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Montesquieu

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Everything posted by Montesquieu

  1. This article is very disturbing The Kinsey Whitewash I know nothing about Dr. Kinsey, in fact I never even heard of the guy until I read Scott Holleran's glowing review of the movie. I haven't gone to see that movie based on his review because, quite frankly, it didn't sound that interesting. After reading this Whitewash article I'm glad I did not. This Dr. Kinsey sounds like a real charletan not to mention totally unscientific and rather immoral to associate with a pedophile and use his "research." I don't know why anyone would want to make a movie to this person, it sounds like his "ideas" may have led to all sorts of nefarious enterprises like NAMBLA, etc.
  2. Wittgenstein was a linguist, he, and others like him, thought words were detached from reality essentially and had intrinsic meanings. It's all really quite ludicrous and obnoxious in the extreme, especially when people today look back on him as anything other than a Platonic quack.
  3. No kidding, but it is, of course, being taken out of context and overblown. Notice all the headlines just say something like "General says it's fun to shoot some people" without contextualizing which people he was referring to, namely terrorists in Afghanistan and Iraq.
  4. You forget that any advantages or abilities the Soviets had were derived entirely from U.S. support, from food and raw materials to their tank designs, etc. Without this great infusion of industrial capital, food, technology, military equipment, engineers, advisors, etc. the Soviet Union would have crumbled under the Nazi onslaught which, in turn would have been so overextended as to be untenable. The only reason Russians fought were, 1) the Nazis were brutally ruthless when they "liberated" Soviet territory, 2) they had guns to their backs from the Soviet regime, 3) the propaganda message shifted from save communism to save Russia. It wasn't just the fact that the liberals in the US were appeasing the Soviets, they, in utter supremacy in the government, were actively aiding them with the immense resources at the governments disposal. To the other suggestion that we somehow provoked the Japanese, this is a gross misunderstanding. The Roosevelt administration only pursued actions against the Japanese, like the oil embargo, after the Japanese invaded Indochina, or committed other atrocities in China, notably their entirely malicious invasion of Manchuria and subsequent takeover of the Chinese coastal plane (the rape of Nanking occured during this phase). China had been an ally of ours since the Republic of Sun Yatsen. I find the assertion that we somehow did anything to justify the Japanese attack, made by anyone on this forum, or by Dr. Peikoff in his West Point appearance, to be misinformed in the extreme. The Japanese had, since their push for modernization under Meiji and subsequently, borrowed heavily from German forms and imported a great number of German advisors from the government of Chancellor Bismarck. The Japanese had already built up a decade long track record of aggression and brutality before they attacked Pearl Harbor, and they did so solely because they thought they were entitled to natural resources because they had enough force to aggressively steal them from their neighbors as opposed to freely trading for them. WW1, our involvement in it anyway, was driven entirely by a selfless call to arms to secure "democracy" in the world and help other countries express their "self-determination" which sounds amazingly familiar these days. The one legitimate reason for us to get involved, the German foreign minister, Zimmerman, attempting to get the Mexican government to attack the United States, was thrown in the war message of Wilson as an afterthought. The only reason I can think of for WW2 being a mistake is that it made the Soviet Union more powerful than it ever could have been without our immense disbursements of essentially free (to them) supplies and industrial capital. Had we fought the war either on our own, or with just Britain, we could have easily defeated Germany, Italy, the USSR, and Japan, because we could have used all that material for ourselves and Britain as opposed to throwing it away on the Russians and imposing idiotic restrictions on people at home.
  5. I remember my first history teacher in college, a declared and devout Marxist, loved the book because it marginalized Western achievement and made good excuses for the savage state of many peoples around the world. Since that class I've had no interest in ever picking the book up and I have seen nothing since to make me think otherwise.
  6. Monopolies can occur in a free market, and it will not produce the results in service and quality that you claim. The thing a government does is prevent entry into a market by granting a license or franchise and then forcibly prohibiting competitors from challenging the monopoly. This assurance of permanence creates a drop off in quality and service. A free-market monopoly, or near-monopoly as a 100% monopoly is highly unlikely, has to always worry about new entrants into the market if they price too highly above the market price or let their service go to hell. It was the idea that monopolies would always act in a price raising, quality lowering way, regardless of whether they occurred through competence or governmental favor, that allowed anti-trust legislation and numerous other regulatory acts against big business to become law. It's not monopolies one should fear, it is the use of laws to create barriers to entry, creating in effect a pseudo-private government style company with all that goes along with such management. Marriage functions similarly. Men and Women have a perfectly legal option to dissolve their contract if they think it is not working out and pursue more valuable relationships. While you may subscribe to a monopoly of love voluntarily there is a legal way to extricate yourself from it. This is not the case with a franchised monopoly where you are forced into a relationship with one seller with no alternatives. It would be equivalent to the government telling you whom to marry and making sure that you couldn't stray or cheat (which in franchised-monopoly parlance is smuggling). Since this is clearly not the case I must agree with Stephen and say these two subjects are disanalogous, at least in the way you originally presented it seeing as your concept of monopoly was incomplete.
  7. The Brandens aren't the only ones out there attacking Ayn Rand. Murray Rothbard "hung out" with Ayn Rand's group back in the 50's I think because at the time he was running the Bastiat Society. Anyway, it's obvious, given his later writings, to see why there was a falling out, but his disciples like Hans Hoppe have turned it into a grand production about Rothbard's catholic wife being targeted by Rand, effectively asking Rothbard to get her to drop the catholicism or dump her. When Rothbard refused Hoppe says (who I assume was told by Rothbard since they worked together at the same university - UNLV - for some years before Rothbard died) that Rand's "collective" put him on a mock trial for his "crimes" and expelled him from their society. I don't know what all the details are in reality but this story is absolutely fantastic and therefore very hard to believe. Rothbard also wrote a very unflattering short play where he made jokes at the expense of Frank O'Connor as a sheepish man dominated by his wife and people like Branden (who was Miss Rand's #2 at the time) as grand inquisitors. The play is really a piece of garbage, and if you are interested in finding it I think you can dig it up at Lew Rockwell's website. The point is that Rothbard's criticisms are childish but I've come across people who have been greatly influenced by them, especially this supposed hex by Ayn Rand (and obediantly taken up by her cult members - us presumably) on Mozart and Beethoven.
  8. This is unsurprising, Jesus is quoted as saying he wanted to separtate mothers and children, husabands and wives, brothers and sisters along the dividing line of those who accepted his prochecies and divinity and those who did not. He may just point to that dictate and claim consistentcy. Whatever he does, I think it speaks volumes that he would give up a loving sibling for a nonsensical idea system. He would give up tangible happiness for unseen, unproven, and unreal entities who will reward him when he's dead. If he doesn't change his mind I would say that you have gained valuable knowledge of him that should make the loss you felt initially be alleviated greatly.
  9. Here is a recent quote from Angelina Jolie, as in from the last few days, from CNN-Jolie CNN article. This is the person some people want having some sort of role in an Atlas Shrugged movie? I'd rather see no movie made at all than see every leftist in Hollywood get cast into it because it's in vogue and then spit on the ideas in the novel. Besides, the prospect of making such a grandiose novel/treatise into a proper series of movies is not good given the current artistic attitudes in Hollywood and I think the chances of this project being done correctly are not good.
  10. The point is that in a work of art it is self-defeating to dramatize the utter destruction of all the heroes and the compromising of all that was good. I find the movie annoying in the respect that I find myself wanting the Neal kid to die since he's such a weak putz. Plus the scene where he does kill himself is so melodramatic, like you're supposed to sympathize with him even though his life is generally good. Anyone that dopey shouldn't be the protagonist of a film unless it's a biopic, in which case why do a biopic about that guy and not Mr. Keating? The movie leaves a bad taste in your mouth and two hours nearer to death (which doesn't seem that bad in comparison to watching the movie again). Perhaps you can tell I don't like it all that much.
  11. Two of the people on the currency were never president (Hamilton and Franklin). The ten dollar bill is lower than the twenty and historically Jackson was more important than Hamilton, plus Jackson was a president.
  12. For the majority of his career Bob Dylan was a socialistic dope and now he has turned to evangelical religion, am I missing something, but in my book, and I assumed everyone on this board's book, that makes him an idiot. Saying he doesn't sing that well is an understatement. Had anyone had a modicum of respect for tone and ability he would have been laughed out of the studio when he first started and not been allowed to terrorize the human ear for decades. Making money through dubious means is no virtuous achievement. Because a schister like Dylan puts crap onto tapes and gets idiots to buy them I should admire him? He can have all the money in the world and that wont change the fact that his music is still no good and that he is an idiot. It just so happens there are many idiots out there with money to support his untalented rump.
  13. The only less important people on the currency are U.S. Grant and maybe Hamilton and Lincoln, because there are more important founders who didn't make it on any currency like John Adams and James Madison. Of course FDR, JFK, Eisenhower, Susan B. Anthony, and Sacagawea being on any American currency is an abomination.
  14. I'm not saying this is AR's opinion of folk music, it is mine and could have been one of AR's, but I wouldn't know and frankly I don't think it is all that important a topic to do any indepth research. Folk music was and still is a haven of untalented (Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan) "singers" of idiotic lyrics, not unlike rap music. Now the original post did mention Jim Croche, his songs are primarily about love and things like that, as opposed to statements on social issues or socialist diatribes, and he had the ability to sing unlike many more famous folk singers. I like Jim Croche songs primarily for this distinction but Jim Croche isn't whom most rock and rollers say is the greatest artist ever, most of them point to Bob Dylan, a man who cannot sing and who has been a complete idiot his entire artisitic life. And his disciples are all over the place, Springsteen, Tom Petty, Sheryl Crow, etc. I perceive the glorification of this type of mediocrity to be the main problem with all modern music, but most notably with folk and rap music, though I fail to see any redeeming qualities in the latter.
  15. Somebody mentioned Dances with Wolves? That movie is awful, the Indians living idyllically and then the big bad white men come and ruin everything. As for the Bridge on the River Kwai, I always enjoyed the struggle between Alec Guiness and the Saito character, the one trying to keep his men healthy and himself from going mad and the other trying not to be a barbarian in front of Guiness's character. I also like that Guiness redeems himself at the end by destroying the bridge. I always liked Contact because of the businessman character who builds the second machine after the religious quack blows up the first government funded project, which is unusual because I generally dislike Carl Sagan, personally and as a writer. Just to throw in another category of movie, my favorite musical is The Sound of Music, with My Fair Lady coming in a close second.
  16. The Greeks also didn't have an industrialized society, which makes the application of a computer and a steam engine difficult to use. One should consider the inventions of Greek inventors in the same light as the work of some one like Da Vinci who was also working among non-industrialized autonomous city states. Galen is also important for advancing human knowledge in the realm of anatomy and learning the functions of various internal organs and other elements. He did this partly through vivisection on Egyptian prisoners.
  17. Having spent time in England I find it hard to believe that they are tied with us. Perhaps Scotland and Wales have different regulations but I doubt it. I think that list needs to be viewed with some suspicion.
  18. Welcome to the boards. As for Stoicism, it is not a very good philosophy for anyone to follow, primarily for its emphasis on not showing outward signs of emotion in public as the primary basis of virtue. It also has many other problems. Marcus Aurelius was the last philosopher emperor of the Roman Empire and really the last gasp of a united empire. I've nothing against him in particular aside from his stoicism, but I see nothing particularly admirable about the man, after all he was a despot.
  19. O'Reilly is intolerable. His propagation of the so called "Judeo-Christian" founding of the United States, which he expounds upon all the time is dangerous as well as counter-factual. And he never has any serious historians of the founding on to discuss his theory which tells me he knows it's bogus, or he is just that stupid.
  20. I may have gotten some facts mixed up, but wasn't John Locke involved in the drafting of one of the original charters of one of the American colonies? I believe it was one of the Carolina's, digging that up may be of use to you. As for secondary sources and commentaries on John Locke from modern writers I would have to say I am unfamiliar with most of them. I think the commentaries of the founders on Locke are pretty interesting.
  21. Apologize to whom and for what? The fact that these people allow dictatorships to run their lives and we deal with their governments? We shouldn't give any of them money, but it's not as if the foreign aid we give to nearly every government is keeping governments in place against the will of some overwhelming majority of dissidents. The government should apologize to the American people for wasting our money in foreign aid, kill the bastards trying to kill us and move on. If any government should be apologizing, it should be them apologizing to us, for stealing the west's oil and for causing so many problems in the modern world. Another point, what dictatorships are we or have we propped up? We didn't prop up the Taliban which was brought to power and kept in power by Pakistan, we didn't bring Saddam to power or keep him there, he was brought to power via Egyptian and Syrian fascist movements and was able to stay there via stolen oil money, Soviet arms, and recently via corruption of a UN program and bribing French, German, Russian, and Chinese officials. We supported the Shah of Iran, but we did nothing to help him when he was ousted. I will say one thing about an apology we should make. We should apologize to the people of the former Soviet Union and the Soviet satellite states for the unprincipled actions of FDR in saving Joseph Stalin from defeat and annihilation and causing a 50 year era of living on the brink of worldwide destruction, not to mention millions of people living in bondage. This was clearly the fault of the World War II allies, the United States being the principle member.
  22. The problem is that we have not been interventionist enough and when we have intervened we have done so in a half-hearted and ultimately disastrous way (i.e. Lebanon in the early 80s). We let Arab dictators steal our oil and did nothing to stop the rise of fascism in the Middle East in Egypt, Syria, and Iraq. We did nothing when American territory was violated in Iran in 1979 and American officials taken hostage. As far as I can tell the only real "intervention" we have ever made in the middle east was our effort to help certain Afghans (not bin Laden as the myth goes) kick out the Russians and to simultaneously help the Iraqis and Iranians kill each other for eight years. One will notice that almost the entire arsenal of Iraq is made up of old Soviet weaponry, not American stuff. Why has Soviet/Russian interventionism, which has been far more brutal and frequent than anything we ever did caused the entire Muslim world to rise against Russia? Yes, there is Chechnya, but they don't pursue this enemy with anywhere near the zeal and determination that they pursue the United States. To say we caused this by being too interventionist is to screw things up historically. We have not intervened when we should have or to the extent we should have. When we have intervened we've bent over backwards to not harm "civilians." And this last policy has only made us appear weak, which in a primitive tribalist culture is not good.
  23. The problem with these "red state, blue state" maps is that they give the false impression that these whole areas support one guy or the other. As the article points out, these secessionists are in particularly democratic precincts. Even states that went overwhelmingly for Kerry like MA or RI would never be able to secede even if they wanted to. The example set up by the Civil War is too perilous for any state to seriously consider this option. It would be interesting to see what might happen if a president who advocated the dismantling of the welfare state were ever elected. Then I can see perhaps some serious secessionist talk, but short of that I doubt it very much indeed.
  24. An improvement over Powell for sure, but that isn't saying much because Powell is a throw-back to the Secretary of States of the era before 9/11.
  25. Except of course in a modern age where one would need a machine gun if one ever wanted to stage a rebellion with any possibility of success. There is nothing wrong with civilians owning machine guns, nuclear weapons yes, guns no.
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