and smell the red mate, because you're balls deep in it with the rest of the country, you're just too blind and stupid to realise it...

NetRunner,

1. By the way, why are you defaming someone who died almost 40 years ago? If she was alive today, would you have the courage to say what you're saying if you met her?

2. I'm not imposing anything on anyone, how could I? My philosophy explictly forbids violence, while your philosophy explicitly requires it.

3. Altruism is an ideal which rarely manifests itself in reality. People pretend they are altruistic because they think it is a virtue. It is not. Those who pretend to be good are frauds, and worse than those who are bad but honest. You don't appear to be "altruistic"--you just want to force others to be "altruistic". Selfishness is a good thing. You wouldn't be breathing if your genes (and your ancestors they drove) weren't selfish.

4. I am not concerned with my demeanor because you (and others) will think I am crazed just because of the beliefs I hold, regardless of the manner in which I convey them. Case in point, you consider Ayn Rand to have a psychological imbalance when I am aware of no public instances when she has failed to be articulate and polite. She disagrees with your opinion, and writes entire books explaining why you are wrong, and all you can muster is "she is mentally ill"


This entire argument comes down to the answer to a single question "Do you believe it is moral to initiate violence against another human being" . My answer is no.

Socialism is not possible without the initiation of violence. If thats what you want, fine, but don't pretend you have the moral high ground because you are robbing houses in order to donate to a cancer fund. You aren't altruistic, noble, moral, or good--you are just another tyrant who uses violence as a means to their ends.

The Republican party is amazing, they are a 24 hour comedy show. You can't find this type of circus anywhere.

If Obama is a threat to national security then why is the CIA not concerned about his candidacy as president of the United States.

WAKE UP STUPID AMERICANS THEY " Republicans" ARE TAKING YOU FOR A RIDE TO NOWHERE BUT DOWN!!!!

re: ehm... science?

I'm not concerned with whether it's true or not, I'm just saying that relying on it as "knowledge about human nature" might conceivably influence the lawmaking process (we don't need the people to vote on this law because it's been scientifically proven to be sound), and that would be a technocratic tendency.
I hope i didn't come off as a hater of science or research into human nature earlier (some of the replies seemed to think so); I'm not, i just see the democratic state as a bit more fragile and precarious than others perhaps do.

I'm with Churchill on this one: "it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried"

>> ^MarineGunrock:

Homosexuality is simply not natural. Just look at it like this:
Regardless of creation or evolution, humans are made to procreate as a couple. A male/male or female/female couple can not procreate naturally. If you could call it natural, then surely the human form would have been created/evolved to be able to produce children from same sex couples.
Can you look at that and say "Oh okay, well, yeah thats a concern" ?


and so lets say homosexuality is natures population control? natural causes just aren't killing people in the western world like they used to. something has to keep the population under control. so no, i am not concerned that people participating in a sex act that does not lead to procreation will cause any shortage of human beings on this planet.

>> ^shuac:
^ To address the larger point: I think spelling and grammar do count. Given enough time and ever-diminishing education spending, all these errors could eventually become the norm, and I don't feel that's a good thing. It would be similar to "1984" where each edition of their dictionary is thinner than the last because they actively destroy words. We may not be actively destroying spelling and grammar but doing little to correct it produces a net equivalent, so to speak.

I, like you, want to be correct. You want to be correct in pointing out how silly I am spending time with this sort of thing. I simply want to be correct in my spelling and grammar because that's my profession. I feel we can both be right.


If writing is your profession then surely you are aware of the difference between prescriptive and descriptive grammar--particularly the fact that most prescriptive rules (the rules against double negation and split infinitives for instance) were completely arbitrary and not even being followed at the time of their invention?

Grammar and spelling change over time in any language, unless it is a dead language such as Latin. There's absolutely no stopping that. There's an estimated 800 new words added to English every year and that's not counting how we use old words in new and innovative ways. At the same time, other archaic words fall out of use. It's a natural process.

Language change is inevitable and is actually a good thing. I'm reminded of my Portuguese friend. He was telling about how the government in Portugal strictly regulates the language, particularly in publishing. It was a huge hassle for him as an academic back in the 80s because Portugal refused to allow the importation of foreign words. Personal computers were becoming common on college campuses, but because the government had yet to approve an official Portuguese word for them yet, they needed to be referred to in official publications as something like "machines that use electricity to calculate and process" or some such extremely long moniker. Of course, most Portuguese at the time in private simply referred to them by their English name of "computers."

Standards of language have their place in the realm of academia and legalese. The standards exist because precision in these areas is crucial to preventing costly misunderstandings. Even these standards change over time (as evidenced by the annually updated manuals of style), though much more slowly than common usage.

I, for one, am not concerned about grammar of spelling errors on the Internet at all. If those errors become accepted usage someday it will only be because the vast majority of English users agree that the supposedly incorrect form is easier to read, write, or understand than the supposedly correct one. And what's wrong with that?

Hamas' charter calls for a withdrawal from all land occupied by Isreal since 1967, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. That is their legitimate goal and attacks sanctioned by Hamas are against military targets on occupied Palestinian territory. Attacks inside Isreal are not sanctioned by Hamas and are condemned by Hamas.

The unilateral withdrawal offered by Sharon that you mention was in fact a 10 year truce mediated by Jimmy Carter in return for complete withdrawal of Isreal forces from the occupied lands taken in 1967, and a return to the 1967 borders. Isreal never responded to it.

Hamas then offered another truce in June this year mediated by Egypt. They have agreed to stick to the timetable but will continue to respond to Isreali attacks. Isreal didn't respond to that either.

In 2006 Hamas announced it would cease all violence if Isreal recognised the 1967 borders and withdrew from occupied territory.

I hope you are seeing the parallels with the Irish struggle.

In reply to this comment by bcglorf:

Hamas does not exist to stir retaliatory strikes from Isreal, that is American propoganda and is completely untrue. Hamas wants to liberate their country which has been illegally occupied by Isreal and wants to reassemble their nation which is an entirely legal and legitimate goal.

By Hamas own charter, they define the illegally occupied country as the ENTIRETY of Israel. If taking that 'back' is a legal and legitimate goal I'm content to disagree.


Isreal is circling and taking over Palestinian land, the idea that they are encouraging any kind of withdrawal is laughable and untrue.


Israel took the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights after the six-day war from, not the Palestinian people, but from Jordan and Syria. Israel was not concerned with circling the Palestinians, as they were not in control of those regions, they were concerned with the armies that Egypt, Syria and Jordan were massing on their borders.

As for withdrawal, have the Palestinians put forward anything similar to Sharon's unilateral disengagement plan? I'd think that, at the least, somewhat qualifies as encouraging withdrawal.

Hamas does not exist to stir retaliatory strikes from Isreal, that is American propoganda and is completely untrue. Hamas wants to liberate their country which has been illegally occupied by Isreal and wants to reassemble their nation which is an entirely legal and legitimate goal.

By Hamas own charter, they define the illegally occupied country as the ENTIRETY of Israel. If taking that 'back' is a legal and legitimate goal I'm content to disagree.


Isreal is circling and taking over Palestinian land, the idea that they are encouraging any kind of withdrawal is laughable and untrue.


Israel took the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights after the six-day war from, not the Palestinian people, but from Jordan and Syria. Israel was not concerned with circling the Palestinians, as they were not in control of those regions, they were concerned with the armies that Egypt, Syria and Jordan were massing on their borders.

As for withdrawal, have the Palestinians put forward anything similar to Sharon's unilateral disengagement plan? I'd think that, at the least, somewhat qualifies as encouraging withdrawal.

"I'm only going to try it once." I've never used, but I'm curious to know why the "just once" thing doesn't seem to work. Is it because the drug is that addictive? Or do people figure they weren't negatively effected the first time, so they're not concerned about the next time, or the next time, etc.?

Oh, and someone submitted spliced videos as a college project? Well done.

Glad to see a parent keeping an eye on her kids. Overly concerned is better than not concerned.

How does this differ from say a Muslim zealot? Religion is a dead concept. God put us on this planet to experience life. Heaven and Hell.......Umm yea?? God does not concern her or himself with issues of a mortal existence, (right or wrong, bad or good) You sin you burn?? Please............

Remembering Chile's 9/11
by Paul Street

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=4162

September 10, 2003

"Close to Perfect:" A Different, Bloodier Nine-Eleven

The events of September 11th were horrific, tragic, and criminal on a monumental scale. Planes flew low over an American nation's leading city. Buildings erupted in flames. There was an official death toll of more than 3,000. Thousands of innocent people were ruthlessly slaughtered. Their loved ones were placed in horrible suspense, waiting to learn the fate of missing husbands, wives, sisters, cousins, and children. An American country was left in shock, with an uncertain future, as the perpetrators evaded capture and punishment. September 11th was a dark, bloody day of historic proportions. It was a prelude to regression, repression and heightened bloodshed.

Yes, the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Chile's president Salvadore Allende on September 11th, 1973 was a terrible watershed. The low-flying planes belonged to the Chilean Air Force. They came on the orders of Chilean General Augusto Pinochet to bomb La Moneda Presidential Palace, where Allende, a self-declared Marxist, killed himself before he could be assassinated. Hundreds of real and suspected Allende supporters were gunned down in Santiago's soccer stadium, fashioned into a torture center and concentration camp. Across the nation, in the streets and military detention centers, Pinochet's forces murdered 20,000 and tortured 60,000 in the first few months after 9/11/1973. One million Chileans were forced into exile. According to leading international relations analyst William I. Robinson, it was "the bloodiest coup in Latin-American history" (Robinson, Promoting Polyarchy: Globalization, US Intervention, and Hegemony [Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1996], p. 46).

According to a report from Patrick Ryan, the US Naval Attaché stationed with the United States Military Group in Chile that black September, the coup was "close to perfect." It was, Ryan told his superiors, a great victory for "free men aspiring to goals which are to the benefit of Chile and not self-serving world Marxism." (Situation Report, Navy Section, United States Military Group, Valparaiso, Chile, October 1, 1973, available online at http://www.gwu. edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB8/ch21-01.htm)

This state-terrorist rampage targeted the left and the mass popular social movements ("Marxist" and otherwise) that brought Allende to power in September 1970. Chilean trade unions and other popular organizations were dismantled. Clinics serving the poor were closed down. Twenty-six newspapers and magazines were shuttered. Chilean state and society, exceptional among Latin American states in the degree or its respect for civic freedoms and bourgeois-democratic political institutions, was militarized at every level.

Next came the restructuring of Chile's political economy along "free market" lines, meaning state protection for the wealthy and savage market discipline for the poor. Land, factories, mines, and mills that had been put under public direction for public service were returned to their "rightful" owners, "rescued" for the noble pursuit of egoistic, capitalist profit. This was consistent with the counsel of University of Chicago economic "experts," who arrived to spread Milton Friedman's delusional notion that capitalism and democracy are identical phenomena.

The socioeconomic consequences of the new "freedom" and "democracy" were striking. As the Chilean rich got richer during the first ten years of Pinochet's rule, the number of Chileans living below the official poverty line rose from 17 to 40 percent. The related slashing of health expenditures and programs led to an explosion of poverty-related diseases at the bottom of Chile's increasingly steep pyramid. Those who questioned the policies leading to these aristocratic outcomes did so at the risk of torture and murder by the fascist "free market" state.

"In Our Own Best Interests": Saving Chile from the "Irresponsibility" of Its Own People

It was all carried out to the applause and with the assistance and political cover of the US power elite. When the American ambassador to Chile expressed misgivings about Pinochet's use of torture, he received a sharp rebuke from US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who oversaw US covert actions and made sure that the ambassador was kept out of the "black-ops" loop during the early 1970s. For Kissinger and President Richard Nixon, humanitarian concerns were irrelevant. The higher Cold War goal was to protect global capitalism and American multinational corporate interests from the virus of "Marxism." Stated more accurately, the purpose was to crush the contagious notion that national social and economic policy should and could be conducted with collective and egalitarian purposes and national self-determination in mind. Kissinger seems to have been most concerned with the demonstration effect successful Chilean left-democratic governance might have on Italy, where left parties were in a position to make gains within the existing parliamentary political system.

Upon learning of Allende's election in 1970, Nixon informed Kissinger and CIA Director Richard Helms that the newly elected government of Chile was "unacceptable." He instructed his dark foreign policy stars to devise a scheme for keeping Allende out of office. "Not concerned risks involved," read Helms' notes on Nixon's instruction. "No involvement of the embassy. $10,000,000 available, more if necessary. Full-time job - best men we have...Make the economy scream. 48 hours for plan of action."

Kissinger saw "no reason," he once remarked, that the US should stand by and let a nation "go Marxist" because "its people are irresponsible." Consistent with that judgment, Kissinger and the CIA were centrally involved in efforts to de-stabilize and overthrow the Allende regime through various means, including military force. This pivotal, illegal US intervention in Chile's internal affairs is now a matter of voluminous documentary and scholarly record, much of which can be perused in a number of sources listed in an Appendix at the end of this article.

(to be continued)

Constitutional_Patriot:

As we've already discussed, while they indeed had sincere reservations about how it was formed, funded and so forth, neither Hamilton nor Keane believe that the 9/11 Commission was ultimately unsuccessful. In fact, the opposite is true. The following is a quotation from their book Without Precedent:

Both of us [Hamilton and Keane] were aware of grumbling around Washington that the 9/11 Commission was doomed--if not designed--to fail: the commission would splinter down partisan lines; lose its credibility by leaking classified information; be denied the necessary access to do its job; or alienate the 9/11 families who had fought on behalf of its creation. What we could not have anticipated were the remarkable people and circumstances that would coalesce within and around the 9/11 Commission over the coming twenty months to enable our success.

In short, whether or not they believe that the Commission was "set up to fail," they don't believe that it actually did fail.

Further, also as we've already discussed, the information that was kept from the 9/11 Commission and the changing stories did not concern what actually happened during the attacks. It was the question of whether, during the investigation, NORAD gave the commission false information intentionally (to cover their mistakes) or inadvertently. (Regarding the attacks, however, the correct information was uncovered in the end.)

The Constitution does not give any power to the Federal branches of the government to define the meaning of words that are vague within the Constitution, therefore the power is given to the States or the people as per Amendment X, that they should define those vague terms for the current period in time.

As per Amendment IX, the interpretation of vague meanings within the Constitution must not be used to "deny or disparage" rights retained by the people. Therefore(in concordance with Amendments IX and X), if government does rule AGAINST a case brought by the people pertaining to a vague definition within the Constitution, that judgment must then be subject to the scrutiny of Amendment IX - that IF it DENIES or DISPARAGES the rights of the people, or of the states, from rights not explicitly stated within the Constitution, that judgment is invalid, and probably should not have happened in the first place.

In other words, for things like "excessive bail," "cruel and unusual punishment," or "just compensation," the founders of this country meant for the states to initiate a Writ of Elections to determine what would fit those definitions - it is most certainly NOT up to the Federal branches of the Government to determine them at all(because that right has not been given to the Federal branches of the government, and therefore is reserved for the States or the people, as per Amendment X), and for the States to define them, without a public inquiry, would only incite lawsuits by the public(as we see all over the United States today) to redefine vague terms like what is considered "excessive bail," "cruel and unusual punishment," and "just compensation."

That is the literal translation of Amendments IX and X applied to the interpretation of the body of the Constitution. The Founders realized that certain definitions could not be contained within the Constitution, and were dependent on both time and locality within the country, and, by not having given the right of definition of those terms to the Federal branches of the government, they inherently gave the right(as per Amendments IX and X) to define those terms to the States, and to the people.

Since the Federal government is not allowed to regulate intra-State commerce, court cases to decide things like "excessive bail" could not be appealed to, because the Federal Branch of the government would have to cede to the People in every case that the Person filing the case could show that such "excessive bail" would "deny or disparage" rights retained by them that the States had not regulated, or not been allowed to regulate by the Constitution(think about how easy that would be - "I was going to go to church(a right retained by the people that the State governments do not have the right to prohibit the 'Free exercise thereof') but I could not because of the excessive bail imposed by my State".

With such an easy abuse of power, it is only logical that the States therefore hold Elections on those matters, which is a right granted to the States especially for the purpose of defining terms within the Constitution that are reliant on time and locality. No amount of persons can avoid the use of time/locality-dependent terms in the creation of any document of constitution, especially in one that is to stand for the totality of the duration of existence of the country in which it founds.

Actually - please look through the United States Constitution and list the terms that are dependent on time and locality.

It should be easy - language is like an equation, and those terms are just variables.

Do the founders of a country need to form their Constitution using a standardized programming language for you NOT to argue against it?(Just FYI - Turing-style computation/programming was not documented until 1936 - 160 years AFTER the United States Constitution was written)

Nowadays, there's Neuro-Linguistic Programming which concerns the foundation of words into programmatic functions, but back when the Constitution was written, the Founders wrote it as specifically as they could, evidenced by how they handle branch functions and commercial regulation. In order to believe otherwise, one must be ignorant of the evolution of the English language.

Please do discontinue the use of the ADL as a source of news for this conversation, as they neither claim, within their charter, to be a source of news, nor do I hold faith in their ability to be an unbiased source of news.

"The immediate object of the League is to stop, by appeals to reason and conscience and, if necessary, by appeals to law, the defamation of the Jewish people. Its ultimate purpose is to secure justice and fair treatment to all citizens alike and to put an end forever to unjust and unfair discrimination against and ridicule of any sect or body of citizens." - ADL Charter; October 1913

This conversation:
    1) Does not concern
        a. "The defamation of the Jewish people"(of which I am one)
        b. Biases that pertain TO "any sect or body of citizens"
    2) Does concern
        a. The organization and structure of a virtual creation that is that of a country, namely the United States of America