Lathanar

I have a question for all this that goes a little further into the base of the conflict over there and whether they have any right to occupy Plestinian lands at all. Was the creation of the current Isreali state moral in the first place? If the Palestinians trying to gain a country by resorting to terrorist bombings, kidnappings, and other acts to force Isreal to recgonize them is immoral, why was it any more moral for the Jews to resort to terrorist bombings and other similar tactics to gain an Isreali state from the British?

There are prototypes being built for guns that discharge the electrical system of newer cars and disable them Microwave guns, there is already an incar chip designed to be shot with a laser and shut down by police called HALT (High Speed Avoidance Using Laser Technology) with accompanying legislation to try and fiorce automakers to use it. There is also talk of testing GPS darts which would be shot and attached to fleeing vehicles, so a chase is not needed.

In the next paragraphs, however, she qualifies this with conditions, such as just because the government of that country being invaded has no national rights , it's citizens still have individual rights, even if not recognized by their own government. The conquerer has no right to violate those rights. She also makes it quite clear that just because there are no fully free countries in the world, every country on earth is not open to invasion. Captilism should be the one political system that is the most opposed to war, yet in the recent past, America is pushing it as much as possible. A nation should only attack another nation when it has an objective reason to do so, and it must be in it's self interest to do so. Invading a country to fight political, religious beliefs is not an objective reason, and too many are quick to jump on the 'they might stare at us wrong so we should wipe them all out' ideology. Just as a free society restricts it's citizens from use of force as much as possible, the nation itself should do the same. Fighting a war in Vietnam just to fight communism was wrong.

If God is sentient does he have rights? What if there were no hypotheticals? Until we know the makeup of another volitional creature, we can't determine what kind of rights that should be conferred on it.

Who cares. It's not a governments job to enforce it's populations philosophy on the rest of the world. It's failed at that point. Japan attacked us, slightly different. Our nation HAS NO MORAL OBLIGATIONS. A government has rules it must follow, it does not run off morality. A government is not a person.

One of my problem with Myron's logic he's been posting in this and other threads is that the rest of the world should be attacking us. We are the biggest gun, we are the biggest economic force, we use our political muscle to enforce our ideology on the rest of the world, we are the biggest threat to ever other nation. A pre-emptive strike against America only makes sense for the rest of the world. It leads then that the rest of the world is our biggest threat, so we should just bomb Europe, Asia, Africa, South America and probably even Australia and just get it over with. No more threats.

No you can't, why even go there. 1) music is not food, you don't need it to survive. 2) buy something else to eat. 3) grow your own food 4) if 2 and 3 are not possible for whatever reason in your scenario, eat your family. Who is the 'them'? The artist? They determined it's in their best interest to hand over the production/distribution/price setting to the others, if they are getting the raw end of the deal, that's their issue to rectify, not yours by determining they should be receiving more money. If the RIAA was a horrible industry, then a different one would crop up that would provide better deals to the artists and the public. Artists do NOT have to go through the RIAA. None of that changes the reality that it is WRONG to steal. You do not have a right to listen to music. You do not have a right to determine a business is unfair and justify stealing from them. Regardless of whether you "think" they have a right or not to the music signed over in a contract does not change the reality of the situation. Check your premises.

What rational creature? Ants did not evolve around being volitional using reason to survive, so you can't even begin to do the "what if they were volitonal and had rights". They would have evolved completely differently and would more than likely have a much greater potential for adding value to our lives because of that. The "ifs" are too great to sit down and say, well if aliens showed up, should we grant them rights as we know them. How do they survive? How do they reason? Are they fragile, do they have incredibly long life spans so that death is not as large an issue as it is for us?

I would never go walking around Dallas late at night, but never had any sort of doubt about my safety walking around Ft Worth at night. Sundance Square is awesome, Ft Worth Museum of Science and history is one of the most enjoyable museums I've gone to. I miss life in Ft Worth.

Hank lives in Dallas side because he often stands in the alley behind his house which is a Dallas thing, Ft Worth suburbs don't normally have alleys. Some say it's because Mike Judge lived for quite a while in Garland, but that's in the details. Regardless of where Arlen finally lands, Hank would still be from Ft Worth, Dallas doesn't quite fit his style. He should have made Arlen be Arlington, would have been more suiting, but again, no alleys.

Ft Worth suburbs are more Texan native. Hank Hill would be from Ft Worth. Dallas and it's suburbs are more displaced yankees.

Reno 911 comes to mind.

I'm not quite following this one, are ya'll just trying to say that the fact that an object reflects color of a certain wavelength that we percieve is an attribute of on object, a metaphysical fact but deciding that it should be called green is a man-made concept? That it has a color is a fact, what we call the color is a concept?

On the 60th anniversery I was reading some articles that said they did, I'll have to see if I can find those links again when I get home.

We did the same thing to Japan, let them know when and where we were dropping them.

I'd respond they were correct. Men's actions are what is good and evil, and man can not perform any actions dead. you're right, poor choice of words on my part. Instead of saying "or what keeps you alive" I should have said "or what steps you take to keep yourself alive". Reason is how man survives as a man. We could all set aside reason and just live as savage animals with no tools, no language, etc. but then we wouldn't really be men. Men use reason to gain knowledge to conquer their environment to survive, it's what we are. Survival as a man is the standard of value, man qua man. Reason is the tool we use to survive, reason isn't the standard. Value is exactly what you quoted "that which one acts to gain or keep." Doing nothing is an action, it's a volitional choice to gain nothing. If you have no choice in an action, no alternative to choose, you can neither gain nor lose any value by doing it. Determining what that value is, whether it is a positive value or a negative value, is determined by the standard of survival as a man. What one acts to gain or keep that is in ones rational self-interest is a positive value, it's good. The rest is a negative value, it's evil.

Life is the source of all values, and a rational man recognizes that other men can be of value to him. It's a selfish principle, but generates goodwill towards other men, recognizing that all men have potential value for you until they prove otherwise. That does not give man intrinsic value. It's morally correct to save a stranger in an emergency if you can do so safely, you're simply trying to preserve that potential. The amount of risk to ones life you should take will be directly proportional to the value of the person you are saving. Jumping in front of a bullet, which would have a very high probability of killing you, to save a stranger who you couldn't rationally value more than yourself would be immoral, unless it served some other purpose for which the value would be greater. I think all this is addressed in an essay in VOS.

Quote of the week duh

May you be touched by his noodly appendage.

Then we're in disagreement. I think the point is made very clear that in a civilized society you do wait to shoot back until it is clear that someone is attacking you. If it's clear, I'm fine with it, go to town. If it's not clear, if it's just an arbitrary decision that someone might do you harm, then no. Lethal force should not be the first thing that goes through our heads. I don't want some idiot misinterpreting something I'm doing someday and decide I'm threatening or someone else and kill me. The only way to ensure that no one's rights are violated is to not do violence, that should be the starting point, not I'll kill first and ask questions later. Otherwise there's no point to saying the government should have a monopoly on force, there's no qualification, no sharing. They do not say the government is the only one to use force to enforce laws. I would rather expect you to face these situations a lot. You're a cop, it's your job. You are supposed to know how to deal with these situations, as a cop. You are the one with the authority to use force. I've been robbed at gunpoint with the barrel about 2 inches from my forehead. I've had a gun pulled on me on another occasion and one of my old trucks ended up with a couple bullet holes one night while I was driving. I've had my fair share of angry drunk boyfriends come after me. It's no where near what a police officer sees, but it's much more than I've ever wanted to deal with myself. You have a gun, he has a tire iron. What is wrong with pointing the gun at him and saying stop it or I'll shoot.

The only sure thing in life is death, and when you die you lose any capacity for anything, so staying alive becomes the ultimate goal. Taking that a step further, what keeps you alive becomes the standard of value since without life you can have no other values. Life itself is not the standard but the goal. The means of survival, or what keeps you alive, is the standard, which in man's case is reason.

No, I'm trying to clarify what is an emergency situation. I define an emergency situation as when you have no other choice, no other alternative. If a man is shooting at you, physically attacking you, defend yourself, if a man is waving a gun, run. You're point of "Quite a few citizens are as well trained with firearms as police officers are, and quite a few are better trained with firearms than police officers are." does not matter in such context. If they are well trained, but not a police officer, they can not decide to use retalitory force because they think they are capable, even if they are more capable. No, because I think it goes further than that. From VOS The Nature of Government This paragraph as far as I can tell is the basis from which ya'll are objecting to my view. I happen to agree completely with this statement. However I also happen to agree with what she qualifies this with in the passages following. (emphasis mine) By leaving people open to using force to protect themselves from anyone they feel is a threat, not just retaliating after the fact, but what they are considering self defense, and saying whoever they happen to kill when they defend themselves doesn't matter, then no one is safe. Why else would she add "-even if it's retalitory-" and Piekoff put "they renounce the private use of physical force even in self-protection" if all they were talking about was finding who did something to you after the fact. We should only have to worry about the criminals, not well meaning citizens too. That is why the government needs to have a monopoly on force. The fact that average joe private citizen might have more arms training then a police officer is probably a fault with the police department training system and does not change the fact that it is the police that should be doing the shooting. It is the governments job to make sure under what circumstance force can be used, who can use it, against who it can be used, and how much is necessary. Private citizens can not arbitrarily decide it. With this as a basis, I can not agree with your statement of A threat is not enough. There has to be no other choice. Further by making sure the government has a sole monopoly on force and the rules it should be used with, that removes the need of private citizens to have to take the law into their own hands and then later determine if they were in the wrong or not. No citizen should do that no matter how justified they think they are.

Then what is the point of this Where the OPAR and the essays go on to describe citizens having to carry around guns for protection leading to anarchy. Why even have a police force, why is it needed if we could simply arm ourselves and defend ourselves if we'll simply be "subject to the checks and balances of the law"?

They are moving into Lebanon, next stop Syria.

You are a police officer, are you not? You have received specialized training, rules set up to follow to deal with this situation, correct? Would you rather have you, the police, the government deal with this situation rather than have 10 armed citizens taking potshots? edit: If I didn't make it fully clear, in my example with the drunk I means me, average Joe citizen, not the police.