Nicky

An investment is something that you stand to gain from. Standing up to evil isn't just an investment. If you don't stand up to evil, you don't just lose what you would've gained by doing so. You eventually lose everything. What we gained, when we went to war against the Communists, isn't just trading partners in South Korea. We also gained everything else we would've lost: the whole of Asia, and probably the whole world. So the question should never be "Is it worth it to stand up to evil?". It's always worth it. The question should be "What's the best way to stand up to evil, at any given point?". Also, in answering that question for past generations, you should always keep in mind that you have the luxury of hind sight, and they didn't. Judge their decision making with that in mind.

You can't arrive at an objective definition of rights without first determining what the purpose of your philosophical endeavor is. Instead, for these people, something called rights seems to have just fallen out of the sky, and now they're scrambling to figure out what it is. What are they trying to achieve, by declaring that infanticide is moral? (rhetorical question: infanticide, clearly - it's unclear why, but it would be easy to speculate)

I'd love to see this market analysis you're talking about. Or at least some idea of what it is. Or at least a snippet of actual information suggesting that market analysis was used to make this decision. Any kind of evidence whatsoever that market analysis has anything to do with the decision to fire this poor guy. Until then, I'm gonna go ahead and doubt it exists. ESPN execs don't go around polling Asians to see if they mind the word chink in a headline enough to want someone fired. They just follow the trending ideology as interpreted by whatever self-appointed special interest advocate makes it onto the news. Won ton soup is not offensive to Asians. Chink is. But, that aside, yes, if I saw that in an article about Lin, it's out of place enough to assume that the guy is using it to reference Asian food. No sports writer would ever use that kind of language if they're not going for the bad pun.

I think you're missing the point. That's not why the headline is a problem. A headline containing the word chink wouldn't automatically be a problem. Chink is a legitimate word, that has a meaning unrelated to the slur. The problem is due to the specific context of this headline, not the word by itself. They don't have to fire people over a mistake. There is no objective legal or financial reason why they should've responded this way to the special interest groups'. Those groups don't have the power to affect ESPN's sponsors or viewership over this. Asian Americans don't care about the PC idiots who "advocate" for their rights by policing speech.

It's also a Natural Born Killers ripoff.

Muslims "adjust" their religion the same way Christians do: by compromising religious tenets when they don't suit their non-religious values. That's the "self-correcting mechanism" in Christianity. The Bible doesn't really allow for sex before marriage, for gay Christians, for divorce, or for any kind of tolerance of those things. Christians accept those things despite the Bible, not because of it. And the same can happen with Muslims. And it is happening, even in Muslim countries. That phenomenon, of western values seeping into Middle Eastern culture, and corrupting Islamic values, is what the "backlash" is directed at. Not some event 40 years ago. That is why Islamists are targeting our presence in the region(and by us I don't mean the US military, I mean all westerners and our products). And that's why yielding and withdrawing the only thing between us and them (the US military) would be disastrous for the Middle East, for our interests there, and in the long run for the entire World. The Middle East can and must be westernized. It would be nice if it was done the way Japan was westernized (quickly, and with the minimum necessary pain for the United States), but in the absence of that the next best thing is what is our reluctant presence, not our full withdrawal.

"all the time" is a silly idiom. It actually means "plenty of times", it doesn't literally mean "all the time". Confusing, I know. I'll try to stay away from it in the future. With that in mind, no, of course I'm not joking.

You're mixing your metaphors. First you used "at face value". Now you switched to "blindly". Why is that? What was wrong with "at face value"? Didn't work for you anymore? I don't think you should ever accept anything blindly. But you should take things at face value on occasion.

I agree with all that, I'm not disputing any of it. I'm just disputing the part where you're saying that the headline wasn't an intentional double entendre.

I don't think she would agree with you on that at all. Trusting a secular organization is very different from trusting a religion. The government reports on events accurately all the time. Religion doesn't. If you think they're the same, then you're the one who's biased.

Is it funny? Did I not check what that index included? Are those your two arguments?

Their laws, their press and their literature. Anything but an index from an organization that doesn't even define the word freedom correctly.

I don't think so. I think that Iran's "devil" is at the most abstract, least detailed point of divergence with western ideas you could find. And it's the same exact point of divergence we had with Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany. It's the disagreement on whether human beings are ends in themselves or not.

Why are you speculating on what I'm basing my opinions on? You don't even know me. My claims on the guiding principles of the United States are mainly based on studying its laws, and the well documented ideas those laws are based on. My conclusions are confirmed by looking at the history of the United States, and Americans' willingness to actually fight for those principles. While I agree that the Heritage Economic Index you posted is objective, it paints only a partial picture (and a fraction of the picture, at that - far outweighed by the two most important characteristics of freedom: free speech, and political participation open to everyone). It doesn't contradict anything I said. As for the other list, that's a joke. Freedom House is not a consistent advocate of the principle of individual rights, and its list is superficial at best. Those countries it lists as equivalent to the US in political and social freedoms all have laws restricting both political participation and speech. And, more importantly, on a cultural level those nations do not identify with individualism the way Americans do. Their laws are ambiguous and their history spotted with episodes of tyranny and abuse precisely because their culture is a victim of trends. Sure, the trend right now is democracy and so called "democratic values", but there is no reason to believe that is their cultural identity. They certainly have yet to show a willingness to fight for those ideas, which is quite telling of the depth of their convictions. The ideology at the heart of the European Union (described with phrases such as open society, democratic values, human rights) often and in many areas produces similar concretes to the ideology of the United States. More often than not, people can speak freely. But not always, and never on principle. More often than not, people can support a political ideology. But not always, and never on principle. More often than not, people get to keep their property. But not always, and never on principle. People tend to conform to the many rules that restrict freedom, and the few who don't show up tiny blips on a vast radar of conformity, in these studies you are citing. But, if you'd look at the actual rules instead, you'd be able to spot the glaring difference between the First Amendment and its application in the US, and speech laws in Australia, or political campaign laws in Europe, for instance. And, again, this ideology of democratic values is a fleeting trend. You can already see the signs of the new trend: political correctness (fascism, when converted into law, as it's happening everywhere except in the United States and maybe Japan), everywhere from Canada to Europe and Australia. Their "open society" and "democratic values" laws are less and less about freedom, and more and more about sweeping dissent of "tolerance" and "humaneness" under the rug.

Noted. I stand by my statement. I don't see what that list has to do with it. Depends on your definition of interventionist. As for my definition, it doesn't fit most US wars (except the one against Serbia in the 90s). US wars are motivated by retaliation or prevention, not arbitrary intervention.

Sounds like you still haven't seen the skit. Watch it, then comment. It's not PC at all.

It's not a discussion. I've shown no interest in your point of view. You engaged me with a question, so I responded. I'll take your rudeness as a withdrawal of interest, so we can go our separate ways now. That makes no sense.

That link claims Operation Susannah was aimed to induce the British to keep their forces in the region. You claimed that Israel tried to get the US into war in Egypt. That's a leap that makes me more suspicious that you're a crazy conspiracy theorist, not less.

What I speak of is an attempt to explain to you why it's in your self interest to care about what happens outside the United States, and why isolationism is not going to protect the rights of Americans. Please note that you are complaining about how you can't question things, right after you took my question and answered it as if it was a statement. Leave Ayn Rand out of this. Her position on the subject is not an argument for yours. Trust me.

Two Jews walk into a bar. They own it. Do you think that's a factual statement, or am I alluding to a stereotype of some sort? The answer to your question is that this is an obvious double entendre the same way it's obvious that what I just wrote is a joke, not a factual statement. Humor follows patterns that are purposefully non-logical. But they are very obvious patterns. The pattern "mention Jews, imply stereotype" is very easy to recognize. So is "mention Jeremy Lin, allude to his race". It's all over popular media, to the point where SNL did a skit on it. The proof that it's a joke is not a logical connection, it's simply that it fits the pattern. But that's proof enough. Btw., to me the excuse is worse than the actual offense. If the excuse were true, then he should be fired, and never allowed into a writing job again, because he's an idiot. For the love of God, how is no one denying that? SNL (which, last time I checked is in New York) wrote and aired a skit on it the next night. And I think their writers can distinguish between deliberate and accidental puns a little better than the local news. Besides, Ryan and I (the two other posters in this thread besides you) just denied this hours ago.

Because Lebanon and Palestine aren't in another galaxy. The people in Lebanon and Palestine are plenty close enough, and connected enough to matter what they are doing and what happens to them. They did? What? When? And more importantly, are you an antisemitic conspiracy theorist? If you are, tell me now, so I can start ignoring you.

What famous black hockey player? They don't even have ice in Africa.

Right, the double entendre is on the word chink, not "chink in the armor". Chink can mean either a hole, or a racist term. In this case, it was used to mean hole (as part of the expression), but the headline was also meant to convey the other meaning. I wouldn't normally jump to this conclusion, btw., not even if the subject involved Asians. But with Jeremy Lin, every god damn headline I look at is another attempt at a pun, either on his name or on his race. Obviously this one is too.

It's that same gotcha mentality we see in American public life (and saw in the Peikoff thread). Just because the guy found a quote that, as long as it is kept totally out of any context, can be interpreted to mean what he says it means, doesn't mean Ayn Rand is implying that the government couldn't own property to achieve its proper functions. If you look at even just a little more of the context in which the sentence appears in her book, or if you considered anything whatsoever she stood for or said over the years, this should be so painfully obvious to anyone that it's mind blowing that there is someone who refuses to interpret the sentence correctly.

BTW, check out the SNL skit on the subject, from last Saturday. It's hilarious.