Solomon Eagle

Liberalism and scocialism as "Hidden communism" I like that. I think I may see the recent election as much more significant than you do. It truly was a civil war. And just as slavery didn't come back after the first civil war; liberalism will never enjoy the power it once did ever again after this second. I see a real break with the, now seemingly very old, postmodern era. Man can take pride in himself again. Reason and Science get us further than the glorification of the irrational (postmodern). And the mainstream sees this more and more in the very concrete products of technology. Unfortunately religion was not defeated, but some would even say exhonerated in a way, in this last showdown. But I see it will be a long time yet before we will be able to drop this need for the mystical. It's perfectly understandable. Death and death anxiety are just too awful to face up to without it, that is, without some bromide. Objectivism itself may even be such a bromide, (like anything else it can be embraced as a religion) but with an important difference--it also happens to be headed in the right direction, that is, in the direction of reason as the only proper tool to deal with reality, and our only real hope to a blindingly brighter future (an age of light) in which solutions to all problems, not excluding death, can be found. And as I said, people will move ineluctably in this direction more and more simply because of the concrete benifits of this world view. Objectivism is the rigorous spelling out of this world view.

Not at all. Dishonesty is "knowingly" telling a lie. If I make a statement based on the best relevant information and the statement turns out to be false, that's not lying, that's making a mistake. Not to understand such a basic distinction is astonishing. Now, neither the British commission nor the Senate nor the 9-ll commisions found any evidence what so ever that the President or any of his administration "knowingly" lied about the reasons for going to war. OK? Your (and the left's) use of the term "misleading", however, is truly "intentionally" misleading. This is pure political slight-of-hand, specifically through equivocation. You libs begin by saying the president mislead in the sense of "took us somewhere we shouldn't have gone"-and then use it, and hope it is misunderstood, in the more usual sense of to deceive or lie. Once again, slimey and dishonorable. Of course, none of this nonsense worked, so why the rehash here? It's getting old. Old like, for example the word "Quagmire". (Not to get too far from the point, but it 's always seemed very funny to me that this was the Lefties favorite new word this last year--aparently a word meaning anything the President and his administration did successfully. But what struck me as really funny was that they never used it in reference to their beloved Democratic party as it sunk deeper and deeper into its own mud.) This is a great President. What he did for the Iraqi people as well as the Afganis is wonderful. What he's done for the country is wonderful. The recent election confirmed this as will History. We are, thank god, historic witnesses to the twilight of the liberal. And I'm done with this thread.

To call a President, especially in a time of war, a liar--you must present real evidence. You have so far presented no evidence, but only the usual leftist assumptions (yawn!). If you have, in fact, no evidence for such serious claims- you are acting dishonorably. In general liberalism (watered down socialism) and Objectivism are anti-thetical. Indeed, it may be your own premises that are "subjective" free floating and otherwise cut off from reality.

Oh, your god is an animator! Indeed, you seemed a little cartoonish.

That should cheer you up.

------Here are the main reasons why they cling to the belief in God: They believe that without God, Life is meaningless. The universe is incomprehensible. There is no morality by which we can live. We can never be certain of the truth. You can see why they believe in God even in the face of cogent evidence. (I would, too, if I thought that those were the only alternatives to faith in God).----- ^QUOTE^ They are motivated by the horror of personal extinction, and would sacrifice all of these reasons you cite, if they thought it would spare them having to die someday. SolomonEagle

Thank you for pointing out my fallacious reasoning. I stand guilty of hypostatization(I think it's also called the pathetic fallacy). It's terrible to see how easily I slip into these traps-even knowing about them beforehand! In fact, the main reason I'm interested in Objectivism is to clean up my very sloppy intellectual habits.

It's pronounced Rand, of course (rhymes with "and"). And Ayn rhymes with "mine" or "pine." Thanks Bill, I didn't even wonder about her first name, but assumed it was another spelling for Ann. So double thanks. Solomon

I've heard it pronounced rind as in grinned. Are you saying the d is silent?

What is the proper pronunciation of "Rand"?

It's a biological standard, and thus, cannot be applied to contraception ( a matter of human volition) at all. Also, you forgot to explain why the proposition was false.

Thus, while it may be true that many of todays scientists are concluding biology determines sexual orientation, that has no more meaning than saying many of today's philosophers are concluding consciousness determines reality. -- If homosexuality is biological, then it has to be a mutation or mistake since the goal of any species is propagation. That would mean biological mistakes were being made, in this case, anywhere from 2 to 5% of the time. I find it impossible to believe Nature could be making such a mistake on that kind of scale about something(figuratively speaking) it considers to be most important. This leaves learning as an explanation. Since most homosexuals say they feel as though they'd "always been that way" (a big reason why they and others speculate the biological hypothesis) the learning (or misslearning) must be occurring very early. My guess is that it is a strategy for dealing with the fear of death: it is as if they are saying , though subconsciously, "I'm not a propogating animal that passes on its genetic code and dies--my love is purer in that it has nothing to do with biological propogation, and therefore nothing to do with the resulting death either." I find it very telling that a common derogatory name in the homosexual community for a heterosexual couple is "breeders".

This is extremely wishful thinking. And any-means-to-an-end is the implicit motto of the Left. We must all watch the human tendency to star-struckness, and stick like a death grip to reason. Hollywood has always been, and will always be, a cesspit of self-destuctive fools from which nothing good or real will ever come.

And my point was that this old argument is sophistical, but I'm withdrawing that charge. I see that it's just a bad argument because it proves the opposite of what it intends. That death is nothing is the problem, is the very bases for the fear in the first place, pointing this out , therefore , can never be solicitudinous. ..."not an issue--once it occures"... Sure, but the problem is one of living--occures in life. An equivalent and more revealing form of the argument would be, "It's silly to worry about death, you'll be dead soon". There's some kind of logical slight-of-hand going on here I'm not clever enough to isolate. Perhaps I was correct at first in claiming a basic equivocation at work. Your mentioning of the term "Nothing" draws my suspicion. Is Epic. saying to the person afraid of death, "don't be affraid of becoming nothing (as in non-existence) anyone can see that death is nothing (as in unimportant)? Is there a trained logician in the house? ... --- ... !