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Debt as a percentage of GDP is not as high as Greece and we have more banking flexibility since we are not restricted to an outside Reserve System (aka EU centralized banking). Further, we are not at their level of mixed economy or entrenched looter class. I agree America is in rough shape and we are going there fast (as someone from Michigan I’m predicting riots in Detroit and Flint burning this decade) but it is not as bad as Greece. Yet. What is alarming is that we are heading that way. Obama's re-election is disappointing, no so much because he won but because his "victory" is forcing

The book is online at http://www.intellectualtakeout.org/library/books/familiar-exposition-constitution-united-states?library_node=71291 Very good read.

Dangit I had this idea first....

The portmanteau is a bit overused, but I kind of like it.

By that reasoning, any solution to the problem justifies itself. For example, another solution to the problem would be for the government to confiscate a thin strip of property from the owner of the surrounding land and give it to the owner of the surrounded land. Yet another solution would be for one party to kill the other party and seize his land. Grames' "justification" would apply to both: "What justifies the concepts of confiscation or the killing of one of the parties involved is the problem it solves." And both solutions would be as lacking in Objectivist philosophical justification as

For the record, at least around here, CrowEpistemologist argued similar points you're pointing out, and I agreed with much of it even, personally. For me, the difference is marginal, but in general, I vote according to a position on abortion, that is, opposing anyone who would make abortion illegal if given the chance. In the long-run, I'd bet most people around here would say both Romney and Obama are more harm than good. Do you want to drive off a cliff or collide head on with a train? You're gonna crash either way.

The candidates' positions are secondary to the voting public's. (sheeple)

Right so there's a lot in there. Why don't we try to capsulate it further into a single point or two and see if we can untangle it and make things more clearer. To Rand, humans are not "perfectible" in the sense you mean, e.g. Christian ethics holding something impossible to reach as the standard, then condemning men for failing to live up to it. Rather, to her, morality is based on man's nature and thus a realistic ethics has to consist in behavior possible to man. Where no choice is even possible, morality cannot be said to apply. Thus to her, and most other virtue ethicists in history, perf

Why would one want to think long term? Take an example: you buy an item because it is cheap and seems to work just as well as an item that is twice the price. However, the item you buy breaks easily, and over the time that you want to use it, (say) you have to buy it three times as frequently as the better-quality one. In such a situation, thinking long-term means you probably buy the longer-lasting one (if you can manage paying the higher price today). Thinking long term is the way to maximize your own value, over your life time; and, that is all it means. Your life will ultimately stop: this

Hah! Well, I can use all the inspiration you want to send my way... Sounds like a good exchange. I have never bought (even when I was an atheist) the idea that if one believed there was no life after death, that that somehow made meaningful actions meaningless. Hell, then why not just sit in a corner and die sooner than later? I wonder how much of that is really a mask for the unwillingness to exert oneself to meaningful, purposeful action.