Montesquieu

What I think you should look to in terms of elections is the one of 1896 between McKinley and William Jennings Bryant. The whole point of his "cross of gold" speech and his push for silver backed money (more of it) was to help farmers pay debts more easily. He was soundly beaten, twice, on this issue and could be seen as the most obvious electoral rejection of some farmers interests, though the farmers would get their revenge in FDR's administration.

Eh??? As I remember it, John Wayne's character is the hero while Stewart's takes credit for something he knows he didn't do and couldn't do. And he ends up with all the accolades, going to congress as "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" while he knows he would have been gunned down while shaking in his boots had it not been for the real man (Wayne) coming in to save him.

Donald Rumsfeld should be shuffled over to the State Department with Wolfowitz getting promoted to the Defense Secretary position. Perhaps Rep. Cox can serve as Rumsfeld's or Wolfowitz's number two man in one or the other department. Ashcroft should be replaced, preferably with Ted Olsen, but I think he wants out of government for a while if not for good. Tommy Thompson and some others are going to leave to make way for some of the southern democratic senators who retired like John Breaux, or maybe even Evan Bayh or Zell Miller (though I doubt this latter choice given some unfavourable historical connections Mr. Miller has). You're probably not going to see McCain, Giuliani, Schwarzenegger, etc. in the cabinet because they are all holding out for the Presidency, though I see no way the constitution will be altered in the required time to allow Arnold to run. President Bush will also be the first person to appoint a new Fed chief since Ronald Reagan given that Mr. Greenspan has said his retirement will take effect upon the completion of his last term in 2006. This as well as 3-4 likely Supreme Court nominations are going to make Bush's second term full of important and lasting appointments that will effect the government and economy in various ways for years to come. Luckily, if he errs, especially in terms of the Supreme Court, the Senate Democrats can still block nominations through filibuster, however I expect the Republicans may actually force the Democrats to do a real filibuster for a change.

Also realize that bombing technology wasn't very good during World War II, it was seen as a more effective way to cripple the German and Japanese economies to mass bomb their cities. Today we can steer cruise missiles straight to where we want them to go, so there are far more options on the table in the tactics of the war. We don't have to firebomb Baghdad when we have tanks on the ground and AC-130 gunships and a selection of armaments flying overhead to eliminate any potential targets. We didn't have anywhere near this capability in World War II, making mass bombings really the only effective way to destroy targets and tie up German resources in fighting air raids. Another thing, Germany and Japan were highly industrialized societies and we had to bomb the hell out of hundreds of factories and other elements to have even a limited effect on their war output and even then the Germans hit a peak in ammunition production in mid to later 1944. Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, etc are all firmly entrenched in the third world, you would be bombing rubble essentially if you mass bombed the area and achieve nothing. Obviously these people can't handle the problem of governance on their own, so we have to go in their and straighten things out as best we can, and blowing the whole place to hell isn't going to facilitate that.

Because that is what Kerry stands for, and has always stood for since he became a public figure.

See it first, then if you still have a complaint we can at least argue it from the same starting point.

I have seen it, and it would definitely make a top 100 list, but the reason it is not in my top 10 is because I dislike the ending and I don't think it's overall theme is as grand as it could be. I don't see the Shawshank Redemption all that differently from Clint Eastwood's Escape from Alcatraz.

Ten Greatest Movies ever made: 1: Lawrence of Arabia 2: Ben-Hur 3: The Bridge on the River Kwai 4: Patton 5: Glory 6: Amadeus 7: Rob Roy 8: Life is Beautiful 9: Immortal Beloved 10: The Sound of Music

He did not treat or think of his slaves as full human beings on par with himself, this is an absurdity. Read Jefferson's own writings on this subject, yes he thought Britain introducing African slavery was immoral and wrong, but he also considered the Africans themselves to be an inferior sort of people. And of course he took advantage of his ability to initiate force on his slaves, though I don't know if he did so personally, I very much doubt that. But slavery, by its very nature, requires the use of force, and the continual threat of force to stay effective. Slaves had to be beaten for slacking off, force is the only incentive a slave has to work at all. No slave at Monticello could walk up to Jefferson and announce he was going to leave to head north and get an industrial job, if he did or tried to do such a thing he would be caught and most likely be beaten very harshly. I don't think anyone on this thread is saying that everything positive Jefferson did is negated by his holding of slaves or his overtly racist comments about slaves, but it does no one any good at all to try to "pretty up" the reality of slavery at Monticello by making it appear to be some sort of utopia when it wasn't and could not be. Plus trying to make Jefferson sound like the ideal slave-holder is wrong when it is clear, historically, that Washington did more to help and free his slaves than Jefferson ever did for his own. Thomas Jefferson was a great man, but he was a slaveholder who did not end up freeing his slaves and actually laid the foundations for the pro-slavery arguments the south would use right up to the Civil War, and then afterwards to rationalize segregationist laws. To not deal with this simple fact of history is a terrible evasion of reality.

The good things that Jefferson did, which are all part of American lore, should be greatly admired. However, one need only look to Jefferson's "Note on Virginia" to see him cobble a feeble defense of the slavery together. One must also remember that Jefferson often contradicted himself on many issues of which slavery is probably the most blatant. To the above quotes, there was a sizable free black population in the South at the time the country was founded and until 1830 there were more anti-slavery and abolitionist groups in the South than in the North. To say that many blacks did not want to be free because they enjoyed a "health, free life with their owners," is an absurdist claim in the extreme. First of all, as a slave one is never "free" in any sense of the word. Secondly, any pleasurable experience one got while in slavery depended wholly upon who owned you. One might make out pretty well under George Washington (if you know anything about how Washington handled his slaves this will make more sense, he was lenient to the point of ruining the fortunes of Mt. Vernon) but under other owners ones experience may have been entirely different, with frequent beatings for not meeting the cotton quota or some other infraction. The problem with being free for black people was racism and the fact that most were unskilled initially and had to take the worst jobs. But even in the early 1800's many free blacks in the south were artisans of various kinds in many Southern cities. One should also veer away from the notion that someone didn't want to be free, because 1) it was a favorite argument of pro-slavery southerners against moves to limit or abolish slavery and 2) it takes the position that since one has been enslaved for a period of time and thus doesn't know freedom, that they no longer have any right to it. It is never acceptable to own other people, and their immediate emancipation, no matter how long they were owned is the only proper recourse. On a sidenote, Washington's estate provided pensions to all the older slaves that were freed because he understood that they had been raised as slaves and might not adjust very well to freedom, which makes different demands upon a person. I believe the last pension payment occurred in the early 1830s.

The Spaniards who conquered the Aztecs and Incas were soldiers left over from the campaigns to kick the muslims out of Spain. They acted as marauding armies, but they weren't just a band of nomadic barbarians, they succeeded for various reasons demonstrating their own cultural superiority (even though the soldiers were probably the worst exemplars of it) and demonstrating the inferiority of those they conquered. In both the downfalls of the Aztecs and Incas, the tributary tribes were open to helping the invaders get rid of their native overlords. The Spanish soldiers passed on diseases to the people in the Americas because European cultures had long been domesticating aminals, where many deadly diseases orginate. Animal husbandry is an important part of civilization and the fact that many Indians had no immunity to these diseases demonstrated their backwardness. Also the Spaniards brought another implement of European modernism, guns, but with so few Spaniards these were more psychological than military. Again I must refer back to the fact that many tribes flocked around Pizarro (Incas) and Cortez (Aztecs) to get rid of the two great empires of the Americas. Now the aftermath was a complete disaster as should be expected from the spread of diseases the Indians couldn't combat and the fact that the soldiers were there for gold, silver, or land. However a true benefit from the overthrow of the Aztecs especially was the ending of human sacrifices to the sun, which were drawn as tributes from conquered tribes. I think it is undeniable that the end result is preferable to how it was, but the means were messy, bloody, irrational, wrong, etc. But I defy anyone to show me a military conquest from the sixteenth century that fit any rational or Objectivist ideal, which is a contradiction in terms almost. We cannot judge historical actors in their own time because they didn't come up with all sorts of ideas, the precursors of which didn't exist. Aristotle had only been rediscovered by Europeans a few hundred year prior and the Renaissance was just beginning to reach its form. Had Ayn Rand been born at this time period I can guarantee she would not have been any life-altering philosopher for anyone, because too many things necessary for 1905 Russia to exist had not yet been developed or taken place. In looking upon these events, we must judge them primarily by their ends. The means should also be discussed, and certainly if their were and Aztec Empire today we would deal with it differently than Cortez did, but this is an irrelevancy. What is important is how American (and subsequently Mexican) culture and civilazation was changed by the conquest, good and bad. And on the whole I think it was a net benefit.

Anarchists and Communists were prevented from entering the country at the turn of the century, and people who lied or became anarchists or communists were deported. The question though is why should everyone espousing dumb ideas (like religious ones) be prevented from entering the United States? The government should prosecute crimes, not thwart immigration based on assumptions. Native islamists can do just as much damage as islamist immigrants. Also, this line of reasoning sounds like what Pat Buchanan has been saying the last few years, and it still hasn't been proved or bolstered with any fundamental ideas or principles of ethics.

It was disappointing, but they kept cutting to him in the dugout as he was praying in between his pitching half-innings, so it wasn't entirely unexpected. I think it would have been funny if his doctor showed up and slapped him, because the procedure his doctor has to do before every Schilling start is entirely untried and is apparently very effective in the short term before they can do the reconstructive surgery. What an ingrate, passing off the credit to a magical invisible being instead of the very real heroes responsible for him being able to pitch. That being said, GO RED SOX. I can't cheer for the Cardinals who helped eliminate my Chicago Cubs.

Howard Zinn is about as worthless as you get as far as professional history. I don't know what you can gain by buying and reading the book, other than to locate the orignator of some of the very horrid ideas underlying the demonization of Columbus, America, the founding fathers, etc.

It seems I'm the only person sometimes who remembers that this guy was the poster child for governmental corruption not much more than a decade ago. For those that don't know, in the Savings and Loan "crisis" in the late eighties and early nineties an owner of a S&L named Frank Keating donated money to five US Senators who then tried to bail out Keating's S&L with government money when it became insolvent. John McCain was one of those five senators and his career seemed like toast. But he somehow miraculously wasn't thrown out of office and was able to turn the whole thing around. He was able to get the media to forget it (and I'm hypothesizing now) simply because he staked out this Republican "Maverick" territory. Since the media is leftist in general, they love a Republican who disagrees with his own party a lot, criticizes its leaders and provides Democrats with someone to quote (John Kerry did this to distraction in the second debate, naming every single general supporting him and every Republican senator who ever criticized the war in Iraq). Plus he becomes powerful very quickly in the senate because there is always the possibility he could switch parties and the leadership needs to keep him as content as possible. I find it very annoying indeed how everyone kisses this guy's ass for his so called independence and smarts, when in reality he's just a skilled politician who turned what should have been a career ending scandal entirely around and is now the darling of talk shows and Democratic politicos. Of course one could also say similar things about Strom Thurmond or Zell Miller, but the media has never liked either of them.

I'm curious, are you voting for Kerry? For you say that Bush is "totally alien to the purposes of capitalism," but is Kerry better in this regard? I've come to expect a total lack of knowledge of capitalism and general disregard for individual rights from American politicians, especially those running for President, for otherwise they wouldn't have been nominated because a candidate who did understand these things would have to promise the abolition of the welfare state and would be crushed in a 538-0 electoral college blowout. However I don't see how Kerry is any better in this regard, in fact Kerry has been out front (along with John McCain) with this forcing high school kids to do public service before they can graduate or in exchange for getting their parents money back in the form of student loans. Shameless drivel? Harry Binswanger isn't a "garden-variety, modern day Conservative" because he's an Objectivist and everything that entails. Do you think Leonard Peikoff would let a "garden-variety, modern day Conservative" have any prominence in Objectivism at all? Yet Binswanger is featured prominently in the Ayn Rand Bookstore catalogue, which is issued by the Ayn Rand Institute, for his many great lectures and courses on many aspects of Objectivism. Your outlandish comments can only be chalked up to ignorance, or you are so emotionally invested in getting Kerry elected you're willing to besmirch any Objectivist who doesn't agree with you. I don't agree with Dr. Lewis, Dr. Peikoff, Mr. Swig, you, etc, but I'm not going out and calling you guys names or questioning whether or not you're really Objectivists. I don't compare Dr. Peikoff and Dr. Lewis to Michael Moore, Maureen Dowd, and Al Franken because they all are supporting Kerry (or in the case of Dr.s Peikoff and Lewis, opposing Bush). Comparing a man like Binswanger to the likes of Limbaugh, Hannity, and Coulter is a shameless ad hominem and a refusal to counter what you see as an incorrect argument with another argument.

Historical precedent does bode well for Presidents elected on the '0 year mark since 1840. 1840 - William Henry Harrison catches pneumonia after delivering long inaugural address in the rain and dies a month into office. 1860 - Abraham Lincoln is elected president and is assassinated in 1865. 1880 - James Garfield is elected and is assassinated by Charles Guiteau. 1900 - Re-elected William McKinley is assassinated. 1920 - Warren Harding dies in office. 1940 - Franklin Roosevelt dies in 1945. 1960 - JFK assassinated in 1963. 1980 - Ronald Reagan is shot in the chest, bullet only an inch and a half away of killing him. 2000 - George W. Bush ??? Of course this is merely coincidental, but still it's interesting trivia.

WOW, they make the case for keeping Bush in office better than I can.

Imposing a monkey as dictator would be a huge improvement over the Taliban.

Not only have Europeans not built up demand, they are also heavily subsidizing all their phamaceuticals. In the United States, the government imposed price controls and drove the domestic producers out of the market. Also notice that the English company was producing almost its whole quantity for the American market and not for the English market.

Another thing about this "half-war, no war" dichotomy, which I obviously believe is false. No leading politician is an Objectivist so a full war is not going to be fought in a proper, rational, and moral way as we would like it to be fought. In fact, going by historical precedent in the modern age when America fought total war we at the homefront have gotten screwed over. There will be rationing, economic organization boards, there will most certainly be an activation of the selective service, etc. A "full-war" will not be a panacea to all of the current wars problems, in fact it will create a whole host of other problems that we have fortunately been spared thus far. The only good thing about it is that the war would not take as long, but I can't say there won't be more casualties since under a total war setting the media will be rigorously clamped down and casualty reporting will cease or become more broad, making the number of casualties less costly politically. Also the government is generally far more careless in total war situations since resources and soldiers are in overabundant supply. This is one of reasons the casualties in the Civil War, World War I, and World War II were so horrendously large. SO in some sense, a half-war may be better than a full-war given that the full-war will be run, not by rational Objectivists, but by others who will rely more on what they can do legally and by historical precedent than by what is morally just as defined by a rational ethical code.

Why should a difference of opinion on who to endorse in a political race make one or the other unqualified to represent the philosophy of Ayn Rand? It's not as if they are disagreeing about some fundamental point of metaphysics or epistemology.

No kidding. A half-war isn't like a half-argument, where one concedes the fundamental point to ones adversary. Half-wars still kill terrorists and give them trouble. No war does nothing to them. We don't have time to sit around and do nothing in a Kerry administration with Iran on the cusp of becoming nuclear. Bush has said unequivocally that we won't allow Iran to have nuclear weapons, now if he lets such a disaster occur, he will pay dearly with all parties and people, his legacy as a president will be ruined. We have sold Israel long range refueling tankers and bunker busters, which are obviously meant to be used on Iran. Would Kerry have done this? I doubt it given what his stated policies on Iran have been. MisterSwig says, Vietnam was an irrelevancy that never posed a threat to anyone except the Vietnamese. A third world country which no one cared about before and which no one cares about now. We went into Vietnam on the false assumption that Vietnam falling to communism would cause all Southeast Asia to fall and thus somehow be dangerous to us. The Iraq situation is much different. Iraq was actually waging agressive war against us for a decade, something Vietnam never did. Iraq actually supported international terrorism against us and our allies, mainly Israel. Iraq was actually a threat, Vietnam was not. Leaving Vietnam represented a win for the Vietnamese communists and was an insult to the 58,000 Americans who died there, but the effect didn't go beyond that area because the Soviet Union and China both knew that they weren't unimportant locations like Vietnam. We could still stand up to communism while failing in Vietnam. How can we stand up to Iran when even our limited action against Islamists is greated with electoral defeat? When the opponent to Bush runs not on doing more, but doing less? The communists in Beijing and Moscow knew that our failure in Vietnam didn't mean they could do whatever they wanted. Our retreat and giving up in Iraq, along with the electoral rejection of doing something about it will be viewed by all the Islamists as a sign of victory. The proof of this is Somalia. To go along with your example, Somalia was even far less important than Iraq and when Clinton decided to retreat people like Bin Laden saw it as proof positive that the US military were "paper tigers." Leaving didn't keep the status quo ante-bellum, it made things worse, it showed the American people that the president was unwilling to do anything and it showed our enemies that we would do nothing, or if we did, it was unlikely in the extreme to involve ground troops because even a few casualties would force retreat. We're still dealing with this in Iraq, every single casualty is dwelled upon, effectively doing the job of the terrorists for them and encouraging them to commit more attacks. This has been a tactic of our enemies since the Filipino Insurrection and will continue to be into the future so long as the media helps them out.

I voted early here in Nevada for Bush. My greatest fear in a second Bush term is that the war won't move beyond Iran and North Korea. I agree that the United States doing anything about Iran is troubling in that we may not do anything. This doesn't worry me perhaps as much as it does you because of what the Israeli government has been saying and the fact that we have been selling them long range refueling tankers and bunker buster bombs, which can only be used for Iranian targets. So I think that even if we sit on our hands, the Israelis will not.

Obviously no one thinks it is right to make this kind of comment at any time, whether private, off the cuff, or in a policy speech. Bush says a lot of stupid things all the time, but so does his opponent, they are both the product of the corrupt and collectivist political context in which we live. If there were an Objectivist or Objectivist leaning candidate running we would all vote for him, but this is not the case. As for speaking in public and a President's ability to do so, I don't put much if any stock in this "ability" at all. The important question is, "Is what people say correct and truthful?" not did they mangle a few words and thus invalidate their argument. George Washington wasn't a good public speaker at all, at least not in front of large crowds, while Hitler was a much more able orator. Does this mean that if the two men could somehow run against one another we should vote for Hitler or not vote for Washington because of the supposed intelligence of someone who speaks well in high pressure situations on TV or in front of large crowds? Also, no politician explains themselves about anything at all, because either their ideas are just absurd and elaboration would make this more obvious, or they know that their public comments will only be shown in part on TV news and thus long and elaborate explanations of policies are almost a waste of time until they have an opportunity to make long speeches in prime time.