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LaszloWalrus

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Everything posted by LaszloWalrus

  1. It looks alright, though I would be wary of its David Kelley/TOC connection. (They link to his book.)
  2. How is it "dangerous logic"? Would you vote for someone who "might feel obligated to run" as a Communist so not to "be lumped with the mass corruption" of the two major parties?
  3. Rationalism is quite distinct from being rational. Ratonalism, is generally, seeing only how ideas relate to one another, and not how ideas connect to reality.
  4. Most of the soldiers' deaths were unneccesary. Iraq has demonstrated that 1) The US is not willing to wage total war even after an attack on its own soil. 2) If a country attacks the US, the US will kindly give it billions of dollars in aid to build up its infrastructure and allow it to hold elections, at the expense of US (and US allies') soldiers' lives. 3) If a country attacks the US, it's free to elect an equally evil, or even more evil regime. 4) The US will not attack the main enemy, Iran.
  5. In Ayn Rand Answers Ayn Rand calls Don Quixote one of her three least favorite novels (the other two are Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary.
  6. There just is. One explains things in terms of existence.
  7. After browsing the first few pages, especially the table of contents, and noticing that the author believes that Objectivism could "degenerate into a religion," I don't think much of this book.
  8. This analogy is wrong on so many levels. Before I get into an actual argument: are you a creationist?
  9. Antitrust should break up the monopoly, so that the Old Testament will be in competition with the New Testament, rather than in collusion.
  10. I agree with the first part, but not the second. If the second were true, then South Korea should be bin Laden's headquarters.
  11. Strangely, despite Hitchens snipes at Ayn Rand, he now features a number of her works on his website: http://buildupthatwall.com/recommended3.html
  12. If only there were a government program to keep her looks from depreciating. That is quite sad and quite funny.
  13. Ugh. The line up of speakers includes David Kelly, Edward Hudgins and Mimi Gladstein? This is a disaster in the making.
  14. What about the fact that there are fewer than 800 billionaires world wide? http://money.cnn.com/2006/03/09/news/newsm...orbes/index.htm Of those, only 371 live in the US (elsewhere, it would be far less likely that someone has ever heard of Ayn Rand or Objectivism). How many Objectivists are there in the world? I would guess that there are fewer than ten thousand. *** Mod's note: This led to a related discussion on probabilities, that has been split into a new topic. - sN ***
  15. It seems to be that the Ron Paul supporters ignore the role of ideas vis-a-vis the war against Islamic totalitarianism: Islamic terrorism is not the result of "blowback," but the result of certain ideas that the Islamists hold that are antithetical to the Western values of reason, secularism, and rights. If terrorism were simply a result of "blowback" from supposed Western meddling, then why aren't Indian Hindus blowing themselves up in Britain? Why haven't we been attacked by Serbian terrorists, or by Korean terrorists?
  16. The site also states AS FACT that Jesus is the son of God: http://www.conservapedia.com/Jesus_Christ
  17. The only thing the Libertarians seem to agree on is that the government is wrong no matter what it does.
  18. I think that's from Branden's website; for that reason, I wouldn't trust it. I believe Diana Hsieh has some commentary on Branden's claims about Ayn Rand's views on evolution.
  19. She didn't have a view on evolution, since she didn't know enough about it (she says this explicititly in Philosophy: Who Needs it, I think.) About creationism, Ayn Rand wrote this (in The Age of Mediocrity): "To claim that the mystics' mythology, or inventions, or superstitions are as valid as scientific theories, and to offer this claim to the unformed minds of children, is a moral crime. Is the child expected to make a choice? Only a very unusual, very intelligent and self-confident child would make the right choice in such a case -- and he would despise his teacher as a fool or a liar. But to the extent that a child trusts his teacher, he would be inclined to accept him on faith and to doubt his own mind (which, of course, is the result sought by Immanuel Kant, by the militant mystics, and by the 'creationists')."
  20. I don't vote for Salamandridae on principle. For a serious answer, I don't see what sets Gingrich apart from the other Republican candidates, and he buys into the "global warming" nonsense: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...7041000963.html
  21. Well, the only way the US could refrain from "provoking terrorism" would be to convert to Islam en masse. Are you suggesting that had the US should never have gotten involved in the Middle East?
  22. Do you mean that you thinkg September 11th was the result of US action against the Islamic world?
  23. My point is that there are a lot of arbitrary "theories" one could spin that "explain" certain unexplained phenomenon, including the 9/11 conspiracy theories.
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