dark_unicorn

The first thing to understand is that racially speaking, there is no such thing as a Palestinian, they are what you would call displaced Syrians who have formed their own political identity. The second thing is that when the Palestinians were not kicked off of their lands, the West Bank and Gaza Strip were handed over to Jordan and Egypt, so any grevences that the Palestinians have during that period are to be taken up with their fellow Muslim countries, whom have basically been using them as a political tool as they always have. And the final note is that Israel is 10,000 times the open secular culture that Palestine is, you have travelers coming in and out from dozens of countries, you have open trade, and women are not treated like property to be disposed of at will. In Palestine, if they are consistant with the system of law they live under (Islamic Law), a person could be executed for playing chess.

By this post I will assume that this was serious and not just sarcasm, if it was a joke, disregard this response. As a practicing Catholic I can't stand Howard Stern, however, I'm not one to resort to government force in order to shut someone up whom I don't like, my preferred method of dealing with garbage is either turning off the radio, changing the channel, or trying to show someone the error of their ways through principled debate. Your country's various news outlets and media have every right to deny anyone air time (this of course would provide that they are privately funded, which obviously they aren't), but your government has no right to deprive people of their right to hear whatever speech they wish to hear. The problem also is that Howard Stern is not the only person your censoring with a ban on satelite dishes. You are also interfering with commerce between corporations of other countries who may wish to gain some Canadian customers, and certain news outlets such as Fox News (like them or not, they are of a different opinion than the mainstream media) provide perspectives that many of your citizens (mostly outside of the major cities) want to see. Free speech either applies to everyone or it doesn't exist.

I would like to state for the record that what I was specifically getting at is the rights of terrorists to enjoy procedural rights granted under the constitution, which is different than the universal rights of "Life, Liberty and Property". I support the rights of all human beings to self-determine their own lives and their own property. If a person wishes to poison their soul by converting to Islam, it has no effect on me, however that does not give him the right to practice his twisted beliefs at the expense of my "Life, Liberty, or Property"However, I am not in favor of granting procedural rights to non-Americans suspected of terrorism. A good example would be the debachel of the "Saddam Trial". That man is not entitled to the right of presumed innocence any more than the people at the Nuremborg trials, because his guilt is so obvious it could almost be considered axiomatic (exaggeration).

After reading "Das Kapital" for the second time I can tell you that Karl Marx was probably one of the most blatant plagarists of Adam Smith's view of economics (meshed with his own secular version of the Old Testament and Medievalist Lutheran mysticism) to serve the end of destroying it. In the same respect you could kind of argue that the artists and architects who created these monuments were plagarizing egoistic romantic art in the interest of destroying the soul of a people that may well have aspired to something better than what they recieved when the Czars fell.

As far as I can tell this spy program is aimed at people whom are calling into the United States. So the question I have to ask is "Do non-Americans enjoy the same U.S. Constitutional Rights as Americans"? The second question that I have to ask is "Do terrorists have a right to privacy."? I am in agreement with the majority of posters here that it is never ethical for the government to violate individual rights. There is nothing practical about engaging in a morally compromised position on such an important issue. However, terrorists such as the Islamo-fascists don't really qualify as individuals when you analyze the ideology they have accepted. Furthermore, I would argue that the level of irrationalism that they have accepted pretty much cancels out all traces of their humanity.

Yes, I neglected to mention the problem of Universals. I actually concur with objectivism on this, over my Thomistic teachers at the Philadelphia Arch-Diocese. However, what disqualifies me as an objectivist is my belief in God, as Ayn Rand's philosophy is atheistic in nature. This is why I don't label myself as an objectivist. I have a great deal of contempt for both the Brandens and David Kelley and I have no desire to join their ranks. Unlike many of my fellow Christians (this is where my dash of Deism comes in) I don't feel threatened by Objectivism's atheism. I chalk it up to a gentleman's disagreement over speculating as to the origin of Physics, ergo as a student of Aristotilean teachings I concur with Objectivists on the material universe not having a beginning or end, but I think that the more logical course in speculating how the first star was born, and how things began to move comes back to some "first cause". I know that Leonard Peikoff asserts that Aquinas' appeal to the first cause has supposedly been refuted by various philosophers, but nothing I have read so far has convinced me that this is the case.

I lived in Maryland for 16 years and this kind of nonsense doesn't surprise me, former mayor Glenn Denning (Democrat) was known as "the governor of the dead" because that is where he got most of his votes from. Next to Chicago the entire state of Maryland has one of the most corrupt political systems in the country (yes, I think they've even got New Jersey beat) and also one of the most idiotic, simpleton-ridden, moronic population in the entire Union. Frankly I'm surprised that they actually elected my former Representative (the current Mayor, who is actually a decent man) as the current Governer. If I was Walmart I would do exactly what Rush Limbaugh recommend they do, and afterward I'd send a letter to the Maryland legislature telling them to kiss their sales tax base goodbye.

My mother suffers from asthma and I'm waiting for her to bring home one of these new inhalers. It is obvious now that green is not the color of humanity.

The sheer idiocy of these people is actually starting to make me wonder if there really are two realities. Quote of the Moment: "I have always made one prayer to God, a very short one. Here it is: "My God, make our enemies very ridiculous!" God has granted it to me." (Voltaire)

The excerpt where Francisco D'Aconia explains virute and guilt to Hank Reardan, where the title of the book "Atlas Shrugged" is alluded to. "Mr. Rearden," said Francisco, his voice solemnly calm, "if you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down upon his shoulders-what would you tell him to do?" "I . . . don't know. What . . . could he do? What would you tell him?" "To shrug." Atlas Shrugged (Part 2, Chapter 3)

I had to check my gag reflex again after reading that Dadaist poetry, it is literally unreadable. I used to laugh when reading the poetry derided as "the common man's art" in the Fountainhead and the idiotic philosophical rants by a few stooge characters in Atlas Shrugged, but after reading this and finding out that the reality is even more ridiculous than Rand's abstraction of it, I'm in dire need of some Tolkein. P.S. - Tristan Tzara makes E. E. Cummings look like William Shakespeare.

One of my favorite games for the original playstation was Suikoden, which was a big RPG from the mid-90s, had some pretty strongly capitalistic, and definately some strong romantic themes to it. One of my favorites is one of the mini-tasks you have to perform at the beginning of the game where you oust a corrupt village governor who is over-taxing his citizens (I think the town's name was Rockland). Probably the most Romantic part of the game is how it ends. After defeating the Emperor of the Scarlet Moon Empire, rather than seize power and influence, your character wishes not to rule anyone or to be ruled by anyone else and disappears to live for himself. There is a little bit of John Galt in your character (whose name is EcDohl I believe) in just about everything he does. He fights for his friends, he rallies the best people he finds to a just cause, and all the while he depends on trade with merchants and using his mind to solve puzzles in order to gain the items he needs to succeed. 5 stars. P.S. - Another strongly objectivist aspect of the game is the soundtrack. You've got music inspired from the likes of Baroque Concertos, Filmscore, melodic eastern music, and some other rather great sources of tonal consonance.

The primary school of thought in public education doesn't neccesarily deal with logic, reasoning, analysis and facts dealing with reality. Most educational professors at universities take a Sigmund Freud approach to children, which argues that children are not capable of abstract thought until their early teens (which is absurd, if you can speak and identify objects you a thinking abstractly, just not super-complexly). Furthermore, particularly in the universities that train teachers, such logical methods of learning to read such as phonics are derided as "simplistic" and "subversive to the feelings of students". Granted, most elementary teachers that I've met don't turn their back on the logical teaching methods, but often they will create compromise methods between what worked for them as children and what the universities slammed down their throats, and the result is mixed levels of accomplishment. Objectivist Epistemology is primarily useful as a razor to cut away all the nonsense that obviously does not pertain to educating a human child, yet gets passed off as thought it is. Beyond that, you are correct in your assertion that it is primarily a re-statement of Aristotilean logical theories (much as the Scholastic method of Scripture Instruction, which I was exposed to in Catholic School, thus giving me a different perspective on it than the self-taught Bible thumpers you see raving on TV like a bunch of psychos.)

Your point is well taken, although certain splinter sects. of Christianity here in the States keep a literal interpretation of those verses divorced from any sense of history (mostly due to the practice of Sola Scriptura, which is an erronius practice by the original Christian standard). The problem is that most of the so-called "Moderates" in the islamic world are not doing much in the way of trying to defend their beliefs from these fundamentalists, which leads me to the conclusion that they are probably not the majority in that region. Whether the Qu'ran specifies that the "Convert by the Sword" speech is true [i do find it disturbing that a religion that claims to be peaceful would put a military leader ahead of a man of peace (Mohammad/Christ)], most of these terrorists take that saying literally as a call for all muslims to be in a state of Jihad until the world is subsumed under their ideology. I do find it interesting to note that the "72 virgins" thing originated with an old Islamic cult. from the Middle Ages called the Hashshasheen, which was founded on the principle that Islam supposedly needed to be clensed of the so-called untrue believers within it. What was also interesting is how this cult was originally dealt with. Genghis Khan and his troops played seige warfare, crushed them, took their leader out of their temple and kicked him to death. Apparently it rid the Middle East of a cancer for 5 or 6 centuries.

Understood, I still need to learn the ropes around here a little.

Much obliged, and thank you for the warm welcome, hopefully my hands won't betray me like this again. This forum is the first one I've been on where there isn't an edit function for posts.

1. Agreed, it is getting a bit late. Just suffice to say that I'm always guarded about supposed new laws. One of the problems this country has nowadays is this "There ought to be a law" mentality everyone has. Whenever I hear someone saying this, out of sheer annoyance I always respond "there ought NOT be a law". 2. It's one of the problems with talking online as opposed to face to face, it's not always easy to understand the intentions of a post when you don't have facial expressions or tone of voice to guide your interpretation. But I took it as a compliment, don't worry. One of the reasons why I came to this forum was I wanted to discuss things with people who agree with me on most things, for most forums I belong to are extremely hostile to my opinions.

Speaking as someone who has taught in the public school system for 4 years now as a substitute, I can give you dozens of examples of how public education has not only made some people illiterate, I can also make a pretty solid case that it plays a role in the current phenomena taking place in Philadelphia (where I used to teach) where the city can't go a single day without someone being shot dead on the street. In Pennsylvania there is currently an insane Supreme Court ruling back in the 70s that has basically doomed the entire state's education system to mediocrity. Observe by way of a logical table. Senario: In the 1970s the Pennsylvania supreme court passed a law (ergo, legislated from the bench) that mandated a certain amount of land must be free of private ownership by either private business or resident property owners so that more trailor park space could be made available. Now let's see how the statistics to break down. 1. The average amount of money it takes to publicly educate a single child is roughly $7,000 a year. 2. The average nuclear family breaks even and puts about $7,000 back in for each child it sends to school. 3. The average single parent family pays about $3,000 back into the system, creating a deficit of $4,000 per child. 4. People living in trailor parks do not pay property taxes so they pay nothing back into the system, thus creating a $7,000 deficit per child. 5. The only known entity that pays property taxes and does not produce children, thus canceling out any education budget deficits, are small businesses and corporations. So do the math, the average property owning family breaks even, thus can not make up any of the budget deficit unless they are taxed more (which Ed Randell would be more than happy to do), and businesses are banned from using certain amounts of land in a given county because it is set aside for trailor parks by a matter of law, regardless to whether or not any people live on that land. And Pennsylvania wonders why our public school systems are running out of money and can't keep their music and arts programs? I say to hell with it, privatize the whole damned system, these government flunkies have no idea what their doing. Besides, I make more money per hour giving private guitar and piano lessons anyway.

Yes, I read it. However, as I have seen the disaster that has been the Sherman Anti-Trust act portrayed in history (and rightly so) by Gary Hull, I'm just hoping that what constitutes knowingly fostering infringement is clearly defined and that there isn't any "creative logic" being applied to the definition of the given concept.

Yikes, I typed the wrong name. Yep, that's what I meant.

Hemp has it's uses, however it feels like I'm walking around wrapped in burlap. 10 for durability, 0 for comfort.

As the original champion of reasoned thought stated himself "Republics fall into Democracies, and Democracies fall into Despotisms" (Aristotle) San Fransisco fell into a despotism back in the 60s when it drank the wine of Dionysus, and now they are voting like a bunch of drunken madmen. P.S. - "How fortunate for leaders that men do not think." (Adolf Hitler)

Apologies sir, I neglected to mention Canada, although I'm not really sure about that business of satelite dishes being banned up there. Do you guys still support free speech up there?

This is all known to me, however, what is the difference between being subjugated by Islam visa ve land control versus actually being forcefully converted, it's pretty much similar to the analogy of taking Nazism over Communism, it's the same poison with a different mask. Islam demands intolerance of free, self-determining people, hense it is of no use to me, I say get rid of it. P.S. - If the Vatican had the Aristotilean clarity that Aquinas had, they would not be defending these people, they are not friends of Christianity or any other established religion, nor are they to be regarded as people of equal political standing.

Thank you, unfortunately it seems I accidentally hit the "t" key one too many times and misspelled "introducing", I hope this doesn't give others the impression that I can't spell.