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Yesterday, (Wednesday, Dec. 9) Ron Paul introduced a bill to abolish all legal tender laws, eliminate laws that prohibit the operation of private mints, and eliminate capital gains and sales taxes on gold and silver coins. http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul619.html

This is a contradictory claim that I brought up like 10 pages ago and you never responded to: A man cannot produce anything without ownership of the land (if only as standing room.) Therefore, if an individual cannot own original land, neither can he in the same sense own any of the fruits of his labor. You cannot eat your cake and have it. You cannot permit a man to own the fruits of his labor while denying him ownership of the original materials which he uses and transforms. It is either one or the other. To own his product, a man must also own the material which was originally a part of nature, and now has been remolded by him. Now that his labor has been inextricably mixed with land, he cannot be deprived of one without being deprived of the other. This applies to gold, wheat, whatever. It makes no difference. If man cannot own land, he cannot own anything.

He doesn't appear to understand what he's saying. He says "the only consistent ethics are ones grounded in reality, ie subjective ethics." The only ethical system grounded in 1. Reality, and 2. Reason is the Objectivist ethics. In fact, that is the whole point of the Objectivist ethics, that is why it is so revolutionary a contribution to the field of philosophy. Does he disagree with Ayn Rand's definitions of "reality" and "subjective" and "objective?" Does he know what these things are? Does he know what ethics are? Does he know what values are? It does not appear so. About values being objective, ask him if it is in my intention to live, then would drinking a bottle of deadly poison be objectively immoral, or would it only kill me in my subjective opinion? Or throw the original question back at him: if I murdered someone he cared for, would that be objectively immoral, or only in his subjective opinion? http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/existence.html http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/subjectivism.html http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/objectivity.html http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/objectiv..._of_values.html http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/morality.html http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pag...ectivist_ethics

Those aren't forms of capitalism, but forms of statism. In any event, you can call the political branch of Objectivism as "glorb-capitalism" and corporate capitalism "bleeb-capitalism" and the welfare state "real-capitalism" and anarchism as "54302594-capitalism" and the mixed-economy as "nkdasn'fa'iw;" it doesn't matter what words you use to represent it, it's the concept the word stands for that matters.

After seeing this guy appear on some of the other Fox programs, I must say I am no fan. He seems like your average token establishment "libertarian" and no advocate of egoism.

'Is the concept of value, of “good or evil” an arbitrary human invention, unrelated to, underived from and unsupported by any facts of reality—or is it based on a metaphysical fact, on an unalterable condition of man’s existence? (I use the word “metaphysical” to mean: that which pertains to reality, to the nature of things, to existence.) Does an arbitrary human convention, a mere custom, decree that man must guide his actions by a set of principles—or is there a fact of reality that demands it? Is ethics the province of whims: of personal emotions, social edicts and mystic revelations—or is it the province of reason? Is ethics a subjective luxury—or an objective necessity?' Read more: "The Objectivist Ethics" from The Virtue of Selfishness, Ayn Rand

JMeganSnow pretty much said it. The government of a free nation has NO say in the free movement of people in or out of the country, aside from keeping rights-violators under control. It has no interest, no opinion, no strategy, no declarations, and can take no action regarding where people freely decide to live, and it doesn't spread propaganda advertisements telling people how good it is to live there. What's with the concern for what other people do with their lives? If people rather want to live under the various brands of statism out there then that begs the question of how you formed this government in the first place, since that kind of presupposes you had a rational society already who has already adopted the ideas capitalism is based on. But really, if no one wants to live there, then you have no country anyway. If a few people want to live there, then you have a free country of a few people for as long as others leave them alone. If a lot of people decide to live there, then you'll have a lot of people living there. I don't see how this is a problem or why this suddenly requires variations of anarchism or nationalized ambulance services?

You have to attack the whole concept of exploitation philosophically. The concept of exploitation as generally understood comes from the intrinsic theories of value postulated by Smith, Ricardo, and ultimately Marx in the labor theory of value. There are likely no utilitarian facts about conditions that will sway your opponents because their understanding of exploitation is epistemological at root. You have to demolish their erroneous concepts of value on that level. A solid understanding of the Austrian subjective theory as espoused by Carl Menger and later Ludwig von Mises, as well as the objective theory of value that Rand discussed in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal will help you. The classical liberal theories of class conflict usually goes something like this: there are those who contribute to the creation and production of wealth, and there are those who destroy it, consume it, waste it, and plunder it. From there, you can build your argument on who are actually the exploiters and who are actually the exploited, by making clear the source of production as man's mind and the nature of individual rights versus the initiation of force as destroyer of man's mind its products.

Try to grasp the basic nature of government and why it exists. When you say "service" you are thinking about it in terms of a product offered on a market. That is not the kind of action that a government performs. The government is not an economic agent of trade, it's an institution that is charged with forcible restraint of men who initiate force. "Remember that forcible restraint of men is the only service a government has to offer. Ask yourself what a competition in forcible restraint would have to mean." That is why Randroid's comment is so succinct. There is no competition a proper government has to offer. It just protects rights, all rights of everyone within its borders. It doesn't give you percentages, or send you a bill, or give you a menu, or offer you ambulances, or education, or healthcare, or ham sandwiches, or cracker jacks and lollipops. How could you think any of that is compatible with laissez-faire capitalism? It depends on what you mean by "obligation." They have an obligation in the sense that a proper government would require them to by the terms of their contracts, and by the statutes and legal framework that they operate in. Just as a theoretical matter, in principle there is no obligation on anyone to provide you with the unearned, but as a practical matter, a government has to regard all uses of force not specifically sanctioned by its objective law as a threat and must act against it. (Leonard Peikoff answered that question here http://forum.ObjectivismOnline.com/index.p...mp;#entry224829 ) Harry Binswanger also pontificated on his essay about anarchism: "Private force is force not authorized by the government, not validated by its procedural safeguards, and not subject to its supervision. The government has to regard such private force as a threat—i.e., as a potential violation of individual rights. In barring such private force, the government is retaliating against that threat." Again, this is a protection racket. CITIZEN: Hello police? My husband's been murdered. "POLICEMAN:" What's that? You didn't pay us your dues? Well isn't that a shame. I guess you'd better give the boss his money, or else something bad might happen to you, eh? Wouldn't want that to happen would we? And don't think of trying to move away, cause we don't take too kindly to traitors.

A two-year old document has surfaced in which the UN states that environmentalism should be regarded on the same level as religion: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,577827...5:b29117466:z10

No, you haven't understood the point from the beginning. Governments don't provide "services." The nature of all that government does is coercive action. All government action is force. A government that forces you to pay money in exchange for "services" is running a protection racket and is no different than the mob or a gang. Your individual rights aren't up for barter. It either ALL of the rights of ALL of the people within its border, on principle, which means the government looks like this; or it doesn't, in which case you have competing gangs using force at the whim of whoever can get away with whatever, which looks like any statist sewer. No matter what legal fiction you can come up with about how the government is good because it "does things" for you, or that it's definitely not extortion because "it's sovereign," or that its okay because "services" it makes you pay for are cheaper, or its "solutions" to various "problems" are better, is of no consequence. That was a rhetorical question, by the way. I can think of a myriad of reasons not to secede. There is no "right to secede" as such, there are only individual rights. Why didn't you list the Confederate States of America? Was it right for that slave-state to secede? Succession depends entirely on the context. A "right to secede" depends on dropping all of that context. So you can stop asking "is it right for X to secede from Y" because the answer is "it depends."

Enough said. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protection_racket There are no collective rights. There is no such "right to secede" just because you want your ethnic tribe to be seperate from some other ethnic tribe. There are only rights not to have force initiated against you. If people want to secede, it solely depends on the context. What kind of government are they seceding from? What kind of government are they seceding into? Why are they seceding? We have that already in most civilized countries. Why would I want to have to migrate twenty times in my life because my individual rights are subject to the whims of competing gangs? How about I just not have my rights violated?

Yes. Otherwise I would have to restrict my own freedom then wouldn't I?

This hasn't deterred British health ministers, now proposing that all doctors must advise their patients on how they can reduce their "carbon footprint." http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environme...o-patients.html

Well I don't have any evidence for this situation with the acid, I don't know anything about it, but I wouldn't be surprised either. In a lot of these areas with Sharia law, women are constantly terrorized as I have seen time and time again. Something as simple as drinking a beer can get you held down by several large men while you are caned and lashed with a large stick made for punishment of sinners, and if you are accused of impurity or adultery, you can be stoned and left for dead. These are official punishments handed out by courts. In most of the instances, the women plays 100% the sanction of the victim.

If you have not heard already, this is the so-called "War Tax" to fund the Afghanistan War. It is being proposed by David Obey, D - Wisconsin. I witnessed the following on CNN's State of the Union with John King today: KING: Nineteen newsmakers, analysts and reporters were out on the Sunday morning talk shows, but only one gets the last word. That honor today goes to Democratic Congressman David Obey of Wisconsin. He's the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. Mr. Chairman, welcome to "State of the Union." OBEY: Thank you for having me. KING: I'm going to hold up the headline, here, of the Washington Times, "Obama Faces Hard Sell on Afghan War Decision." I want to get, in a moment, to your proposal to how to pay for this, if the president goes forward with this. But just on the merits, 30,000-plus more troops to Afghanistan: a good idea or a bad idea? OBEY: The problem is that you can have the best policy in the world, but if you don't have the tools to implement it, it isn't worth a beanbag. And I don't think we have the tools in the Pakistani government and I don't think we have the tools in the Afghan government. And until we do, I think much of what we do is a fool's errand. KING: If you can see it so clearly, why can't the president of the United States, if you're right? OBEY: Well, the president sits in a different position. I mean, he has inherited an absolute mess. No matter what he does, it's a -- it's a no-winner. And I -- you know, I have a great deal of respect for the way he's gone about this process. But the Pentagon... KING: But you think he's wrong? OBEY: Well, the Pentagon has only one job, and that's to talk about this war and this war only. But he has, and I have jobs that require us to look at everything else that's tied into it. I have to look at the entire federal budget, as chairman of the committee, for instance. I have to see what $400 billion or $500 billion, $600 billion, $700 billion, over a decade, for this effort, will cost us on education, on our efforts to build the entire economy. And -- and when you look at it that way, I come to a different conclusion than he does. KING: And if he goes forward, and even if we stayed at the current level, you believe the American people need greater transparency, greater clarity about how much this is costing. So you've proposed something, along with several of your colleagues, the Share the Sacrifice act of 2010. I want to show some of the details of it. Couples earning up to $150,000 would see a 1 percent tax increase. Your proposal would exempt service men and women and their families who served in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001, and it would exempt families who have lost an immediate relative in the war. So if you make 150 grand or more, you would pay 1 percent, and then you would escalate up. If you made 250 grand, you'd pay more, and so on up the scale, correct? OBEY: Yes. And my point and our point is simply that, in this war, we have not had any sense of shared sacrifice. The only people being asked to sacrifice are military families. They've had to go to the well again and again and again. And yet everybody else in society -- you know, they're essentially told to go shopping by the previous president. I just think that, if this war is important enough to engage in the long term, it's important enough to pay for. We're told by people like General Petraeus that we need to be prepared to commit eight to 10 years. First of all, I don't think that's sustainable, but if you're going to do that, at least you ought to pay for it so it doesn't destroy every other effort that we need to make to rebuild our own economy. KING: The chairman of the House Appropriations Committee can do a lot, but to pass that proposal, you need the support of the speaker. What does she say? OBEY: I have no idea where anyone in the leadership will stand, except John Larson, who is a co-sponsor of this proposal. So is Jack Murtha, the Chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. So are a number of other people -- Chairman Frank from the banking committee. And my impression is that Charlie Rangel, the -- or the Ways and Means Committee chair is also interested in the idea. KING: Has anyone in the leadership or anyone at the White House asked you, "Mr. Chairman, we understand your point, but we don't want to be talking about taxes heading into the midterm election campaign, where we're already talking about taxes in the health care debate?" OBEY: No, I think people understand where we're coming from. And I think people understand that we're doing this because we believe it's the right thing to do on the merits. I'm -- I'm very dubious about this whole effort in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but if we're going to do it, we shouldn't do it in a way which will destroy every other initiative that we have to rebuild our own economy. KING: There was talk during the final years of the Bush administration, when Democrats came back into power, of trying to block him. Will you go so far with a Democratic president or are you more deferential because, of a Democrat in the White House, where you can say, "I oppose it; I think it's a bad idea; I think we should do this to pay for it," but would you try to get in front of the train? OBEY: I owe it to any president to listen to what he has to say before I say what I'm going to do. The important thing is not what Dave Obey is going to do. The important thing is what the country is going to do, long term. KING: I'm going to get up and go over to the map because I want to try to connect the dots, as you connect them, to talk to the American people. This is a map, of course, of the Middle East region. And I'm going to pull out Afghanistan because I just want to highlight this point. We've discussed this a little bit and you know these numbers very well. Over $223 billion have been allocated to Afghanistan since the beginning of the war back in 2001; $38 billion in U.S. aid for reconstruction; at the moment, 68,000 troops in Afghanistan, and the president, of course, prepared to go higher than that. Now, I want to bring the debate back home by bringing us back around this way, and I want to show you these states here. Here's the United States here. Let's zone in on unemployment. With these colors here, you see the states in red, 23 of them, unemployment went up last month. The states in green, the unemployment rate dropped a little bit last month. But you see all that red, double-digit unemployment across the country. Mr. Chairman, the president will have a job summit on Thursday at the White House. If he could do one thing -- if you could ask him to do one thing to create jobs in those states that are red and in the rest of the United States, what would it be? OBEY: I think the most important thing is to help state and local governments. We've been trying to fill over a $2 trillion hole in the economy with the budget stimulation package because of the collapse of the private economy in the previous administration. We were be able to fill about 40 percent of the hole in those state budgets, but in the next year, our capacity is going to drop to fill only about 20 percent of that hole. That would mean that states would be raising taxes and cutting services at the very time we're trying to expand the economy. That's counterproductive. So I think that really is what has to be done. KING: Are you worried about the political price of more deficit spending to do that? The American people, increasingly, if you look at polls, are getting nervous about all the deficit spending. OBEY: We'll do what we think is right and worry about the polls later. But I want to make one other point. We've been told for a year that we need to pay for every dollar that it's going to cost us to reform our health care system. That's about $900 billion over 10 years. OBEY: If we wind up being committed in Afghanistan for eight to 10 years, that's also going to approach $800 billion to $900 billion. And if we're going to do that, it seems to me that if we're being told we have to pay for health care, we certainly ought to pay for this effort as well. KING: The chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, Congressman David Obey, sir, we hope you'll come back as this debate continues in the weeks and months ahead. Source: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0911/29/sotu.04.html WTF? Is it just me or is this totally incoherent? If he thinks the war is unwinnable and a fool's errand as he says, then why commit more violence on Americans to keep funding it? If he thinks its a bad idea, why pilfer from some more people to fund it? Why not immediately withdraw and get out? Is it because sacrifice is good just for being sacrifice? Why not go invade some other countries and sacrifice for them too then? That's a good way to share it some more. If sacrificing is good, simply because it's the right thing to do on the merits as he says, shouldn't we make everyone pay more taxes? Why not 100% tax everything everyone owns then? Why do we need private property or any freedom at all? Why not have 100% sacrifice all the time? Why just bestow the immense privilege of sacrificing on military and "the wealthy?" And if sacrificing is bad, why do we want to share it? Why not STOP it altogether? blank-out

What makes a society "free" or not isn't just the right of exit, or the ability to move away. A person can already move from San Diego to Tijuana or vice versa. Someone who doesn't like "services" or the taxations of one government can always move elsewhere under the current scheme, that isn't the point. A government of a free society isn't here to offer competitive "services" or advertize that they just happen to rob you less than the next one. That's not what anarcho-capitalism or "competing governments" is anyway. That's just massive decentralization or abolishing countries and making everything into small counties or city-states. Government isn't a company on a free market. Governments of free nations do not compete in any sense of the word. I'm going to go ahead and veto that and throw my support behind laissez-faire capitalism.

Chris, my understanding is that Objectivism is the philosophy of Ayn Rand. It is a "closed system" as Miss Rand is dead. It is settled and not open to change. Of course, you can accept basic parts of it if you like, agree with certain parts or the vast majority of it and reject or disagree with other parts. That simply means you like and agree with some ideas of Ayn Rand but reject Objectivism as a whole. Accord to Dr. Peikoff: My suggestion is don't worry about labels. You're not a Coke can. There is no organization or club to join. This isn't church. A lot of people feel like you or have left like that at one point. The information is always out there for your questions, you can always post them on here. Asking questions is good, this forum is a good tool to bring your questions to Objectivists and other smart people.

The difference is only superficial, the underlying goal of both can be summed up in this line in Mein Kampf: "And these are always heroic virtues [self-sacrifice to the community] and never the egoism of shopkeepers, since the preservation of the existence of a species presupposes a spirit of sacrifice in the individual." And with Khrushchev's criticism of the communist party following Stalin's death: "Comrades, we must abolish the cult of the individual decisively, once and for all..." What else is there to say? One claims to sacrifice you to "the race," one claims to sacrifice you to "the society," or "the class" or "the proletariat" or "the people" or "the Aryans" or "the State" or whatever you want. The question is always the same: statism or freedom. Slavery or individual rights. Any other bargaining games you play about which regime hated Jews more or which regime should be designated "right" or "left" or which regime is nationalist socialism (racist! bad!) versus communitarian socialism (inclusive! no discrimination! cuddly and warm... insert smiley face) is irrelevant and besides the point. http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/fascism_...-socialism.html http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/fascism-nazism.html

http://www.freep.com/article/20091124/NEWS...-to-Afghanistan http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/articl...kop0tgD9C5VAQG0 I'm sure we'll hear non stop protesting from all the "liberals" and "progressives" who all hated Bush's evil criminal wars, or will they magically become good Democrat wars?

http://cohort11.americanobserver.net/latoy...mediafinal.html Here is an interesting little video that shows the geographic creep of unemployment across the land.

Actually sir, yes, I was born in Singapore and I can tell you that you do not bow and shake hands at the same time. I could bow. I could shake hands. But not both, that would make me look like a dumbass.

I think everything is going to hell. Western civilization is on path toward dictatorship. I don't think it's the closest it has ever been, that was during World War 2, but it is turning back in that direction since the times of the fascist president Roosevelt. Of course, people have freewill so no one can say what will happen, but that is the path we are going toward and people will have to make a choice eventually. As Mises stated in reference to fascism: "The issue is always the same: the government or the market. There is no third solution." The mixed economies will continue to decline until the crossroads are reached: choose freedom or slavery. Yes, it is true we have great technology and certainly enjoy a high standard living now, of course it is better than Ayn Rand's time. It would take a second type of Dark Age, where people lose their humanity and come to literally regard scientific knowledge as abhorrent and dangerous with data, technology, and knowledge itself being lost, forgotten, or censored in order to achieve the kind of withering loss of progress that would have to make something like the Depression Era seem like paradise. That's not to say some kind of massive depression couldn't occur in the future and wipe out large amounts of wealth and the world could be hurled into a never-before-seen collapse that would require liquidation of massive amounts of malinvestments and crushing global poverty, chaos, and war. Who knows, if things do keep going down the current path and people don't change their ideas then that will be inevitable and dictatorship is definitely a possibility. With the rise of religion and the Total State, maybe my bleak second Dark Age scenario isn't totally implausible. However, I think the progress of the human race in 2009 could and should be immensely better than it is currently and would be if not for the many chains holding it back. You could always say that about any time, though. I recommend this article "The Republic Becomes the Empire" wriiten by an American journalist named Garet Garrett in 1952. I don't totally agree with it, but it provides some perspective of a past generation that was a lot closer towards totalitarianism than during my lifetime. http://mises.org/story/3636

Well here we have it, the White House's solution to the bow to Saudi King Abdulluh: just fucking lie. He didn't bow. There was no bow. You didn't see what you saw. You can't trust your eyes. Now stop asking. The White House's solution to this bow: fucking lie. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1109/29529.html "It was protocol." Really? Just where is it written that it is protocol for the president to bow to anyone, anywhere, for any reason whatever? No. It's protocol. It just is. Shut up. Stop asking questions.

I'm pretty for sure that you have no way of knowing such a thing, and it's pretty irrelevant.