putofftoolong

Why is it assumed there will be an increase in revenue from the tax increases. When the bush tax cuts went into effect, was there a revenue decrease? Revenue in 2002 was 1.8 trillion and by 2006 it was up to 2.6 trillion, the problem was the spending

All foreign aid is a waste, unless you want to make the whole world a welfare state

never said I believed in god, I thought it was clear the way I worded my post. If you are a conservative and want to conserve what you think is good, how will you change your mind by listening to the party on the left. I just said I don't blame those who feel they have no choice but to stick to the gop. You could say they should discover objectivism, but you could say that about anyone. Its strange but in the us, with the exception of objectivists the socially liberal fiscal conservatives don't seem to be able to hold there principles on spending, its like only the people who can withstand being called a nut for being prolife can have the same ability for being more principled on spending. I don't agree with using god as an only check on the power on govt, and with enlightenment philosophy it wouldn't be necessary. I am just saying, the left has fallen so low that using god has become more helpful in holding some reminent of the enlightenment position, mostly by tradition but not completely, unless you think you can trace it through history to today's democratic party. At least conservatives invite people like yaron brook to speak, and they listen to him.

why should the GOP pay the price for the birther nonsense, it was started by hillary clinton back in 2008 or before. I can't see how anyone can blame the anti immigration, anti abortion party. The democrats supported slavery, the KKK, including nominating them to the supreme court FDR, opposed every civil rights bill, from 1860-1960 and didn't care about blacks until exactly one minute after they effectively had a vote to court, then somehow try to rewrite history by now acting like there is a racist around every corner, and blaming the GOP. Where were they when they were needed! O I forgot, will of the majority excuses everything. Given this, if americans use god as a check and balance on human stupidity, its better than nothing. The human race hasn't progressed to the point where they can be principled enough without god to actually have the numbers to win an election.(not to mention releasing first degree murderers, and when they reoffend, continue the policy(dukakas), and letting communists run the govt for who knows how long. I am so angry right now, my only consilation is that because the media and the fed are trying so hard to prevent disaster until after the election, obama will probably go down in history as the worst president ever, or at least he would if the dems won the house as well. Now the house republicans get to turn obama into a clinton who will then take credit for whatever good does happen. Apperantely, if the world voted, 82% would vote for obama. They say you can't fool all the people all of the time, well, were going to see how wrong they all are. knowing the dems tradition of projection, (IE) saying the gop is the war party, I am willing to bet that the future disater will be averted/disguised by some kind of semi world war, wasn't that what happened the last time the world was so united behind far left policies. Too many unemployed, we can't renounce our philosophy,guess we have to kill them.

I am not a christian, but the continued dominance of religion in general and christianity in america exist because the opposition(outside objectivism) on the left are so irrational, that I can hardly blame anybody for sticking with Jesus as their moral ideal. Bush=Hitler is not a convincing argument, nor is protesting in the street, or in this case celebrating the injury of someone who's values may be in error, but who still at least has values. The only arguement I could have against christians, would be that they evade better arguements that are available, but the more I see this kind of thing, the less I can blame them, and its sad. Can't you do better than this?

Think of what this says to any wouldbe dictator or socialist anywhere on the globe. "Sure we believe in capitalism generally, but heavens, not when there is an emergency." Every socialist's moral confidence just skyrocketed this is how a depression leads to war

Well, he is a real person. Whether he is an empiricist or not I don't really know. Although I don't see how that would matter. I guess I was just curious as to whether this was a big deal or not. Because if its not, I guess if someone were to ask me about Ayn Rand (whether its my friend or not), and her philosophy, and how to describe it, I guess it would be ok to call her a rationalist, I mean if the word really can just mean rational then it wouldn't matter.

There is this disease in the culture where everyone feels the need to express an opinion about something even though they know that they haven't bothered to study the subject they are commenting on. Objectivism is not easy to grasp, so people try to associate it with something that is easier/more well known. Its usually a lack of understanding, and an unwillingness to investigate futher, which by itself is no crime, but then they should just say- I don't know.

Well I think that link helps quite a bit. Is the contrast with empiricism only found outside objectivism? If my friend was an empiricist and Bernstein uses the term rationalist, wouldn't my friend think Bernstein was a Rationalist in the general non objectivist, philosophical meaning.

So Andrew Burnstein isn't saying "The enlightenment philosophy was essentially one with thinking without concretizing concepts properly" and he wasn't suggesting captialism grew out of this unconcretized philosphy. I remember Ayn Rand calling rationalism an "intellectual disease", in a situation where a questioner was attributing rationalism to her. It seems like rationalism is like taking the end result of knowledge like a commandment without figuring out(or caring) about how the principle is arrived at. That seems very much like a religious method, and one that objectivism rejects but always finds itself of being in a position of being accused of anyway. Wouldn't it be best not to use the word, for clarity. I have a friend who wants to borrow the book, because he supports capitalism. But due to the absolutist nature of the philosophy, and due to the anti-absolutist nature of the culture, the default for people not willing to put the time into learning philosophy properly is to casualy assume the philosophy is somewhat religious in nature. Now, that is there own problem, but is there an issue of clarity here. I mean, practicaly speaking, if I lend the book to him, do I have to tell him that Bernstein doesn't mean rationalism when he uses the term over and over.

Ok I had forgotten about this. Here are some quotes from The Capitilist manifesto. "the enlightenment philosophy was essentially one of secular rationalism" "The thinkers of the day were committed to rationalism" "The accomplishments of Newtonian science were made possible only by the new observation based rationalism" They are all on page 76 I guess I am just confused, because I always here rationalism described in a negative light. Do these quotes mean something else.

"To remind us-in moments of discouragement, in the loneliness of exile- of our true homeland, which has always been yours too, Miss Taggart" ----------- "The only competition left is in the application to the Board for permission to cancel trains. The railroad to survive will be the one that manages to run no trains at all" ----------- "When a politician or movie star retires, we read front pages stories about it.But when a philosopher retires, people do not even notice it" "They do, eventually"

We get along pretty well most of the time. She is working full time, and studying for her CGA(accounting), so she is always busy. She doesn't seem particularly interested in Objectivism any more, because I think she is at a point where she can't understand it more than she does now( like hitting a wall), so she can't be bothered to try. She was interested before(She read atlas in 4 days).That's ok with me since she is busy, but I guess it makes it harder for our relationship. There is a communication barrier, it goes up whenever I bring up something she doesn't understand, or want to. Same with us, when I bring up fixing things, she gets stressed. She always gets stressed. Maybe it is my fault for pushing fixing things that aren't broken, which makes her think I take her away from her work, so really she leaves to focus on what she is doing. I thought about just asking her to marry me, I even talked about it with her a couple of days ago. I wanted her to know I was serious, but only as something we could get to after we sort things out.

Hi all, its good to be here. Its been 15 or so years since I found the fountainhead at the library, and became an athiest by the time I got to the part of the stoddard temple. Objectivism has always made sense to me, I think even before I knew about it. I was pretty sad during highschool, spending all my time alone in the library. It wasn't until I became a vegetarian that I began to feel better about myself, plus lost the excess 40 pounds. Not that being a vegey has anything to do about objectivism, but it was the first time I ever did something different, was warned against it, and it ended up working. Since then I have to learn everything myself. Unfortunately everything about myself seems to rub the people the closest to me the wrong way. My father and me have no relationship and neither does me and my sister. Once I lost weight I looked better but still had a hard time with friends. My sister dropped out of school at 14 and moved in with a friend and her wellfare mom and did nothing but drink, drugs and well nothing good. My dad, eager to win his daughters love due to our parents devorce ,allowed all of it, and even hung out with his new "friends" Meanwhile I went out west to run my mom's furniture business, and though the stress of a family business got to me due to the tempers of those involved, I felt I was learning. Eventually me and my sis got an apartment together. I had to understand what was going on and why I felt the need to belong. She had at least smartened up to the point where she was no longer one of the losers, but she still liked to be their ringleader and invited quite a few to come stay in our 2 bdrm apartment. I was the only one working, and it bothered me, everyone else being on welfare or mooching. I had started out wanting to learn to be friends with my sis's friends, but after awile I changed and kind of felt disgusted about the whole situation. That was when I first discovered that having alot of friends doesn't make you special if they are all losers. Almost to that day my sister and my father were against me. I thought about how I was in high school. My father didn't have a problem with me then, but cross my sisters friends and become more independant, and our relationship went downhill. There was one time I came home from a long day at work and tried to sleep while everyone else partied. The group, including my dad, snuck into my room and put shaving cream up my nose while I slept. I never understood why I was so angry at that moment until I read Ayn Rand. Tell me is this not a perfect example of putting someone down just because I was trying to do something with my life. But of course I should be able to laugh at myself. Forward to my present relationship. I have been with the same girl for 8 years. The first few years were great, and I couldn't have been prouder of us. Then about 18 months ago she started to get distant and I might have relaxed a bit myself. Objectivism was always very important to me and I would always talk with my girlfriend about it without any problem. Maybe after 4 years I got this feeling that I should look around to other writers, and be more, I guess cautious about what I would say. I read some libertarian stuff, and got into reading about Gold and got in that for investment early and tripled my money in my mutual fund. All the while I bought a house myself and paid it off in 6 years working long hours, of basic jobs, nothing special, like baking and driving a forklift. This isn't exactly an ideal career, but unfortunately, I never had much in the way of guidance (ie) my father. Previously after falling out with him over something that hurt me I took my inspiration from atlas, for right or wrong. Remember when Rearden told Francisco, "I don't know my limit, and I don't care", well that was all I knew about career. I just worked and thought I was doing well, and well, I am. Except that she doesn't really think so. Or at least not as well as I can. She is going for her accounting degree, and I support her efforts completely. She did have to deal with my thursday to monday 2-10 pm shift which did make it hard for us to see each other. I agreed to take a posting in the freezer to get Sun-Thurs, and I got Mon- Fri last Oct, so we now have the same days off although she works during the day. She first said she was lonely about 3 years ago. I told her I was doing the best I could for us, and not to feel that way. "Just because I am not there doesn't mean I don't love you, you are going to have to become more independant" I remember how my dad coddled my sister, I didn't want to be like that. Her brother had been introduced to objectivism by me, but only read the novels and went more into investing and economics. He is a smart guy but, he is, well, one of those rothbard guys, he actually emailed me that rothbard play that denegrates Ayn Rand. I however, recovering from my bout of "tolerance" decided to get back to objectivism, and tried to bring it back into our relationship. For whatever reason, she wasn't interested, or rather couldn't get over that next step and so gave it up. As I entered the last 18 months, she was getting distant. Finally last March she said she didn't feel the same. I told her if that was the case, she had to leave. The next day I called her, we met, and got back together. Things were good for awile but we had things to still work out. She unfortunately didn't want too and or didn't know what to do. Finally, it was decided that we would break up, last weekend. We went right from we should fix this, to I don't want to. In other words, 8 years gone without even trying and I cannot find the central cause. Some possibilities-she wasn't really independant enough at the start, so now that she is, she wants more. Which leaves the annoying feeling that I didn't attract the independant type and therefore wouldn't now. -She thinks I havent accomplished enough, or have a "normal" career. Although she didn't have to deal with $740 coming off a biweekly paycheck every other week. I bought the house, She was welcome to contribute but I wanted us to each keep track of how much etc, so she decided not to. This difference in expenses changed my spending habits, sometimes I just don't like to spend money. - I put off marriage- This was simply a question of whether it was essential. I had the frame of mind that I could never love her less because we were not married, so it was never an issue. Unfortunately, the way this went I kind of regret. We did actually agree to get married, 5 years ago, but then never got back to it. She maintains that the fact we didn't proceed with it was not an issue with her the whole time, but at the same time has said now that it is something she wants. I have a feeling I should not have believed it wasn't important to her and went ahead with it myself. -I am too indecisive. sometimes this is true. I don't like to just call up someone to fix something and pay rediculous prices. I like to try to fix things myself, sometimes I put them off. Sometimes I don't always know what to do on our days off or what movie to rent -She can't deal with the stress working this out will cause her, its easier not to try - I am too serious. It is my opinion that seriousness is looked at as being overly sensitive nowadays. I told her she is making a mistake and frankly the not try thing is insulting. A one year relationship, fine. I have some flaws you don't like, fine. But 8 years deserves more effort. I generally don't like to escape responsibilty, but if I do something you have a problem with, can't I ask for help on occasion without getting dumped. Any advice?

Is it ever valid to use rationalism as a concept in a positive way. I was reading The Captitalist Manifesto by Andrew Bernstein, and he seemed to be using rationalism positively, as if he meant rational. At least that was how I took it. I don't have the book with me, so maybe how he phrased it was correct, but either way I was confused. I will look for an example later when I get home, and can take a look, if necessary.