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DarkWaters

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Everything posted by DarkWaters

  1. If you are referring to emergency situations, then yes, I agree, having a gun can help one protect one's right to life. However, in your previous post, you indicated that a constitution (presumably one that protects one's right to life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness along with an established government committed to and capable of protecting these rights) is worthless without the right to private gun ownership. This means that it is worthless in both emergency and non-emergency situations. I certainly disagree with the latter. The American Revolution was a success primarily because of the moral certainty of the American colonists and the power of the truly revolutionary ideas that they were committed to. The fact that many of the colonists had rifles is not sufficient to explain the long-term success of the American Revolution.
  2. To start, I agree with everything David said. You may assume that I endorse all of his arguments. I do not think David was insinuating that you plan to initiate force. I believe he was just commenting on the mistake of assuming that gun ownership is a primary and sufficient means to secure freedom. Anyway, I said: I stand by this statement. Suppose everyone is legally permitted to own a personal arsenal but nearly all individuals lack a proper intellectual defense of political and economic freedom against any of the three aforementioned threats. Such a society is headed towards swift and uncompromising destruction. Without a proper philosophical foundation, how could the armed individual citizens determine what government actions are just and what actions evil? Should they take a principled stance against any violation of property rights or should they only get involved if their particular property is being seized? How could these individuals even determine what property is? Should these individuals oppose religion in politics or is a political party of religious mystics fine so long as they promise to keep taxes low and to let the citizenry keep their guns? We can ask a multitude of such questions that can only be properly addressed with sound philosophy. Without the right philosophy to answer these questions, these citizens are helpless in spite of their arms. Philosophy drives history and you cannot stop bad ideas with bullets. Although rightful gun ownership is certainly important within a certain context, the best thing that gun ownership can accomplish against greater ideological threats is that you can take a few of the thugs with you in your final hour when a mob comes to destroy you. Instead, I recommend not mistaking the right to bear arms as the primary means to securing one's freedom. If enough individuals cease making this mistake, then hopefully the real dangers to freedom can be stopped before anybody in the U.S. will ever need to draw guns during a final stand.
  3. I briefly perused Bob Barr's "issues" section of his presidential campaign website. He explicitly states that he is opposed to using military force against "perceived threats". So, hypothetically speaking, if a rogue nation is aggressively pursuing weapons of mass destruction and explicitly states that they are going to destroy every major U.S. city, we cannot use military force against them, since they are merely a perceived threat who has not attacked us! You cannot parody this stuff.
  4. Nash equilibria and the Prisoner's Dilemma can also refer to specific mathematical concepts, which can arguably be useful for various decision models. In other words, these concepts need not be packaged together with social commentary that leads to terrible policy conclusions such as the presumed necessity of antitrust regulation. Unfortunately, too many neoclassical economists like to assume that all individuals are short-sighted utility function maximizers.
  5. The right to own a gun is not going to protect us from the most potent threats to the United States today: Dominionism, Marxist Environmentalism and Socialism.
  6. The Czech Republic's President, Vaclav Klaus, recently released a book that argues that environmentalism is the modern form of Marxism. However, after doing some searching on Amazon.com this afternoon, I noticed how even Environmentalists are openly embracing Marxism. Just look at the following sample of books that connect Marxism to environmentalism (and the author intends it in a good way) Marx and Nature: A Red and Green Perspective Natural Causes: Essays in Ecological Marxism Marx's Ecology: Materialism and Nature The Greening of Marxism The Enemy of Nature: The End of Capitalism or the End of the World? Ecology Against Capitalism Marxism and Environmental Crises I am shocked but not really that surprised.
  7. One of the key insights that moved me towards a similar conclusion is the environmentalist concept of natural. It essentially boils down to anything that is untouched or uncreated by man. Thus, when these environmentalists want to do everything they can to always preserve the natural over the man-made, they are preventing humans from exploiting their environment. Since we must alter our environment to ensure our survival, environmentalists are in essence opposing the very survival of man, even if they fail to consciously realize it. As always, my usage of environmentalist above goes well beyond the average person on the street who merely opposes pollution when it is clearly harmful to humans.
  8. The cited motivation is to preserve the Florida Everglades. I have never heard a satisfying distinction between "everglades" and "swamps". I would not even be surprised if this land acquisition increases the mosquito population in Florida.
  9. I perceive that the disagreement you have with a few other members on this issue stems from different usage of the words 'subjective' and 'objective'. If I am not mistaken, you seem to be using the words 'objective' and 'intrinsic' interchangably. Although this is probably how 'objective' is normally used by modern philosophers, it is not how Objectivists use it. In addition, I suspect that your usage of the word 'subjective' is different from how Objectivists use that term. According to Objectivist philosophy, there is no dichotomy between subjective values and intrinsic values. Subjective values, if I am not mistaken, would be something that is good because of the subject but completely independent of the facts of the reality. If values are subjective, then some individuals can decide that abusing crack cocaine or crystal methamphetamine regardless of the fact that embracing such a habit will destroy your life. Similarly, intrinsic means that an object is good, in and of itself. So if mozarella cheese is intrinsically good, then it should be good for everyone, regardless if the person happens to be lactose intolerant, has heart problems or just happens to not like the taste. There is no false dichotomy between subjective and intrinsic values because values can also be objective (in the Objectivist sense). Here, I mean that values are contextually grounded in the facts of what goal-directed actions are required to strive towards the long-term flourishing of your life. I hope that this offers clarification. I like to use set theory to explain the allowance for personal preferences with objective values. The way I see it, there is an objectively defined set of life-advancing values and the complement of that set are values that are not life advancing. For example, in the context of dietary preferences, there are plenty of foods that are well within the set of possible life-advancing values for cuisine: New York strip steak, Chicken parmesgian, Rigatoni vodka, Bourbon-marinated salmon, et cetera. With reasonable exceptions, an individual can objectively claim that some meals in this set are values to him and others are not, depending on his personal tastes. The point is, this set of possible values is objectively defined. Likewise, we can also objectively say that an individual cannot rationally claim that he values eating broken glass or drinking cyanide.
  10. I am interested in where this case goes. I have posted a few more excerpts from the article. The emphasis is mine. I wonder if the part that I italicized is true. If so, it makes a difference between fraud and circulating coins. If no fraud was actually committed, this sounds like a decent defense. Does anybody know why this could fail? Is it really inflation-proof if Mr. Von NotHaus can continue to mint more of them? As much as I support objective currency, I would not want to use any medium of exchange that suggests that Ron Paul, a man whose defining political issue seems to be non-interventionism, is worthy of commemoration.
  11. I definitely think that Bill Gates holds a number of bad ideas as he repeats how it is the "duty" of the wealthy to take care of the needy. However, I do not see any signs of him being ashamed of his ability in spite of him extolling an anti-life idea.
  12. Just because two parties mutually benefit from a voluntary transaction certainly does not mean that values are subjective. Given that one villager objectively has a sufficient amount of wood to sustain his needs, it objectively makes sense that he will enhance his welfare by exchanging a few of his logs for agricultural produce. The same can be said for the farmer who trades the produce.
  13. I saw this article on CNN.com this evening. Evidently, Barack Obama is reiterating his clarion call for "21st century regulations" on Wall Street by insisting that he wants focused regulations on oil speculators. Unfortunately, because the Republican Party is also actively embracing an anti-big business mentality* and there does not seem to be anyone offering a moral defense of commodity speculation beyond serious Objectivists, I dread that there is going to be an ugly politically-driven crackdown against oil speculators during the next administration. *from Former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist calling for "windfall profits" taxes on oil while he was in office to John McCain running campaign commercials today that insist that he will "hold CEOs accountable" for unspecified crimes.
  14. If this research actually becomes ubiquitous, the radical environmentalists will eventually start shrieking about how this bacteria is sucking a dangerous amount of carbon dioxide out of the air, possibly destroying plantlife that requires CO2 to perform its basic biological functions.
  15. I agree with Greebo here and I tried addressing this point with Fireball before. Fireball, it seems as if you are having fun but we are sure that you are aware that Barack Obama does not go by his middle name. To intentionally go out of your way to repeat it suggests that you want individuals to judge Barack Obama based on negative stereotypes associated with his name. I think this is silly, it is an attempt to manipulate the ignorant and it is a distraction from more serious issues. It is not in anyone's rational interest to encourage judging individuals by non-essentials such as one's birth name. We should encourage individuals to make honest judgments about more important characteristics of Barack Obama such as his articulated values, political platform and personal choices. There are plenty of serious arguments against supporting Barack Obama. His middle name being Hussein is not one of them. Please provide evidence of this if you know any credible links. This would be alarming news indeed.
  16. It seems like you are saying that the U.S.' involvement in WWII was inevitable but offered no rational self-interest to U.S. citizens anyway. Stopping monstrous ideologies such as Nazism and Japanese Imperialism is not "useless."
  17. Let us all not forget Barack Obama's: Global Poverty Act Vision of Universal Health Insurance Clarion call for "21st century" regulations of Wall Street speculators to prevent a future Subprime Mortgage Crisis. I was adamantly for voting for John Kerry over George Bush in 2004. However, unless if John McCain is going to choose a M2 religious conservative, such as Mike Huckabee, as a running mate, I am going most likely going to vote for John McCain (who is just plain awful) in November. I shudder to think of what might happen with an Obama presidency with a Democratic majority in Congress.
  18. John Lewis' forthcoming book Nothing Less Than Victory now has the property of existence on the inventory list of Amazon.com. John Lewis is one of my favorite ARI-affiliated intellectuals. I am really looking forward to the release of this book!
  19. I suspected that someone would bring up that part of the pledge. If a random guy on the street came up to me and proudly announced that he was going to engage in activity to intentionally increase his carbon footprint without "fear or concern that he is destroying the planet", I would not have enough information to conclude that he is going to subsequently engage in life-advancing action. However, we have the additional context of the list of suggested activities that I linked earlier. This suggests that the campaign does not intend for anyone to engage in anything too reckless. Otherwise, I think I am just going leave this discussion in disagreement. We are not disagreeing over anything fundamental.
  20. From looking at the Carbon Belch Day website, one is lead to believe that their goal is to increase our carbon footprint. Granted, there is a small mention of Climate Alarmists making individuals feel guilty here. I have quoted the mention below. However, consider the pledge that the website encourages individuals to take: I do not see a firm and proper statement of an individual's right to engage in life-advancing activities that result in increased carbon output. It is possible that the organizers of this campaign have something somewhat resembling Rational Egoism in mind with this campaign. It is also possible that their primary motivation is merely to infuriate the Climate Alarmists as opposed to seeking to make an important philosophical point. I cannot tell.
  21. From a cursory glance at their website, the Carbon Belch Day campaign primarily focuses on encouraging all individuals to increase their carbon footprint. The website concretizes their instructions with a list of suggested activities. Essentially all of the suggested activities are rational forms of recreation as opposed to purposeless wasting of resources, which is promising. However, I question the productivity of focusing on encouraging individuals to increase their resource usage. Encouraging individuals to use more resources, even for rational pursuits, will not be effective in combatting the irrationality of the Climate Change Alarmists. Instead, I think it is much more productive to have a campaign to educate readers on the crucial philosophical issues at stake in today's climate change debate. For example, consider The Objective Standard's Exploit the Earth Day campaign, which immediately and properly addresses the essential philosophical issues at hand. In my perception, the Carbon Belch Day campaign is at best focusing on a non-essential since the amount of CO2 one is generates is not nearly as important as the level of life-advancing action one chooses to pursue in spite of the demands for sacrifice coming from the Greens. At worst, this campaign is focusing on a negative, since increasing one's energy usage is often a cost (e.g., through increased utility bills) associated with one's activities. Anyway, the Carbon Belch Day campaign is could certainly be much worse. However, as intellectual activists, I think we can find a much better campaign to throw our weight behind.
  22. Well, the most obvious and appropriate answer is Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged! I also remember Farenheight 451 being a fairly interesting dystopia.
  23. Welcome to the forum! I hope that you find the discussions both enjoyable and informative.
  24. As Ben indicated, none of these activities need to be nihilistic at all so long as they are acted with a rational goal in mind. If we want to consider silly examples, grilling thousands of uneaten burgers would be pretty pointless even though it would surely aggravated the global warming lobby for using all of that energy to power the grill, it would infuriate the animal rights lobby for purchasing all of that ground chuck and it would really piss off the anti-world hunger lobby for wasting all of that food. Anyway, I am confident that we both agree that there is nothing at all wrong with a holiday that encourages individuals to enjoy life without any unearned guilt. I have not investigated Carbon Belch Day close enough to determine if this is such a holiday. My negative reaction was based on the many Facebook activities that encourage individuals to senselessly waste resources as well as the fact that the original poster (who later indicated that this was a poor choice of words) said that the holiday was about wasting resources.
  25. So your statement did intentionally claim that the grouping of different ethnicities and/or religious sects was intentional. I did not realize this at first. That being said, your previous statement needed no correction. Can you please provide supporting evidence of the above claim? There might be evidence from transcripts from meetings of the League of Nations when they issued all of the various mandates. Reflecting on your statement further, I would not be too surprised if it were true.
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