Citizen Publius

I was wrong. I did not know what I was talking about. I offer my apologies. 'Twas the night before Christmas and I stuck my foot in my mouth big time. There goes all my credibility.

You are right. I was wrong. I should have read Jack Wakeland's complete quote before I posted. Based on what I have been able to read that Jack Wakeland wrote, I am in agreement with him. Other than what I have learned about them in this thread, I have no idea who Yaron Brooks or Jack Wakeland are. Actually, when I made that post, I was just looking for something to debate. I now realize that I made a mistake. I will just sit this one out and watch from the sidelines.

Here we go again. Punk keeps throwing in his little thinly veiled hatred for the United States, freedom, and rights. Yea, Punk, your quote shows how organized crime was able to enlist goons and street punks to take over America. Yea, Punk, let the cowardly terrorists keep doing the same thing over and over and see if they get a different outcome. The outcome will be the same. They will bleed and die. Unfortunately for them, they will not get to rape seventy-two virgins after they die.

Jack Wakeland is the kind of guy that thinks the United States should not have used atomic bombs to end World War II. The United States is not using thermonuclear weapons in the Middle East. We are establishing a free society between three, count'em THREE, totalitarian faithist theocracies. This is a very difficult and costly humane thing to do. Jack Wakeland decries the nature of warfare, i.e. civillian casualties, as an excuse to point a finger at the United States for defending itself. Once a free and self-governing Iraq is established, it's economy will thrive and the standard of living in Iraq will rise considerably. It will serve as an example in a manner similar to the example West German posed to East Germany. Unfortunately, the nature of the beast is, as I type these very words, the surrounding dictatorships don't like this and they are sending in mercenaries and munitions. Militarily speaking, Iraq seperates them from each other strategically. My question is this: If radical Islam is so different from "regular" Islam and is in such a minority, why do we not hear an outcry from the hundreds of millions of Muslims who detest terrorism; even in this country? Jack Wakeland is all talk and no substance...unless one wants to tally up his lies.

The Iraqi people experienced Saddam Hussein’s goons coming in the middle of the night to randomly seize individuals and entire families to be imprisoned and tortured. The Iraqi people experienced Saddam’s sons seizing brides on their wedding days to rape them and killing their bridegrooms on the spot. Your suspicion that the Iraqi people, or any humans anywhere for that matter, prefer this to armed rebellion reveals, nay proclaims, your sinister and twisted view of humanity. Also, Iraq is not moving toward a civil war now. Iraq is in a civil war as punks and murderers stream in from surrounding theocracies. Augustus (Octavian) Caesar started his political career by sharing his power with two of his adversaries. This was done in order to prevent civil war. Your boy Saddam would never do such a thing. A civil war did erupt and it took years of fighting to restore order. The turning point for Octavian came when he used the spoils of Egypt to give his troops large pensions in Italy thus retaining their loyalty. He later performed many civic actions that were regarded by the common population to be fair and just . Where did this little tidbit of information come from, Al Jezeera TV? You obviously hate the United States of America and the Constitution it is founded on and survives with. You hate those brave humans who will take up arms against the likes of you instead of following you to their slaughter. It is obvious that everything you say beyond this point is just a bunch of non-sensical blow that you made up on the fly just to use as confetti. I cannot see myself wasting any more of my time responding to it. “And that’s the ball game!” ---Jim Carrey, Liar! Liar!

As I have already said in an earlier post in this thread, the Soviet Union stood with the support of only about 5% of its citizens. The Soviet Union, the champion of socialism during my childhood, murdered millions of its own citizens. One reason that this champion of “From each according to his abilities; to each according to his needs” managed to stay in power so long is that its citizens were denied the right to bear arms. This meant that those in power could make small change of any dissenters to the official party line quickly and efficiently. The communist party did this on a regular basis as a matter of policy. So did the Ba'athist party of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Obviously, you are siding with the cowardly marauding bands of terrorists, goons, and street punks again here. Somehow, you consider them to have a moral sanction. You are trying to make a case that they represent the majority of Iraqis and shift the blame for their cowardly and despicable acts to the United States of America.

I have much to say in response to the posts in this thread. However, in an attempt to keep my posts short and within forum guidelines, I will continue by addressing shorter quotes and responding to them in shorter posts. My understanding of Saddam Hussein's involvement in supporting terrorist attacks against the United States not only includes those listed in some of the posts above but, also his involvement in the Oklahoma City bombing. As I reside in Oklahoma City, this concerns me. While it would take an inordinate amount of time and space to make my case in this post, a very interesting book on the matter is The Third Terrorist, by Jayna Davis. A synopsis may be read on her website HERE.

Perhaps someone sent a virus into the site. You would know more about this than me. However, I just thought that I should mention the possibility. As it turned out, my most recent post required quite a bit of editing so I used the time to do this. I am that glad everything worked out and I hope that you continue to back up the forum regularly.

First, what you believe does not alter the facts of reality. The fact that you believe something is not a moral premise; it is merely an opinion. In this case it is an invalid opinion as has been disproved by the American liberations of Germany and Japan in World War II. The United States is not a democracy; it is a republic. It is demonstrable that a republic severely limits the democratic process to the election of public officials while limiting the actions of those public officials. In the United States Constitution, the part that limits the actions of public officials is called the Bill of Rights. Disregarding the point about the nature of governments, your point is valid and is a good one. I will point out here that there is no democracy, or republic, in Iraq and it appears that you are trying to get your readers to substitute a geographic area for a non-existent form of government in their minds in order to validate your invalid point of view. This is true of a republic also. Witness Benjamin Franklin’s statement. When asked, “What type of government did you give us, Dr. Franklin?” he replied: “A republic, if you can keep it.” The US can provide moral guidance, and exemplary actions. Exemplary actions include things like rebuilding and improving the defunct power grid, improving the water supply, renovating the oil industry, rebuilding and improving schools. Moral guidance includes things like the humane treatment of prisoners and interacting fairly with the population on a personal basis. They can also keep order by maintaining an active military presence and training police and soldiers. The Soviet Union was kept in power and ruled by about 5% of the population. The remaining 95% had no say in the matter. The only firearms allowed in the hands of the population were guns registered to hunters who needed them for food and ammunition was strictly controlled. In Nazi Germany, in 1936, Hitler boasted that Germany was the first civilized nation to affect 100% gun control. (Hitler did not believe in hunting because he considered it cruelty to animals.) Once again, a small minority of the population controlled the vast majority of the population through fear of death. Millions of people were senselessly slaughtered under both regimes just like in Iraq under Saddam Hussein. Any political dissent was brutally crushed under all three regimes. “No one can claim a right to enslave.”---Ayn Rand. Millions of Iraqis were slaughtered under the Saddam Hussein regime. The killing happened on a daily basis, especially of those who rose up in defiance. The people who sought to choose a different government were publicly humiliated, tortured, and murdered by the goon squads that you so much love and try to justify. The government the people are choosing to have is the one that they will choose at the polls under the American aegis. The one that you obviously want them to have is the one that the minority of criminal goons, thugs, and punks want to inflict on them. The people of Iraq want to have free elections but you do not want them to. Once they have free elections, their sovereignty will be returned to them. When you refer to “the people of Iraq,” you are obviously referring to the thugs and street punks who are not man enough to fight face to face but rather, hide their faces and use terror tactics to scare people to submit their point of view. After a government is elected by the majority of the people, the ones that love productivity and peace, that government will draft a constitution writing down the principles by which they will live. In the United States, this process took over a decade. If the United States allows this constitution to violate people’s rights, then the new government is no more righteous than the former. If this happens, THEN the United States will be in the wrong. Sovereignty in Iraq presently rests with the United States of America. It will rest with the United States of America until a duly elected body of Iraqis have drawn up a constitution and it is voted on by the general Iraqi public. In the absence of US sovereignty in Iraq, WHO should be able to refuse a foreign military presence? Should the present ruling council decide? Should the Iraqi soldiers that make up the Iraqi army that the US is training decide? Should the Iraqi police whom the US military is assisting decide? You obviously want the cowardly and bloodthirsty terrorist minority to decide. The US is not assuming ANYTHING here. It has conquered a brutal totalitarian regime and is now the sovereign ruling authority in Iraq. The United States may do what it sees fit to protect its investment in American blood and American treasure. Iraq is presently surrounded by totalitarian regimes who are just wanting, wanting so badly, for the US to bugger out so they can send in their terror forces in the light of day rather than under the cover of cloak, dagger, and darkness like they now have to. It is obvious to me that you are in favor of the terrorists, thugs, goons, and punks who thrive on terrorism. These are the people and the methods that you would have rule over people in America; people like me. MOST Iraqis WANT the US Military to stay until things are stable. This includes the Iraqi government. This includes the people who want to have free elections and a constitution. This includes mothers and women who were not even allowed to attend school under Hussein. This includes scientists, engineers; general laborers and the entire spectrum of the productive work force that want to live in peace and raise their children without fear. This includes millions of Iraqis who now have computers and satellite dishes, which they were denied under Saddam Hussein in an effort to keep “HIS” people ignorant and isolated from the rest of mankind.

Possibly. I am not sure exactly how you mean this. Do you mean people who sling mud at the United States because of the principles refered to in the Constitution or do you mean people who sling mud at the United Staes because they only see and are effected by the misdeeds of people who act in the name of the United States? Do you mean something else?

I always thought that it was the principles that a government recorded in writing that justified its existence and actions. Why don't some of you kick around the United States Constitution as being immoral, unjustified, and evil instead of focusing on the corrupt acts of individuals and groups of individuals who have, at times, acted in the name of the American government? I suspect that the reason is that you hate the principles espoused by the United States Constitution but are afraid to say so. You keep setting up straw men and knocking them down in the hope that everyone is too stupid to see this.

Randrew, Islam does require Muslims to kill those that they cannot convert. A good place to learn this first hand is to read it in their holy book, the Koran. An interesting link to begin this study is HERE.

Has anyone ever read an article or seen a documentary on the Big Bang or black holes and heard the term "almost infinite density?" I always find this term rather humorous. Does it actually have any meaning?

Consciousness is defined as "that faculty which is aware of that which exists." I have also heard it defined as "that faculty which perceives that which exists." This axiom applies directly to the first person. I must first be aware of existence in order for my mind to have volition in existence. I must be awake. I must be cognizant. In this sense, consciousness is an active state of mind. It must be experienced first hand in order to be able to make any other statement. If I am not conscious, if I am not aware of existence, then I certainly cannot involve myself in a debate or discussion with someone else about anything. If someone else tells me that they are not conscious then they are telling me that they have no awareness of existence either internal or external. In essence, I might as well be talking to a brick wall if I continue the discussion with them. If someone tells me that I am not conscious then, they are telling me that I am not aware of existence. Consciousness is axiomatic in the sense that it is a necessary ingredient of any thought or action that I do. To say that something else is conscious is to say that something else, another person or a dog or a cat, possesses that faculty which is aware of that which exists. This statement also involves the axiom of identity and the use of the unit concept. That is, there are units of consciousness. These are usually called brains. In order to say that consciousness exists, the speaker must first be conscious to begin with. Consciousness is axiomatic in the sense that the speaker must experience consciousness to define or to identify consciousness as an existent. To say that the statement "consciousness exists" is axiomatic, the speaker must be conscious to begin with. Implicit in every statement that I or anyone else makes is the statement by the speaker that "I am conscious and..." In order to say that "consciousness exists," the speaker is , implicitly, prefacing this statement with "I am conscious and..." Thus, the statement becomes "I am conscious and consciousness exists." The first conjunct is axiomatic in that it must be implied in any utterance. The second conjunct is an observation made based upon the first (implied) conjunct. I would understand what someone meant if they worded the axiom as "consciousness exists" but crafty logicians, such as some college professors and many politicians, might be able to wangle it around if it is phrased this way. Therefore, I would be very careful about using this wording. I hope I have been of some help. If someone thinks that I am incorrect here then please bring it to my attention.

McGroarty is right. Blogs are pretty easy. If you want to do a more general website, there are several options: 1) Just about any web service, Yahoo/Geocities, AOL, et al., have website builder utility programs on their browsers that are pretty simple to use after you read the directions. 2) If you want to build one "from the ground up," you'll have to learn some HTML or XHTML. HTML is an acronym for Hyper-Text Mark-up Language. The X in XHTML stands for eXtensible. HTML was created by a physicist at the CERN so that computers could talk directly to each other because so many papers were being written about atomic reasearch, postage was so expensive, and mailing them was taking so long. The CERN is an atomic research facility located in Switzerland and is where the web was born. Google search CERN and it will tell you this somewhere on their website. HTML is really pretty easy but, you will have to read a book or two. It consists of TAGS placed before and after information to be placed on the site. They look like this: <tag>blah, blah, blah</tag>. An HTML "form," as it is called, has two parts: 1. A HEADER at the beginning. Look for <header> and </header> A line above header tells what version of HTML is used. Another line up here gives info used by search engines. 2. A BODY which follows the header and contains the main body of the web page information. Look for <body> and </body> A newer version of HTML called Cascading Style Sheets, or CSS, is the current version but nobody really uses this because most web pages were written before this came out. Java Script, not to be confused with the programming language Java, is a lot more complicated and is a language/style usually interspersed to make web sites do fancy things. Little routines called "applets" do this too. If you want to see the "code" that any website is written in, just click VIEW/SOURCE up on the menu bar. Most of them use HTML tables which can be confusing. The people that make the rules about all this are called the World Wide Web Consortium or W3C. Their web site is www.w3c.org I built a practice website at www.geocities.com/publiusone once. I ended up reading over a thousand pages to do this. 3) There are "Web Wizard" programs you can purchase that will do essentially what you can do for free in 2) above. My advise? Either follow McGroarty's suggestion or just find a browser on line such as Yahoo/Geocities that has a free web wizard offered and use that.

Welcome aboard. The more, the merrier.

Praxus, it looks to me like you are making two choices. One choice is to die. The other choice is to go on a rampage until you die. Given this, it appears to me that your objective is not to die but, rather, to go on a rampage before you die and to use your desire to die as an excuse to slay others. This is not Objectivism but nihilism. (I am referring to Dictionary.com's definition #2 of nihilism here.) Please correct me if I am wrong.

Zoso, a good reference book to learn about Objectivism with is The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism form A to Z by Harry Binswanger. In the table of contents it is broken down conceptually and reads much like a dictionary. I find this book to be a very good source of information as it saves me having to remember what I read where and in which article. If I am curious about a particular topic, I can find it quickly.

Thank you for your quick response. I did view your first chapter as an introduction of sorts. I would expect in the next one or two chapters to read about extrapolated underlying priciples which were illustrated empirically in the first chapter. I would relegate Falwell, Robertson, et cetera to later chapters where I projected these principles into a larger societal realm. When I sadd that the first chapter made me want to read the second, it was not so much that I was curious about what happened next chronologicallybut that it got my attention both topically and stylistically. I will note that, while I enjoyed the style, it may take some rewrites to achieve a style that will appeal to a wider audience. I look forward to reading more but, by all means, concentrate on grad school as a hirer priority right now.

A couple of paragraphs describing your high school years may be a little redundant. The first chapter makes me want to read the second chapter.

It is late now and I am fixing to hit the hay but I will read it tomorrow. At this time I will point out that you might check with prospective publishers about acceptable fonts and justification. Although I prefer center justification, many publishers prefer left justification.

On a more fundamental level, how about having a Solstice Day celebration? It could last several days, gifts could be exchanged, feasts could be gulped down, "yule logs" could be burned, decorative lights could be placed everywhere. It would have nothing to do with faith or religion, though various religions could celebrate their beliefs then, and it would mark the astronomical beginning of winter for the entire northern hemisphere.

Weeeeeeeeeell, "Shiver me timbers!"---Popeye

As I understand it, Objectivism is the most basic and fundamental philosophy necessary for survival and prosperity as a human being. As far as I know, Ayn Rand was the first one to publish its complete form. Nowadays, people can read her publications and learn about it in a matter of days; hours if they read fast enough. This is not to say that someone cannot discover its axioms and apply them on their own because the human mind possesses volitional consciousness and Objectivism is consonant with reality. I, for one, learned many of the objective values from examples my parents set for me. Certain values involving fairness in dealings with other people just seemed natural to me. Such things as the axioms remained hidden to me for many years because I attached my parentally derived values to my parentally mandated weekly church attendance. This was a faulty connection re-enforced by other factors too (more than I am prepared to go into at this moment). Still, by the time that I was a senior in high school, I had developed much of what I called "objectivity." So much so, in fact, that when my 12th grade English teacher singled me out and gave me a copy of The Virtue of Selfishness as a gift to read, I read a few pages and figured that all it did was state the obvious so I placed the book on a shelf and did not finish reading it until about three years later. I finally pulled the book out and began to read it just because it was a gift and was in a pile of old unread books that my (ex)wife was about to through out. I was impressed by Ayn Rand's essays and bought and read each one of her non-fiction books and then bought and read her fiction and onward and upward gee-whizz and I am glad that I did. Would I have developed the complete Objectivist Philosophic system on my own? No. Could someone else, isolated from any knowledge of Ayn Rand or Objectivist movements, forums, etc. develop the complete system on their own? Yes. Why? Because the philosophy of Objectivism is THE tool for dealing with and interacting with existence and, to the extent that a volitional will observes existence and calculates this conceptual framework, that being is objective. Personally, I suggest you read the body of knowledge already published on Objectivism and interact with others who have done the same, as you are doing now. You will benefit greatly by this and will not have to re-invent the wheel all by your lonesome.

I rated most questions as high because I believe philosophy is important. I did think that some of the questions were poorly worded and I took the test rapidly. I am not pleased with the results. I can pound my chest all day about getting 100% for Ayn Rand but, the 62% for Immanuel Kant is very disturbing. My advice: Take your time and make sure you understand exactly what each choice means before choosing. Ayn Rand (100%) Click here for info Epicureans (75%) Click here for info Aristotle (73%) Click here for info Plato (72%) Click here for info John Stuart Mill (69%) Click here for info Jeremy Bentham (63%) Click here for info Kant (62%) Click here for info Prescriptivism (60%) Click here for info Aquinas (53%) Click here for info David Hume (48%) Click here for info Thomas Hobbes (45%) Click here for info Nietzsche (41%) Click here for info Cynics (40%) Click here for info St. Augustine (38%) Click here for info Stoics (35%) Click here for info Ockham (32%) Click here for info Jean-Paul Sartre (31%) Click here for info Spinoza (31%) Click here for info Nel Noddings (0%) Click here for info I have no idea who Nel Noddings is but, I don't like him already. Scores 1 a High 2 c High 3 g High 4 b Medium 5 d Medium 6 a High 7 a High 8 e High 9 e Medium 10 b High 11 c Low 12 b High I was tempted to not include my scores so nobody could cheat but, hey, I can tell if you're an objectivist or not just by talking to you.